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Eastern Arabia, also known as Greater Bahrain or Bahrain Region (), is a historical region encompassing the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula stretching from Basra to Khasab along the coast of the Persian Gulf. It includes parts of the modern-day states of Bahrain, Iraq (Basra Governorate), Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia (Eastern Province), and the United Arab Emirates. The entire coastal strip of Eastern Arabia was known as " Bahrain" for a millennium.
Until very recently, the whole of Eastern Arabia, from the Shatt al-Arab to the Hajar Mountains, was a place where people moved around, settled and married unconcerned by national borders. The people of Eastern Arabia shared a seamanship, as sailor.
Nowadays, Eastern Arabia is a part of the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, with all the seven modern-day countries listed as the Gulf Arab states. Most of Iraq and Saudi Arabia are not geographically a part of the historic Eastern Arabia.
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.
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. Languages of Saudi Arabia Ethnologue
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 Kassites 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 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 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.
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, 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.
Mesopotamian trade documents, lists of goods, and official inscriptions mentioning Meluhha supplement Harappan seals and archaeological finds. Literary references to trade with Meluhha date from the Akkadian Empire period (c. 2300 BC), but the trade probably started in the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2600 BC). Some Meluhhan vessels may have sailed directly to Mesopotamian ports, but by the Isin-Larsa Period (c. 1900 BC), Dilmun monopolized the trade. The Bahrain National Museum assesses that its "Golden Age" lasted from c. 2200 BC to 1600 BC.
Dilmun, sometimes described as “the place where the sun rises” and “the Land of the Living”, is the scene of some versions of the Eridu Genesis, and the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Utnapishtim (Ziusudra), was taken by the gods to live forever. Thorkild Jacobsen's translation of the Eridu Genesis calls it "Mount Dilmun " and a “faraway, half-mythical place”.
Dilmun is also described in the Epic poetry story of Enki and Ninhursag as the site at which the Creation myth occurred. Enki says to Ninhursag:
For Dilmun, the land of my lady's heart, I will create long waterways, rivers and canals, whereby water will flow to quench the thirst of all beings and bring abundance to all that lives."Enki and Ninhursag"Ninlil, the Sumerian goddess of air and southerly winds, had her home in Dilmun.
However, in the early epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, the main events, which center on Enmerkar's construction of the in Uruk and Eridu, are described as taking place in a world "before Dilmun had yet been settled".
Gerrha and Uqair are archaeological sites on the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, only from the ancient burial grounds of Dilmun on the island of Bahrain.Potts (1990), p. 56.Bibby, pp. 317-318.
Gerrha was described by StraboStrabon, Geography, i6. 4. 19-20 as inhabited by 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 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 from the Persian Gulf near current day Hofuf. The researcher Abdulkhaliq Al Janbi argued in his bookGerrha, The Ancient City Of International Trade جره مدينة التجارة العالمية القديمة 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 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 Bahrain, particularly the main island of Bahrain itself, another possibility. (1983). 9780226469065, University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226469065
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.Classical Greece: Ancient histories and modern archaeologies, Ian Morris, Routledge, p184 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 Ancient Greek (although Aramaic was in everyday use), while Zeus was worshipped in the form of the Arabian sun-god Shams.Phillip Ward, Bahrain: A Travel Guide, Oleander Press p68 Tylos even became the site of Greek athletic contests.W. B. Fisher et al. The Cambridge History of Iran, Cambridge University Press 1968 p40
The name Tylos is thought to be a Hellenisation of the Semitic "Tilmun" (from Dilmun).Jean Francois Salles in Traces of Paradise: The Archaeology of Bahrain, 2500BC-300AD in Michael Rice, Harriet Crawford Ed, IB Tauris, 2002 p132 The term "Tylos" was commonly used for the archipelago; Ptolemy's Geographia when the inhabitants are referred to as "Thilouanoi" ("inhabitants of Tylos").Jean Francois Salles p132 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 Muharraq Island.Curtis E. Larsen. Life and Land Use on the Bahrain Islands: The Geoarchaeology of an Ancient Society University Of Chicago Press, 1984 p13
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."Arnold Heeren, p441 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.
