Bahrain

• 1. Introduction

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  Bahrain, officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, is an island country in West Asia, close to the western shore of the Persian Gulf. In 2024 its population stood at 1,588,670 people. Of these, 848,934 were expatriates, or 53.4 percent, and only 739,736 were Bahraini nationals. The country is the third-smallest nation in Asia, behind only Maldives and Singapore. Its capital and largest city is Manama. Yet these islands have been claimed by Bronze Age traders, a Greek admiral, Portuguese rulers and British political residents. Even the country's name is a puzzle that has never been fully settled. Which two seas does it mean? How did so many ruling families rise and fall here? And what keeps such a small country prosperous today?

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• 2. Two Seas

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  The Arabic name al-Bahrayn is the dual form of the word bahr, meaning sea, so it originally means the two seas. Grammar never quite followed through. The name hardened into a feminine proper noun, which is why it is always Bahrayn and never the expected nominative form Bahrān. Endings attach to it unchanged, as in the national anthem Bahraynunā, meaning our Bahrain, and the demonym Bahraynī. The medieval grammarian al-Jawahari noticed the oddity. He said the more formally correct term Bahrī would have been misunderstood, so people never used it.

  Which two seas the name first described remains disputed. The term appears five times in the Quran, yet none of those references points to the modern island, which the Arabs originally called Awal. Today the two seas are usually taken to be the bay east and west of the island, the seas to its north and south, or the salt and fresh water above and below the ground. North of the island there are places where fresh water bubbles up in the middle of the saltwater, and visitors have noted this since antiquity. A rival theory from the al-Ahsa region reads the two seas as the Great Green Ocean, meaning the Persian Gulf, and Al-Asfar Lake on the Arabian mainland.

  Until the late Middle Ages, the word Bahrain meant far more than a few islands. It named a region of Eastern Arabia that took in southern Iraq, Kuwait, Al-Hasa and Qatif. That region ran from Basra in Iraq to the Strait of Hormuz in Oman and was known as Iqlīm al-Bahrayn, the Bahrayn Province. The whole coastal strip carried the name for a millennium. The island and kingdom were also commonly spelled Bahrein. Nobody knows when the name narrowed to refer only to the Awal archipelago.

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• 3. Dilmun and Tylos

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  Between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, the Bronze Age trade centre of Dilmun linked two great regions from the islands of Bahrain. Sumerians and Babylonians later ruled the islands. From the 6th to the 3rd century BC they belonged to the Achaemenid Empire. By about 250 BC, Parthia had brought the Persian Gulf under its control and pushed its influence as far as Oman. Parthian garrisons along the southern coast guarded the trade routes.

  The Greek admiral Nearchus, serving under Alexander, landed on the island the Greeks called Tylos, then the centre of pearl trading. Nearchus is believed to be the first of Alexander's commanders to visit. He found a green land tied into a wide trading network. His account describes large plantations of cotton trees. Their fibre became cloth called sindones, sold in grades from costly to cheap and worn in India and also in Arabia.

  The Greek historian Theophrastus adds that cotton trees covered much of the island. He also says Bahrain was famous for exporting walking canes engraved with emblems, which were customarily carried in Babylon. Alexander had planned to settle Greek colonists here, though it is not clear this happened on the scale he envisaged. Even so, the island became part of the Hellenised world. The upper classes spoke Greek, while Aramaic served in everyday life. Local coins show a seated Zeus, who may have been worshipped as a blend with the Arabian sun-god Shams. Tylos also hosted Greek athletic contests.

  Strabo and Herodotus both believed the Phoenicians originated in Bahrain. The 19th-century German classicist Arnold Heeren accepted this, citing Greek geographers who described two islands, Tyrus or Tylos and Aradus, as the Phoenicians' mother country. The people of Tyre have long maintained Persian Gulf origins, and the similarity of the words Tylos and Tyre has drawn comment. But there is little evidence of any human settlement on Bahrain when such a migration was supposed to have happened.

  The name Tylos is thought to be a Hellenisation of the Semitic Tilmun, from Dilmun. It stayed in common use until Ptolemy's Geographia, which calls the inhabitants Thilouanoi. Some place names survive from the Tylos era. Arad, a residential suburb of Muharraq, is believed to descend from Arados, the ancient Greek name for Muharraq.

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• 4. Faiths and the Black Stone

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  In the 3rd century, Ardashir I, first ruler of the Sassanid dynasty, marched on Oman and Bahrain and defeated Sanatruq, the ruler of Bahrain. Around this time the island was a site of worship for an ox deity called Awal. Worshippers built a large statue to Awal in Muharraq, but it has since been lost. For many centuries after the Tylos period, Bahrain itself was known as Awal.

