Page 113 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Ordering space, politics and community in Manama, 1880s–1919 93

Manama’s Baharna population. Its name (from the Arabic verb kharaqa,
piercing) suggests a close connection with the pearling industry but also
with local crafts, possibly referring to the presence of tailors in the
neighbourhood. 45
Immigration from overseas added a crucial dimension to processes of
urbanisation as it fostered the creation of clusters of ‘informal’ commun-
ities which started to colonise al-barriyyah, insalubrious land impover-
ished by the infiltration of sea water located to the east and southeast of
the harbour. With the exception of al-‘Awadiyyah, which became the most
elegant district of Manama in the first decades of the twentieth century,
localities such as Sangeki and Zulmabad, inhabited by a mixture of
Persians, Baluchis and former slaves, remained peripheral to the pre-
modern town. These impoverished peasants and unskilled workmen
constituted the rank-and-file of the dispossessed, a crucial reservoir of
casual labour for the harbour and pearling industry. 46 The numbers of
emancipated slaves in Manama, mostly employed in the pearl industry,
had increased after 1897 when the British government set up an official
manumission programme in the Persian Gulf. 47 Slaves, who were
granted freedom after they presented a petition to local British agents,
arrived in Manama from other Gulf ports, particularly Lingah and Muscat.
The role played by tribal immigrants in the development of the resi-
dential districts of the inner city is unclear, although Farij al-Fadhil
located east of the harbour was named after a Najdi tribe which had
settled in the area before the Al Khalifah conquest. Alongside with Kanu,
this neighbourhood grew along the axis of transport which connected
Muharraq Island to the harbour of Manama. The majority of the population
of tribal origin was concentrated in this district in the second half of the
nineteenth century, including several families of al-‘Utub and al-Dawasir
under theguardianshipofthe Najdipearlmerchant Muqbilal-Dhakir,
the closest personal advisor of Shaykh ‘Isa. As the centre of British influence
and European shipping, Kanu housed those who had acquired political
influence through outside connections: Yusuf ibn Ahmad Kanu, after
whom the quarter was named in the early 1920s, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Qusaybi,

45
Sayf, al-Ma’tam, vol. I, pp. 86–7; 119–20; interview with ‘Ali Akbar Bushehri, 17 March
2000.
46
Interviews with Tayyebah Hoodi and Muhammad Ishaq ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Khan,
Manama 21 March and 8 April 2004. There are no historical records on the development
of these neighbourhoods. For a general impression and location see the sketch attached to
the letter of S. M. Zwemer to the American Board of Foreign Missions, 28 November
1899, MWT; Political Resident Bushehr to Government of India, 10 November 1923,
n. 626-S of 1923, R/15/2/127 IOR.
47
Khalifa, ‘Slaves and Musical Performances in Dubai’, pp. 103–4.