Page 47 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Indigenous state traditions and the dialectics of urbanisation 27

Archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad was of course intended to
endow the ruling family with a sense of divine mission. The event marked
the establishment of the Al Khalifah in Bahrain on a permanent basis and
the relinquishment of their possessions in mainland Qatar after the fall
of the town of al-Zubarah in 1796, the previous stronghold of the family. 30
al-Hidd, the second largest and richest pearling centre of Bahrain,
remained a satellite of Muharraq under the powerful Al Ibn ‘Ali tribe
while al-Budayya‘ and al-Zallaq remained the personal fiefdom of the al-
Dawasir tribe which arrived from al-Dammam on the mainland after
1845. 31
The transfer of productive activity from the agricultural hinterland to
the coast lay at the heart of the political economy of tribal government.
The concentration of revenue from pearling in the hands of tribal entre-
preneurs allowed the Al Khalifah to construct a tight network of political
allegiances. At the same time, the family derived most of its income from
customs dues and agricultural taxation. The islands began a period of
rapid commercial expansion before the outbreak of the civil war in the
early 1840s as a result of increased activities in the pearl banks. In the mid
eighteenth century Carsten Niebuhr reported an annual income of
approximately 100,000 rupees from Bahrain’s pearl fisheries and dates,
while in 1833 David Blane, the British Resident in the Persian Gulf,
estimated annual production from pearling at about £200,000–240,000
(between two and three million rupees) with approximately 30,000 men
and 2,500 vessels employed around Bahrain. 32
As rural communities became an integral part of Bahrain’s new ‘colo-
nial’ economy, the population and size of agricultural hamlets decreased
steadily. Although there are no population statistics or evidence for rural
production for much of the nineteenth century, as early as 1836 villages
such as al-Diraz and al-Shakurah were reported in a state of ruin with large
tracts of land lying waste. It is also significant that Shaykh ‘Isa’s agricul-
tural revenue halved between 1873 and 1904. In 1906 Bahrain was

30
al-Nabhani, al-Tuhfah al-Nabhaniyyah,pp. 82–98; Tariq Wali, al-Muharraq: ‘umran madi-
nah khalijiyyah 1783–1971 (Manama: Matbu ‘at Banurama al-Khalij, 1990), pp. 67–8. For
the history of Zubara see A.M. Abu-Hakima, History of Eastern Arabia, 1750–1800: The Rise
and Development of Bahrain, Kuwait and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia (Beirut: Khayats, 1965),
pp. 63–77.
31
Lorimer estimated the total population of Bahrain at 99,275 of which 60,800 were
concentrated in Manama, Muharraq, al-Hidd and al-Budayya‘. He reported only
16,000 Shi‘i urban residents (mainly in Manama) as opposed to approximately 45,000
Sunnis. Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. II, pp. 62–4, 237–8, 324–35, 596–7, 1270, 1364,
1917–19.
32
Niebuhr, Travels through Arabia, vol. II, p. 152; J. B. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf,
1795–1880 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), pp. 29–30.