Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/237

Rh the territory allotted to him by the Sublime Porte. The provinces of Bahdinân and Buhtân, being the nearest to Mosul on the north, were the first which excited his cupidity; and he endeavoured by every means in his power to get these two districts annexed to his pashalic. was at this time nominally subject to Baghdad, but had been ruled for ages by an hereditary Coordish chieftainship, of which Ismael Pasha was the living representative. In 1832 the Coordish Pasha of Rawandooz took possession of the strong fortress of Amedia, and placed it under the command of Rasool Beg his brother. The constant disturbances and insurrections which arose in consequence of the intrigues of these two rival chiefs, the one striving to hold what he had obtained by conquest, and the other to regain possession of what he had lost (fomented as they were by Mohammed Pasha, who nevertheless was the first to report to the supreme government the anarchical state of the district), finally induced the Porte to add the whole of Bahdinân to the Mosul pashalic, by which concession the authority of Mohammed Pasha was extended to the borders of the Tyari country.

But not satisfied with this addition of territory, Mohammed Pasha found means to prevail upon the Porte to place also under his sway. This province, which comprises the whole of the district west of Bahdinân as far as Jezeerah, and stretches northward to the west of Tyari, was under the immediate jurisdiction of Bedr Khan Beg, and, in a late reform attempted by the Turkish government for regulating the condition and political relations of the Coordish and other mountain tribes in this part of its dominions, had been annexed to the pashalic of Diarbekir. Mohammed Pasha found it a comparatively easy task to convince the Porte that this arrangement was likely to be productive of great inconvenience to the two pashalics, and upon his repeatedly promising to establish the Sultan's authority more firmly in Coordistan, and thus to increase the revenue of the government, Buhtân was transferred from Diarbekir and made a dependency of Mosul.

These concessions took place in the early part of 1841, and