Page 57 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Indigenous state traditions and the dialectics of urbanisation 37

2 Bayt Faruq in al-‘Awadiyyah, c. 1955. After World War II it became
the Taj Mahal Hotel, demolished soon after independence.

Many of the houses imitate the Persian style, with terraced roofs, ornamented with
open work stucco balustrades or parapets, hanging balconies, porticoes with some
pretence to elegance and windows with fretted wooden shutters or sliding panels
which gave them a pretty look. 54

The house of Yusuf Ridha’ built after 1921 in al-‘Awadiyyah was
renowned for its balustrades, whose style imitated the European taste
widespread in late Qajar Iran. In Manama, architecture not only spoke
the language of an urbanite trans-regional culture but also of ambivalent
political allegiances to the Al Khalifah. The two carved lions at the
entrance of Bayt Faruq, the residence of the wealthy ‘Arshi family, paid
homage to the Iranian imperial tradition which rallied the loyalties of
many of Manama’s Persian residents (see Figure 2). 55
In the nineteenth century new architectural styles also expressed the
changing nature of tribal government. In the first decades of their rule,
the Al Khalifah built military outposts, forts and watchtowers to control

54
Quote from M. Cursetjee, The Land of the Date (Reading: Garnet, 1994), p. 75.
55
Majed, The Traditional Construction, pp. 88–128; interviews with ‘Ali Akbar Bushehri and
Hamid al-Awadhi, Manama, 15 and 19 April 2004.