Herodotus's account (written c. 430 BC) refers to Phoenicians inhabiting the shores of the Persian Gulf:
With the waning of Seleucid Greek power, Tylos was incorporated into Characene, the state founded by Hyspaosines in 127 BC in modern-day Kuwait . A building inscription found in Bahrain indicates that Hyspoasines occupied the islands.
By about 250 BC, the Seleucid Empire 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.Bahrain By Federal Research Division, page 7
In the 3rd century AD, the Sasanians succeeded the Parthians and held the area until the rise of Islam four centuries later. Ardashir I, 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.Conflict and Cooperation: Zoroastrian Subalterns and Muslim Elites in ... By Jamsheed K. Choksy, 1997, page 75 It was subdivided into the three districts of Haggar (Hofuf, Saudi Arabia), Batan Ardashir (Qatif, Saudi Arabia), and Mishmahig (Muharraq, Bahrain), which included the Bahrain archipelago.
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.Curtis E. Larsen. Life and Land Use on the Bahrain Islands: The Geoarchaeology of an Ancient Society University Of Chicago Press, 1984. 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.Kozah, Abu-Husayn, Abdulrahim. p. 1. 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.
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.
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.John Joseph Saunders, A History of Medieval Islam, Routledge 1978 p130 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.
For much of the 10th century the Qarmatians were the most powerful force in the Persian Gulf and Middle East, controlling the coast of Oman, and collecting tribute from the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad and from the rival Ismaili Fatimid caliph in Cairo, whom they did not recognize. The land they ruled over was extremely wealthy, with a huge slave-based economy. According to academic Yitzhak Nakash:
The Qarmatians were defeated in battle in 976 by the Abbasids, which precipitated the decline of the Qarmatian state. Around 1058, a revolt on the island of Bahrain led by two Shi'a members of the Abd al-Qays tribe, Abul-Bahlul al-'Awwam and Abu'l-Walid Muslim,Farhad Daftary, The Ismāı̄lı̄s: Their History and Doctrines, Cambridge University Press 1990, p221 heralded the collapse of Qarmatian power and eventually the ascendancy to power of the Uyunid dynasty, an Arab dynasty belonging to the Abdul Qays tribe.Clifford Bosworth, The New Islamic Dynasties: A Genealogical and Chronological Manual, Edinburgh University Press, 2004, p95
The Usfurids had an uneasy relationship with the main regional power at the time, Ormus, which took control of Bahrain (the island) and Qatif in 1320. However, the Hormuzi rulers did not seem to have firm control of the islands, and during the 14th century Bahrain was disputed as numerous neighbours sought tribute from the wealth accumulated from its pearl fisheries.
The Jarwanids belonged to the clan of Bani Malik. It is disputed whether they belonged to the Banu Uqayl—the tribe of their predecessors the Usfurids and their successors the Jabrids—or to the Banu Abdul Qays, to whom the Uyunids dynasty (1076–1235) belonged.Abdulkhaliq Al-Janbi, an online article on the history of eastern Arabia (Arabic)
عبدالخالق الجنبي، جروان الأحساء غير جروان القطيف The Jarwanids came to power some time in the 14th century, after expelling the forces of Sa'eed ibn Mughamis, the chief of the Muntafiq tribe based in the city of Basrah.
