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Restructuring city and state 123

but the definition of the latter was open to speculation. 22 In 1905, extra-
territorial jurisdiction was extended to the Persian community and to all
Arab residents who were not subjects of Shaykh ‘Isa. However, legal
arrangements remained unclear. As explained by the British resident to
the High Court of Bombay in early 1918: ‘He [the political agent in
Bahrain] does not execute decrees rather than his own.’ 23 Under the
new municipality, the court convened in the British political agency was
firmly placed under the criminal and civil law of India which was codified
in 1860. British agents also acquired considerable powers over the indig-
enous judicial system. 24
Before the arrival of Belgrave in 1926, the agency controlled municipal
government and treated it as an appendix of the capitulary system. While
British agents effectively vetoed appointments to the Islamic courts and
vetted judgements passed by the local qadis, they also adjudicated all
municipal offences in the agency court. There is also evidence that they
attempted to extend British jurisdiction to the subjects of the Shaykh of
Bahrain, particularly to the Baharna population. These attempts did not
find favour in either London or India at a time when British commitment
to the advance of imperial influence in Bahrain was subject to fierce
controversy. 25 After 1926, the British agents adopted a policy of ‘limited’
interference in municipal affairs, while continuing to adjudicate cases
involving foreigners. By the late 1930s the issue of extraterritorial juris-
diction had become conspicuously absent from municipal affairs, reflect-
ing the course of British imperial politics in Bahrain. The agency
progressively relinquished jurisdiction over large segments of the urban
population, a process which peaked after the issue of the Bahrain
Nationality and Property Law in 1937. In the meantime, the consolida-
tion of the independent authority of the baladiyyah can be measured by the
emergence of a critical mass of municipal subjects. There is ample evi-
dence to suggest, for instance, that both foreigners and Baharna no longer
resorted to the Bayt al-Dawlah, as they had done before 1919, to voice
their grievances but appealed directly to the municipal council to remon-
strate against the agency, the municipal administration and the new

22
Penelope Tuson, ‘Introduction to series R/15/3 IOR, Bahrain Political Agency: Political
Agent’s Court, 1913–1948’, p. 124, India Office Library.
23
Political Resident Bushehr to Foreign Department of the Government of India,
28 August 1929, R/15/2/127 IOR; quote from correspondence British Residency
Bushehr to Registrar of the Bombay Court, 7 January 1918, R/15/2/948 IOR.
24
Article 14 of ‘The Bahrain Order in Council, 1913’, L/P&S/10/248 IOR; S. A.
Al-Arayyed, Islamic Law as Administered in British India and in Joint British Courts in the
Arabian Gulf, 1857–1947 (Manama: al-Ayam Press, 2001), pp. 500–11.
25
R/15/2/133 IOR: Political Agent Bahrain to Political Resident Bushehr, 17 March 1923,
n. 37/C; Political Resident Bushehr to Political Agent Bahrain, 18 March 1923, n. 267.