Page 235 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

City and countryside in modern Bahrain 215

prices of date gardens soared as a result of restrictions on date imports
from Iraq and from the mainland. 55
The economic considerations which underscored land registration
undermined the rationale of land settlement on political grounds. After
1929 the land claimed by members of the royal household covered more
than three-quarters of the productive area of Bahrain, including large
tracts of the agricultural belt surrounding Manama. As noted by
Belgrave in 1931, if these claims had been granted, the state treasury
would have lost control over much of the countryside. At the same time,
the Land Department was not in a position to start land distribution anew
as Shaykh ‘Isa, the deposed ruler, was alive and in theory he was still the
‘land controller’. In other words, if the government interfered with cus-
tomary practice it would have denied political legitimacy to the household
as a whole. 56 After the death of Shaykh ‘Isa in 1932, Shaykh Hamad did
not recover family properties as the new ruler. Land grants started to be
redistributed on an ad hoc base under the supervision of the family
council, a body which pre-dated the reforms. 57 Regrettably, it is impos-
sible to draw a detailed picture of land rights after the reforms. What is
clear is that the Al Khalifah family remained in control of the most
productive land in the northern region of the main island. For instance,
Shaykh Muhammad ibn ‘Isa, the brother of Shaykh Hamad, became the
largest owner of rural property in the 1930s. 58
One notable outcome of the conservative nature of the new land regime
was that it did not enforce new hierarchies of authority in the countryside,
essentially preserving the profile of landlord, tenant and agriculturalist. It
upheld the position of wazirs, members of village communities who had
supervised tenancies and tax collection on behalf of landlords before the
reforms. Under the supervision of the Tabu, cultivators enjoyed rights of
usufruct (tasarruf) by written agreement which replaced oral contracts of
lease. Arrangements between tenant and landlord/shaykh continued to be
negotiated on a sharecropping basis or, in the case of palm groves, bound

55
‘Annual Report for the Year 1365’ in The Bahrain Government Annual Reports, 1924–1970,
vol. III, p. 56.
56
Belgrave to Political Agent Bahrain, 19 November 1931, R/15/2/807 IOR. The Bahrain
Government Annual Reports, 1924–1970: ‘Annual Report for the Year 1348’, vol. I, p. 160;
‘Annual Report for the Year 1351’, vol. I, pp. 369–71.
57
‘Annual Report for the Year 1351’ in The Bahrain Government Annual Reports, 1924–1970,
vol. I, pp. 369–71. R/15/2/804 IOR, in particular minutes of Al Khalifah family council, 4–
11 October 1934, and Belgrave to Political Agent Bahrain, 18 March 1935, n. DO 36;
Khuri, Tribe and State in Bahrain, pp. 101–7.
58
‘A Note on Land Tenure by the Ruling Family in Bahrain’ by Belgrave, 23 December
1931, R/15/2/807 IOR.