Page 189 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

‘Disorder’, political sociability and the urban public sphere 169

In both the pearl and oil eras ritual behaviour reflected important shifts in

the relations between Shi‘i groups and the government, most importantly
the progressive emancipation of the Shi‘i population of Manama. The first

outdoor procession in 1891, led by Mirza Muhammad Isma‘il, the local

agent for the British India Steam Navigation Company, marked the begin-

ning of the protection granted by the British agency to the Baharna com-

munity, protection which was dispensed on an unofficial basis as they were

47

de jure subjects of Shaykh ‘Isa. In 1907, the Persians, encouraged by the

enforcement of British extraterritorial jurisdiction, raised the imperial flag

of Iran at the opening of the parade, a clear statement of their allegiance to

the Qajar government under threat from the constitutional movement. By

the 1950s, when Ma’tam Ras Rumman marched chanting nationalist

slogans preceded by the banner of Nasser’s Egypt, the road became open

to a new type of popular politics which transformed some of the Arab

congregations into hotbeds of nationalist propaganda. Fuelled by anti-

British sentiment, this development attests to the dramatic changes in

urban political life since 1891. 48 In the first two decades of the oil era, the

participation of new congregations in the procession showed the emergence

of new solidarities among the workforce. This process continued after

Bahrain achieved independence, as shown by Fuad Khuri in his study of

ma’tams in the 1970s. 49

In the town of the pearl boom the processions had empowered immi-

grant communities and occupational groups, allowing them to enter the

public arena under the protection of their merchant patrons. By the 1940s

and 1950s, religious devotion became a conduit for the expression of the

class sentiments beginning to unite oil workers, professionals and govern-

ment employees. Processions also became bitterly divided along political

lines. For instance, Ma’tam al-Shabab gathered many of the young

Persian employees of BAPCO (The Bahrain Petroleum Company), who

became renowned for their subversive political inclinations and used

‘ashura’ as a platform to voice their resentment against the Pahlavi regime.

Pro-shah and pro-Musaddiq rival groups engaged in bitter wars of slogans

while marching through the streets of Manama after the nationalisation of

the oil industry in Iran in the early 1950s. Arab ma’tams, meanwhile, had

to come to terms with the new nationalist tide unleashed by devotees
belonging to the poorest strata of the urban population now employed in
the oil industry. Contestation during ‘ashura’ became symptomatic of the
decadence of the traditional Arab notability who had controlled the
houses of mourning before the collapse of pearling, and of the emergence
47 48
Oral history from the Bushehri family. P. W. Harrison, ‘The Feast of Muharram’.
49
Khuri, Tribe and State in Bahrain, pp. 169–70.