373 
ARAB PIRATES. 
Within the last few years, their attacks have been almost indiscriminate ; 
nor had they learnt to respect even the English colours, as the instance 
in the text, and the subsequent capture of the Minerva , Captain 
Hopgood, proved too well. The British government however, know¬ 
ing the intimate connection of these pirates on the coast with the 
Wahabee ,* * proceeded in the suppression of the evil with cautious judg¬ 
ment; and when, by the extension of these outrages to themselves, 
they were driven to vindicate the honour of their flag, and to extirpate 
their enemies, they regarded all the ports, which had not actually in¬ 
cluded the British within their depredations, as still neutral; and 
endeavoured to confine their warfare to reprisals, for specific acts of 
violence, rather than to commit themselves generally against the 
Wahabees, by extending the attack to those of that alliance who, 
amid all their piracies, had yet not violated the commerce of 
England. 
We might indeed thus separate the Joassmee tribe from the Wahabee , 
for we had already, in a formal treaty, recognised them as an inde¬ 
pendant power; though perhaps for all other purposes, they might be 
considered as identified. The strength however of the Joasmees alone 
was very considerable. The ports in their possession contained, ac- 
four guns, two of sixty, one of fifty, and eighteen from thirty-two to twelve guns; besides 
smaller, &c. Captain Hamilton, East Indies, i. p. 76. Modern Universal History 
vi. 46. 
* The first mention of the Wahabees, is in Niebuhr, Description de l’Arabie, p. 17, 
p. 296—302: and Gibbon first noticed the singular co-incidence, that they sprung from 
ilie same province, Nedsjed , in which Moseilama the great contemporary adversary of 
Mahomed, had propagated his faith, vol. v. p. 277. It may be added, that the Carma - 
thians , who triumphed over the Mahomedans , like the Wahabees of the present day, and 
like them took Mecca , (and plundered it indeed much more effectually than their succes¬ 
sors are said to have done) in the same manner took possession first of the provinces on 
the Persian Gulph. See Gibbon, v. 449. Sale’s Koran, p. 184. D’Ohsson, Tableau, 
de l’Empire Ottoman, tom. i. p. 105, 
