On June 15, 1858, 21 Christian residents of Jeddah, then an Ottoman town of 5,000 inhabitants, predominantly Muslims, were massacred, including the French consul and the British vice-consul, by "some hundreds of Hadramites, inhabitants of Southern Arabia". 24 others, mostly Greeks and Levantines, some "under British protection" plus the daughter of the French consul and the French interpreter, both badly wounded, escaped and took refuge, some by swimming to it, in the HMS Cyclops steam paddle wheel frigate .
Whereas The Church of England quarterly review (1858) suggested there could be a vague connection to the British repression of the Indian Rebellion of 1857-1859, and The Spectator wrote that "A Sheik from Delhi is said to have instigated the massacre", the Perth Gazette of October 22, 1858 extensively quoted an interview in the Moniteur of Emerat, the French dragoman (interpreter) and chancellor. According to him, the events were provoked by a commercial dispute which ended by the rehoisting of the British flag on an Indian ship and the hauling down of the Ottoman one, which provoked a riot. He added that the "agitators" actually resented the presence of non-Muslims "whose presence, in their eyes, defiled the sacred soil of the Hedjaz".
The massacre was discussed in the British House of Commons on 12 and 22 July 1858.
According to The Church Review (1859), the Jeddah population of about 5,000 was "often much increased by the influx of strangers", "the inhabitants are nearly all foreigners, or settlers from other parts of Arabia".