📰 Bahrain

Bahrain,[14] officially the Kingdom of Bahrain,[15] is an island country in the eastern part of Arabian Peninsula in West Asia.1 Situated near the western shore of the Persian Gulf, the country comprises a small archipelago of 33 natural islands and an additional 50 artificial islands, centered on Bahrain Island, which makes up around 80 percent of the country's landmass.2 Bahrain is situated between Qatar corpus and the northeastern coast of Saudi Arabia corpus, to which it is connected by the King Fahd Causeway.3 The population is 1,588,670 as of 2024, of whom 739,736 (46.6% of the population) are Bahraini nationals, and 848,934 are expatriates (53.4% of the population).[2]4 Bahrain spans some 760 km2[16] and is the third-smallest nation in Asia after Maldives corpus and Singapore corpus.[17]5 The capital and largest city is Manama corpus.6

The area that straddles the present-day territory of Bahrain was once the site of the ancient Dilmun civilisation.[18]7 It has been famed since antiquity for its pearl fisheries, which were considered the best in the world into the 19th century.[19]8 Bahrain was one of the earliest areas to be influenced by Islam, during the lifetime of Muhammad in 628.9 Following a period of Arab rule, Bahrain was ruled by the Portuguese Empire from 1521 until 1602, when they were expelled by Shah Abbas the Great of the Safavid Iran.10 In 1783, the Bani Utbah and allied tribes captured Bahrain from Nasr Al-Madhkur.11 It has since been ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family, with Ahmed al Fateh as Bahrain's first hakim.12

In the late 19th century, following successive treaties with the British, Bahrain became a protectorate of the United Kingdom.[20]13 In 1971, it declared independence.14 Formerly an emirate, Bahrain was declared a semi-constitutional monarchy in 2002, and Article 2 of the constitution made sharia a principal source for legislation.15 In 2011, the country experienced protests inspired by the regional Arab Spring.[21]16 The ruling Sunni Muslim Al Khalifa royal family has been criticised for violating the human rights of groups including dissidents, political opposition figures, and its Shia Muslim population.[22]17

Bahrain is known as one of the first post-oil economies in the Persian Gulf,[23] the result of decades of investing in the banking and tourism sectors.[24]18 Many of the world's largest financial institutions have a presence in Manama, but oil revenues still constitute a significant part of its government budget.19 It is recognised by the World Bank as a high-income economy.20 Bahrain is a member of the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and the Gulf Cooperation Council.[25]21 It is a Dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.[26][27]22

Etymology

Bahrain is the dual form of the Arabic word Bahr (meaning "sea"), so al-Bahrayn originally means "the two seas".23 However, the name has been lexicalised as a feminine proper noun and does not follow the grammatical rules for duals; thus its form is always Bahrayn and never Bahrān, the expected nominative form.24 Endings are added to the word with no changes, as in the name of the national anthem Bahraynunā ("our Bahrain") or the demonym Bahraynī.25 The medieval grammarian al-Jawahari commented on this, saying that the more formally correct term Bahrī (lit.26 ‘belonging to the sea’) would have been misunderstood and so was unused.[28]27

It remains disputed which "two seas" the name Bahrayn originally refers to.[29]28 The term appears five times in the Quran but does not refer to the modern island—originally known to the Arabs as Awal.[29]29 Today, Bahrain's "two seas" are generally taken to be the bay east and west of the island,[30] the seas north and south of the island,[31] or the salt and fresh water present above and below the ground.30 In addition to wells, there are areas of the sea north of Bahrain where fresh water bubbles up in the middle of the saltwater as noted by visitors since antiquity.[32]31 An alternative theory concerning Bahrain's toponymy is offered by the al-Ahsa region, which suggests that the two seas were the "Great Green Ocean" (the Persian Gulf) and Al-Asfar Lake on the Arabian mainland.32

