Page 41 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Indigenous state traditions and the dialectics of urbanisation 21

population that had taken refuge there was killed or captured and the date

farms owned by his family in the village of al-Shakurah were taken over by

new settlers. Only the successful despatch of some books to his father in

al-Qatif soon before the beginning of the hostilities secured the idealised

transfer of religious knowledge outside Bahrain. 13

Yusuf al-Bahra ni’s story might well suggest that spiritual wealth sur-

vived in the face of the confiscation and destruction of material posses-

sions. Yet by the time the Al Khalifah consolidated their rule over Bahrain,

the departure of religious leaders and the loss of agricultural land had

irreversibly transformed the position of Bahraini Shi‘ism. In his introduc-

tion to Anwar al-Badrayn, ‘Ali ibn Hasan al-Bahra ni, a local cleric writing

at the beginning of the twentieth century, summed up these changes with

fervour and nostalgia:

Speaking about their forefathers some people of good reputation told me that … in

the old days every corner of the islands was renowned for the piety of its inhab-

itants … but the forces of ignorance and sin prevailed after the departure of the

‘ulama’ … Foreigners replaced them. They appropriated properties unlawfully

and plundered the resources of the country. 14

After the demise of the Safavid administration, rural Bahrain suffered

severe destruction. Carsten Niebuhr, who visited the islands in 1765,

remarked that some villages had virtually disappeared as a result of

depopulation and warfare. During the rule of the Sunni Al Khalifah,

agricultural production suffered from the depletion of water resources

under a new system of land tenure. Although the majority of cultivators

retained rights of usufruct (tasarruf) over their village plots and some were
able to buy land, they became accountable to new tribal lords who
regarded villages and their population as their personal properties. The
shaykhs fixed rents, imposed a poll tax (raqbiyyah), agricultural corvees
15

(al-sukhrah) and a water tax (dawb).

It is easy to understand how in the Al Khalifah era the intellectual and
political engagement of Yusuf al-Bahrani and of his predecessors became
the flagship of lost ‘just’ governance and the symbol of bygone economic
prosperity. Large numbers of cultivators resented arbitrary exploitation
and violence. Starving and defenceless, they were left with a bare
13 14
Y. al-Bahrani, Lu’luat, pp. 442–3. ‘Ali al-Bahrani, Anwar al-badrayn, pp. 52–3.
15
C. Niebuhr, Travels through Arabia, and other Countries in the East, trans. by Robert Heron,
2 vols. (Edinburgh: R. Morison & Son, 1792), vol. II, p. 152; R. B. Serjeant, ‘Customary
Irrigation Law among the Baharnah of Bahrain’ in A. Ibn K. al-Khalifah and M. Rice
(eds.), Bahrain through the Ages: The History (London: Kegan Paul International, 1993),
pp. 471–96 (pp. 474–5); Khuri, Tribe and State in Bahrain, p. 41; Lorimer, Gazetteer,vol. II,
pp. 241–3, 248–9.