Page 188 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

168 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

The Muharram festivities also reinforced Manama’s tradition of autonomy

from Muharraq. Despite being the most important public occasion of the

year, the celebrations for ‘ashura’ did not involve any official protocol. The

shadow of the tribal government was felt mainly through the presence of

guards and watchmen deployed along the route and across the inner city to

enforce public security. While the patrons and sponsors of the ma’tams took

centre stage, religious leaders did not play a significant role as censors and

regulators of performances. Fatwas (legal opinions) from leading mujtahids

had been reaching Bahrain from Iraq and Iran since the death of the last

shaykh al-ra’is of Bahrain in 1801. Yet overseas preachers hired to perform

the al-qira’ al-husayniyyah (the readings of the stories of Imam Husayn)

continued to function as the main religious intermediaries between the

islands and the main centres of Shi‘ism.

In the age of reform, the impact of ritual as a platform for the mobilisation

of Shi‘i interests continued to be limited. The rhetoric of development

which inspired nation building in Bahrain underplayed sectarian divisions,

as exemplified by the institutionalisation of both a Sunni and a Shi‘i court

system after 1927. The Baharna community also lacked the independent

power base, hierarchical religious organisation and learned tradition which

characterised their Iraqi and Iranian counterparts under the Hashemite

monarchy and the Pahlavi dynasty respectively. 46 A number of factors

restricted the political effectiveness of Muharram in Manama. With the

collapse of pearling, ritual patronage lost momentum as a means of pro-

moting social status among the old merchant classes (as explained in

Chapter 3), and the moneyed elites and senior bureaucrats of the early oil

era no longer invested in the houses of mourning. In contrast with Pahlavi

Iran, where those in charge of awqaf controlled the opposition to the Shah’s

regime, the historic monopoly held by the Al Khalifah and by the Sunni

Hawala community over market endowments precluded the consolidation

of ma’tams as political organisations able to compete with the government.

Last but not least, the management of ma’tams became increasingly inte-

grated into institutional networks. While the authorities appointed a com-
mittee in charge of overseeing the procession in 1925, many of the
endowments which supported the oldest houses of mourning were taken
under the control of the Idarah al-Awqaf al-Ja‘fariyyah, the Department of
Shi‘i Pious Foundations established in 1927.
46
For developments in Iraq and Iran see Nakash, The Shi‘is of Iraq, pp. 157–62; Aghaie, The
Martyrs of Karbala, pp. 47–66; N. Keddie, ‘The Roots of ‘Ulama Power in Modern Iran’
and H. Algar, ‘The Oppositional Role of the Ulama in Twentieth-Century Iran’ in
N. Keddie (ed.), Scholars, Saints and Sufis: Muslim Religious Institutions in the Middle
East since 1500 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 211–30, 231–56.