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80 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

customs reform. 14 It was only when military operations began in Iraq in
1914 that the residency of Bushehr was forced to adopt a more lenient
stance in customs matters, and sought to gain influence by appointing
locally based clerks who could monitor receipts on behalf of the Bahrain’s
agency. 15
New patterns of commercial arbitration contributed to undermine
further the position of Shaykh ‘Isa in Manama where the settlement of
trade disputes had enormous political implications. With the de facto
imposition of British extraterritorial jurisdiction in 1861, following the
treaty negotiated by the Indian authorities with the then ruler Shaykh
Muhammad ibn Khalifah, an informal court was established in the native
agency which catered for foreigners as protected subjects. Moreover, the
native agent started to attend the sessions of the Majlis al-‘Urf, the indig-
enous commercial council presided over by the ruler of Bahrain, in order
to protect the interests of Manama’s foreign merchants. British influence
in the Majlis al-‘Urf became more consistent as foreign trade grew expo-
nentially by the end of the century, and peaked after 1919, when half of its
members started to be nominated directly by the agency. 16
Yet the granting of British protection in nineteenth-century Manama
was neither straightforward nor necessarily directly beneficial to imperial
interests. The boundaries of jurisdiction of the Majlis al-‘Urf, Manama’s
indigenous commercial council, and of the court convened in the native
agency were blurred. Until 1900 the official duties of native agents were
often overshadowed by their personal interests as merchants, as well as by
their relations with the rulers. Moreover, as Bahrain was in a far corner of
the British Empire, procedures took a while to become established, even
in the case of the Indians, who in theory were the privileged recipients of
British protection. A group of Hindu traders claimed this entitlement as
early as 1843, but it was not until the 1870s that the majority of Manama’s
Banyan could produce certificates of British nationality. After 1853, for
instance, the Indian authorities even discontinued the issue of these
certificates in Bahrain, fearing to fuel dissent among the members of the

14
R/15/1/315 IOR: Notes by Assistant Political Resident Bushehr, 27 May 1899; customs
agreement, 5 Jumada al-Thaniyyah 1315/31 October 1897; memo by Assistant Political
Agent Bahrain, 23 December 1899; Political Resident Bushehr to Government of India, 8
January 1800, n. 3 of 1900. Assistant Political Agent to Tax-Farmers, 31 October 1904,
n. 251, R/15/1/330 IOR. Political Resident Bushehr to Secretary to the Government of
India, 4 June 1914, n. 1693, R/15/1/331 IOR.
15
Political Resident Bushehr to Secretary to the Government of India, 4 June 1914, n. 1693,
R/15/1/331 IOR.
16
Onley, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj, pp. 119–27; M. A. al-Tajir, Bahrain 1920–
1945: Britain, The Shaikh and the Administration (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 22–6.
The dissolution of the Majlis al-‘Urf in 1917–18 is discussed extensively in R/15/2/12 IOR.