Page 187 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

‘Disorder’, political sociability and the urban public sphere 167

Muharram and the state

These flamboyant performances of suffering set the rhetoric, imagery and

vocabulary which informed relations between the Shi‘i popular classes

and the government. Further, as Muharram celebrations were the most

important public event staged in Manama, they provided a shared expe-

43

rience of religiosity for both performers and spectators. Regardless of

sect and ethnicity, residents experienced a world of ritual which spoke of

universal concepts such as justice and injustice, and heroism and oppres-

sion. Until the rise of nationalist politics, the ritual world of Manama’s

Shi‘ism was not ove rtly subversive. ‘Ashura’ dramatised political allegian-

ces and displayed them to the audience but did not advocate outright

political protest. Yet Shi‘i devotion carried a strong populist message, as

rituals portrayed political power in reverse. They emphasised relations

between power holders and ordinary people and exemplified the com-

munity’s interpretation of justice. Symbols of domination featured as

subjects of mockery and entertainment, disguising distrust for constituted

authority which appealed to all segments of Manama’s lower classes.

During the performance of al-tamthiliyyah in 1932, for instance, the

actor playing Ibn Zayd, the hated commander of the army which killed

Imam Husayn, was dressed as a soldier of the British Indian army.

Holding a bottle of whisky, he was made into a caricature of the dubious

morality of the foreign servicemen who served as agency guards and

policemen. 44
Before the reforms, the performances offered the Baharna population
collective redemption and release from the order supported by the Al
Khalifah. Settings and protocol emphasised their condition of misery
(al-masakin) without making explicit reference to tribal oppression.

Camels and horses were often borrowed from the rulers by Arab ma’tams

for the occasion. Swords, the symbol of tribal authority par excellence,
were used only by the Persians for the ceremony of self-mutilation (halqat
al-suyuf/al-haydar), the most violent form of flagellation. Contravening
the ban imposed by the rulers on the ownership of swords, the Persian
ma’tam (al-‘Ajam al-Kabir) relied on the protection of the agency as
suggested by the registration of forty-six swords for ‘ashura’ in 1937. 45
43
As suggested by Sandria Freitag in her study of communal politics in northern India
during the colonial period, in Manama ceremonies of religious nature set ‘the patterns for
all public activities’, at least until the 1950s. Freitag, Collective Action and Community,
p. 25.
44
Photographic evidence, Manama, c. 1930, BA.
45
Licence 0002 issued by the British agency, 10 May 1937, BA; Sayf, al-Ma’tam, vol. I,
p. 102.