BAHRAIN

 

BAHRAIN, Ar. Baḥrayn, lit. “two seas,” the name originally applied to the area of the northeastern Arabian peninsula now known as Ḥasā (Aḥsāʾ).

i. Geography.

ii. Shiʿite elements in Bahrain.

iii. History of political relations with Iran.

(For Carmathians in Bahrain see carmathians.)

 

i. Geography

Several interpretations of the name Bahrain, both popular and learned, have been put forward. The most probable (Oestrup) explains it by the presence of the promontory and archipelago extending eastward from the mainland in the direction of the Qaṭar peninsula, which divide into two parts the waters in this section of the upper Persian Gulf. The name now refers exclusively to the archipelago (composed of thirty-six islands, with a total area of 622 km2) and to the independent state located there, or sometimes only to its largest island, formerly called Owāl or Awāl, popularly Samak (the fish), which extends almost 40 km from north to south and 15 km from west to east at its widest points. The other important islands are Moḥarraq, Nabīh Ṣāleḥ, and Setra northeast of the main island; Ḥawār to the southeast; and Omm Naʿsān to the west. The north-south axis passing through the main island coincides with a massive anticlinal dome of Jurassic and Cretaceous limestones that belongs to the family of marginal folds along the northeastern edge of the Arabian plateau. Carved out in the center by relief inversion, it reaches its highest point in the crest of the Jabal Doḵān, at an altitude of 124 meters.

Bahrain possesses a desert climate. Precipitation (annual mean: 95 mm), which falls only between January and May, is carried by rare cyclonic lows originating in the Mediterranean and penetrating as far as the Persian Gulf and is completely inadequate to support a rural population. But the island, like the northeastern coast of the mainland, possesses an important underground aquifer originating in the heights of central Arabia, which gushes forth here in large springs, in the form of natural artesian wells (some of them under the sea bed) along the entire northern perimeter of the main island. The aquifer can also be tapped along the full length of this coast by means of very shallow wells (the water level has, however, dropped recently because of overexploitation). In the interior of the island underground drainage channels funnel the waters from the piedmont.

Irrigation crops of cereals, fruits, and legumes, sheltered by date palms, are thus widespread along the entire northern periphery of the island.

It is not surprising then that this site, so favorable for human habitation and located halfway between the head of the Persian Gulf and the straits of Hormoz (Hormuz), played an important role in the trade and life of the Gulf at a very early period. The island’s freshwater resources made it a valuable provisioning station for ships. It has been demonstrated that Bahrain must be identified with the Dilmun of the Assyro-Babylonian texts, an important staging point in the maritime commerce between Mesopotamia and the cities of the Indus during the third and second millennia b.c., and with Tylos of the Classical Latin and Greek texts (see the history and survey of this subject in Bibby). In the Islamic Middle Ages there was already an important city located on the site of present-day Manāma, a busy center of transit trade and the hub of pearl fishing in the entire gulf (Edrīsī, tr. Jaubert, I, pp. 372-73; Ebn Baṭṭūṭa, II, p. 246). This maritime activity reached its peak at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time Bahrain possessed about 1,500 ships in its own right and served as the embarkation point for 3,000-4,000 ships a year; it was a center of pearl fishing and trade and was visited especially by numerous Indian merchants. The decline began, however, after World War I, owing to competition from Japanese cultured pearls. There were 400 pearl-fishing boats in Bahrain in about 1930, 250 still on the eve of World War II, but only 150 in 1946. Today there is hardly anything more than a small shrimp-fishing industry (Fougerouse, pp. 100-01).

A new economic phase began with the discovery in 1932 of a petroleum field in the center of the island, which was brought into production in 1934. Production of crude oil, topping 1 million tons a year after 1935 and stabilized at about 1.5 million tons between 1948 and 1956, steadily increased thereafter to a maximum of 3.8 million tons in 1970. A large refinery (present capacity: 13 million tons), established in the northeastern part of the island near Setra, processes, in addition to the crude from Bahrain, oil coming from Saudi Arabia by underwater pipeline. On the other hand, between the island and the mainland there is an offshore oil field the production from which is managed by Saudi Arabia, though the revenues are divided between it and Bahrain. Finally, a rich field of natural gas, in two superimposed strata, the reserves of which are estimated at 150 billion m3, has been under exploitation since the end of the 1970s at a rate of 4.5 billion m3 a year. Downstream from the petroleum refinery a petrochemical complex has been constructed and operating since 1985, producing ammonia and methanol. Plans for an important new refinery that would process heavy crude oil from Saudi Arabia into light petroleum products at the rate of 80,000 barrels a day are also underway.

