Page 111 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Ordering space, politics and community in Manama, 1880s–1919 91

ephemeral nature of Manama’s built environment, in stark contrast with
the majesty of some of the provincial capitals of the Ottoman Middle East
and of British India, prompted visitors to assume a state of decadence. Yet
what seemed a chaotic and unregulated layout concealed a deep-seated
urban order: Lorimer reported the existence of fourteen neighbourhoods,
from the oldest residential areas of eastern Manama on the seafront, to
the popular quarters south and west of the harbour whose expansion
accounted for much of the town’s growth in the second half of the nine-
41
teenth century.
The landscape and social organisation of Manama’s neighbourhoods
reflected the multiple modes of community implantation in the town by
agriculturalists, tribesmen and overseas immigrants. Important elements
of the village tradition of Safavid Bahrain resurfaced in the popular neigh-
bourhoods of Manama. Rural migration cannot be quantified in the
absence of census statistics, but the family histories of Baharna émigrés
suggest that, throughout the nineteenth century, settlement in the town
offered an opportunity to escape the exploitative system of the tribal
estates. Urban residents had an ambivalent relationship with villagers.
People with no rural pedigree were disdained in the predominantly Shi‘i
neighbourhoods of Manama where association with the old families of al-
Diraz, Jidd Hafs and Bilad al-Qadim brought social and political influ-
ence. At the same time villagers were looked down upon as al-hala’il,a
term which mocked their condition of servitude. 42
Archaeological evidence suggests that changing patterns of land use
around the Mushbir canal, the most important water supply around the
harbour, account for the formation of the Shi‘i popular neighbourhoods of
Manama. The Mushbir canal featured prominently in the folk tales which
surrounded the creation of the al-Hammam district, originally a large
agricultural hamlet, and of the establishment of two of the oldest religious
institutions of the town: the Jami‘ al-Mu’min, mentioned for the first time
in 1738, and Ma’tam Bin Aman, a building for the celebration of ‘ashura’
established at the turn of the nineteenth century. 43 Mushbir was also part
of the epic which surrounded the Al Khalifah occupation of Bahrain as the

41
Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. II, pp. 1159–61 (p. 1159); The Gulf Pilot by C. G. Constable and
A. W. Stiff (London: Hydrographic Office, 1864), p. 112.
42
See Sayf, al-Ma’tam, vol. I, for family histories; Kazeruni, Athar, pp. 880 ff.; interview
with ‘Abdallah Sayf, Manama, 20 March 2004. Although the etymology of hala’il is
contested, it seems that the term is the plural of halali (my property) used by the Al
Khalifah to lay claims of ownership over the villages. Interview with Muhammad Jabar al-
Ansari, Manama, 8 June 1998.
43
Interview with Shaykh ‘Abdallah ibn Khalid Al Khalifah, Manama, 15 June 1998; al-
‘Urayyad, Nafidha ‘ala al-tarikh, p. 33; Sayf, al-Ma’tam, vol. I, p. 179.