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that name, which is a large town , and contains about six thousand inhabitants. This would
seem to be the first mcntion of Muharraq as the name of the island; what is mcant by the
island of Muharra is a little unclear, as on page 568 Brucks continues: The islands of
Muharag, Arad, and Samahoy are twelvc miles round, and only separated at very high
spring tides, They have a few date plantations on then, and about seven thousand five
hundred inhabitants .٠٠Thcre are t٧o forts or Ghurccs, one at Muharag, the other at Arad.

'This Mcmoir has just been rcpublishcd by Oleander Press as Arabian Gulf [ntelligence,
with١ an introhuction by Robin Bidwcll; it appcared after this article was written by Dr Potts.

'Ihcre may be other, slightly carlier attcstations of the name, but Ritter, writing in 1846,
stated that Fort Maharag'' was bilt by Abdul Rahman' (Ritter 1846:595), third son and
eventual successor Ahmed b. Mohammcd al-halifa, who died in 1794 (Al-halifa and
Hussain 1983:4). Lorimer mentioned 'The 4-bastioned fort of Abu Mahur, sometimes called
Mularraq fort, which was bombarded and dismantled in 1867', and noted that Abu Mahur
si a village which at highwater is surrounded by the sea, but at low tide is connected with
Muharraq island' (Lorimer 198:1126). By Abdul Rahman' Ritter apparently meant
Abdullah al-halifa, who is said to have re-built the fort in 184 upon a Portuguese
foundation (Clarke 1981:18), Whether or not a Portuguese fort stood on the same site
already in the 16th century, it would not appear that the name Muharraq, which seems
largely tied to the fort, was current at this early date. Certainy this would explain why there
are no references to Muharraq in the very detailed Dutch reports on Bahrain and the Gulf
from the middle of the 18th century (Floor 1979, 1982, 1984).

As the citations listed above show, Prideaux linked the name of the island Muharraq
with that of the pre-lslamic idol by the same name (usually wirtten Muharriq, although the
orthography is the same). Mackay, obviously thinking along siimlar lines, added a piece of
local lore which tied the name to the Hindu practice of cremation, said to have been
practiced there. Let us turn now to Al-Muharriq in the pre-lslamic period.

Al-Muharrig, the diety and the epithet

According to Yaqit (I‫ﺭ‬, 425), al-Muarir‫' ﻭ‬was an idol of the Bakr b, Wa'il and the other
Rabfa (tribes) in Salman (a town in Iraq near al-Hira). Sons were set aside for ihm in every
tent of the Rabi'a. The priests were the descendants of al-Aswad of the 'Ig‫( ﺍ‬a sub-group of
the Rabl'a). Among the 'Anaa the name Balg b. al-Muharriq appears, among the 'mAira
nad ufayla there were (two families with the name of the 'Amr b. al-Muharri‫( 'ﻭ‬after
Welihausen 1887:57 with new readings by Fahd 1968:128-129. The name al-Muharrig is
usually understood as 'the burner', perhaps in the sense of a solar deity (Wellhausen
1887:244; Noldeke 1887:712. In view of the mention of sons given over to the god, both J.
Wellhausen (1887:57 and W. Robertson Simth took Yaqit's statement as a reference to
human sacrifice (Smith 189: 364, n.1, whereas Th. N5ldeke and others after him have
preferred to see this as evidence that the children in question were merely consecrated to the
god (Naldeke 1887:712.

Robetrson Smith's arguement, however, was not simply theological. Rather, he pointed
.to the fact that several of the pre-lslamic Lakhmid kings of al-Hira, Sasainan Persia's vassals
in the border 2one between Arabia and Mesopotaima, bore the epithet 'al-Muharriq', nad

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