Page 49 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Indigenous state traditions and the dialectics of urbanisation 29

Manama maintained social distance from their former constituents,
attracting the continuous resentment of rural folks. 36

Urban and rural spheres in the Al Khalifah era
Approaching the coast from the mainland in the late nineteenth century,
northern Bahrain still appeared as a large oasis surrounded by the sea, a
place of shelter and recovery from the harshness of the desert. The ‘Islands
of Paradise’ were certainly alive in the imagination of foreign observers who
were captivated by Bahrain’s lush landscape. In 1879 Captain Durand, the
Assistant British Political Resident in Bushehr, noted: ‘On looking out to
sea on the morning of a clear sky and a fresh nor’wester, it would seem as if
nature, at all times lavish of effect, had here, however, exhausted every tint
of living green in her paint box.’ 37 The economic profile of the towns and
villages which merged into this idyllic scenery differed from the oasis
settlements of Central Arabia. Muharraq, al-Hidd and al-Budayya‘ did
not serve as nodes of exchange between the sedentary and nomadic pop-
ulations but developed as the passageways into the pearl banks which
surrounded Bahrain. 38 In contrast with al-Ha’il and ‘Unayzah in Najd,
market towns which lived off caravan trade and revenue from the pilgrim-
age to Mecca in the Hijaz, their economy was heavily dependent upon
Manama, the centre of pearl exports to Bombay and the hub of Bahrain’s
import trade. The socio-economic and demographic divisions between
these pearling towns and their immediate agricultural hinterland also
reflected deep sectarian cleavages. While in Central Arabia, Kuwait and
Qatar the terms badu and hadar distinguished the tribal from sedentary
populations, the corresponding status groups in Bahrain were ‘Arab
(Sunnis of tribal origin) and Baharna (Arab Shi‘i agriculturalists). 39
Yet it was tribal solidarity (al-‘asabiyyah) as opposed to sectarian senti-
ment which articulated ideal urban hierarchies, often irrespective of the
size and the importance of settlements. In the early twentieth century
Muhammad al-Nabhani, the official historian of the Al Khalifah,
expressed this taxonomy of place by celebrating the primacy of
Muharraq and al-Hidd over Manama, by then arguably the largest and

36
Interview with Mansur al-Jamri, London, 13 March 1999.
37
E. L. Durand, ‘Notes on the Islands of Bahrain and Antiquities’ in Political Resident
Bushehr to Secretary to the Government of India, 1 May 1879, R/15/2/192 IOR.
38
al-Rasheed, Politics in an Arabian Oasis, pp. 9–28, 95–132; S. Altorki and D. P. Cole,
Arabian Oasis City: The Transformation of ‘Unayzah (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1989), pp. 15–82.
39
For a cogent discussion of the distinction between badu and hadar in al-Ha’il see al-
Rasheed, Politics in an Arabian Oasis, pp. 117–32.