Page 179 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

‘Disorder’, political sociability and the urban public sphere 159

stronghold of foreign interests. 21 The currency of these new ideas also
transpires from Amin al-Rihani who reported that Bahrain was divided
between a national government led by Shaykh ‘Isa, and a foreign admin-
istration controlled by the British agency and by the baladiyyah in
Manama. 22
The eloquent polemics of ‘Abdallah al-Za’id also illustrates how Sunnis
and Shi‘is entered the nationalist discourse as modern political commun-
ities. His interpretation of the baladiyyah affair of 1923 follows a tradi-
tional rhetoric of communal antagonism. In the same correspondence
with Shaykh ‘Isa he dismissed the role of the British agency, focussing
instead on Muhammad Sharif and the ‘Persian’ police. He accused the
former of fomenting rebellion against the Al Khalifah by popularising the
idea that Bedouin tribes and rulers were alien to the body politic of
Manama. By denouncing the baladiyyah and its Persian secretary, al-
Za’id provides a novel definition of the familiar theme of ‘foreigners’.
He portrays the Persians as a non-indigenous ‘other’, in contrast to the
authentic patriots (al-wataniyyun) of the town, the Baharna population.
As the majority of Arab residents under the jurisdiction of the Al Khalifah,
the Baharna became legitimate political subjects whose rightful aspira-
tions were crushed by the arbitrary justice dispensed by the municipality.
That al-Za’id was attempting to win their loyalty by appealing to tradi-
tional grievances is evident from the language of oppression (zulm)he
used to describe the condition of the Baharna, which echoes the vocabu-
lary employed by Shi‘i religious leaders and laymen to denounce Al
Khalifah rule. 23
It is not surprising that by the end of the 1920s al-Za’id’s partisan
analysis identified the Persians as the major threat to the tribal order of
Bahrain. As the Iranian government renewed its claims over the islands,
Manama’s Iranian Union School (an offspring of Ma’tam al-‘Ajam al-
Kabir) disseminated Pahlavi propaganda through its curriculum and
24
recreational activities. Further, the extension of British extraterritorial

21
‘Abdallah al-Za’id to Shaykh ‘Isa ibn ‘Ali Al Khalifah, c. 1927, BA.
22
Rihani, Muluk al-‘Arab, vol. II, p. 285.
23
‘Abdallah al-Za’id to Shaykh ‘Isa ibn ‘Ali Al Khalifah, c. 1927, BA; Ibrahim ‘Abdallah
Ghulum, ‘Abdallah al-Za’id wa ta’sis al-khitab al-adabi al-hadith: Jaridah al-Bahrayn,
1939–1944 (Muharraq: Dar al-Tiba‘ah wa al-Nashr, 1996), pp. 16–19; Mubarak al-
Khatir, Nabighat al-Bahrayn: ‘Abdallah al-Za’id (Manama: Matbu‘at Banurama al-
Khalij 1996), pp. 23–24.
24
Fuccaro, ‘Mapping the Transnational Community’, pp. 52–3; ‘Ali A. Bushehri, ‘National
Union School’, typescript, 17 pages, n.d., pp. 3–4, BA. After the incident in the suq the
Persian Shi‘is sent their remonstrations to Teheran while the Sunnis appealed to the
agency through the intercession of Muhammad Sharif. Ma’tam al-‘Ajam al-Kabir and