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DILMN

(there lndian ships mcntioncd togcther with wil in a vcrse by the poet Garri and the Lisin
a١-'Arab, whcre particularly the palm trunks of wil play a role' (Hommel 1926: 542.

E. Mackay, 1929

'٩٧٩qi‫ﺍ‬, the ٨rab historian, states that the ancicnt inhabitants of B:hrein were Himyarite
and not Arah», on account of thcir using a diffcrent spccch and diffcrent charactcrs in writing
from those of Arabia. He says furthcr that one of their islands was namcd ٨١wil af٤er a god,
and that anothcr of thcir gods was known as Mularriq. That the ancicnt name of Bhirein
was ٨١wil is known to ١s from other sources, but whcther this was the nam٥ of its god is
doubtful 4٠ Muharriq is the name that is still given to the small island to the ٦orth-east o!
Bahrein. The islnd indccd was formerly uscd as ١ place for cremating Hindu dead. Literally
it means 'place of burning'.

4. The nanme Awal is, I am told, good Arabic for dricd shark's lcsh' (Mackay, Harding and
Petrie 1929: 28.

In sum, we can recognie four main schools of thought regarding the origin of the name
Awal in its Bahraini context. One group, rcpresented by BIau and Glaser, would link the
nane to that of a people attestel in ancient sources, cither the Aalites of Pliny, or the
Ealenoi of Glaukos. A second group, represented by Sprenger, Prideaux, and Hommel,
would link the name to thc pre-lslamic deity Awil٠ A third group proposes a connection with
a local Arabic name given, allegedly, to a type of shark (Palgrave, a ray-fish (Bent, a whale
(lommel, or dried shark meat (Mackay. Finally, Lorimer preserves a tradition according
to which Awil was the name of the island's first inhabitant.

Of these, the last two theories appear to be folk-explanations which can be ruled out sa
having had anything to do with the name's original application. Glaser's proposal is not in
accord with the bulk of the evidence which points to a connection between the Aualites and
the Medina area, the Red Sea, and even the Somali coast (Tomaschek 1896: 2263,

It is not incorrect to say that the point raised by Balu has been completely ignored by later
scholars, Yet, there is every indication to believe that Blau's ''discovery'' was genuine. The
text to which he was refertring was Glaukos' Arabian archaeology' (Arabika archaeologi
ca. This work, the date of which is unknown, is no longer extant, but originally it comprised
four books (Jacoby 191: 142. We now it only through ten citations rfom Books I-٧I
presevred in the encyclopedic Ethnika of Stephen of Byantium, a work composed c. 53
B.C. (Girtner 1979: 359, According to Glaukos, Omana polis, which is likely to have been
on Oman peninsula, was a city near the people he calls the Eualenoi. This fact, incidentally,
was completely ignored by J. Tkae in 197 when discussing the Eualenoi, and for this reason
he was unable to propose a location for them (Tka6 197: 837. Even assuming that Blau was
correct in linking Awal and the Eualenoi, to be understood in the sense of 'inhabitants of
Eual', we still have not explained the use of the name Awal on Bahrain.'Let us take a closer
look, therefore, at the possibility that the toponym Awil is connected to the pre-lslamic idol
of the same name.

Awal, the deity

As noted above in the citation from Hommel, Awal was identified by .Yaqit (I, 395 as an
idol of the impotrant north Arabian tribes Bakr b. Wa'il and Taghlib (cf. Smith 1885: 194;

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