No. 917.
Mr. Pratt
to Mr. Bayard.
Teheran, August 28, 1888. (Received October 3.)
Sir: I have the honor to report that I received this morning from the British minister here a note transmitting the transcript of a telegram he had received yesterday from Mr. Abbott, Her Britannic Majesty’s consul-general at Tabriz.
Inclosed I beg respectfully to submit copies both of the note and of the telegram in question.
By the latter, you will observe it is apprehended that the Turkish Kurds intend crossing the borders and making a descent upon Tiary and Tehoman for the alleged purpose of massacreing the Christian inhabitants.
Fearing lest some of our missionaries might chance to be in one or the other of the above localities, I at once had Rev. S. Lawrence Ward, of this mission station, telegraph, at my expense, to the mission station at Oroomiah (the one nearest the Kurdish frontiers), urging if any Americans contemplated visiting the threatened region that they be deterred from so doing, and that such as were already there be warned forthwith to depart.
After this I called at the English legation and learned from Sir Henry Drummond Wolff that he had communicated the substance of the report from Tabriz to his excellency the Emin é-Soultan, and also telegraphed the British ambassador at Constantinople to so represent the case to the Sublime Porte as to cause it to directly exert its authority over the tributary Kurds and restrain them from committing the contemplated act of aggression.
I do not anticipate any immediate danger to our citizens, but will cable you should the situation become critical and the necessity arise of resorting to special measures for their protection.
I have, etc.,