  By the 5th century, Bahrain had become a centre of Nestorian Christianity, with the village of Samahij as the seat of bishops. Synodal records of the Oriental Syriac Church say that in 410 a bishop named Batai was excommunicated in Bahrain. The Byzantine Empire often persecuted Nestorians as heretics, but Bahrain lay outside its control, which offered some safety. Village names in Muharraq still reflect this legacy, and Al Dair means the monastery.

  Before Islam, the population included Christian Arabs, mostly from Abd al-Qays, along with Zoroastrian Persians, Jews and Aramaic-speaking farmers. Syriac served as a liturgical language. Robert Bertram Serjeant suggested that the Baharna may be Arabised descendants of converts from the original Christians, Jews and Persians of the island and the cultivated coast of Eastern Arabia.

  Muhammad's first contact with the people of Bahrain was the Al Kudr Invasion. He had heard that tribes were assembling an army in Bahrain to attack the mainland, and he ordered a surprise attack on the Banu Salim tribe. The tribesmen retreated when they learned he was leading an army against them. Traditional Muslim accounts add that in AD 628 Muhammad sent Al-Ala'a Al-Hadrami to the region as an envoy. The local ruler, Munzir ibn Sawa Al Tamimi, responded to the mission and converted the entire area.

  In 899, the Qarmatians, a millenarian Ismaili Muslim sect, seized Bahrain. They sought a utopian society built on reason and the redistribution of property among initiates. The Qarmatians demanded tribute from the caliph in Baghdad, and in 930 they sacked Mecca. They carried the sacred Black Stone back to their base in Ahsa, in medieval Bahrain, and held it for ransom.

  According to the historian Al-Juwayni, the stone was returned 22 years later, in 951, under mysterious circumstances. Wrapped in a sack, it was thrown into the Great Mosque of Kufa in Iraq. A note came with it: "By command we took it, and by command, we have brought it back." The theft and removal had broken the stone into seven pieces. The Abbasids defeated the Qarmatians in 976.

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• 5. Rulers and Treaties

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  In 1076 the Arab Uyunid dynasty of al-Hasa took over the entire Bahrain region, and it controlled the islands until 1235, when the Persian ruler of Fars briefly occupied them. In 1253 the Usfurids brought down the Uyunids and gained eastern Arabia, including the islands. By 1330 the archipelago paid tribute to the rulers of Hormuz, while the Shia Jarwanid dynasty of Qatif controlled it locally. In the mid-15th century the Jabrids, a Bedouin dynasty based in Al-Ahsa, took over.

  In 1521 the Portuguese, allied with Hormuz, seized Bahrain, and the Jabrid ruler Muqrin ibn Zamil was killed in the takeover. Portuguese rule lasted around 80 years and relied mainly on Sunni Persian governors. In 1602 Abbas I of Safavid Iran expelled the Portuguese, which gave impetus to Shia Islam. For the next two centuries Persian rulers kept control, interrupted by Ibadi invasions from Oman in 1717 and 1738. They governed indirectly, through the city of Bushehr or through immigrant Sunni Arab clans known as Huwala. In 1753 the Huwala clan of Nasr Al-Madhkur invaded on behalf of the Iranian Zand leader Karim Khan Zand and restored direct Iranian rule.

  The Bani Utbah and allied tribes defeated Al-Madhkur at the 1782 Battle of Zubarah, and Bahrain passed to them in 1783. They were no strangers to the islands. A document records that 81 years before the Al Khalifa arrived, a sheikh of the Al Bin Ali tribe, an offshoot of the Bani Utbah, bought a palm garden from Mariam bint Ahmed Al Sanadi on Sitra island. The Al Bin Ali flew a flag of four red and three white stripes, called the Al-Sulami flag. The House of Khalifa moved from Qatar to Bahrain in 1799. It has ruled since, with Ahmed al Fateh as its first hakim.

  In 1802, Bahrain was governed by a 12-year-old. The Omani ruler Sayyid Sultan had installed his son, Salim, as governor in the Arad Fort. In 1816 the British political resident in the Persian Gulf, William Bruce, received a letter from the Sheikh of Bahrain. The Sheikh feared a rumour that Britain would support an attack by the Imam of Muscat. Bruce sailed to Bahrain and drew up an informal agreement that Britain would stay neutral.

  In 1820 the United Kingdom recognised the Al Khalifa as rulers by signing a treaty relationship. Ten years later they were forced to pay yearly tributes to Egypt. In March 1860 they wrote to the Persians and Ottomans and agreed to accept Ottoman protection, which offered better conditions. The Government of British India overpowered Bahrain when the Persians refused to protect it, and Colonel Pelly signed a treaty placing Bahrain under British protection.

  After the Qatari-Bahraini War in 1868, British representatives signed another agreement. The ruler could not dispose of territory except to the United Kingdom, nor deal with foreign governments without British consent. In return Britain promised to protect Bahrain from attack by sea and to support the Al Khalifa. Agreements in 1880 and 1892 sealed the protectorate.

