Anglo-Kuwaiti Agreement of 1899 Following their successful 1871 Najd expedition, the Ottomans solidified their influence over Kuwait. In 1892, Muhammad Al-Sabah ascended to the Kuwaiti throne. Mohammad's ineptitude as a ruler led to a gradual emergence of his brother in law Yusuf bin Abdullah Al–Ibrahim as an éminence grise. Al–Ibrahim went on to pursue Turkophile policies, which alienated the nationalist circles of Kuwait's society. In May 1896, Mohammad was assassinated by his half brother Mubarak Al-Sabah who then seized power. The Ottomans believed that the revolt was a part of a larger British plot to create a Pan-Arab anti-Ottoman alliance. The Ottomans cited Mubarak's
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