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Ordering space, politics and community in Manama, 1880s–1919 103

discovery of oil as suggested by large numbers of holdings registered in the
name of both Sunni and Shi‘i merchants after the issue of the Bahrain
Nationality and Property Law in 1937. 67
For a‘yan with popular constituencies, the acquisition of real estate in
the residential districts not only generated considerable income but also
represented crucial political and social capital. Houses, plots and barastis
were distributed or rented out to family members, distant relatives, clients
and skilled labourers, ensuring the continuation and enlargement of
patronage networks. The consolidation of a class of property owners
benefited the merchant class as a whole. As with the markets, residential
properties became a crucial item of exchange for loans and political
support with Shaykh ‘Isa, members of his entourage and tribal allies. 68
Unlike in Ottoman Damascus during the Tanzimat period, Manama’s
new landed elite did not emerge as a result of processes of state central-
isation and of the institution of private property. Particularly after the
Government of India appointed Shaykh Hamad as heir apparent in 1900,
it was the financial crisis that hit the treasury of Shaykh ‘Isa which turned
many of the town’s prominent merchants into landowners. 69
By the 1920s the role of entrepreneur and patron had become synon-
ymous with that of landowner. Yusuf Luft ‘Ali Khunji and Mustafa ‘Abd
al-Latif, two of the wealthiest Persian Sunnis of al-‘Awadiyyah quarter,
for instance, employed attorneys to manage their estates in Manama as
part of the network of agents who supervised their import–export offices
overseas. 70 Sunni Persian notables also acquired properties in Muharraq,
al-Hidd and the two al-Rifa‘s, the tribal towns with an overwhelming
majority of Sunni residents. A handful of Baharna merchants turned their
attention to the villages. As explained in Chapter 1, investment in rural
estate was not particularly profitable given the lack of commercialisa-
tion of Bahrain’sagriculture, but it cemented social ties and political

67
Minutes by Political Agent Bahrain, 21 January 1938, and letters by ‘Abd al-Wahid
Faramasi, Muhammad Khoeji, Muhammad Hadi ibn Mahmud Bastaki and Nasrallah
ibn Zainal al-‘Abidin to Political Agent Bahrain, February 1928, R/15/2/151 IOR.
68
Evidence of the sale of land by members of Shaykh ‘Isa’s household is included in the
documentation from the Idarah al-Tabu. See also Political Agent Bahrain to Political
Resident Bushehr n. 204 of 1904, 31 December 1904, R/15/2/10 IOR, and memo from
Belgrave to Political Agent Bahrain, 19 November 1931, R/15/2/1807 IOR.
69
In Ottoman Damascus the rise of the landowning bureaucratic elites of the Tanzimat
period was closely associated with provincial reform, state centralisation and the applica-
tion of the 1858 Land Code. Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism, pp. 27–30.
Evidence of ownership rights acquired by the merchant notability of Manama before the
enforcement of land registration in 1925 is included in the documentation of the Land
Department. Files n. 29 to 54, IT.
70
Interviews with Muhammad Ishaq ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Khan and Hamid al-‘Awadhi,
Manama, 8 and 10 April 2004.