Page 131 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Ordering space, politics and community in Manama, 1880s–1919 111

town’s entrepreneurs. While Shaykh ‘Isa distributed tax-farms in order to

maximise revenue, Persian, Indian and Arab merchants were able to

consolidate their position in crucial areas of state activity, particularly by

taking over the management of the harbour, the customs house and the

local markets. As the notable class amassed wealth, they took an active role

in processes of urbanisation. Through their sponsorship of rural and

overseas migrants they satisfied an increasing demand for labour. In

turn, they enlarged their patronage networks which were crucial in the

expansion of Manama’s resident ial areas.

The politics of real estate was another act of ‘balanced opposition’ which

sealed the partnership between merchants and rulers. Mercantile wealth

was generally invested in the residential areas where revenue from rent and

the distribution of properties to clients became an integral part of

Manama’s politics of patronage. Yet, in spite of the advance of merchant

capital, the entrepreneurs of the pearl boom did not break the traditional

monopoly over market properties held by the Al Khalifah and their allies.

Sectarian cleavages, however, fragmented the merchant class as an interest

group bound by land ownership, reflecting the inequalities between Sunnis

and Shi‘is. The lucrative properties of the markets continued to be the

preserve of Sunnis: members of the Al Khalifah family, Hawala merchants
and the Persian Sunni nouveaux riches of the trade boom. In contrast, the
properties owned by Shi‘i entrepreneurs in the popular neighbourhoods

(and the closely knit network of ma’tams which they supported) trans-

formed them into the strongholds of Shi‘i mercantile power and political
influence. In this respect, the dual spatial hierarchy of markets and resi-
dential areas mapped fairly accurately the Sunni–Shi‘i political divide.
Capitalist expansion, the penetration of foreign (and particularly
British) trade in the Gulf and the influence of the Government of India
in commercial arbitration accentuated the dependence of merchants on
foreign connections, a crucial factor in the progressive weakening of the
tribal administration after 1900. The exile of ‘Ali ibn Ahmad Al Khalifah,
the governor of Manama, in 1905 as a result of the military intervention of
the British Navy marked the beginning of the end of the urban order of the
pearl boom and foreshadowed the imposition of tighter British control
over Manama and Bahrain after 1919. 90 The power vacuum left by the
departure of Shaykh ‘Ali irreversibly compromised the position of the
town within the system of the tribal estates controlled by the Al Khalifah
and transformed it into the natural platform for imperial reform and
political modernisation in the era of municipal government.
90
See p. 156.