 |
Old Muharraq Souq - Kingdom of Bahrain |
Alexander R. Yee posted a photo:
Muharraq was the country’s capital in the 19th Century and still has much of the charm of an old-world Arab city, with its low-rise buildings, narrow streets and tiny alleyways, and fine historic buildings with their traditional Arab-Gulf style of architecture.
Over four millennia ago, the islands that collectively form Bahrain today were part of a thriving Bronze Age Dilmun culture and a hub for trade and commerce within the region. Muharraq, with its strategic location, must have played a key part.
In the Tylos or Greek period of influence (from about 300 BC to the early First Millennium), Muharraq was known as Arados, from which Arad Fort gets its name. Philip Ward in Bahrain: A Travel Guide states that Muharraq means the “the burnt one” or “the burnt” and there has been much speculation by writers and historians about how it got this name. Was there once a great fire here or destruction after an invasion, or is this where burnt offerings were made to the deities in pre-Islamic times?
The Portuguese occupied the islands and the coastal areas of the region in the16th Century and built a fort on the mainland and in Muharraq on top of an earlier Islamic fort. The islands were later occupied by the Omanis in the early 18th Century.
By the 19th Century, Muharraq was the capital of Bahrain and the centre of a thriving pearl trade in the region. The ruling family and many allied families lived in the town in a honeycomb of houses, at the centre of which was the Shaikh Isa Bin Ali House. In 1914 Muharraq’s population stood at 20,000, according to figures quoted by Ward, and there were 700 boats or dhows on the island’s coastal waters, half of which were used for pearl diving.
PHOTOGRAPH BY: Alexander Yee
INFO SOURCE:bahrainguide.org/content/view/28/84/
More: continued here
This entry was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 and is filed under Bahrain Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Leave a comment