Purchase of Sheikh Othman 1880
By the late 1870s it was realised that Aden was getting too crowded. The solution proposed by the Resident at the time, Brigadier Loch, was ‘to purchase the villages of Sheikh Othman and Imad and adjoining lands with a view to forming a civil settlement there to relieve the pressure of the civil population in the military town and garrison of Aden’. This proposal was put to India in 1878 and was approved in June 1879. But the actual purchase was to be deferred until ‘a more convenient financial season’.
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The land was all owned by the Sultan of Lahej and to keep him on board in July 1879 he was given an advance payment of 20,000 rupees, which would become an interest-free loan in the event that the plan was abandoned. (To put the price in perspective 20,000 rupees was just over two years salary for the 1st Assistant Resident, and quite a bit less than a year’s salary for the Resident, not counting the increment he received if he was also commanding the troops).
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The following year it was realised that the purchase would need to be completed without further delay, in particular to avoid government having to pay increased sums to other interested parties. In November 1880 government agreed to pay the following: Another 35,000 rupees to the Sultan, making a total of 55,000 to him and less than two year’s worth of Loch’s salary. A further 5,000 rupees to the Fadhli Sultan who had claim to some of the land, plus another 5,000 to the Kazi of Lahej who had helped broker the deal.
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Apart from these down payments the Sultan’s monthly subsidy from government was to be increased quite considerably to compensate him for the loss of revenue from water and salt. For the former he was to receive 600 and for the latter 500 (Maria Teresa) dollars a month. It was also agreed that the change of border would not alter the right of the Sultan to levy transit dues on trade with Aden.
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(Little Aden had already been bought in the 1860s, so this was not part of this deal)
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1. Man in pith helmet. Connaught Rd Sheikh Othman c1900
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2. Connaught Road Sheikh Othman c1947
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3. Mosque in sheikh Othman