seeking the aid of Fetteh Ali against their relative. Mehdi Ali Khan seems to have been by no means backward in incurring responsibility. He had been entrusted by the Governor of Bombay with a letter to the King of Persia, by which he was empowered to conclude any arrangement he might choose to enter into. But had the contents of these credentials reached the eyes of the Shah's ministers, they would have led them to believe that the English authorities were willing to purchase their aid against the Affghans. Mehdi Ali Khan found the Shah sufficiently disposed to attack the Affghans without the inducement of an English subsidy, and he therefore determined to suppress the letter by which he was accredited, and to substitute in its place another document, purporting to come from the Governor of Bombay, in which that officer offered to the Shah his condolence on the death of his uncle, and his congratulations on his accession to the throne. The mission of this envoy met with full success, and he returned towards Hindostan, exulting in the assurance he had received regarding the king's schemes of conquest in Affghanistan, and in the orders that had been issued for seizing the persons of any Frenchmen who might venture to show themselves in Persia.
Zeman Shah about this period caused his vizeer to send an officer to Haji Ibraheem, the prime minister of Persia, with a request that Fetteh Ali would make over to Afghanistan the province of Khorassan. Such a suggestion could not fail to draw out an explanation from the king as to the policy he intended to pursue. He instructed his minister to reply that it was his intention to restore the south-eastern limits of Persia
