Eastern Arabia

Etymology

In Arabic, Baḥrayn is the dual form of baḥr (Arabic: بَحْر, lit. 'sea'), so al-Baḥrayn means "the Two Seas". However, which two seas were originally intended remains in dispute. The term appears five times in the Qur'an, but does not refer to the modern island—originally known to the Arabs as “Awal”—but rather to the oases of al-Qatif and Hajar (modern Al-Aḥsā). It is unclear when the term began to refer exclusively to the archipelago in the Gulf of Bahrain, but it was probably after the 15th century. Today, Bahrain's "two seas" are instead generally taken to be the bay east and west of the coast, the seas north and south of the island, or the salt and fresh water present above and below the ground. In addition to wells, there are places in the sea north of Bahrain where fresh water bubbles up in the middle of the salt water, noted by visitors since antiquity.

An alternate theory offered by al-Hasa was that the two seas were the Great Green Ocean and a peaceful lake on the mainland; still another provided by al-Jawahari is that the more formal name Bahri (lit. “belonging to the sea”) would have been misunderstood and so was opted against.

The term "Gulf Arab" or "Khaleeji" refers, geographically, to inhabitants of eastern Arabia. However, today the term is often applied to the inhabitants of the GCC countries in the Arabian Peninsula. "Khaleeji" has evolved into a socio-political regional identity that distinguished the GCC inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula from the wider Arab world building on the perceived cultural homogeneity within the Gulf states and their shared history.

Culture

The inhabitants of Eastern Arabia's Gulf coast share similar cultures and music styles, such as fijiri, sawt and liwa. The most noticeable cultural trait of Eastern Arabia's Gulf Arabs is their orientation and focus towards the sea. Maritime-focused life in the small Gulf Arab states has resulted in a sea-oriented society where livelihoods have traditionally been earned in marine industries.

The Arabs of Eastern Arabia speak a dialect known as Gulf Arabic. Approximately 2 million Saudis (out of a population of 34 million) speak Gulf Arabic.

Mass media and entertainment

Khaleeji entertainment is popular throughout the Arab world. Although performed in the Gulf Arabic dialect, its influence reaches as far as Tunisia. Kuwaiti popular culture, in the form of poetry, film, theater, and soap operas, is exported to neighbouring states. The Arab world's three largest broadcast networks (Al Jazeera Network, Al Arabiya, and MBC Group) are all located in Eastern Arabia as well.

Religion

Islam is dominant in Eastern Arabia. The main sects are Sunni Islam, Ibadi Islam (dominant in Oman); and Shia Islam.

History

Before the 7th century CE, the population of Eastern Arabia consisted of partially Christianized Arabs, Arab Zoroastrians, Jews and Aramaic-speaking agriculturalists. Some sedentary dialects of Eastern Arabia exhibit Akkadian, Aramaic and Syriac features. The sedentary people of ancient Bahrain were Aramaic speakers and to some degree Persian speakers, while Syriac functioned as a liturgical language.

Dilmun

The Kingdom of Dilmun first appears in Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets dated to the end of fourth millennium BC, found in the temple of goddess Inanna, in the city of Uruk. The demonym "Dilmun" is used to describe a type of axe and the ethnicity of an official in these tablets.

Dilmun was also mentioned in two letters, recovered from Nippur, which were dated to the reign of Burna-Buriash II (c. 1370 BC), a king of the Kassite dynasty of Babylon. These letters were from a provincial official located in Dilmun, Ilī-ippašra, to his friend Enlil-kidinni in Mesopotamia. The names referred to are Akkadian. These letters hint at an administrative relationship between Dilmun and Babylon. Following the collapse of the Kassite dynasty, Mesopotamian documents make no mention of Dilmun, with the exception of Assyrian inscriptions dated to 1250 BC which proclaimed the Assyrian king to be "King of Dilmun and Meluhha". Assyrian inscriptions at this time also recorded tribute from Dilmun. There are other Assyrian inscriptions during the first millennium BC indicating Assyrian sovereignty over Dilmun; one of the sites discovered in Bahrain indicates that Sennacherib, king of Assyria (707–681 BC), attacked the northeastern Persian Gulf and captured Bahrain.

The most recent reference to Dilmun came during the Neo-Babylonian dynasty. Neo-Babylonian administrative records, dated 567 BC, stated that Dilmun was controlled by the king of Babylon. The name "Dilmun" fell from use after the collapse of Neo-Babylon in 538 BC. It is not certain what happened to the civilization itself; discoveries of ruins under the Persian Gulf may be of Dilmun.

