Page 16 - The Pirate Coast (By Sir Charles Belgrave)

popular when the victims were of a foreign race and of a different
religion.
Soon after Islam was established by Mohammed in the Wcjaz,
the tribes on the Arabian coast sent deputations to Mecca and
subsequently embraced the new religion. Later, Oman which
the King of Persia claimed as a vassal state, accepted Islam. But
during the troublous times which followed the death of Moham­
med, the Bahrain Arabs reverted to their old religion which in
some eases was Christianity. In early Islamic times, the name
Bahrain applied to the whole of the Arabian littoral, as well as to
the islands, which were known as Awal. It was after Europeans
came to the Gulf that only the islands were called by their present
name of Bahrain. In the time of the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, and
during the reign of his successor, Omar, the Gulf Arabs were once
again converted to Islam, this time by force of arms. But Oman,
in spite of attempts by subsequent Caliphs to subjugate the coun­
try, retained a certain independence, and for many centuries the
Omanis elected their own religious leaders, who were known as
Imams. At the beginning of the 9th century, pirates were again
active in Oman waters and the Caliph despatched an expedition
against them.
During the next two centuries the Arabs of the Gulf and the
Bahrain islands supported two formidable insurrections against
the authority of the Caliphs. The first rebellion was led by Ali
bin Mohammed, a man of Persian origin, who claimed descent
from the Prophet Mohammed. He raised a revolt among the
negro slaves who worked in the saltpetre deposits in the marsh
country south of Basra. He was joined by many of the Arab
tribes from Iraq and Arabia, whose allegiance to the Orthodox
faith was not strong. The slave rebellion lasted for some fifteen
years, during which the Arab coast came under the control of the
rebels, who in 871 had captured Basra.
At the beginning of the 10th century, Bahrain became the
centre of another religious movement, whose fanatical followers
were known as Carmathians, named after the founder of the sect,
Hamdan Carmat, who came originally from Persia. Their belief
was an extreme form of Shiism. For more than a century the
Carmathians were in control of the whole of Arabia, and they
extended their conquests into Iraq and Syria, plundering Basra
and threatening Baghdad, the seat of the Abassid Caliphs. Their
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