Local oil production has, however, declined since 1972. In 1980 it amounted to only 2.8 million tons, and the oil field will doubtless be exhausted by 1995. So Bahrain is currently orienting its economy more and more toward a broadly diversified industry, based for the present on local gas and in the future on the important gas resources of the neighboring region. A large aluminum smelting plant (capacity 165,000 tons a year) processes ore coming from Australia. An aluminum rolling mill was opened in 1984, and three other factories make finished products. A factory for the initial smelting of iron ore (capacity 4 million tons annually) has just opened on an artificial island east of the port of Manāma. Four desalination plants furnish the water necessary for these installations and for the population, for whose needs the natural springs are now quite insufficient. Extensive shipyards for repair and overhaul, the most important in the Persian Gulf, were opened in 1977, also on an artificial island. In addition, there are a cement plant and numerous small industries of various kinds. Finally, in its post-petroleum phase Bahrain is coming to function as a sort of service center for the entire gulf. It has become a hub of international communications and telecommunications; a very busy commercial arena for “exempt” multinational companies; and finally—and most important—a world banking center, with 178 “offshore” establishments in 1983, serving the entire international community and especially Saudi Arabia, playing a role comparable to that of Beirut before the Lebanese civil war and benefiting from the decline of the latter city.

All this activity has attracted to Bahrain a considerable foreign population, especially during the fifteen years that followed the declaration of independence in 1971. The indigenous population, which in 1941 comprised 90,000 inhabitants, of whom 16,000 were foreigners, and in 1971 216,000 people, of whom 38,000 were foreigners, had reached, by the time of the 1981 census, 350,000 people, of whom 112,000 (32 percent) were foreigners. The foreign population had thus tripled in ten years. This foreign population provided most of the labor force: 81,000 (74,000 men and 7,000 women) compared to 64,000 working persons (57,000 men and 7,000 women) of Bahraini nationality. Four-fifths of this foreign population (87,000 people) consisted of non-Arab Asians, especially Indians and Pakistanis (in domestic employment and other service occupations), Thais, South Koreans, and Filipinos (in construction and industrial jobs). Bahrain also counted a European and North American colony of more than 5,000 people. Iranians are numerous (certainly several thousand) but are not distinguished in the census, so that their exact number is unknown. The capital, Manāma, on the northeastern side of the main island, and the port of Moḥarraq, on a small neighboring island linked to the capital by a causeway, contain the majority of the population.

Bibliography: See the following article.

(X. De Planhol)

 

ii. Shiʿism in Bahrain

Bahrain came into the Iranian sphere of influence for the first time in the Sasanian period. After the Portuguese occupation (1521-1602), it again fell under Persian domination for nearly two centuries, despite several Omani invasions, in 1718 and 1738, which caused major devastation and the abandonment of villages, mentioned by Niebuhr in the 1760s (II, p. 188). In 1753 the island was reoccupied by the Persians, who remained until 1783, when it was conquered by the Arab dynasty of Āl-Ḵalīfa, of mainland Bedouin stock descended from the Banū ʿOtba of Qaṭar. Iranian claims to the island were renewed several times subsequently, however, notably at the time of the 1861 and 1871 treaties establishing the British protectorate in Bahrain and at the Turkish conquest of the Ḥasā in 1871 (see Esmaïli; Adamiyat; Tadjbakhche). They were officially abandoned only after a mission of mediation by the United Nations Organization in 1971, at the moment when the emirate achieved its independence. Obviously Persian domination has been reflected in a degree of cultural influence, which, however, should certainly not be exaggerated, for the agents of Iranian power have often been the Howala or other Arab chieftains established in the eighteenth century in the region of Būšehr on the Iranian coast of the gulf (Rentz and Mulligan, p. 942).

