16/02/2022
Al-
This region stretched from the south of Basra along the Persian Gulf coast and included the regions of Bahrain, Kuwait, al-Hasa, Qatif, and Qatar,. The entire coastal strip of Eastern Arabia was known as "Bahrain" for ten centuries.[1]
Until very recently, the whole of Bahrain, from southern Iraq to the mountains of Oman, was a place where people moved around, settled and married unconcerned by national borders.[1] The people of Bahrain shared a culture based on the sea; they are seafaring peoples.[1]
The Arab states of the Persian Gulf are solely Bahrain,[2][3] the borders of the Arabic-speaking Gulf do not extend beyond Bahrain.[4] The modern-day states of Southern Iraq, Qatif and al-Hasa oases, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar are the archetypal Gulf Arab states.[2][5] Saudi Arabia is often considered a Gulf Arab state although most of the country's inhabitants do not live in Bahrain with the exception of the Bahrani people who live in Qatif and al-Hasa oases and who historically inhabited the entire region of Bahrain before the establishment of the modern day political borders.
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.[6] 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 Hadjar (modern Al-Hasa).[6] It is unclear when the term began to refer exclusively to the Awal islands, 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,[7] the seas north and south of the island, or the salt and fresh water present above and below the ground.[8] 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;[which?] 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.[8] The term "Gulf Arab" solely refers, geographically, to inhabitants of eastern Arabia.[4] The term "Khaleejis" is often misused to identify all the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula.[4]
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References
1. Holes, Clive (2001). Dialect, Culture, and Society in Eastern Arabia: Glossary. Clive Holes. pp. XIX. ISBN 9004107630.
2. Abu-Hakima, Ahmad Mustafa (1965). "History of eastern Arabia, 1750-1800: the rise and development of Bahrain and Kuwait". Ahmad Mustafa Abu-Hakima.
3. Saleh, Hassan Mohammad Abdulla (1991). "Labor, Nationalism and Imperialism in Eastern Arabia: Britain, the Shaikhs and the Gulf Oil Workers in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, 1932-1956". Hassan Mohammed Abdulla Saleh.
4. Abu-Hakima, Ahmad Mustafa (1986). Eastern Arabia Historic Photographs: Kuwait, 1900-1936. Ahmad Mustafa Abu-Hakima. ISBN 9780903696005.
5. "Eastern Arabian States: Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman" (PDF). David E. Long, Bernard Reich. 1980.
6. Encyclopedia of Islam, Vol. I. “Bahrayn”, p. 941. E.J. Brill (Leiden), 1960.
7.Room, Adrian (2006). Origins and Meanings of the Names for 6,600 Countries, Cities, Territories, Natural Features and Historic Sites. ISBN 978-0-7864-2248-7.
8. Faroughy, Abbas. The Bahrein Islands (750–1951): A Contribution to the Study of Power Politics in the Persian Gulf. Verry, Fisher & Co. (New York), 1951.
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