Bahrain

Bahrain (ⁱ/bɑːˈreɪn/; Arabic: البحرين‎  al-Baḥrayn), officially the Kingdom of Bahrain (Arabic: مملكة البحرين‎  Mamlakat al-Baḥrayn), is a small island country situated near the western shores of the Persian Gulf in Southwest Asia. It is an archipelago with Bahrain Island, the largest land mass, at 55 km (34 mi) long by 18 km (11 mi) wide. Saudi Arabia lies to the west and is connected to Bahrain by the King Fahd Causeway while Iran lies 200 km (124 mi) to the north across the Persian Gulf. The peninsula of Qatar is to the southeast across the Gulf of Bahrain. The population in 2010 stood at 1,234,571, including 666,172 non-nationals.^[7]
Bahrain is the site of the ancient land of the Dilmun civilisation.^[8] Bahrain was one of the earliest areas to convert to Islam in 628 AD. Following a period of Arab rule, Bahrain was occupied by the Portuguese in 1521, who in turn were expelled in 1602 by Shah Abbas I of the Safavid dynasty under the Persian Empire. In 1783, the Bani Utbah clan captured Bahrain from Nasr Al-Madhkur and has since been ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family, with Ahmed al Fateh as Bahrain's first hakim. In the late 1800s, following successive treaties with the British, Bahrain became a protectorate of the United Kingdom. In 1971, Bahrain declared independence. Formerly a state, Bahrain was declared a Kingdom in 2002. Since early 2011, the country has experienced sustained protests and unrest inspired by the regional Arab Spring, particularly by the majority Shia population.^[9]
Bahrain has the first post-oil economy in the Persian Gulf.^[10] Since the late 20th century, Bahrain has invested in the banking and tourism sectors.^[11] The country's capital, Manama, is home to many large financial structures. Bahrain has a high Human Development Index (ranked 48th in the world) and was recognised by the World Bank as a high income economy.

History

Earliest recorded history

Bahrain was home to the Dilmun civilization, an important Bronze Age trade centre linking Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.^[19] Bahrain was later ruled by the Assyrians and Babylonians.^[20]
From the 6th to 3rd century BC, Bahrain was added to the Persian Empire by the Achaemenian dynasty. By about 250 BC, Parthia brought the Persian Gulf under its control and extended its influence as far as Oman. The Parthians established garrisons along the southern coast of the Persian Gulf to control trade routes.^[21]
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 the Great came to discover Bahrain.^[22] 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 in the island of Tylos, situated in the Persian Gulf, are large plantations of cotton tree, from which are manufactured clothes called sindones, a very different degrees of value, some being costly, others less expensive. The use of these is not confined to India, but extends to Arabia.”^[23] The Greek historian, Theophrastus, states that much of Bahrain were covered in these cotton trees and that Bahrain was famous for exporting walking canes engraved with emblems that were customarily carried in Babylon.^[24]
Alexander had planned to settle in Bahrain with Greek colonists, and although it is not clear that this happened on the scale he envisaged, Bahrain was very much part of the Hellenised world: the language of the upper classes was Greek (although Aramaic was in everyday use), while Zeus was worshipped in the form of the Arabian sun-god Shams.^[25] Bahrain even became the site of Greek athletic contests.^[26]
The Greek historian Strabo believed the Phoenicians originate from Bahrain.^[27] Herodotus also believed that the homeland of the Phoenicians was Bahrain.^[28][29] This theory was accepted by the 19th-century German classicist Arnold Heeren who said that: "In the Greek geographers, for instance, we read of two islands, named Tyrus or Tylos, and Arad, Bahrain, which boasted that they were the mother country of the Phoenicians, and exhibited relics of Phoenician temples."^[30] 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.^[31] However, there is little evidence of occupation at all in Bahrain during the time when such migration had supposedly taken place.^[32]
The name Tylos is thought to be a Hellenisation of the Semitic, Tilmun (from Dilmun).^[33] The term Tylos was commonly used for the islands until Ptolemy’s Geographia when the inhabitants are referred to as 'Thilouanoi'.^[34] Some place names in Bahrain go back to the Tylos era, for instance, the residential suburb of Arad in Muharraq, is believed to originate from "Arados", the ancient Greek name for Muharraq.^[22]

 Pre-Islamic era

 

In the 3rd century AD, Ardashir I, the first ruler of the Sassanid dynasty, marched on Oman and Bahrain, where he defeated Sanatruq the ruler of Bahrain.^[35] At this time, Bahrain was known as Mishmahig (which in Middle-Persian/Pahlavi means "ewe-fish").^[36]

Bahrain was also the site of worship of a shark deity called Awal. Worshipers built a large statue to Awal in Muharraq, although it has now been lost. For many centuries after Tylos, Bahrain was known as Awal. By the 5th century, Bahrain became the centre for Nestorian Christianity, with the village Samahij^[37] as the seat of bishops. In 410, according to the Oriental Syriac Church synodal records, a bishop named Batai was excommunicated from the church in Bahrain.^[34] 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. The names of several Muharraq villages today reflect Bahrain's Christian legacy, with Al Dair meaning “the monastery”.
Bahrain's pre-Islamic population consisted of Christian Arabs (mostly Abd al-Qays), Persians (Zoroastrians), Jews^[38] and Aramaic-speaking agriculturalists.^[39][40][41] According to Robert Bertram Serjeant, the Baharna may be the Arabized "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".^[39][42] The sedentary people of pre-Islamic Bahrain were Aramaic speakers and to some degree Persian speakers, while Syriac functioned as a liturgical language.^[40]

Prophet Muhammad's era

Muhammad's first interaction with the people of Bahrain was the Al Kudr Invasion. Muhammad ordered a surprise attack on the Banu Salim tribe for allegedly plotting to attack Medina. He had gotten news that some tribes were amassing an army on march from Bahrain. But the tribesmen retreated when they learnt Muhammad was leading an army to face them.^[43][44]
Traditional Islamic accounts state that Al-ʿAlāʾ Al-Haḍrami was sent as an envoy during the Expedition of Zaid ibn Haritha (Hisma)^[45][46] to the Bahrain region by the prophet Muhammad in 628 AD and that Munzir ibn-Sawa al-Tamimi, the local ruler, responded to his mission and converted the entire area.^[47][48]