The question is particularly relevant in connection with Shiʿism. The island actually contains two quite distinct cultural and religious strata. The urban population, concentrated around the Āl-Ḵalīfa dynasty in the two cities of Manāma and Moḥarraq, is Sunnite, primarily of the Malikite rite, with a very few Hanbalite elements reflecting Wahhābī influence. The rural population is Shiʿite. It is generally estimated at about half the indigenous population, perhaps even 55 to 60 percent (no precision is possible, for sectarian affiliation is not recorded in the censuses). This rural Shiʿite population calls itself by the name Baḥārna, Baḥārena, or Beḥārna (sing. Baḥrānī; Hansen, 1968, p. 22) and readily claims not to be Arab, in order to distinguish itself from the population of Bedouin origin that revolves around the dynasty. It is certainly this attitude that has given rise to the rumor—obviously without foundation but repeated frequently in Iranian publications or those reflecting Iranian political views on the archipelago (Tadjbakhche, pp. 14, 223) and sometimes reported in survey works (Aubry, p. 453)—according to which these people are supposed to be of Persian origin and to speak Persian among themselves, at least part of the time. But to what extent did the Shiʿism of the pre-Bedouin population of Bahrain owe its origin to Persian influence and to the period of Persian domination in the island? The answer to this question must be categorically negative. Shiʿism, in various forms, is very old on the northeastern coast of Arabia and Bahrain, connected with the Carmathian movement and in geographical proximity to the great Shiʿite province of southern Iraq, where it has continued uninterrupted since the Buyid period. Twelver Shiʿism was deeply rooted in the Ḥasā at the beginning of the fourteenth century (Ebn Baṭṭūṭa, II, p. 247). During the Persian domination in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, religious influence seems to have flowed mainly from Bahrain to Iran, rather than the reverse. Niebuhr (II, p. 189) states very clearly that Persian clerics traveled to the shaikhs of Bahrain, considered “the university of the Shiʿites,” to acquire the Arab culture that they required.

This symbiotic period, however, did allow the introduction of a certain number of Persian elements into the material and spiritual culture of the island. It has been shown, for example, that female costume, notably the veil (čādor) and the garments worn during the pilgrimage, include elements that are manifestly Persian (Hansen, 1968, pp. 71ff., 166), whereas male costume does not differ from the Arab type common in the region. Equally, however, some differences must be noted. Pious images, which are frequent among Iranian Shiʿites, are very rare in Bahrain (ibid., p. 149). Their diffusion among the lower classes in Iran seems to have occurred mainly in the Qajar period, and their absence from Bahrain is obviously to be explained by the much less active cultural relations after the Arab conquest of 1783. In the same way the new elements developed in Iran during the Pahlavi period (for example, the solar calendar) have never spread to Bahrain. In fact, the essential element continues to be the emotional attachment of the Shiʿites of Bahrain to Iran, which they regard as their spiritual home (ibid., p. 185). In order to determine more precisely the ultimate role of Iran in the Shiʿite culture of the island, a comparative study of this culture and that of the Ḥasā, on the neighboring mainland, would be necessary, but no such study has yet been undertaken.

Other elements in the material culture of Bahrain are just as certainly of Persian origin. The underground drainage channels, for example, are known on Bahrain as qanāt (Hansen, 1968, p. 85; Bibby, passim), the term used in western and southern Iran, rather than as falaj, the term used in Oman. But Persian terminology on this subject reaches as far as central Arabia (Naval Intelligence, p. 34) and is not specific to Bahrain. In sum, it does not appear possible, at least in the present state of knowledge, to define clearly an Iranian cultural stratum on Bahrain.

 

Bibliography:

F. Adamiyat, Bahrein Islands, New York, 1955.

A. Aubry, “Bahrain,” in P. Bonnenfant, ed., La péninsule arabique aujourd’hui II, Paris, 1982, pp. 453-71.

C. D. Belgrave, “Pearl Diving in Bahrain”, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 1934, pp. 450-52.

Idem, “The Portuguese in the Bahrain Islands 1521-1602,” ibid., 1935, pp. 617-30.

Idem, Personal Column, London, 1960.

J. H. D. Belgrave, Welcome to Bahrain, 9th ed., Manama, 1975.

J. T. Bent, “The Bahrain Islands in the Persian Gulf”, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, 1890, pp. 1-19.

G. Bibby, Looking for Dilmun, New York, 1969; French tr., Dilmoun, La découverte de la plus ancienne civilisation, Paris, 1972.

M. Malek Esmaïli, Le golfe Persique et les îles de Bahrein, Paris, 1936.

M. Fougerouse, Bahrain, un exemple d’économie post-pétrolière au Moyen-Orient, Paris, 1983.

H. H. Hansen, “The Pattern of Women’s Seclusion and Veiling in a Shīʿa Village. Field Research in Bahrain,” Folk 3, 1961, pp. 23-42.

Idem, “Growing Up in Two Different Muslim Areas. Field Research in Iraqi Kurdistan and in Bahrain,” ibid., 5, 1963, pp. 143-56.

Idem, Investigations in a Shīʿa Village in Bahrain, Publications of the National Museum, Ethnographical Series 12, Copenhagen, 1968.

