Page 243 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Conclusion 223

The state and changing hierarchies of space, place and sect
The transformation of the social, political and spatial topography of
Manama after World War I reflected the integration of Bahrain and of
the Gulf coast into a world of nation states in the making. The organisa-
tion of urban neighbourhoods and the ways in which their residents
experienced state authority are a case in point. In the pre-modern era,
patron–client relations, immigration flows and merchant capital defined
the spatial identity and social texture of al-firjan of the town. By the 1950s,
the organisation and social hierarchies of the quarters of the inner city had
become increasingly dependent on, and identified with, new practices of
state control. The government redrew the lines of privilege among their
residents through the enforcement of land registration, censuses, munic-
ipal taxation and immigration and nationality laws which created new
legal and political divisions between nationals and non-nationals, and
between Arabs and non-Arabs.
The episodes of unrest discussed in Chapter 5 illustrate the ways in
which places, spaces and urban institutions became the sites of new forms
of popular and elite mobilisation against the state. Before the emergence
of modern politics in the late 1930s, civic conflict erupted most often at
the market place, the core of Manama’s pre-modern economy, as with the
incidents of factional violence involving Persians and Arabs in 1904 and
1923. The mobilisation of class and intersectarian interests against the
modern administration in the era of nationalist upheaval gradually shifted
the focus of popular activism to the residential areas. Here by the 1950s
protesters and their leaders commandeered houses of mourning and
mosques. The government buildings, the municipality and the foreign
enterprises on the seafront became the target of widespread resentment,
pitting Manama’s old quarters against the new political centres of the
modern city.
In this respect, it is evident how not only the state but also modern
politics appropriated the residential areas of the inner city, in contrast with
the situation in Damascus in the interwar period. In the Syrian capital, the
elite Arab nationalists of the mandate period who led the movement
against the French administration transferred their operational base
from the old city to the modern residential districts which had developed
2
as a result of colonial urbanism. In Manama, the new nationalist leader-
ship operated from the old neighbourhoods, contributing to maintaining
their spatial and political unity. Perhaps for this reason, the inner-city

2
P. Khoury, ‘Syrian Urban Politics in Transition: The Quarters of Damascus during the
French Mandate’, International Journal of Middle East Studies,16(1984), 507–40.