Page 61 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

Indigenous state traditions and the dialectics of urbanisation 41

Conclusion
Since 1602, the history of the towns and agricultural hamlets of Bahrain
was part of a ‘dialectics of urbanisation’ which embodied the key sources
of state building in Eastern Arabia and in the Persian Gulf: religious ideals
(al-din) and kinship solidarity (al-‘asabiyyah). The demise of Safavid Bilad
al-Qadim and the emergence of Muharraq as the new seat of government
in the early nineteenth century conform to the patterns of city making
described by Ibn Khaldun, the medieval Muslim intellectual who
famously wrote that the life of a dynasty in the Islamic world coincided
with that of the town. 67 In Bilad al-Qadim, state-sponsored religiosity
became manifest in the prominent political and social position occupied
by Shi‘i clerics in the agricultural villages surrounding the settlement. In
contrast, a combination of tribal ideals and mercantile interests guided the
development of Muharraq as the centre of the Dar al-Hukumah which
emerged after 1869 under the rulership of Shaykh ‘Isa ibn ‘Ali Al Khalifah.
Here Sunni Islam made its presence felt as a corollary of tribal ethics and
organisation, rather than acting as a source of political legitimacy per se.
The Al Khalifah era witnessed accelerated sectarian tensions and deep-
ening divisions between tribesmen and agriculturalists. These divisions
were political, administrative and institutional, as well as socio-economic
and spatial. Inequalities encompassed several aspects of individual, com-
munity and public life, and mirrored the transformation of urban and
rural landscapes. Urban and architectural forms gradually enshrined the
ethos of Sunni towns and tribal polities in the making with their quarters
(al-firjan), residences of the members of the ruling family (al-qusur) and
majlises. As Shi‘i agricultural areas remained politically and socially at the
very periphery of the tribal system, they became synonymous with deca-
dence and oppression. Most notably, however, the vibrant popular reli-
gious culture which coalesced around ma’tam congregations permeated
rural life and framed the quest for political and social emancipation of the
Shi‘i population.
In parallel, the networks of politics, trade and migrants which in the
course of the nineteenth century increasingly connected Bahrain to the
Gulf coast and to British India triggered a new type of urbanisation in
Manama. Unlike the other urban centres which flourished under the Al
Khalifah, Bahrain’s leading port developed as a cosmopolitan settlement
where mercantile groups, immigrant communities, tribesmen, former
agriculturalists, Sunnis and Shi‘is rubbed shoulders with each other. If

67
Ibn Khaldun. al-Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. by Franz Rosenthal, 3
vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), vol. II, pp. 233–7.