Page 147 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Restructuring city and state 127

8 Police Fort (Qal‘ah al-Diwan) now the Bahrain Ministry of Interior, c.
1950

inner city was surveyed in 1926 by the Department of Land Registration,
there is no evidence of any mapping of the municipal territory until the late
1940s. As municipal borders remained fairly arbitrary, they became pro-
gressively marked by the public buildings which emerged on the outskirts
of the town. In the second set of municipal by-laws issued in 1929, for
instance, the southwest boundaries of Manama were fixed to the west at
Qal‘ah al-Diwan, the old Persian fort turned into the headquarters of the
new State Police, and to the east at Qasr Shaykh Hamad, the new palace of
the regent completed in 1927 (see Figure 8). 34
The demise of Bahrain’s pearling economy after 1927 brought the
young municipality on the verge of collapse. The introduction of
Japanese cultured pearls onto the world market impoverished all strata
of Gulf societies and had a catastrophic effect on Manama. Between 1929
and 1931, Bahrain’s pearling entrepreneurs lost two-thirds of their capital
as a result of poor returns from the sale of pearls, which was accentuated
by the world’s economic depression. By 1932 the advances received by

34
MMBM, 22 Dhu al-Qa‘dah 1345/24 May 1927, R/15/2/1218 IOR; file n. 30, IT;
‘Manamah City’, April 1926 in Historic Maps of Bahrain, 1817–1970, ed. by Jarman,
map n. 26; ‘Annual Report for the Year 1352’ in The Bahrain Government Annual Reports,
1924–1970, vol. I, p. 4; art. 1 of ‘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.