L. Lockhart, Nadir Shah, London, 1938. S. Nafīsī, Baḥrayn, Tehran, 1333 Š./1954.

E. A. Nakhleh, Bahrain. Political Development in a Modernizing Society, Lexington, Mass., 1976.

Naval Intelligence Division, Iraq and the Persian Gulf, Geographical Handbook Series, Oxford, 1946, esp. pp. 142-45.

C. Niebuhr, Description de l’Arabie, 2 vols., Paris, 1779.

J. Oestrup, “Al-Baḥrayn,” in EI1. G. Rentz and W. E. Mulligan, “Al-Baḥrayn,” in EI2. M. G. Rumaihi, Bahrain, Social and Political Change since the First World War, The Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies of the University of Durham 5, London and New York, 1976.

A. W. Stiffe, “Ancient Trading Centres of the Persian Gulf VII: Bahrein,” Geographical Journal 18, 1901, pp. 291-94.

G.-R. Tadjbakhche, La question des îles Bahrein, Publications de la Revue générale de droit international public, N.S. 1, Paris, 1960.

A. T. Wilson, The Persian Gulf, London, 1928, esp. pp. 83-91, 244-49, and passim.

F. Wüstenfeld, Bahreïn und Jemama nach arabischen Geographen beschrieben, Göttingen, 1874.

[J. Cole, “Rival Empires of Trade and Imami Shiʿism in Eastern Arabia, 1300-1800,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19, 1987, pp. 177-203.]

(X. De Planhol)

 

iii. History of Political Relations with Iran

Up to 1970, Iran claimed that “Bahrain had always and uninterruptedly formed part of Persia in past centuries, except during the Portuguese occupation from 1507 to 1622, in which year the Persian Government resumed possession of this territory” (Ramazani, 1966, p. 248). Yet, even though the Portuguese were driven out of Bahrain in 1622 by the Safavid Shah ʿAbbās, Persian rule over the island did not become effective until 1753, when Shaikh Naṣīr of Būšehr sent an expeditionary force to conquer the archipelago from the Arab Howayla tribe. In 1783, Bahrain was reconquered by the Arab al-ʿOtūb tribe led by Aḥmad al-Ḵalīfa. The British government, which had entered into treaty relations with al-Ḵalīfa in 1820, formalized its ties through treaties signed in 1847, 1856, 1861, and the Executive Agreements of 1880 and 1892 establishing “exclusive” control over Bahrain’s foreign relations (Lorimer, pp. 836-999, passim), and questioned the validity of the Iranian claim. Relations between Manāma and Tehran were consequently affected by the rise of British hegemonic influence in the area challenging Iran’s posture.

Iran disclosed its claim to Bahrain on November 22, 1927, when “the Persian Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs addressed a sharp letter to Sir Robert Clive, the British Minister at Tehran, in which he reiterated that Bahrain was incontestably in Persian possession” (Adamiyat, p. 194). In that letter, a copy of which was sent to the League of Nations, the Iranian government protested against the May 20, 1927, treaty concluded between Britain and Saudi Arabia. Article 6 of the Treaty of Jiddah stated that the King of Hijaz and of Najd and their dependencies “undertakes to maintain friendly and peaceful relations with the territories of Koweit and Bahrain and with the shaikhs of Qatar and the Oman coast who are in special treaty relations with His Britannic Majesty’s Government” (Adamiyat, p. 194). London rejected this protest in a letter dated January 18, 1928, from Sir Austen Chamberlain, the British Foreign Secretary, to Hovhannes Khan Mossaed (Mosāʿed), the Persian chargé d’affaires in London. The British denied that “any valid grounds” existed upon which Iran could claim sovereignty over Bahrain (Khadduri, p. 633), and stressed that not only was the shaikh of Bahrain an “independent” ruler but that the island and its inhabitants were under British protection.

