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96 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

reward to some, advancement in the public arena under the aegis of the
tribal government was an unlikely option. Unlike their counterparts who
populated Ottoman provincial centres during the Tanzimat period, the
notables of Manama lacked the means to gain influence through govern-
ment appointments. 53 The administrative apparatus supported by Shaykh
‘Isa was truly minimal. Apart from the Al Khalifah governor and the
Sunni qadi, the rank-and-file of the administration was provided by al-
fidawiyyah recruited among loyal tribes, mercenary units and former
slaves, and thus imported into the town. Beside the Customs House, the
palace of the governor (Bayt al-Shuyukh) was the centre of Manama’s
tribal administration. Built as a self-sufficient compound on the coast east
of the harbour around 1840 by ‘Ali ibn Khalifah Al Khalifah (the ruler of
Bahrain before Shaykh ‘Isa), Bayt al-Shuyukh was guarded by high walls
and resembled the tribal al-qusur of Muharraq. 54 Its architecture was a
powerful reminder of the social distance between rulers, merchants and
the urban population. The rigid spatial boundaries which demarcated the
residence of the governor from Manama’s markets and residential dis-
tricts mirrored the inability on the part of merchant notables to gain
influence through intermarriage with the ruling family.
As already mentioned, connections to the tribal establishment of
Muharraq guaranteed a few influential Sunni and Shi‘i merchants eco-
nomic privileges and access to real estate in the markets. Yet, strictly
speaking, they did not form a state-sponsored elite as this role was con-
fined to the tribal clients of Al Khalifah who gravitated around the council
of Shaykh ‘Isa in Muharraq. The majority of these pearling entrepreneurs
opted for the exclusivity and security offered by the new tribal towns of the
Al Khalifah era, and treated Manama with a mixture of contempt and
distrust. For merchants with no tribal pedigree based in Manama, the
kind of state patronage promoted by membership in the Majlis al-‘Urf,the
town’s commercial council which brought together influential members
of its communities, did not automatically grant prestige, connections and
wealth, although it certainly helped to maintain it. Rather, it offered
recognition of the notables’ position in the urban economy, their political
connections outside Bahrain and their influence among the population.
In Manama status and pedigree were not a guarantee of economic and
political success. The group of merchants who took the centre stage of

53
See for instance the rise to power of the landowning families of Ottoman Damascus after
1860 as a result of their monopoly of positions in the civil bureaucracy of the Tanzimat,
Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism, pp. 35–46.
54
Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. I, pp. 927–8 and vol. II, p. 1161; J. Dieulafoy, A Suse: Journal des
Fouilles, 1884–1886 (Paris: Hachette, 1888), p. 47 (drawing of Bayt al-Shuyukh).