Al-Khalifa - Bahrain Through The Ages

Bahrain
through the ages
the History

Edited by Shaikh Abdullah bin Khalid al-Khalifa and Michael Rice

Introduction by

Tariq Almoayed

First published 1993 by

Kegan Paul International Limited

Published 2014 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

The Ministry of Information, State of Bahrain 1993

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-7103-0272-4 ( hbk)

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. The publisher has made every effort to contact original copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

Contents

This volume is based on the papers delivered at the historical sessions of the conference Bahrain Through the Ages, organised in Bahrain on the initiative of the Government of the State of Bahrain, in December 1983. The papers are substantially the texts of those delivered at the Conference, adapted to printed form.

This volume is the companion to Bahrain Through the Ages the Archaeology edited by Shaikha Haya Ali al-Khalifa and Michael Rice, Kegan Paul International 1986.

A number of the papers appeared in Al-Watheeqa, the Journal of the Bahrain Documentation Centre.

The order of papers presented in this volume follows a Roman alphabetical sequence.

As before, proper and place names have generally been standardised, according to the forms usually adopted in Bahrain. Transliterations are generally those adopted by the individual authors.

The publishers would like to give a special word of thanks to Dr A. A. Shaady of the Faculty of Languages, Polytechnic of Central London, who undertook the considerable task of translating those papers that were originally written in Arabic. Translation papers are marked with an asterisk *.

I am especially pleased to introduce this second volume of the Proceedings of the Bahrain Historical Conference, for it marks the completion of a project of exceptional significance in the history of the State of Bahrain, and of the Arabian Gulf as a whole.

The Conference was held in Manama in December 1983. Some one hundred and twenty scholars from all over the world attended the sessions, which were devoted to the study of the archaeology and history of the State, from the earliest times to the present century.

The Conference was held to mark the two hundredth anniversary of the arrival in the Bahrain Islands of the Al Khalifa family and their supporters, who had migrated eastwards from Central Arabia in the middle of the eighteenth century. At first, they settled in the region of Kuwait, then moved southwards and established themselves in what is today the Qatar Peninsula, eventually to assume the rulership of the Bahrain islands around the year 1783. It was felt that a major International Conference, dedicated to scholarship and the acquisition of knowledge, would be a fitting way to mark the anniversary.

The Ministry of Information reserved the rights to publish the Conference proceedings. Mr Michael Rice, who is a respected authority on Bahrain history, kindly agreed to consult with all contributors for their texts. Shaikh Abdulla bin Khalid Al Khalifa examined the papers on contemporary political history. The editors, rightly, decided not to alter any of the texts. But the Ministry did ask them to avoid material which did not fall within the mainstream of the conference, or which represented seriously contested views on recent political history.

In my introduction to the first volume of the Conference Proceedings (Bahrain Through the Ages: The Archaeology; edited by Shaikha Haya Ali Al Khalifa and Michael Rice, Kegan Paul International Limited, London 1986) I told the story of the Conference and described its organisation. That first volume was principally devoted, as its title would suggest, to the archaeology and ancient history of Bahrain. It revealed, more cogently perhaps than had ever been the case before, the extraordinary richness and extent of the historical record of Bahrain in pre-Islamic times. In those days Bahrain was the centre of a high culture, bearing comparison with its great contemporaries in Iraq, Egypt, Iran and India but more notable than any of these in one important respect: in addition to being revealed as a place with a reputation for particular sanctity, Bahrain in antiquity was the centre of a wide-spread, indeed truly international trading network, which involved its people in contact with virtually the entire known world at the time. Outside the studies of the relatively few specialists, the extent of Bahrains history from the third millennium BC onwards was hardly known before the Conference took place and the papers which were presented at it, published. This is certainly no longer the case.

Bahrain Through The Ages: The Archaeology has now become a standard work, to be found on the shelves of all principal academic libraries throughout the world. It was extensively and generously reviewed and, more perhaps than any other single document, has served to identify Bahrain as a major centre of an ancient and advanced civilisation.

This present volume brings the long and richly varied history of Bahrain closer to our own time. As such, it may appeal to a still wider audience than its predecessor, for people living in Bahrain today will find much within its pages with which to identify. Many of the contributors to the archaeological volume came from outside the Arab world, from the many centres of learning and research devoted to the study of ancient Western Asia, of which Bahrain, the Arabian peninsula and the Arabian Gulf form part. Bahrain Through The Ages The History, however, has a large component of authors from the Arab world, including a number from Bahrain itself.

Much of the evidence for the archaeological phases of Bahrains past comes from excavation and the examination of surviving buildings and artefacts. With the later periods the evidence is, in some ways, more complex still, requiring the scholar to seek out material in a wide variety of sources, many locations and in languages as varied as Portuguese, Turkish, Persian, most of the principal languages of Europe and those from Far Eastern lands with which the merchants and seamen of Bahrain were in contact throughout the centuries. As European states began to look to the East for their markets and the extension of their Empires, the Gulf became, once again, an important international waterway; with it Bahrain resumed her place as a centre of trade and of the friendly intermingling of peoples.

Many of the papers published in this volume were originally presented in Arabic, in contrast to the majority of those published in the first volume. Many of the original texts were published in Al Watheeka, the journal of the Bahrain Centre of Documentation. However, the Ministry of Information was keenly aware of the interest which the Conference had aroused internationally and of the importance of many of the contributions which were made to the historical sessions of the Conference. With this in mind, therefore, it was decided to translate the Arabic texts into English and so make them available to a wider, international audience. Those papers which have been translated are indicated by an asterisk.