Contemporary sources such as Ibn BattutaIbn Hajar al-'Asqalani, al-Durar al-Kamina fi A'yan al-mi'a al-Thamina describe the Jarwanids as being "extreme Rafidha," a term for Shi'ites who rejected the first three Rashidun Caliphs, while Ibn Hajar, a 15th-century Sunni scholar from Egypt, describes them as being "remnants of the Qarmatians." Historian Juan Cole concludes from this that they were Isma'ilis. However, the Twelver Shi'ite sect was promoted under their rule, and Twelver scholars held the judgeships and other important positions, including the chief of the hisbah. Also, unlike under the Qarmatians, Islamic prayers were held in the mosques under Jarwanid rule, and prayer was called under the Shi'ite formula.'Ali b. Hasan al-Bahrni, Anwar al-badrayn fi tarajim 'ulama' al-Qatif wa'l-Ahsa' wa'l-Bahrayn online version
أنوار البدرين في تراجم علماء القطيف والإحساء والبحرين، الشيخ علي بن الشيخ حسن البلادي البحراني According to Al-Humaydan, who specialized in the history of eastern Arabia, the Jarwanids were Twelvers, and the term "Qarmatian" was simply used as a derogatory epithet for "Shi'ite."Abdullatif Al-Humaydan, "The Usfurid Dynasty and its Political Role in the History of Eastern Arabia", Journal of the College of Literature, University of Basrah, Volume 15, 1979 (Arabic)
عبداللطيف بن ناصر الحميدان، "إمارة العصفوريين ودورها السياسي في تاريخ شرق الجزيرة العربية"، مجلة كلية الآداب، جامعة البصرة، 1975
Al-Wasit Online Newspaper, Issue 2379, March 12, 2009, citing Al-Humaydan [4]
الشيعة المتصوفون وقيادة في مسجد الخميس، حسين محمد حسين
Their most prominent ruler was Ajwad ibn Zamil, who died in 1507. He was described by his contemporaries as having been "of origin." Ajwad's elder brother had earlier established the dynasty in the early 15th century by deposing and killing the last Jarwanid ruler in Qatif. At their height, the Jabrids controlled the entire Arabian coast on the Persian Gulf, including the islands of Bahrain, and regularly led expeditions into central Arabia and Oman. One contemporary scholar described Ajwad ibn Zamil as "the king of al-Ahsa and Qatif and the leader of the people of Najd." Following his death, his kingdom was divided among some of his descendants, with Migrin ibn Zamil (possibly his grandson) inheriting Al-Aḥsā, Qatif, and Bahrain. Migrin fell in battle in Bahrain in a failed attempt to repel an invasion of Bahrain by the Portuguese in 1521.
The Jabrid kingdom collapsed soon afterwards after an invasion of Al-Aḥsā by the Muntafiq tribe of Basrah, and later by the Ottoman Empire. However, one branch of the Jabrids remained active in Oman for another three centuries. It is unknown what became of the non-Omani Jabrids. Some believe they are identical with the Jubur section of the Bani Khalid confederation, who eventually took control of the region after the Jabrids.
Like a vast majority of their subject people, in time the Khalidis adopted Shi'ite Islam (if they were not already so at the time of their ascendency). This led to a lasting animosity between them and the staunchly anti-Shi'ite Wahhabis and the House of Saud from the mid-18th century to the present. The Bani Khalid maintained ties with members of their tribe who had settled in Najd during their earlier migration eastwards, and also cultivated clients among the rulers of the Najdi towns, such as Al Mu'ammar of Al-Uyayna. When the emir of Uyayna adopted the ideas of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the Khalidi chief ordered him to cease support for Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and expel him from his town. The emir agreed, and Ibn Abd al-Wahhab moved to neighboring Dir'iyyah, where he joined forces with the Al Saud. The Bani Khalid remained staunch enemies of the Saudis and their allies and attempted to invade Najd and Diriyyah in an effort to stop Saudi expansion. Their efforts failed, however, and after conquering Najd, the Saudis invaded the Bani Khalid domain in Al-Aḥsā and deposed Al-'Ura'yir in 1793.
When the Egyptians under the Muhammad Ali dynasty invaded Arabia and deposed Abdullah bin Saud Al Saud in 1818, they reoccupied Al-Aḥsā and Al-Qatif and reinstated members of Al 'Uray'ir as governors of the region on their behalf. The Bani Khalid were no longer the potent military force they once were at this time, and tribes such as the Ajman, the Dawasir, the Subay', and Mutayr began encroaching on Bani Khalid's desert territories. They were also beset by internal quarrels over leadership. Though the Bani Khalid were able to forge an alliance with the 'Anizzah tribe in this period, they were eventually defeated by an alliance of several tribes along with Turki bin Abdullah Al Saud, who had re-established Saudi rule in Riyadh in 1823. Battles against a Mutayri–'Ajmani alliance in 1823Meglio and another battle with the Subay' and the Saudis in 1830 brought the rule of the Bani Khalid to a close. The Ottomans appointed a governor from Bani Khalid over Al-Aḥsā once more in 1874, but his rule also was short-lived.Al-Rasheed, p. 36
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