Page 109 - Life & Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (Curtis E Larsen)

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watered portions of the north coast. In many ways, this can be thought to resemble
the earlier Kassite and protoliterate intervals on the island when evidence for
settlement is also fragmentary.
For the sixth and seventh centuries, an expansion in land use should be
considered inasmuch as the Late Sasanian and Early Islamic archeological evidence
is certainly mixed. Belgrave (1975) insists that the various qanat systems visible on
the western coastal plain were introduced into Bahrain during the Sasanian period,
but there have been neither Sasanian nor Early Islamic ceramics found in
association with them pointing to only later use. Thus one must consider Bahrain
to have been only minimally influenced by the Sasanian maritime trade network,
even at its zenith. While we know that Bahrain was a source of pearls in Parthian
times and that Sasanian rulers considered them to be major luxury item, these
could equally well have come from Ceylon which was central in the Sasanian trade
network. Yet, even a moderate trade in pearls argues for location of a trade
center on the north coast of the island. The late Sasanian period can, therefore, be
tentatively identified as an interval of subdued settlement and land use.
Agricultural activity continued as before along the north coastal plain but did not
influence the remainder of the island. McGuire Gibson (personal communication)
suggests, as an alternative, that an emphasis on pearling may have downplayed an
agricultural market even though the port was prosperous.
Settlement during the Islamic period is more clearly defined than during
the preceding periods. As in the historical discussions, land use can be divided into
Early, Middle, and Late Islamic intervals based upon the spatial arrangement of
contemporary occupation sites. Those of the Abbasid period, for example, are
limited to eight individual sites (fig. 13). Although these ceramics have been
reported from Bilad al-Qadim (site 151) near Manama, more abundant evidence
comes from the northwestern portion of the island. Abbasid period sites are
centered between the villages of Barbar and Diraz, while others are located farther
south near the villages of Sar and Ali.