Page 119 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Ordering space, politics and community in Manama, 1880s–1919 99

from Bahrain’. 56 Wahhabi politics also played a role in the rise of powerful
merchant houses in Manama. As the political and commercial represen-
tative of Ibn Sa‘ud in Bahrain, ‘Abd al-Aziz al-Qusaybi built up a mer-
cantile empire as a pearl merchant, and supplier of wheat and foodstuffs to
Eastern Arabia after al-Ahsa’ came under Wahhabi control in 1913. After
he arrived in Bahrain from al-Dammam in 1898 with his two brothers, the
family enlisted in the entourage of Shaykh ‘Isa. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz , a flamboy-
ant character notorious for his arrogance, entered into competition with
the royal household in terms of wealth and lifestyle, surrounded by his
own al-fidawiyyah. He built one of his residences in al-Rifa‘, the fiefdom
of the Al Khalifah family. 57 Another example is that of the al-Safar family,
which throughout the nineteenth century used their position as British
native agents in Bahrain to consolidate the family’s international network
of merchant houses which branched as far as Yemen and India. 58
Unlike the majority of the town’s merchants, the power base of these
entrepreneurs who capitalised on foreign connections was generally dis-
sociated from the popular quarters of Manama. It was above all the
influence these merchants were able to exercise at the grass roots which
transformed them into a fairly cohesive group of a‘yan, a class of notables
who represented the interests of the population vis-à-vis the tribal admin-
istration. Not only did this kind of authority underscore the consolidation
of a powerful cohort of Shi‘i tax-farmers cum landowners in the markets, it
also allowed merchants to exercise state-like functions in the residential
districts almost single-handedly. Taking advantage of developing com-
munity networks, they provided protection, representation and welfare to
the town’s immigrant population. Mostly of humble background, these
leaders started off their careers as petty traders, or labourers in the port
and in the markets. At the turn of the twentieth century, a‘yan with
popular constituencies were predominant in Manama, particularly
among the Baharna and the Persian Shi‘is which constituted the poorest
as well as the largest section of the urban population. These two groups
were able to produce community leaders (the Bushehris, Ibn Rajabs, al-
‘Urayyads) with a strong power base in al-Mukharaqah, al-Hammam and

56
Dickinson, ‘Note on the Political Situation in Bahrain’ in Political Agent Bahrain to Civil
Commissioner Baghdad and Political Resident Bushehr, 5 January 1920, n. 6-C, R/15/2/
785 IOR. K. M. Kanoo, The House of Kanoo: A Century of an Arabian Family Business
(London: Centre of Arab Studies, 1997), pp. 1–15; M. Field, The Merchants: The Big
Business Families of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States (New York: Overlook Press, 1985),
pp. 266–7.
57
‘Confidential Memo on the Qusaybi Family’ in Political Agent Bahrain to Political
Resident Bushehr, 2 June 1931, R/15/2/101 IOR; interview with Khalid al-Bassam,
Manama, 20 March 2004; Field, The Merchants, p. 219.
58
Onley, ‘Transnational Merchants in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf’, pp. 63–77.