Shortly after the return of Fetteh Ali Shah from Meshed, he was informed of the coming of an envoy who had already opened diplomatic communication between the British authorities in India, and the court of Persia. This envoy was named Mehdi Ali Khan, and he had been deputed to Tehran by the Governor of Bombay. The object of his mission was to endeavour to persuade the Shah to attack Afghanistan, and thereby relieve, for the time being, the minds of the European rulers of India from the apprehension under which they laboured lest India should be invaded by Zeman Shah. The envoy entered upon his task with a mind free from the restraint of a too scrupulous adhesion to truth. He took care to inform the chief minister of the court of Persia that the English authorities in India were not at all afraid of the Shah of Afghanistan, but that, on the contrary, they rather wished him to put into execution his repeated threat of invasion, in order that they might show how easily he could be defeated. The envoy tells us that, in his correspondence with the Persian Government, he artfully avoided pledging the name of the Honourable East India Company, but that he represented unofficially the ravages of the Affghans at Lahore, and mentioned that thousands of the Sheeah inhabitants of that quarter had fled from their cruelty, and had found an asylum in the East India Company's dominions; and he added that, if the King of Persia possessed the ability to check the career of such a prince as Zeman Shah, he would be serving God and man by doing so. He further endeavoured to hurry the advance upon Afghanistan of Prince Mahmoud and Prince Ferooz-shah, two brothers of the monarch of Cabul, who were at that time refugees
