Page 38 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

18 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

The town of Bilad al-Qadim became the provincial capital of Safavid
Bahrain and the seat of the chief mujtahid of the islands, the second most
important political figure after the Persian governor. The religious cre-
dentials of Bahrain’s shaykh al-islam, locally known as shaykh al-ra’is,were
carefully vetted by Isfahan, as his office was under the direct control of the
central government. The legacy of Bilad al-Qadim as a centre of Twelver
Shi‘ism continued after the collapse of the Safavid administration. Several
shuyukh al-ra’is were buried on the holy grounds of the site at least until
1792, and the mosque of Suq al-Khamis, the oldest religious complex of
the area, has continued to attract widespread popular devotion ever
4
since. In Safavid Bilad al-Qadim, piety and learning thrived alongside a
flourishing market-place supported by the lush date farms, orchards and
vegetable gardens of the rich agricultural region of northern Awal, the
main island of the archipelago. In the early Safavid period the Portuguese
traveller Pedro Teixeira also noted extensive cultivation of wheat and
barley. It can be surmised that the opening of southern Iranian markets
to Bahrain’s produce, particularly dates and pearls, boosted the islands’
5
export economy. Migration also contributed to Bahrain’s agricultural
prosperity. In fear of religious discrimination, Shi‘i cultivators from al-
Qatif and al-Ahsa’ flocked to the islands after the temporary Ottoman
occupation of Eastern Arabia in 1537. 6
The shaykh al-ra’is and a network of local Arab clerics became the
pillars of the Safavid provincial administration of Bahrain, which was
supported by taxation on agriculture and pearling earmarked in accord-
ance with the Islamic principle of khums. The spiritual authority and
political influence of the clergy derived from the control of religious
institutions: mosques and schools (hawzat), endowments which provided
essential services to the population, the celebration of the Friday prayer in
the name of the Safavid Shah, and the hisbah which allowed clerics to
regulate prices and transactions in the local markets in accordance with
Islamic principles. One of the titles of the shaykh al-ra’is was that of

4
J. Belgrave, Welcome to Bahrain, 8th edn (Manama: The Augustan Press, 1973), pp. 87–9;
‘Ali A. Bushehri, ‘Archaeological evidence on the graves of the shuyukh al-ra’is of Bahrein’,
typescript, 12 pages, 1996. On the early history of al-Khamis mosque see ‘Abd al-Rahman
Musameh, Muqaddimah fi tarikh al-Bahrayn al-qadim (Manama: [n.pub.], 1998), p. 3.
5
P. Teixeira, The Travels of Pedro Teixeira, trans. by William F. Sinclair (London: Hakluyt
Society, 1902), pp. 174–5.
6
C. E. Larsen, Life and Land Use on the Bahraini Islands: The Geoarchaeology of an Ancient
Society (University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 67, 99, 205; The Gazetteer of the Persian
Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia, by John George Lorimer, 2 vols. (Calcutta: Office of
the Superintendent Government Printing, 1908; repub. by Gregg International,
Farnborough, 1970), vol. II, pp. 298–9.