  Unrest followed. In March 1895 the first widespread uprising broke out against Sheikh Issa bin Ali, and British forces killed some protesters. In 1911 a group of Bahraini merchants demanded limits on British influence, and its leaders were arrested and exiled to India. In 1923 the British replaced Sheikh Issa with his son. Three years later they placed the country under the de facto rule of Charles Belgrave, who advised the ruler until 1957.

  Reforms credited to this era include the country's first modern school in 1919 and the abolition of slavery in 1937. In 1927 Rezā Shāh, then Shah of Iran, demanded sovereignty over Bahrain in a letter to the League of Nations. Belgrave responded harshly, and he even proposed renaming the Persian Gulf the Arabian Gulf. The British government refused.

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• 6. Pearls, Oil and Banking

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  Before the First World War, about 400 vessels hunted pearls from Bahrain, and annual exports exceeded £30,000. Pearl fisheries there were still considered the finest in the world as late as the 19th century. In 1903 the German explorer Hermann Burchardt visited and photographed historical sites, including the old Qaṣr es-Sheikh. Those photographs are now kept at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin.

  In 1932 the Bahrain Petroleum Company, known as Bapco and a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company of California, discovered oil. It was the first place on the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf where oil was found. The First Oil Well, below Jabal al Dukhan, has operated since 1932. The discovery speeded the building of roads that connected isolated villages such as Budaiya to Manama. Britain's interest in the islands was driven by concern over Saudi and Iranian ambitions in the region.

  Bahrain joined the Second World War on the Allied side on the 10th of September 1939. On the 19th of October 1940, four Italian SM.82 bombers attacked Bahrain and the Dhahran oilfields in Saudi Arabia. Damage was minimal in both places. The raid still forced the Allies to strengthen Bahrain's defences, which stretched their military resources further.

  The oil boom of the 1970s benefited Bahrain greatly, though the downturn that followed hurt. The country had already begun diversifying. During the Lebanese Civil War in the 1970s and 1980s, Lebanon's large banking sector was driven out of the country, and Bahrain replaced Beirut as the financial hub of the Middle East. In 2008 the City of London's Global Financial Centres Index named Bahrain the world's fastest-growing financial centre. In October of that year the government introduced a long-term plan called Vision 2030, aimed at a diversified and sustainable economy.

  Oil still matters. Petroleum accounts for 60% of export receipts, 70% of government revenues and 11% of GDP, and aluminium is the second-most exported product. Bahrain holds the smallest hydrocarbon reserves of any Persian Gulf state. Its one onshore field produces 48,000 barrels per day, and the bulk of its revenue comes from a share in an offshore field administered by Saudi Arabia. Its gas reserve is expected to last less than 27 years.

  Tourism adds another leg. Over eleven million visitors arrived in 2019, most from the surrounding Arab states, and the Bahrain Grand Prix has raised the country's profile. In January 2019 the state-run Bahrain News Agency announced an underwater theme park with a sunken Boeing 747 as its centrepiece. A value added tax began on the 1st of January 2019 at 5% and rose to 10% on the 1st of January 2022. Public debt in 2020 stood at $44.5 billion, or 130% of GDP, and IMF estimates expect it to reach 155 per cent in 2026.

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• 7. Politics and Protest

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  In 1948, after rising hostilities and looting, most of Bahrain's Jewish community abandoned their properties and fled to Bombay. They later settled in Israel and the United Kingdom, and 37 Jews remained in the country. In the 1950s the National Union Committee, formed by reformists after sectarian clashes, demanded an elected popular assembly and the removal of Belgrave. It carried out protests and general strikes. In 1965 a month-long uprising followed the layoff of hundreds of workers at the Bahrain Petroleum Company.

  On the 15th of August 1971, Bahrain declared independence and signed a new treaty of friendship with Britain. The Shah of Iran still claimed historical sovereignty, but he accepted a referendum held by the United Nations. Bahrain joined the United Nations and the Arab League later that year. In 1973 it held its first parliamentary elections. Two years later the emir dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution after it rejected the State Security Law.

  The period from 1975 to 1999, known as the State Security Law Era, brought arbitrary arrests, detention without trial, torture and forced exile. In 1981, after the 1979 revolution in Iran, Bahraini Shia orchestrated a failed coup attempt through a front organisation called the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain. It would have installed a Shia cleric exiled in Iran, Hādī al-Mudarrisī, as supreme leader. Then in December 1994, a group of youths threw stones at female runners for running bare-legged during an international marathon. The clash with police grew into a popular uprising from 1994 to 2000, in which leftists, liberals and fundamentalists joined forces. It cost approximately forty lives.

