Page 103 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Ordering space, politics and community in Manama, 1880s–1919 83

the surrounding hamlets and tribal settlements which were provisioned
from Manama. 23
As large sections of the markets sold overseas merchandise, wholesale
merchants with foreign connections enjoyed paramount social and polit-
ical influence. Rice, cotton and coffee reached Manama’s warehouses
mainly from India, wheat from Iran, India and southern Iraq, and meat
and cattle from Muscat, al-Qatif, southern Iraq and Iran. The depend-
ence of Manama’s economy on imports was a double-edged sword for the
majority of the town’s trading communities. Under Shaykh ‘Isa fiscal
arrangements favoured entrepreneurs with overseas connections and
shopkeepers dealing with foreign commodities. Goods were taxed only
at the point of entry in Bahrain and were not subject to systematic taxation
once they reached the markets of the inner city. Yet merchants could be
badly affected by the fluctuation of the regional and international markets
as retail prices followed basic rules of supply and demand. By the early
twentieth century, for instance, the prices of some goods imported from
India such as cotton cloth increased considerably as a result of the stiff
competition of British monopolies which forced some local entrepreneurs
to abandon the trade or to become attached to British firms.
Moreover, the fortunes of the pearling season, which determined the
spending power of groups partaking in the diving chain (divers, boat
captains, middlemen and financiers), were also crucial to securing the
business turnover of Manama’s wholesalers and retailers. The livelihood
of the pearl divers was always on the line as they depended almost
exclusively on advances, although some of them supplemented their
income with fishing and trade in oyster shells. 24 The period 1902–4
aptly illustrates the economic cycle which bound the prosperity of traders
to the circulation and availability of commodities on the one hand, and to
the pearling industry on the other. In 1902 and 1903 divers were able to
make up most of the advances they had received at the beginning of the
season, but pearl dealers faced considerable losses on exports as a result of
low prices in Bombay and Europe. Good returns for the lower echelons of
the industry stimulated consumption and consequently rice imports, and
by the end of 1903 the town’s supplies were fairly low. The following year
the large stock of unsold pearls started to affect the divers’ margin of

23
The large number of shops reported by Kazeruni in 1836 in comparison with the figure
proposed by Lorimer confirms that the former’s description of Manama is generally
hyperbolic. Kazeruni, Athar, pp. 881 ff.; Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. II, p. 1162.
24
See for instance documents of purchase of oyster shells by ‘Abd al-Nabi Bushehri and ‘Ali
Kazim Bushehri between 1908 and 1910. In this period the two Persian merchants carried
out some twenty-five transactions for a total of 1,915 sacks of shells purchased from divers
residing in al-Diraz, Karranah, Ras Rumman, Bani Jamrah, al-Budayya‘ and Sitrah, BA.