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178 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

by the Hawala activists in 1938. Both associations promoted increasing
cooperation between activists from Manama and Muharraq and intersec-
tarian interests, although until 1950 their membership remained confes-
sional, Shi‘i and Sunni respectively.
These new societies were able to acquire followings among different
strata of the urban population also thanks to the development of modern
education. First, with the introduction of physical activities in the curric-
ulum of modern schools which started to be established in 1919, the value
of sport as a tool for moral education and political indoctrination became
apparent. As football gained widespread popularity, clubs started to
sponsor their own teams, attracting increasing numbers of young men.
After 1957 the Bahrain football association included eleven teams which
were all attached to mainstream clubs. 72 Second, clubs endorsed the
figure of the public intellectual whose role was to promote a new con-
sciousness by engaging in a ‘conversation’ with society (mukhatibah
al-mujtami‘). In Manama, Nadi al-‘Urubah, which was established as a
youth society, opened a branch in one of the primary schools and
appointed teachers as honorary members. Although most of the club
affiliates were Shi‘i, the programme of public lectures and discussion
forums which it organised advocated a new relationship between individ-
ual, community and society within the framework of the emerging nation-
alist ethics. In a speech to the central committee of the club in February
1939, Hasan Jawwad al-Jishi, the headmaster of the affiliated primary
school, declared that the recognition of the indivisible personality of the
Arab nation of Bahrain was a precondition of the country’s aspiration to
nationhood. 73
The growth of a polemical press and rising literacy also facilitated the
popularisation of Arab nationalism. After 1952 the publication of inde-
pendent weeklies such al-Qafilah and al-Watan became part of an orches-
trated press campaign which extended from Manama to the remotest
villages of Bahrain. al-Qafilah, which was published between 1953 and
1956, had a weekly circulation of more than 4,000 copies. 74 ‘Abdallah
al-Za’id, the pioneer of Bahrain’s political writing in the late 1920s,

72
Bushehri, ‘National Union School’, pp. 7–8; Nadi al-Muharraq: ra’id al-nahdah
al-riyadiyyah (Manama: Commemorative pamphlet, c. 1981); Nadi Ras Rumman: thala-
thun ‘am ‘ala ta’sis (Manama: Commemorative pamphlet, c. 1986). For a history of
modern education in Bahrain based on local sources see Mayy Muhammad Al
Khalifah, Mi’ah ‘am min al-ta‘lim al-nizami fi al-Bahrayn: al-Sanawat al-ula li al-ta’sis
(Beirut: al-Mu’assasah al-‘Arabiyyah li al-Dirasat wa al-Nashr, 1999).
73
Taqi Muhammad al-Baharna, Nadi al-‘Urubah wa khamsun ‘am, 1939–1989 (Manama:
Ministry of Information, 1991), pp. 23, 48–9.
74
Nakhleh, Bahrain, p. 65.