There is both literary and archaeological evidence of extensive trade between Ancient Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilization (which most scholars identify with Meluhha). Impressions of clay seals from the Indus Valley city of Harappa were evidently used to seal bundles of merchandise, as clay seal impressions with cord or sack marks on the reverse side testify. A number of these Indus Valley seals have turned up at Ur and other Mesopotamian sites.

The “Arabian Gulf” types of circular, stamped (rather than rolled) seals known from Dilmun appear at Lothal in Gujarat, India, as well as in Mesopotamia. These seals support the other evidence of Dilmun being an influential trading center. What the commerce consisted of is less known; timber and precious woods, ivory, lapis lazuli, gold, luxury goods such as carnelian and glazed stone beads, pearls from the Persian Gulf, and shell and bone inlays were among the goods sent to Mesopotamia in exchange for silver, tin, woolen textiles, olive oil and grains. Copper ingots from Oman and bitumen, which occurred naturally in Mesopotamia, may have been exchanged for cotton textiles and domestic fowl, major products of the Indus region that are not native to Mesopotamia. Instances of all of these trade goods have been found. The importance of this trade is shown by the fact that the weights and measures used at Dilmun were in fact identical to those used by the Indus, and were not used in Southern Mesopotamia.

Gerrha

Gerrha was an ancient city of Eastern Arabia, on the west side of the Persian Gulf. More accurately, the ancient city of Gerrha has been determined to have existed near or under the present fort of Uqair, 80 kilometres (50 mi) northeast of Al-Aḥsā in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. This site was first proposed by R E Cheesman in 1924.

Gerrha and Uqair are archaeological sites on the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, only 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the ancient burial grounds of Dilmun on the island of Bahrain.

Gerrha was described by Strabo as inhabited by Chaldean exiles from Babylon, who built their houses of salt and repaired them by the application of salt water. Pliny the Elder (Natural History, 6.32) says it was 8 kilometres (5 mi) in circumference with towers built of square blocks of salt.

Gerrha was destroyed by the Qarmatians at the end of the 9th century, and all 300,000 inhabitants were killed. It was 3 kilometres (2 mi) from the Persian Gulf near current day Hofuf. The researcher Abdulkhaliq Al Janbi argued in his book that Gerrha was most likely the ancient city of Hajar, located in modern-day Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia. Al Janbi's theory is the most widely accepted one by modern scholars, although there are some difficulties with this argument given that Al Ahsa is 60 km (37 miles) inland and thus less likely to be the starting point for a trader's route, making the location within the archipelago of islands comprising the modern Kingdom of Bahrain, particularly the main island of Bahrain itself, another possibility.

Tylos

The island of Bahrain was referred to by the ancient Greeks as "Tylos" (Ancient Greek: Τύλος) and was known for its pearls. From the 6th to 3rd century BC Bahrain was part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The Greek admiral 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: “In the island of Tylos, situated in the Persian Gulf, are large plantations of cotton trees, from which are manufactured clothes called sindones, of different degrees of value, some being costly, others less expensive. The use of these is mostly confined to India, but extends also to Arabia.” The Greek historian, Theophrastus, states that much of the archipelago was covered in these cotton trees and noted that textiles were a major industry. According to him, Tylos was also famous for exporting engraved walking canes popular in Babylon.

It is not known whether Bahrain was part of the Seleucid Empire, although the archaeological site at Qalat Al Bahrain has been proposed as a Seleucid base in the Persian Gulf. Alexander had planned to settle the eastern shores of the Persian Gulf with Greek colonists, and although it is not clear that this happened on the scale he envisaged, Tylos 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. Tylos even became the site of Greek athletic contests.

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

The Greek historians Herodotus and Strabo both believed the Phoenicians originated from Bahrain. 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." 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.

Parthian and Sasanian periods

From the 3rd century BC to arrival of Islam in the 7th century AD, Eastern Arabia was controlled by two other Iranian dynasties: the Parthians and the Sasanians.

By about 250 BC, the Seleucids lost their territories to the Parthians, an Iranian tribe from Central Asia. The Parthian Empire brought the Persian Gulf under their control and extended their influence as far as Oman. Because they needed to control the Persian Gulf trade route, the Parthians established garrisons on the southern coast of the Persian Gulf.

