Page 31 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

carved plaster; one had a cross and another a carved head, with wings
Five
The marriage month is drawing very near.
Indian Love Lyrics. Laurence Hope. 1865-1904
I N the summer of 1928 we went on home leave for the first time.
Subsequently I took about three months’ leave every other year
during the hot weather, except in the war years, when I went to
India. Our son was then at the Shaikh Bagh School at Srinagar, in ■
Kashmir; the school had been started by Eric Tindale-Biscoe, the son of
a famous missionary, for English boys in India who were unable to go to
school in England owing to the war. Marjorie used to hire a houseboat
on the lake at Srinagar and when possible I joined her for a month or six
weeks. There could not have been a greater contrast than Bahrain, with
its flat landscape and humid climate, and Kashmir with its magnificent
mountain scenery and bracing air.
Returning from home leave I was rather apprehensive about what
might have happened during my absence as there were still some people
in opposition to the Shaikh who would have liked to see the last of me.
But all was well and when the ship anchored we were met by a large
crowd of Shaikhs and leading merchants who came on board to greet us
and seemed genuinely pleased to see us again. The topic of the moment
was the replacement of both Sunni and Shia Kadhis, whose position as
religious judges was far more important than it is today.
The Islamic world is divided into two main sects, Sunnis and Shias;
the former are. orthodox, the latter are schismatic. The split occurred
in the middle of the seventh century and was caused by a dispute over
the succession to the Caliphate. Before Islam some of the inhabitants of
Bahrain were Christians. There were Christian settlements on the coast
of the Persian Gulf and Syrian Christian records of the late seventh
century mention bishops of the Nestorian seer, one of whom was bishop
of Bahrain. I never found any traces of Christianity in the islands, but
some years ago an Arab brought from Saudi Arabia some pieces of
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behind it. These may have come from the ruins of a Ncstorian church. In
early Islamic times Bahrain came under the rule of the Caliphate and soon
after the Sunni-Shia schism the people of the islands adopted the Shia
sect.
The Bahrain islands, fertile and well watered, off the barren coast of
Arabia, have always excited the cupidity and ambition of powerful
neighbours. Persians, Portuguese, Wahabis, Omanis and mainland tribes
invaded Bahrain, and time and again the unfortunate Bahama were
cava ged and plundered, to such an extent that many of them migrated to
other parts of the Gulf. They became ‘hewers of wood and drawers of
water* and they developed an inferiority complex which has now made
them aggressive and easy to take offence. The Khalifah, and the tribes who
came with them when they conquered Bahrain in 1783, were Sunnis. By
most of the gardens and property which
right of conquest they took over
the Bahama had owned and in the early days of the occupation the
Bahama were in a state of serfdom. Today the Bahama occupy most of
the villages and a section of Manama. They have a different appearance
and a different accent to the Arabs and the two sects rarely intermarry.
Because of the differences between the two sects it was necessary in
Bahrain to have a Shia as well as a Suimi Kadhi.
Old Shaikh Jasim, the Sunni Kadhi, had become quite blind and was
too old and feeble to carry on his work. The successor to Shaikh Khalaf,
the Kadhi who had been banished, an up-and-coming young man, died
suddenly, leaving the post vacant. In appointing Kadhis it was the Shaikh’s
policy to conform as much as possible to the wishes of the people. As I
knew the Shias well, and was regarded by them as being impartial, the
Shaikh left the matter of appointing a Shia Kadhi almost entirely in my
hands. Town and village Shias were backing different candidates and each
party was lobbying and intriguing to get support for its candidate. Night
after night mysterious muffled figures arrived at my house to press the
claims of their proteges and to decry, in most libellous terms, their
opponents. It seemed to me a strange way to deal with the appointment
of an important official, but it was the way things were done in those
days. My task was to make both parties agree, and after many meetings
and arguments I succeeded in doing so. W"e appointed three Sunni
Kadhis, about whom there had been no difficulty, and two Shias, one for
the-villages and one for the town. The choice of the town Kadhi was
unfortunate. After a few years he was dismissed for misappropriating the
property of orphans.
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