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When might this have happened? The island was still called Tylos in the Parthian period, for
it was under this nane that it was known to thc grcat geographer Cl. Ptolemy c. 15 (Calvet
1984: 342. By ,c 5354, howevcr, it was called Awil, as the poetry of 'Ar b. Oami'a
shows, 'Thus, thc change in nomcnclature must have occurred in the late Parthian or
Sasnian period betwccn c, 15 and 53.

There is only one historically attcstcd circumstance which, in my opinion, provide; 5
plausible context for r٥-naming the island 'rcfugelasylum', Wien Tabari describes the
campaign of Sapur II against Arabia, mentioncd above, he tclls us that the king ''spillcd so
mucl blood that it ra١١ like a rain-swollen brook. Even onc who lcd believcd, neverthcless,
that no cave in the mountains, no island in the sea, would sa٧e him (from Sapur' (Nildeke
1879:56. The Taghlib who survived the bloody assault of Sapur ust have considered it a
miracle. It scems entircly plausible that thosc who finally reachcd Bahrain, as attestcd by the
reference to their deportation to Samihig, lookcd on this 'island in the sea' as a place o
refuge and asylum, and therefore called it Awil. Perhaps this provides a clue to the date of
Glaukos' 'Arabian archaeology', as well. ٨s noted above, Stephen of Byantium's Ehika,
in which Glaukos' work is cited, was written c, 53, and thus it is quite possible that Glaukos'
reference to the 'inhabitants of Eual' dates to the earlier Sasanian period.

Muharraq ( ‫ ﻭ( ﻣﺤﺮﻕ‬the island

We turn now to Muharra‫ﻭ‬. sed as a name for the smaller of Balrain's tvo main islands,
Muharraq is of comparatively recent vintage. Just as Awal was the former name for the
largest of the Bahrain islands, so too was 'Arad the name given to the island known today sa
Muharra‫( ﻭ‬Lorimer 198:1267; Miles 1919:322; cf. the map of the Arabian Gulf in Niebuhr
1744:Tab. XIX. This, moreover, is a clear survival from the ancient name Arado,s used to
denote the island by Strabo (Geog. 16, 3, 4, Cl. Polemy (Geog. 6, 7,47, and stephen of
Byantium (Sprenger 1875:p155; cf. Calvet 1984:3422. Another name for the island in
European parlance, found on several 18th century maps, was taken from the name of a
village called Samahij, mentioned above. Thus, for example, we find Muharraq labelled sa
''Samaka' on Herman Molls 171 and 1712 maps of ''Arabia, According to the Newest and
most Exact Observations'; on Isaak Tirion's 'Nieuwe aart ٧an Arabia... of 1731; and on
Bourguignon d' Anville's 'Premiere Partie de la Carte d'Asie...of1751 (Tibbetts 1978:13,
148, 165. A ٧airent of the same, ''Samahe'', appears on Niebuhr's 1765 map of the Sinus
Persicus' (Niebuhr 1774:Tab. XIX.

The earliest European reference to Muharraq which I have been able to find dates to
1829. It comes rfom a travel account in which the author, J.S. Buckingham, calls the island
'Arad, but names its 'principal town' Maharad (a reflex of the older AradlArados?, or
Maarag (Buckingham 1829:453.

We rae grateufl for٠ the following footnote by rM Robert Jarman of the Bahrain
Histoircal and Archaeological Society: At about the same time as Buckingham's work,
aCptain Bucks wrote his ''Memoir descriptive of the Navigation of the Gulf of Persia'; Patr
1 deailng with the Arabian side of the Gulf is dated 21st August 1829, but it was not generally
published unitl 1856 when it, together with the rest of the Memoir, wsa included in
Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government (ns vol. 24 pp 531-634. On page
566 Brucks wrote: 'The Shaikh, Abdoola bin Ahmed, resides at Muharrag , on the islnad of

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