Page 89 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

The making of Gulf port towns before oil 69

Hawala residents, whom Lorimer includes among the Arab population

of the town, were looked upon with diffidence by both tribal Arabs and

Baharna. Although some families had been in Bahrain for several gener-

ations and spoke Arabic, they continued to be considered Persians. At the
turn of the century the community included an important segment of the
town’s commercial elite who had acquired wealth and political connec-
72
tions by tapping into European shipping and trade. Indians, mainly
Hindus from Gujarat, were a small community of traders and clerks
who ‘live among the motley crowd [of Manama], “among them, but not
of them”’, as noted by Palgrave in the mid nineteenth century. 73 Often
employed as accountants and English translators for local merchants, they
started to play an important role in the modern administration after 1920.
Jewish families such as the Khadduri, Nunu and Rubin, originally from
Iraq and Iran, worked in the markets as bankers and money lenders. 74
Very few Christians and Europeans lived in Manama before the discovery
of oil, mostly working with the British agency and in the mission estab-
lished by the Dutch Reformed Church of America in 1892.
In a social landscape dominated by newcomers and settlers, percep-
tions of outsiders and insiders were blurred. Family bonds, local identities
and sectarian feelings were rarely subject to negotiation, and individuals
and groups maintained strong trans-local referents long after their settle-
ment in the town. Non-tribal residents born in Manama from foreign
parents continued to be identified with their places of origin through their
family names, providing an important subdivision to Manama’s ethnic
groups. Although members of the extended household settled in the town
were the preferred choice as marriage partners, overseas relatives and
former neighbours supplied business associates and matrimonial ties to
the Bushehris, Shirazis, Bastakis, al-Ahsa’is and al-Qatifis of Manama. 75
The Arab Shi‘i population maintained strong connections to the villages,
where marrying into one of the families living in Manama was highly
prized. A song still celebrates the aspirations of the young males of
Bahrain’s agricultural communities: ‘I wish I could get 2,000 rupees,
1,000 residents of uncertain origin and 2,300 Africans of which 800 were slaves. Lorimer,
Gazetteer, vol. II, p. 1160. Interview with Khalid al-Bassam, Manama, 20 March 2004.
On pre-oil al-‘Unayzah see Altorki and Cole, Arabian Oasis City, pp. 15–82.
72
5,000 Hawala were reported in Manama in 1905. Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. II, p. 1160.
Belgrave to Political Agent Bahrain, 17 February 1948, R/15/2/485 IOR.
73
Palgrave, Narrative of a Year’s Journey, vol. II, p. 212. In the early 1830s Brucks reported
the presence of one hundred Banyan merchants in the town. Brucks, ‘Memoir Descriptive
of the Navigation of the Gulf’ (1829–35), fiche 1096–7, p. 566, V 23/217 IOR.
74
Only fifty Jews lived in Manama in 1905. Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. II, p. 1160.
75
N. Fuccaro, ‘Mapping the Transnational Community: Persians and the Space of the City
in Bahrain, c.1869–1937’ in al-Rasheed (ed.), Transnational Connections in the Arab Gulf,
pp. 39–58 (pp. 45–8).