Page 33 - Records of Bahrain (5) (i)_Neat

Death of Shaikh Hamad bin ‘Isa, 1942 21
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and wont to Rumaitha talcing my aooretary Mr. Narayan.
Before going I gave orders for all flags to be flown
at half mast in ordor that the public should know
what had happened. I stopped on the way at Shaikh

Salman's house at Rafaa, ho had gone to Rumaitha but
the news was not known there.
A little distance from Rumaitha I met a long pro­
cession of about 60 oars with the Bahrain Petroleum
Company's ambulanoe in the centre. I turned off the
road. The leading car and the whole procession stopped

and Shaikhs Mohomed, Abdullah and Salman got out and
had a conversation with me on the roadside, Shaikh
Mohomed was the spokesman and he told me that he wished
mo to knov/ at once that the family had ohosen Shaikh
Salman to sucoeod his father and now they were taking
Shaikh Hamad to the cemetery at Rafaa. They asked me
to follow their car. All along the road the prooes-

sion was Joined by oars whioh had been going out to
Rumaitha. The procession turned off the main road
aoross the desert to the little oemetery near the
Hanaini well in the valley below Rafaa, Shaikh Abdul-
latif, one of the Sunni Qadis, was waiting here with
a great crowd of people, all the inhabitants of the

two Rafaa3. On the oliffs below the fort there were
many hundreds of women. The servioe was takon by
Shaikh Abdullatif, Shaikh Hamad was buried dose to
the grave of Shaikh Salman bin Ahmad who was the seoond

ruler of Bahrain and who lived early in the 19th oentury.
Among the large orowd of people who were present were
Dr. Snow and Dr. Harrison, Jews, Indians, Persians and
Arabs. After the funeral I returned to Manamah. On
the way I met several oars full of people driving out
to----