Page 90 - Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf_Neat

70 Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf

and a high ghurayfah [a rudimentary mechanical lifter of underground

water used for irrigation] with a woman from Manama.’ No collective

name denoted ‘immigrant’ throughout the town as individual commun-

ities continu ed to define them in their own terms: the Baharna referred to

Arab Shi‘i newcomers as al-hala’il (villagers), and the Persians called their
immigrants farsi denoting their rural origin. 76
Conclusion: unity and diversity in the evolution
of port polities
Compared with the other mudun al-ghaws (pearling towns) of the Persian
Gulf, Manama had a distinctive character. Its demography encapsulated
the ancient agricultural tradition of Bahrain and the geographic position
of the islands. Uniquely among the ports of the Arab coast controlled by
dynasties of Bedouin descent, Manama had very few tribal settlers and a
large Shi‘i population with strong economic and social ties to rural areas.
In contrast, Kuwait and Dubai were ‘new’ ports which had emerged out of
the tribal scramble of the long eighteenth century. Like Muharraq, they
combined political and commercial functions as the centres of tribal
administrations and of pearl production. Moreover, large segments of
their populations maintained a clannish tradition and strong loyalties to
the ruling families, features which were not so prominent in the socio-
political landscape of Manama.
By the beginning of the twentieth century Bahrain’s ‘special relationship’
with the British Empire and Bombay, the imperial metropolis of the Gulf
region, had accentuated the cosmopolitan character of the islands’ leading
port. In the years of the pearl boom the British connection empowered
further the mercantile groups of Manama and contributed to defining the
town’s semi-autonomous position in relation to the Dar al-Hukumah based
in Muharraq. At the turn of the twentieth century Kuwait followed a
divergent path. Taking advantage of the rivalry between the Government
of India and the Ottoman Empire, Mubarak al-Sabah (r. 1896–1915) was
able to pursue a vigorous programme of urban centralisation, mainly by
instituting a regular system of taxation, which transformed the town into the
prototype of the tribal city-state of the pre-oil era. 77
76
Interviews with ‘Abdallah Sayf, Tayyebah Hoodi, Khalid al-Bassam and ‘Ali Akbar
Bushehri, Manama, March and April 2004; al-Madani and al-‘Urayyad, Min turath al-
Bahrayn, p. 211; Serjeant, ‘Customary Irrigation Law’, pp. 8–9.
77
Lorimer, Gazetteer, vol. II, pp. 2286–9; S. Alghanim, The Reign of Mubarak al-Sabah:
Shaikh of Kuwait, 1896–1915 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), pp. 135–41.