Page 117 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Ordering space, politics and community in Manama, 1880s–1919 97

urban politics during the reign of Shaykh ‘Isa were upstarts as the majority

of them had settled in the town in the second half of the nineteenth

century. This generation of self-made newcomers had amassed fortunes

with the entrepôt trade and with the pearl boom and run large family

business: the al-Qusaybis and Muqbil al-Dhakir from Najd, the Khunjis,

Bushehris, and Kazerunis from Iran, and the Ibn Rajab, al-Mudayfa‘, and

al-‘Urayyad from Bahrain’s agricultural districts. The political instability

of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the fast turnover of

Bahrain’s rulers suggest the concomitant rise and fall of the urban nota-

bility. In other words, Manama did not have an established leadership in

1869 when Shaykh ‘Isa became the ruler of Bahrain. It is significant that

family traditions portray the second half of the nineteenth century as a

major rupture in the history of Manama, the beginning of a radically

new era.

The position of religious households is another important indication of

the relative unimportance of status in influencing urban political life.

Families renowned for their piety were in short supply in early twentieth

century Manama, as hierarchies of influence were moulded by utilitarian

ideas of social order. The Sunni religious establishment drew extensively

on the tribal ethos of the Al Khalifah, while the Shi‘i clerical and scriptural

tradition languished. The reputation of Shi‘i individuals with a religious

pedigree such as Ahmad ibn Sayyid al-‘Alawi and ‘Abd al-‘Ali ibn Rajab (a

descendent of Muhammad Hasan ibn Rajab al-Maqabi who became

Shaykh al-Ra’is of Bahrain in 1602) was due primarily to their association
with the earthly and ritualistic universe of ‘ashura’ and with ma’tam
congregations. They were able to establish and maintain as men of trade
the houses of mourning where ma’tam congregations gathered, and it was

the popularity of their ma’tams which formed the basis of their political

55
standing (see Figure 5).
Two sets of relationships distinguished the notables of Manama as
political actors. The first was their association with the Al Khalifah admin-
istration and with foreign powers, not only the Government of India but
also the Qajar administration of Iran and the Sa‘udi amirs of Central
Arabia. The second was their degree of access to the urban population.
With the expansion of Manama’s entrepôt economy, the wealth of
merchants involved in long-distance and transit trade became increas-
ingly dependent on connections to powerful foreign protectors. Yusuf ibn
55
For the family histories of the al-‘Alawis and Ibn Rajabs see Sayf, al-Ma’tam, vol. I,
pp. 104–5, 127–9.