This book on the modern history of one of the major port cities in the Persian Gulf is a major achievement and represents a milestone in the field. It offers a detailed look at the evolution of Manama, Bahrain, over the past two centuries, and at the same time situates the subject of Gulf urbanism in comparative perspective. The study provides a wealth of detail on Bahrain as well as advancing a more sophisticated theoretical framework for understanding the region's transition towards modernity.
Fuccaro has an ambitious agenda, which is to propose an alternative way of looking at what have so far most commonly been regarded as “Oil Cities”, where the major factors in their formation – British imperialism and tribal elites – have been external. Instead, she focuses on the cosmopolitan nature of the urban milieu, its neighbourhoods and the people who live there – notables, merchants, pearl divers, immigrants, peasants, oil workers and, eventually, national activists. The themes of city, state and modernization form the framework for this study (p. 11).
The author acknowledges that this book has been a long time coming (p. x). The line of inquiry pursued here was first proposed in her earlier review essay, “Visions of the city: urban studies on the Gulf” published in MESA Bulletin 35, 2001, which remains the most useful introduction to the bibliography on the subject. Aside from a number of articles on Bahrain and the Gulf, Fuccaro has also published on the Kurds, the subject of an earlier book stemming from her dissertation (The Other Kurds: Yazidis in Colonial Iraq, London, 1999). Possibly because she began work in a different part of the Middle East, she brings a very welcome (and unusual, for Gulf studies) comparative perspective to the subject. She does not confine her remarks to Bahrain, but often includes references to the situation in India, Iran, and cities in the Ottoman Empire such as Baghdad and Damascus.
Unlike many studies the author does not rely solely on British documents and diplomatic reports, but refers to a multitude of sources, including municipal documents and memoirs in Arabic, newspapers, interviews and old photographs, to retrieve the history of Manama. This city, which she calls “the lynchpin of British informal empire in the Persian Gulf” (p. 112), has now received the most thorough study of any of the Gulf ports stretching from Kuwait to Ras al-Khaimah. Her intellectual aims always transcend the city itself and seek to contribute to the wider discussion about the “Islamic City”, the Pax Britannica in the Gulf, and the nature of rule in the Gulf monarchies. The book is well written and well copy-edited, and the publisher is to be commended for allowing the author to employ footnotes instead of endnotes.
Particularly important is the second chapter, “The making of Gulf port towns before oil”. Using Bahrain as an example, she discusses the effect of the tribal resurgence of the eighteenth century on the rise of the new Gulf ports and the formation of coastal society. Unlike other port towns, the cosmopolitan Manama had few tribal settlers (p. 70), leading to an interesting contrast with Kuwait, which was an Arab Bedouin town (p. 55). There are many examples of the importance of Persian immigrants (and their capital) to the life of the city (e.g. pp. 36, 85, 101). It is interesting to learn, for example, that Persians were the largest owners of urban property in Manama before oil (p. 102). It would have been nice in this regard to have a section that details more explicitly ties between important Iranian cities such as Bushehr and Lengeh with Bahrain. Most work on the Gulf emphasizes its trade connections with India, although economic ties between the Gulf ports were also critical and worthy of study.
An original and especially interesting chapter is “Disorder, political sociability and the evolution of the urban public sphere”. Here Fuccaro discusses urban activism as Manama moved from the pearl to the oil era. The sectarian issue becomes increasingly prominent. The ruling Al Khalifa are Sunni tribesmen like their counterparts in other Arab Gulf cities. However, most of the population is Shia and “Imam Husayn [is] the town's unofficial patron saint” (p. 164). The author includes much fascinating information about Shiism in Bahrain, the celebration of Muharram and the local institution of ma'tams, or houses of mourning. Thus different versions of ʿĀshūrā' are practised by Arab and Persian Shia, inspired by either Iraqi or Iranian Shiism (p. 165). It would perhaps have been advisable to dedicate a separate chapter to sectarian issues.
The book is very rich in detail. Starting with a revealing portrait of post-Safavid Bahrain, Fuccaro proceeds to make a detailed study of the changing urban topography of Manama and its municipal government until the collapse of pearling in 1927. The role of the Hawala, Sunni Arabs who migrated from the Arab side of the Gulf to Persia and later returned, is surprisingly prominent. She touches on the sensitive issue of Persians in Bahrain and the question of where their real loyalties lay; this parallels the importance of the same issue in modern Iraqi history. The rise of political consciousness and the growth of state control in the post-Second World War period are also addressed. The state-led programme of Arabization, which accelerated after 1957 (p. 225), sought to obliterate the memory of a cosmopolitan past, and is similar to the projects of rewriting history and creating national identities in other Gulf states. Fortunately, this study has retrieved some of this history which has been suppressed by the state for political reasons.
Nelida Fuccaro's new volume makes a fine addition to our very small shelf of books dealing with the transition to modernity in the Gulf. Let us hope that it inspires others to carry out equally thorough work for the other Gulf ports.
