Najd Sanjak an autonomous separate country within the empire. The sultan recognized Abdullah II Al-Sabah as the kaymakam of Kuwait as a subprovince of al-Ahsa, formally acknowledging that Kuwait was a part of the Ottoman Empire and that it was ruled by the Sabah family. In 1913 Ibn Saud launched an attack on Hofuf, where 1,200 Turkish troops had been stationed since the province's annexation in 1870. The Ottoman garrison was expelled from Hasa, and the territory fell to the Al Saud. Even after the conquest of Hasa, Britain considered Ibn Saud to be an Ottoman vassal, and the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of
Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913 intervene in matters of the Gulf, of which the British desired to retain a monopoly. The Ottomans were willing to drop all claims to Bahrain, in which they had never been able to maintain anything but a symbolic role, but not Qatar. As a question of sovereignty, the Ottomans argued that the empire had always exercised effective sovereignty over the peninsula and could not justify the abandonment of territory which it had never formally renounced. Yet under considerable pressure it renounced claims to both (Articles 11 & 13) and a blue line was established to define the territorial limits of