Page 104 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

84 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

profit, and consequently their ability to purchase food in the market.

Large quantities of rice remained unsold, partly also as a result of an
outbreak of cholera which killed 5,000 people across the islands between

May and September 1904. 25

Mapping the marketplace

The scarcity of both written documentation and systematic statistics

makes it extremely difficult to trace the development of Manama’s econ-

omy throughout the nineteenth century in any detail. The morphology

and social texture of the marketplace can be reconstructed in broad

outline on the basis of some archaeological and documentary evidence,

surveys undertaken by the government of Bahrain after the 1920s, oral

histories and land records dating from the 1880s. 26 The layout of the

markets and local tradition tell a complex story of the development of

multiple spaces of commercial exchange which articulated the symbiosis

between the rural and maritime economies of Bahrain on the one hand,

and local industries and long-distance trade on the other. Although the

precise phases of this development are open to speculation, it seems that

the growth of specialised suqs around the harbour marked the transition

from the warehouse/entrepôt camp which had characterised the water-

front in earlier periods to the town of the pearl boom.

The oldest commercial complex developed under the aegis of the pearl

industry. In the years of the pearl boom Suq al-Tawawish (the Pearl

Market), the most prestigious commercial area of the town, was con-

nected to the harbour by a covered market (Suq al-Musaqqaf), a long

and narrow lane of shops built on reclaimed land. al-Tawawish was the

base of the rich pearl dealers of Bahrain who conducted their complex

financial operations from large shops including a reception room for

clients (majlis), and small workshops for the cleaning and piercing of

pearls. The job of tawwash (pl. tawawish, pearl dealer) was not only that

of retailer but was often closely linked to pearl production. A tawwash

could own boats, finance pearling expeditions, or simply buy the catch
25
‘Administration Report on the Persian Gulf Political Residency and Maskat Political
Agency for 1902–1903, 1903–1904, 1904–1905’ in The Persian Gulf Administration
Reports 1873–1949, vol. V, pp. 35, 60–1, 150–1.
26
I am indebted to ‘Ali Akbar Bushehri for his invaluable help in supplying documentation
and archaeological evidence, and for the mapping of Manama’s old market area. Maps
‘Manamah City’, April 1926, and ‘Manamah – Plan of Port and Town’, January 1933 in
Historic Maps of Bahrain, 1817–1970, ed. by R. L. Jarman, 3 vols. (Gerrards Cross:
Archive Editions, 1996), maps n. 29 and 30; ‘Map of Manamah’, Bombay Survey
Department, 1946, BA.