- 16 - road, from Kuwait to Baghdad. The first shipment to Kuwait was on 13th December, 1776. It was coffee and sugar valued at 80,000 Rupees.(6) Hearing of the arrival of the large Ottoman forces to Basra in February 1777, the Persian Commander, Sadiq Khan, approached Thamer al-Saadun of Almuntafiq tribe for a huge payment in order to give up Basra. But Sheikh Thamer rejected the deal. In early March, 1777, King Karim Khan Zand received a letter from his brother, Sadiq Khan, that he could no longer hold on to the occupation of Basra, especially with the large troops that kept arriving. He said he would start destroying the city before withdrawing from it, and that he would wait for Karim Khan’s orders to leave Basra after all attempts with the Almuntafiq Sheikh failed. In spite of this predicament, the Persian government decided to launch an attack on Baghdad which had no Ottoman troops. On 5th May 1777, three thousand men headed from Shiraz to Isfahan to make up the remaining numbers required for the invasion of
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTg0NzAy