Mubarak Al-Sabah of Mubarak's supposed assassination plot spread throughout the Ottoman Empire and abroad, which proved a serious obstacle in establishing his legitimacy as a ruler. Mubarak acted quickly to bribe the Ottoman bureaucracy through lavish gift giving in order to gain support for his appointment as kaymakam [sub governor] of Kuwait like his previous brothers. This is further illustrated through a memorandum by Captain J.F. Whyte, a British agent stationed in Basra: “Sheikh Mubarak has, since his usurpation, been employing his late brother’s wealth to secure his recognition as Sheikh and his appointment as Kaimakam of Koweit by the Sublime Porte.”
Rise of the Ottoman Empire and vassals. When the Ottoman polity first emerged at the end of the thirteenth century under the leadership of Osman I, it had a tribal organization without a complex administrative apparatus. As Ottoman territory expanded its rulers were faced with the challenge of administering an ever-larger population. Early on the Ottomans adopted the Seljuks of Rum as models, and by 1324 were able to produce Persian-language bureaucratic documents in the Seljuk style. The early Ottoman state's expansion was fueled by the military activity of frontier warriors (), of whom the Ottoman ruler was initially merely "primus inter pares". Much of