Page 46 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

26 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

cum tribal notables. Tribal autonomy fostered political factionalism and
continued to expose the islands to the turbulent politics of the mainland.
The al-Dawasir, for instance, a tribal group from Najd under the protec-
tion of the Al Sa‘ud family, were treated by Shaykh ‘Isa as very special
‘guests’ in Bahrain. They kept the authority of the ruler at arm’s length
and acquired landed estates and properties in Manama. 28
Bahrain’s prosperous pearl industry constituted the main resource base
for the tribal newcomers. Pearl production was tightly organised around
tribal affiliations and alliances. The powerful pearling tribes of Muharraq,
such as the Al Jalahimah and Al Ibn ‘Ali, owned a large number of ships
and financed expeditions. Their leaders became the wealthiest pearl
merchants of Bahrain. The Al Musallam, a branch of the Banu Khalid
confederation of Eastern Arabia, specialised in the marketing of pearls.
The clients of the al-‘Utub groups provided pullers and divers while other
minor tribes supplied the rank and file of the military force which pro-
tected tribal leaders, locally known as al-fidawiyyah. The concentration of
Africans and Baluchis in the main pearling centres suggests that tribes also
held the monopoly over slave labour, as elsewhere along the Gulf coast. At
the turn of the twentieth century many slaves had become gradually
integrated into the tribal system. Lorimer reported nearly 5,000 emanci-
pated slaves in Bahrain who maintained close involvement with the sea,
particularly with pearling. He also mentioned an equal number still in
captivity, listing them among the tribal population. 29
Tribal mercantilism was the single most important agent of urbanisa-
tion along the coast. By the early twentieth century, approximately 60 per
cent of the population had become concentrated in a handful of maritime
outposts which, with the exception of Manama, grew as a result of suc-
cessive migrations of Arab tribes. After 1869 Muharraq consolidated its
position as the stronghold of the Al Khalifah and of groups which
belonged to the al-‘Utub confederation, including the Al Fadhil and Al
Jalahimah. As the largest tribal settlement of Bahrain, the town developed
as the powerhouse of the pearl economy of the islands and continued to
occupy a special place in the epic of tribal colonisation. The pious
Muhammad al-Nabhani, the official historian of the Al Khalifah family,
described retrospectively the foundation of their capital in 1809–10 as
nuzul al-Muharraq ba‘da al-Zubarah (lit. the descent upon Muharraq after
al-Zubarah). This Koranic image evoking the first revelation of the

28
Khuri, Tribe and State in Bahrain, pp. 35–67.
29
Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. II, pp. 62–4, 238–41, 1160–1, 1282–3; ‘List of Some of the
Families into which the Tribes Residing in Bahrain are Divided’ in ‘Memo on the
Islands of Bahrain’, 11 July 1875, R/15/2/192 IOR.