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Aw‫ﺓ‬l and Mularrag

p.T Potts
lnstitute f‫ﻥ‬r vorderasiatische Altetrumskunde

Freie ‫ﻝ‬niversitat Berlin

ntroduction

ia the Glossary of her indispensable lslands of Bahrain, Angela Clarke identiifes Awal as an
'idol', and Muharraq as a 'Place of burning'. Of Muharraq she writes, Originally the
ame was attributed to a place on the island of the same name where the Hindu cremated
heir deceased' (Clarke 1981: 274, 278. Many explanations have been offered to account
or the oirgins and use of these names in their Bahraini context, but nobody has, to my
nowledge, ever gone deeply into the question of why Bahrain island, from at least the 6th to
he 19th centuyr, and Muharraq, from the early 19th century to this day, should have brone
he names of two pre-lslamic Arab deities, and what significance this may have. Without
Dretending to have solved the problem, this writer hopes to at least initiate a dialogue on the
opic by providing readers with what little evidence he has been able to gather. This should
e regraded as a frist step and nothing more.

Awla ( ‫ ﻭ( ﺍﻭﺍﻝ‬the island

Ihe use of the nmae Awal for the largest of the Bahrain islands has recently been studied ni
ketial by J. Beaucamp and Ch. Robin in their aitrcle on Nestoiran Christianity in Bahrain
rom the 5th through the 9th centuries (Beaucamp and Robin 1983: 176ff. As they point
ut, Awl is attested by the early 6th century in a verse composed by the pre-lslaimc poet
rmA b, Oami'a (died c. 53-54; in a poem by Gairr (died c. 728; and in citations rfom
ain b. ayy . Muqil, Tawa . ai-Humayyir, and an-Naiga al-6a'di in the works of

'‫ﺓ‬it and al-Bakir‫(ﻭ‬cf. hTilo 1958: 11; Bronckelmann 1943: 13. Thereafter,iit remained
e until comparatively recently. It was, for example, the name y which the island was
enerllay known rfom the late 9th trhouhg early 11th century when it was under armathian

ea(iMles 1919: 127; Madelung 1976: 66‫ﺴ‬. It is proaly for this resaon that we ind it in
٦e ocntemporayr geographical compendia of In Hauqal (died 977, al-Muqaddasi
4‫ﺏ‬99, and al-Idirsr (199-1166 (Wistenfeld 1874: 183. hTe rgeat mairner and naval
iter ln Maigd nentions Awal in the tenth chapter of his extensive treatise on navigation,
itten c. 1489-9 (Tietts 1981: 221. Carsten Nieuhr presevres the name as Aual' on
١e map of the Araian Gulf which he drafted folloniwg his joumrey rfom Muscat to Fars in
٦65 (Nieurh 1774: Ta. XIX.

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