Until the late Middle Ages, "Bahrain" referred to the region of Eastern Arabia that included southern Iraq corpus, Kuwait corpus, Al-Hasa, Qatif, and Bahrain.33 The region stretched from Basra in Iraq to the Strait of Hormuz in Oman corpus.34 This was Iqlīm al-Bahrayn's "Bahrayn Province".35 When the term "Bahrain" began to refer solely to the Awal archipelago is unknown.[33]36 The entire coastal strip of Eastern Arabia was known as "Bahrain" for a millennium.[34]37 The island and kingdom were also commonly spelled Bahrein.[19][35]38

History

Main article: History of Bahrain

Antiquity

Bahrain was home to Dilmun, an important Bronze Age trade centre linking Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.[36]39 Bahrain was later ruled by the Sumerians and Babylonians.[37]40 From the 6th to 3rd century BC, Bahrain was part of the Achaemenid Empire.41 By about 250 BC, Parthia brought the Persian Gulf under its control and extended its influence as far as Oman.42 The Parthians established garrisons along the southern coast of the Persian Gulf to control trade routes.[38]43

During the classical era, Bahrain was referred to by the ancient Greeks as Tylos, the centre of pearl trading, when the Greek admiral Nearchus serving under Alexander landed on Bahrain.[39]44 Nearchus is believed to have been the first of Alexander's commanders to visit the island, and he found a verdant land that was part of a wide trading network; he recorded: "That on the island of Tylos, situated in the Persian Gulf, are large plantations of cotton trees, from which are manufactured clothes called sindones, of strongly differing degrees of value, some being costly, others less expensive.45 The use of these is not confined to India, but extends to Arabia."[40]46

The Greek philosopher and a botanist Theophrastus[41] states that much of Bahrain was covered by these cotton trees and that Bahrain was famous for exporting walking canes engraved with emblems that were customarily carried in Babylon.[42]47 Alexander had planned to settle Greek colonists in Bahrain, and although it is not clear that this happened on the scale he envisaged, Bahrain became very much part of the Hellenised world: the language of the upper classes was Greek, with Aramaic in everyday use.48 Local coinage shows a seated Zeus, who may have been worshipped there as a syncretised form of the Arabian sun-god Shams.[43]49 Tylos was also the site of Greek athletic contests.[44]50

The Greek historian Strabo believed the Phoenicians originated from Bahrain.[45]51 Herodotus also believed that the homeland of the Phoenicians was Bahrain.[46][47]52 This theory was accepted by the 19th-century German classicist Arnold Heeren who said "In the Greek geographers, for instance, we read of two islands, named Tyrus or Tylos, and Aradus, which boasted that they were the mother country of the Phoenicians, and exhibited relics of Phoenician temples."[48]53 The people of Tyre in particular have long maintained Persian Gulf origins, and the similarity in the words "Tylos" and "Tyre" has been commented upon.[49]54 However, there is little evidence of any human settlement at all on Bahrain during the time when such migration had supposedly taken place.[50]55

The name Tylos is thought to be a Hellenisation of the Semitic Tilmun (from Dilmun).[51]56 The term Tylos was commonly used for the islands until Ptolemy's Geographia when the inhabitants are referred to as Thilouanoi.[52]57 Some place names in Bahrain go back to the Tylos era; for instance the name of Arad, a residential suburb of Muharraq, is believed to originate from "Arados", the ancient Greek name for Muharraq.[39]58

In the 3rd century, Ardashir I, the first ruler of the Sassanid dynasty, marched on Oman and Bahrain, where he defeated Sanatruq the ruler of Bahrain.[53]59

Bahrain was the site of worship of an ox deity called Awal (اوال).60 Worshipers built a large statue to Awal in Muharraq, although it has now been lost.61 For many centuries after Tylos, Bahrain was known as Awal.62 By the 5th century, Bahrain became a centre for Nestorian Christianity, with the village Samahij[54] as the seat of bishops.63 In 410, according to the Oriental Syriac Church synodal records, a bishop named Batai was excommunicated from the church in Bahrain.[55]64 As a sect, the Nestorians were often persecuted as heretics by the Byzantine Empire, but Bahrain was outside the empire's control, offering some safety.65 The names of several Muharraq villages today reflect Bahrain's Christian legacy, with Al Dair meaning "the monastery".66

