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Restructuring city and state 125

municipal by-laws, first issued in 1921 and revised in 1929. 28 Yet after
1926, the piecemeal development of an indigenous system of modern civil
law which incorporated British Indian Legislation and the ordinances
issued by the new departments and by the ruler triggered a fierce contest
over the recognition and application of municipal decrees in the new civil
courts. Proposals for the draft of a Bahrain Civil Ordinance started to be
discussed in 1924, but at the beginning of World War II the courts were
29
still short of a civil code.
As the activities of the baladiyyah expanded, the arbitration of the courts
in matters concerning taxation and public security became crucial to
support the municipal regime. While the public announcement of decrees
and the posting of proclamations on the walls of Manama became the
most tangible manifestation of municipal authority, judicial proceedings
often challenged it. Once residents were summoned to the court room,
judges, who were often unfamiliar with municipal regulations, offered
both plaintiffs and defendants an opportunity to bypass baladiyyah legis-
lation, as often lamented by the municipal secretary. In 1928 the majlis
appointed a subcommittee in charge of bringing to the attention of the
government the deliberations of the municipality so that they could be
included in the general law (al-qanun al-‘amm). 30 On several occasions in
the following years, the municipal council attempted with no success to
obtain independent judicial authority. In 1938, for instance, it requested
the establishment of a baladiyyah court. 31 To some extent this reflected
the large number of municipal cases which were pending in the civil
courts, but also the lack of standardisation of legal practice that allowed
councillors to demand more autonomy in the name of the arbitrary legal
authority exercised by the central administration.
Between 1923 and 1929 the recognition of municipal law also had
strong political overtones, as the decrees issued by the baladiyyah were
treated as personal deliberations of Shaykh Hamad, who was president of

28
‘Rules and Regulations under Article 70 of Bahrain Order in Council, N.1 of 1921,
Municipal Rules and By-laws’ in Political Resident Bushehr to Secretary of State for the
Colonies, 19 August 1921, L/P&S/10/349 IOR; ‘Surah al-qanun li al-baladiyyah al-
asasiyyah’ in Secretary of Manama Municipality to Belgrave, 6 Ramadan 1347/16
February 1929, n. 910/6 of 1347, R/15/2/1250 IOR.
29
Political Resident Bushehr to Political Agent Bahrain, 18 March 1924, R 15/2/133 IOR.
The file R/15/2/818 IOR deals extensively with the codification of state law which since the
1930s became a major cause of civil unrest. For the evolution of Bahrain’s legal system see
H. J. Liebesny, ‘Administration and Legal Development in Arabia: the Persian Gulf
Principalities’, Middle East Journal,1(1956), 37–42 (37–9); N. Brown, The Rule of Law
in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and in the Gulf (Cambridge University Press, 1997),
pp. 146–8 and al-Tajir, Bahrain, 1920–1945, pp. 54–56, 228–48.
30
MMBM, 14 Safar 1347/1 August 1928, R/15/2/1218 IOR.
31
MMBM, 13 Rajab 1357/8 September 1938, R/15/2/1924 IOR.