Page 36 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

1 Indigenous state traditions and the dialectics
of urbanisation in Bahrain, 1602–1923

Before the discovery of oil, the presence of water and the rich pearl fish-
eries of Bahrain supported the growth of towns and agricultural hamlets.
The continuity of settlement can also be readily explained by a long
history of trade and by the political realities of a frontier society in flux.
The strategic position of the islands favoured the consolidation of local
administrations under the aegis of the regional powers and of the maritime
and land empires which dominated the Gulf coast. Yet until the establish-
ment of the Pax Britannica in the first half of the nineteenth century, the
absence of fixed military and political frontiers fostered continuous insta-
bility throughout the region. Bahrain was a busy ‘buffer’ zone between the
Arab and Iranian worlds and the point of intersection between the tribal
and agricultural frontiers of the Persian Gulf. The coastline did not
constitute a barrier but a permeable border in a region which had a long
history of indigenous seafaring supported by an advanced maritime tech-
nology. Over the centuries, migrations from the mainland were the engine
of political change as suggested by the sequence of dynasties of tribesmen,
merchant seafarers and imperial administrators which ruled the islands.
Newcomers had a profound influence on the economic and demographic
make-up of Bahrain; the mainland was a reservoir of manpower but
migrations could easily carry the seeds of societal and political collapse.
Bahrain also featured prominently in the ‘battle for Eastern Arabia’ which
witnessed the confrontation between Sunni and Shi‘i Islam as political and
religious movements. As noted by Juan Cole, since the consolidation of the
Carmathian movement in the area in the ninth century, Shi‘ism expressed a
quest for local autonomy from surrounding imperial powers, an ideology of
1
resistance against ‘foreign’ intrusion. Moreover, for the Shi‘i peasants who
formed the majority of the settled population of Bahrain, and of the oasis of
al-Qatif and al-Ahsa’ on the mainland, it served as an instrument of ‘resist-
ance’ against Sunni tribes, which constituted the most dynamic and eclectic

1
J. R. Cole, ‘Rival Empires of Trade and Imami Shi‘ism in Eastern Arabia, 1300–1800’,
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 19.3 (1987), 177–204 (178).
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