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Two notable cxccptions to this conventional usagc should also be mcntioned, however, ٨5
Bcaucamp and Robin have pointed out, the Persian traveller Nisr-i husrau, in writing
about his travels during the years 135 to 142, used the nodern name ''al-Bahrain', rathe٦
than Awil, to dcsignate the islands (Bcaucamp and Robin 1983: 176, Anothcr case can be
fond in the thcological encyclopedia cntitled The Lamp of Darkness' writtcn by the
Coptic priest Sams al-Ri'ish (died 1325, bcttcr known as Abu '١-Barak5‫( ﺍ‬Graf, iI 19٩٦:
219. The seventh chapter of this work contains a catalogue of all of the authors of Clristian
theological works in ٨rabic knovwn to Abu 'l-Barakit. Tere we find the following ctry:
Thaddcus of Edessa (Tadd٦'us ar-R١h١iwi, who hived on the islnd Bakrain, a١ island in thie
Red Sea. Fron him comes the book; 'The Tcacher a١d the Students', vhich contains 43
treatises' (Ricdel 192: 683. In this instance, the tern ٠Rcd Sea' should obviously be
undcrstood in the scnse in which its Grcck cquivalent, Erythraean Sea' (Erythra T'halatta,
was used in classical antiquity, It dcnoted the cntire Arabian Gulf-lndian Occan-Red Sea
bclt around the Arabian pcninsula. The nane of the island, given as ''Bakrai٦'' in the Berlin
codey, 'Bar٦٦١ in the ٧atican mauscript, and 'T٨٤rai٦ in the Rone evemplar, are
١othing ١ore than variants of 'Bahrain'.

These early instances of the use of the nane Bahrain to denote the island of Awil were
obviously exceptions to the rule. When Carl Ritter called Bahrain by the name of Awal in
1846 (Ritter 1846: 422, however, we get the impression that this was already an archaism
(cf. Beaucamp and Robin 1983: 177 and n٠ 2. G. W. Palgrave was certainly wrong,
however, when in 1865 he summarily dismissed ''Awwil' as a name which, in his opinion,
had arisen through a linguistic misunderstanding. He wrote, No island, in fact, large or
snall, within the Gulf bears the name of 'Aw٧a١٧ (Palgrave 1865: 321. Even as late as 198
the great Britih archivist of Gulf affairs, J.G. Lorimer, wrote that the name Awal was
''disused, but still remembered' (Lorimer 198: 186, and in 192 the French economist R
Vadala still used it to refer to the largest of the Bahrain islands (Vadala 192: 3.

As for the origin of the name in Bahrain, there exist various theories, several of which are
given below in chronological order (the citations from Balu, Sprenger, Glaser and Hommel
have been translated from the original German.

W.G. Palgrave, 1865

'Sharks are very common throughout the Gulf, and nobody thinks himself above eating
them ... They are a nutritive, but at best an unsavouyr food, their name here is 'Awwal,' the
fndian for 'shark;' the genuine Arab denomination is 'elb-ol-Balyr,' or 'sea-dog'. I was
much amused on finding that Niebuhr himself, with other travellers, through want perhaps
of sufficient conversance with loal technicalities, have taken the world Aww5l' for the
name of a place, and have in consequence christened the island of Bahreyn by the fish in
question - common, it is true, off those shores, but not precisely identical with them. Hence
Bahreyn has in some maps and books become 'Awwal,' or 'shark, much as though a
foreigner should after a visit to our own eastern coast, set down England in his notes by
'Herring' or 'Mackerel' (Palgrave 1865: 321.

O. Biau, 1873

٠I consider the Eualenoi (Glaukos, frag. 1 the inhabitants of the island ‫ ﺃﻭﻝﺍ‬or 'A ١wal in the
Persian Gul٤... (Blau 1873: 322, n. 9.

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