  The uprising ended after Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa became Emir in 1999. He instituted parliamentary elections, gave women the right to vote and released all political prisoners. A referendum on 14-the 15th of February 2001 massively supported the National Action Charter. When it was adopted on the 14th of February 2002, the State of Bahrain became the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Emir became King.

  The new system keeps wide powers with the king, who appoints the prime minister and ministers, commands the Bahrain Defence Force and can dissolve the elected lower house. The National Assembly has two chambers of 40 seats each. The king appoints the Shura Council, while the Council of Representatives is elected. The appointed council exercises what critics call a de facto veto over the elected one.

  Women voted and stood for office for the first time in 2002, though none won. Six were appointed to the Shura Council instead. Nada Haffadh became the first female cabinet minister in 2004 as Minister of Health. In 2006 Haya bint Rashid Al Khalifa became only the third woman to preside over the United Nations General Assembly. In 2008 Houda Nonoo became ambassador to the United States, the first Jewish ambassador of any Arab country. The activist Ghada Jamsheer called the reforms artificial and marginal.

  A different test came in 2005. Over 100,000 Shia took to the streets, and the government called off the Shia branch of the Family law. Foreign policy shifted too. In November 2001 the administration of American president George W. Bush designated Bahrain a major non-NATO ally. Bahrain opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and had offered Saddam Hussein asylum in the days before it. The International Court of Justice in The Hague resolved the Hawar Islands dispute with Qatar in 2001. In 2005 Qal'at al-Bahrain, a fort and archaeological complex, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

  In early 2011, inspired by the Arab Spring, Bahrain's Shia population began large protests against its Sunni rulers. The government at first allowed protests after a pre-dawn raid on protesters camped in Pearl Roundabout. A month later it requested security help from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries and declared a three-month state of emergency. A crackdown followed, with thousands of arrests and systematic torture. More than 80 civilians and 13 policemen have been killed, and Physicians for Human Rights linked 34 of the deaths to tear gas.

  In September 2011, a government-appointed commission confirmed grave human rights violations, including systematic torture. Reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in April 2012 said the violations continued. Freedom House rates the country Not Free. Bahrain also hosts the headquarters of the American Fifth Fleet at Juffair, where an American naval presence has existed since 1948. On the 28th of February 2026, American and Israeli strikes on Iran began a war. Iran answered with missile and drone strikes on US bases and allies in the region, including Bahrain, which suffered material and civilian casualties.

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• 8. Islands and Wildlife

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  Mountain of Smoke, or Jabal ad Dukhan, rises 134 metres and is the highest point of an otherwise flat and arid archipelago. A low desert plain climbs gently to a low central escarpment. Bahrain Island makes up around 80 percent of the landmass. The country was often described as 33 natural islands plus 50 artificial ones, and land reclamation has changed the picture. By August 2008 the count of islands and island groups had reached 84. The area grew from 665 square kilometres to 780. Other large islands include the Hawar Islands, Muharraq Island, Umm an Nasan and Sitra.

  About 92% of Bahrain is desert, and arable land is only 2.82% of the total. Bahrain has a 161 km coastline and no land border. The King Fahd Causeway, 24 km long and financed by Saudi Arabia, links it with the Saudi mainland via the island of Umm an-Nasan. It was completed in December 1986. In 2008-17,743,495 passengers crossed it.

  The shamal, a northwesterly wind, carries dust storms from Iraq and Saudi Arabia that cut visibility in June and July. The seas around Bahrain are very shallow and heat quickly in summer, producing very high humidity, especially at night. That contrasts with other desert climates such as those of Baghdad or Phoenix. Summer temperatures may reach 40 C. Annual rainfall averages 70.8 mm, and in April 2024 heavy rain caused widespread flooding.

  In 2023, Bahrain was the second highest greenhouse gas emitter per capita, at approximately 42 tonnes per person. It has committed to net zero by 2060 and aims to cut emissions by 30% by 2035. The Dammam Aquifer, the principal aquifer, has been over-used by farming and households. It has become salinised by adjacent brackish and saline water. A hydrochemical study identified four types of salinisation: brackish-water up-flow, seawater intrusion, sabkha water intrusion and irrigation return flow.

  More than 330 bird species have been recorded in the archipelago, and 26 of them breed there. Up to 100,000 pairs of Socotra cormorant were recorded over the Hawar Islands, whose breeding colony is the largest in the world. The dugongs that forage around the archipelago form the second-largest dugong aggregation after Australia. The national bird is the bulbul and the national animal is the Arabian oryx. Yet the oryx was hunted to extinction on the island. In 2003 Bahrain banned the capture of sea cows, marine turtles and dolphins in its territorial waters.

  Bahrain has five designated protected areas, and four of them are marine. Al Areen Wildlife Park, a zoo and breeding centre for endangered animals, is the only protected area on land. Visitors to the Sakhir desert can also see the Tree of Life, which is 400 years old and grows with no water nearby.

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