| Chapter 11: | Great Britain, the Ottomans, and the Assyrian Tragedy |
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Canning’s Instructions to Stevens on His Mission to Mosul
On 21 December 1843, the first British action in the affair of the Assyrian tribes was taken when Canning issued his instructions to Stevens to leave his post at Samsoon and go to Mosul. There he was to join Kemal Effendi, the sultan’s envoy, and try to open a line of communications with Bedr Khan Beg. The ambassador defined Stevens’ new mission by informing him that
Kemal Effendi embarks tomorrow for Mossoul with the intention to going on to Diarbekir, and after staying there some weeks, to Mossoul. I have appraised him of your going to Moossul and of the interest which you would be directed to take in the objects, as far as they are known to me, of his mission. The person whom I sent to him assures me that he expressed his satisfaction at the prospect of advantage to be derived from your society and assistance and proposed of his own accord that you should travel with him to Diarbekir, and he is under an impression that you have other motives for motives for your journey than what relate to him.
Canning was keen to have his vice-consul gain the confidence of the sultan’s envoy without drawing his attention. He acquainted him with Porte’s instructions. The prime purpose of Kemal Effendi’s mission was
to obtain from Bedr Khan Beg, and perhaps from the chief of Hakkari Kurds, the restitution of all persons taken as slaves and of all property plundered from the Nestorian Christians in the late incursion on their country; to stop the effusion of blood; and to feel the way toward effecting some permanent arrangement as well with the chiefs as with the Nestorian Patriarch, Mar Shimun, who on fleeing from his country sought refuge with Mr. Rassam at Mosul. However, Her Majesty’s government desire in particular that nothing should be omitted to give the earliest and fullest effect possible to the Porte’s Instructions for accomplishing the more immediate objects of the Sultan’s envoy.