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City and countryside in modern Bahrain 193

facilities and with the large buildings lining the seafront. By the 1950s
Manama’s warehouses had become the largest in the Gulf, serving
Bahrain as well as the oil companies in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and
international firms began to establish branches in Bahrain. New wealth
brought modern building materials into Bahrain, particularly cement. Yet
in 1941 thatched huts still represented more than half of Manama’s dwell-
3
ings, and these survived well into the 1970s. Government investment was
concentrated on new customs services, official buildings and landing
facilities. As modern technology was mobilised in the service of the
expanding entrepôt economy, new urban landmarks bridged land and
sea in novel ways (see Figure 13).
Belgrave was the deus ex machina of Manama’s waterfront renewal,
which was implemented in successive stages through land reclamation.
His brainchild was Bab al-Bahrayn which he designed in 1945 as the seat
of government, part of a complex which was built in front of the harbour
after 1939. This rectangular building was conceived as the ‘gateway’ into
modern Bahrain, and most likely inspired by the Gateway to India built by
the British in Bombay harbour between 1913 and 1924. Its arched
entrance overlooked the Customs Square (Maydan al-Gumruk or
Maydan Shaykh Salman), which became the centre of modern Manama
and provided access from the harbour to the city. Devoid of the oriental-
ised classicism of its counterpart in Bombay, the building introduced to
the overseas visitor the new architectural style of Manama, fusing the
modernist lines of British colonial public architecture which developed
in the interwar period with indigenous features. 4
Rather than symbolising metropolitan authority and colonial hegem-
ony, Bab al-Bahrayn affirmed the dynamism and the political primacy of
Manama as the new capital of Bahrain. Moreover, the architectural lan-
guage of the new seat of government, which also accommodated the
personal office of the ruler, became a landmark in the process of

3
In 1920 Manama included 2,240 dwellings for residential use with a very large proportion
of barastis. By 1941 the number of dwellings had grown to approximately 4,000. Appendix
to Manama Municipal Regulations, 1921, L/P&S/10/349 IOR; ‘Annual Report for the
Year 1359’ in The Bahrain Government Annual Reports, 1924–1970, vol. II, p. 38.
4
Belgrave, Personal Column, p. 135; ‘Annual Report for the Year 1368’ in The Bahrain
Government Annual Reports, 1924–1970, vol. IV, pp. 44–5; interview with ‘Abd al-Rahim
Muhammad, Manama, 17 April 2004. For the Customs Square scheme, see ‘Annual
Report for the Year 1365’ in The Bahrain Government Annual Reports, 1924–1970,vol. III,
pp. 80–1 (with map). M. Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2003). On the Gateway of India see P. H. Davies, Splendours of the Raj: British
Architecture in India, 1660–1947 (London: Murray, 1985), pp. 180–1 and T. R. Metcalf, An
Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain’s Raj (New Delhi, Oxford University Press,
1989), p. 231.