Page 50 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

30 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

most important economic centre of the islands. He referred to them as al-
qasbat, the architectural strongholds which constituted the inner core of
the tribal polity. With no citadel or fortifications protecting Muharraq or
al-Hidd when al-Nabhani was writing, al-qasbat were the figurative bas-
tions which guarded al-‘asabiyyah. 40 These towns held a strong emotional
appeal for Bahrain’s population. They awoke the sense of prowess and
superiority of groups with a tribal pedigree, and demarcated the physical
and ideal separation between them and the Shi‘i agriculturalists, between
Bahrain’s ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ spheres. In the minds of the villagers, towns
became the image of oppression, places of coercion dominated by al-
fidawiyyah, the armed retainers of tribal leaders and members of the ruling
family who were in charge of public security. During the reign of Khalifah
ibn Salman (1825–34) public order in the then capital Rifa‘ was exclu-
sively in the hands of slaves of African origin. In Muharraq, the governor-
ship of the town was entrusted to a high-ranking retainer of Shaykh ‘Isa
while in Manama al-fidawiyyah of the Al Khalifah governor controlled
the markets. The lawhah al-aqfal, the notorious ‘board of chains’ where
offenders were exposed to public scrutiny became the hallmark of the
injustice dispensed by the government. 41
The close identification of tribes with urban milieus is also evident from
the use of the term for tribal section and Bedouin encampment (farij,
pl. firjan) to denote urban quarters. This was evident even in Manama,
whose population included small numbers of tribesmen and a majority of
Shi‘is. The pre-eminent position occupied by al-‘asabiyyah in the organ-
isation of new spaces of settlement is also reflected in the observations of
outsiders who took a keen interest in the complex population mosaic of
the islands. At the turn of the twentieth century Lorimer classed Shi‘i
villagers as a ‘race’ as opposed to a ‘tribe’, attributing their poverty and
oppression to the lack of tribal bonds between them. He described the
Hawala in similar terms since they also lacked the political cohesion which
characterised the Al Khalifah and their allies. In contrast, in 1875 an
anonymous British official included the Shi‘i artisans and sail makers of
Muharraq (al-hayyakin) among the tribal population. He clearly viewed
their economic specialisation and tight spatial organisation in exclusive
neighbourhoods as a form of communal solidarity comparable to al-
‘asabiyyah, but devoid of any political connotation. 42

40
al-Nabhani, al-Tuhfah al-Nabhaniyyah, pp. 42–4.
41
W. H. Wyburd, ‘Journals of an Excursion into Arabia’ (1832) in Records of Bahrain, vol. I,
p. 148; Khuri, Tribe and State in Bahrain, pp. 51–2; Wali, al-Muharraq, p. 37.
42
Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. II, pp. 237–41, 622; ‘List of Some of the Families into which the
Tribes Residing in Bahrain are Divided’ in ‘Memo on the Islands of Bahrain’, 11 July