In the 3rd century AD, the Sasanians succeeded the Parthians and held the area until the rise of Islam four centuries later. Ardashir, the first ruler of the Sasanian dynasty, conquered Bahrain and northern Oman, and appointed his son, Shapur I, as the governor of eastern Arabia, the province of Mazun. Shapur constructed a new city there and named it "Batan Ardashir" after his father. Mazun stretched from Oman in the south to the Shatt al-Arab in the north, and included the archipelago of Bahrain; thus it is roughly coterminous with the modern definition of Eastern Arabia. It was subdivided into the three districts of Haggar (Hofuf, Saudi Arabia), Batan Ardashir (Al-Qatif, Saudi Arabia), and Mishmahig (Muharraq, Bahrain), which included the Bahrain archipelago.

Beth Qatraye

The Christian name used for the region encompassing north-eastern Arabia was Beth Qatraye, which translates to "region of the Qataris" in Syriac. It included Bahrain, Tarout, Al-Khatt, Al-Aḥsā, and Qatar.

By the 5th century, Beth Qatraye was a major center for Nestorian Christianity, which had come to dominate the southern shores of the Persian Gulf. Within the Byzantine Empire, Nestorians were persecuted as heretics, but as eastern Arabia was far enough from the empire's borders that Nestorianism flourished. Several notable Nestorian writers originated from Beth Qatraye, including Isaac of Nineveh, Dadisho Qatraya, Gabriel of Qatar and Ahob of Qatar. Christianity declined with the arrival of Islam in Eastern Arabia in 628. By 676, the bishops of Beth Qatraye had stopped attending synods; although Christianity persisted in the region until the late 9th century.

The dioceses of Beth Qatraye did not form an ecclesiastical province, except for a short period during the mid-to-late 7th century. They were instead subject to the Metropolitanate of Fars.

Post-6th century

Hafit {Tuwwam} abounds in palm trees; it lies in the direction of Hajar {Al-Aḥsā}, and the mosque is in the markets ... Dibba and Julfar, both in the direction of the Hajar, are close to the sea ... Tuwwam has been dominated by a branch of the Quraysh ...

From the time when Islam emerged in the 7th century until the early 16th century, the term Bahrain referred to the wider historical region of eastern Arabia stretching from Bubiyan Island to the Strait of Hormuz along the coast of the Persian Gulf. Eastern Arabians were amongst the first to embrace Islam during the time of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, who ruled eastern Arabia through one of his representatives, Al-Ala'a Al-Hadhrami. Eastern Arabia embraced Islam in 628 (the seventh year of Hijrah; i.e. 7 AH). During the time of Umar I, a companion of Muhammad, Abu Hurairah was the governor of eastern Arabia. Umar I also appointed Uthman ibn Abi al-As, another companion of Muhammad, as governor of the area. Al Khamis Mosque, built during the reign of the Umayyad caliph Umar II, was one of the earliest mosques built in eastern Arabia.

The expansion of Islam did not affect eastern Arabia's reliance on trade, and its prosperity continued to be dependent on markets in India and Mesopotamia. After Baghdad emerged as the seat of the caliph in 750 following the Abbasid Revolution, eastern Arabia greatly benefited from the city's increased demand for foreign goods, especially from China and South Asia.

Eastern Arabia, and Bahrain more specifically, became a principal centre of knowledge for hundreds of years stretching from the early days of Islam in the 6th century to the 18th century. Philosophers of eastern Arabia were highly esteemed, such as the 13th-century mystic, Sheikh Maitham Al Bahrani (d. 1299). The mosque of Sheikh Maitham and his tomb can be visited in the outskirts of Manama, near the district of Mahooz.

At the end of the 3rd Hijri century, Abu Sa'id al-Jannabi led the Qarmatian Revolution, a rebellion by a messianic Ismaili sect originating in Kufa in present-day Iraq. Al-Jannabi took over the city of Hajr, Bahrain's capital at that time, and Al-Aḥsā, which he made the capital of his republic. Once in control of the state, he sought to create a utopian society.

The Qarmatians' goal was to build a society based on reason and equality. The state was governed by a council of six with a chief who was primus inter pares. All property within the community was distributed evenly among all initiates. The Qarmatians were organized as an esoteric society but not as a secret one; their activities were public and openly propagated, but new members had to undergo an initiation ceremony involving seven stages.