Page 160 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

140 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

districts. As the new tax-collector, supervisor and enforcer of public
security, the municipality faced particular resistance in the local markets
which were the traditional fiefdom of the Al Khalifah family.

The import markets
In the old markets dealing with foreign goods, the advance of merchant
capital continued apace, facilitated by the fixation of rights of private
property implemented by the Department of Land Registration after
1925. After 1937, those Persian merchants who had acquired Bahraini
nationality continued to invest in shops, as they had done so conspicu-
ously in the previous decades. Further, in the interwar period small scale
properties were acquired by petty traders of foreign descent as suggested
by the large numbers of shops occupied by Persians and Indians by the
early 1950s. 67 The large pool of properties owned by the former qadi
Qasim al-Mahzah was put up for auction in the 1930s and early 1940s as
their ownership and unclear status as awqaf had become the subject of
complex court cases. 68 Family awqaf remained in the hands of their
original owners. It seems that even at the peak of the pearl crisis only a
few large properties were sold, most notably the large warehouse of Yusuf
ibn Ahmad Kanu which was bought by the Kuwaiti merchant Hilal
al-Mutayri in 1934. The retention of these properties rescued some of
the old merchant families from financial collapse. Warehouses in partic-
ular provided one of their main sources of revenue in the early oil era once
they were converted into apartments and offices in order to accommodate
69
new businesses and foreign firms.
As the old import markets became the centre of the modernising service
economy of Manama, the port regime continued to favour merchants and
retailers dealing with overseas commodities. After the reorganisation of
customs in 1923, import duties were fixed by the government at a mod-
icum 5 per cent, a tariff which was not increased substantially until the
1960s. Until the late 1930s, however, the Directorate of Customs faced

67
Lawson, Bahrain: The Modernization of Autocracy, pp. 55–6.
68
Between 1942 and 1943 Husayn ‘Ali Kazim Bushehri (the son of the famous Persian
merchant) bought several shops in Suq al-‘Ajam, which were previously under the control
of the Sunni qadi. ‘Annual Report for Year 1362’ in The Bahrain Government Annual
Reports, 1924–1970, vol. III, p. 25; I‘lan Hukumah al-Bahrayn, n. 38 of 1350 and n. 2 and
51 of 1351, Belgrave to Political Agent Bahrain, 25 Rabi‘ al-Thani 1347/9 October 1928,
R/15/2/130 IOR; ‘Daftar Husayn ‘Ali Kazim Bushehri, 1939–1951’, BA; minutes by
Belgrave, 15 January 1933, R/15/2/1228 IOR; Belgrave to Political Agent Bahrain, 5
November 1932, R/15/2/1896 IOR.
69
Interviews with ‘Abd al-Rahim Muhammad and Hasan Khajah, Manama, 20 and 25 April
2004.