Bahrain's pre-Muslim population consisted of Christian Arabs (mostly Abd al-Qays), Persians (Zoroastrians), Jews,[56] and Aramaic-speaking agriculturalists.[57][58][59]67 According to Robert Bertram Serjeant, the Baharna may be the Arabised "descendants of converts from the original population of Christians (Aramaeans), Jews and Persians inhabiting the island and cultivated coastal provinces of Eastern Arabia at the time of the Muslim conquest".[57][60]68 The sedentary people of pre-Muslim Bahrain were Aramaic speakers and to some degree Persian speakers, while Syriac functioned as a liturgical language.[58]69

Arrival of Islam

Main article: List of expeditions of Muhammad

Muhammad's first interaction with the people of Bahrain was the Al Kudr Invasion.70 Muhammad ordered a surprise attack on the Banu Salim tribe for plotting to attack Medina.71 He had received news that some tribes were assembling an army in Bahrain and preparing to attack the mainland, but the tribesmen retreated when they learned Muhammad was leading an army to do battle with them.[61][62]72

Traditional Muslim accounts state that Al-Ala'a Al-Hadrami was sent as an envoy during the Expedition of Zayd ibn Harithah (Hisma)[63][64] to the Bahrain region by Muhammad in AD 628 and that Munzir ibn Sawa Al Tamimi, the local ruler, responded to his mission and converted the entire area.[65][66]73

Middle Ages

In 899, the Qarmatians, a millenarian Ismaili Muslim sect, seized Bahrain, seeking to create a utopian society based on reason and redistribution of property among initiates.74 Thereafter, the Qarmatians demanded tribute from the caliph in Baghdad corpus, and in 930 sacked Mecca, bringing the sacred Black Stone back to their base in Ahsa, in medieval Bahrain, for ransom.75 According to historian Al-Juwayni, the stone was returned 22 years later in 951 under mysterious circumstances.76 Wrapped in a sack, it was thrown into the Great Mosque of Kufa in Iraq, accompanied by a note saying "By command we took it, and by command, we have brought it back."77 The theft and removal of the Black Stone caused it to break into seven pieces.[67][68][69]78

Following their defeat in 976 by the Abbasids,[70] the Qarmatians were overthrown by the Arab Uyunid dynasty of al-Hasa, who took over the entire Bahrain region in 1076.[71]79 The Uyunids controlled Bahrain until 1235, when the archipelago was briefly occupied by the Persian ruler of Fars.80 In 1253, the Usfurids brought down the Uyunid dynasty, thereby gaining control over eastern Arabia, including the islands of Bahrain.[33]81

In 1330, the archipelago became a tributary state of the rulers of Hormuz.[33]82 Locally, the islands were controlled by the Shia Jarwanid dynasty of Qatif.[72]83 In the mid-15th century, the archipelago came under the rule of the Jabrids, a Bedouin dynasty also based in Al-Ahsa that ruled most of eastern Arabia.[73]84

Portuguese and early modern era

Main article: Safavid Bahrain, Bani Utbah invasion of Bahrain, Bahrain and its Dependencies, Qatari–Bahraini War

In 1521, the Portuguese allied with Hormuz and seized Bahrain from the Jabrid ruler Muqrin ibn Zamil, who was killed during the takeover.85 Portuguese rule lasted for around 80 years, during which time they depended mainly on Sunni Persian governors.[33]86 The Portuguese were expelled from the islands in 1602 by Abbas I of the Safavid Iran,[74] which gave impetus to Shia Islam.[75]87

For the next two centuries, Persian rulers retained control of the archipelago, interrupted by the 1717 and 1738 invasions of the Ibadis of Oman.[76]88 During most of this period, they resorted to governing Bahrain indirectly, either through the city of Bushehr or through immigrant Sunni Arab clans.89 The latter were tribes returning to the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf from Persian territories in the north who were known as Huwala.[33][77][78]90 In 1753, the Huwala clan of Nasr Al-Madhkur invaded Bahrain on behalf of the Iranian Zand leader Karim Khan Zand and restored direct Iranian rule.[78]91