The Iranian claim was renewed in 1952 and 1956 to no avail. But on November 12, 1957, Tehran decided to officially integrate Bahrain as the fourteenth Iranian province in the administrative divisions of the country, drawing strong protests from Britain and the League of Arab States. Addressing the Majles, the Iranian foreign minister responded by declaring: “Our Arab brothers should know that Bahrain is part of our body and the question of Bahrain is of vital interest to Iran” (Ramazani, 1972a, p. 46). Bahrain’s politico-strategic significance increased when it became a British stronghold east of Suez after the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen achieved independence. Its strategic appeal to Iran was further heightened when Britain announced its intention to withdraw its troops from throughout the Gulf before the end of 1971 and to terminate the treaties binding it to the Gulf shaikhdoms. Moreover, London encouraged the Arab shaikhdoms to unite into a federation. Bahrain, Qatar, and the seven Amirates of the Trucial Coast opened negotiations in February, 1968, which drew sharp criticisms from the shah. Tehran announced its opposition to the project on July 8, 1968, when the foreign minister released a strongly worded communiqué stating that “the creation of a so-called confederation of Persian Gulf emirates embracing the Bahrain islands is absolutely unacceptable to Iran” (Ramazani, 1972a, p. 48). The Ḵalīfa turned to Britain and Saudi Arabia for support and, following the Bahraini ruler’s visit to Saudi Arabia, King Faysal declared that the Arabs must fill the vacuum created by the British withdrawal. In response, the shah cancelled his scheduled state visit to Saudi Arabia but hinted on January 4, 1969, in a New Delhi press conference, that his country and Riyadh considered the future of the Persian Gulf to be the concern of the bordering countries alone. On this occasion, he softened his attitude toward Bahrain, and suggested that the indigenous population should voice freely its wishes through a United Nations supervised referendum. Shaikh ʿĪsā b. Salmān al-Ḵalīfa, fearing that such a referendum would create tension between Persians and Arabs in the Gulf area, rejected this suggestion, drawing a strong threat from the shah on September 9, 1969, who declared that Iran would not recognize Bahrain as an independent state, and if it was admitted to the United Nations Iran would leave that organization (Ramazani, 1972a, p. 51 ).

After several months of secret negotiations the problem was resolved. During 1969, Shaikh ʿĪsā visited London and Washington. The shah also clarified his intentions and took the initiative on March 9, 1970, by formally requesting the good offices of the Secretary General to send an emissary, so that the true wishes of the people of Bahrain with respect to the future status of the Islands of Bahrain could be ascertained (Ramazani, 1972b, p. 4). Britain accepted the proposal and Secretary General U Thant’s personal representative, Vittoria Winspeare Guicciardi, headed a five-member delegation to Bahrain from March 29 to April 18, 1970. Foreign minister Ardašīr Zāhedī revealed that Iran would only accept the recommendations of the mission if they were ratified by the Security Council, and Shaikh ʿĪsā stressed that Bahrain’s acceptance of the UN mission in no way implied that it recognized the Iranian claim as legitimate.

The Guicciardi delegation interviewed civic and religious officials and ordinary individuals and representatives in a wide variety of organizations, institutions, and professional groups, asking them to choose either union with Iran, or status as a British protectorate, or independence. The mission found that Bahrainis “virtually unanimously” wanted a “fully independent sovereign state” and the great majority insisted that it should be an Arab state (Ramazani, 1972a, p. 135). The report was endorsed by the Security Council on April 30 and Iran indicated its acceptance of the Bahrain settlement. Prime Minister Hoveyda introduced a resolution to the Majles and the Senate and the government’s action was approved by the Majles on May 14 by 184 votes to 4 and unanimously by the Senate on May 18 (Ramazani, 1972a, p. 53). But the complications associated with the British-sponsored federation of Persian Gulf Amirates encouraged both Iran and Bahrain to contemplate the emergence of an independent state. Manāma declared its independence on August 14, 1971, and Tehran reportedly was the first nation to extend diplomatic recognition.

The Iranian-Bahraini rapprochement throughout the 1970s was sealed by high level visits and the 1971 agreement delineating the continental shelf between the two countries. Cooperation in the economic and cultural spheres culminated with the official Pārs news agency agreement in 1977 to exchange cultural programs and information. Yet, political relations between Iran and Bahrain soured on the issue of Persian Gulf security. The shah, for example, did not welcome the 23 December 1971 Jufair Agreement which legalized the U.S. Navy’s presence in Bahrain. The shah declared that, as before, Iran did not want any foreign presence in the Gulf, be it England, the United States, or China (Ramazani, 1975, p. 435). The Iranian invasion of Abū Mūsā and the Tonbs (30 November 1971), and the shah’s proposed Gulf Security Pact, in the form of an Iranian-led military alliance, further aggravated the situation. Saudi reservations, Iran’s lopsided military predominance in the Gulf, and the Iranian revolution contributed to the abandonment of the contemplated alliance. Bahrain aligned itself with the Saudi position while trying to maintain friendly relations with Iran. In June, 1978, during an official visit to Tehran, Shaikh ʿĪsā praised Iran’s role as a “regional power,” and hailed the shah’s efforts to take measures against the dangers threatening the region.

In December, 1978, Shaikh ʿĪsā expressed serious concern over events in Iran, which, he predicted, would inevitably affect the security and stability of the Persian Gulf. Manāma felt directly threatened by the sequels to the Iranian Revolution within Bahrain itself, as more than half of Bahrain’s population is Shiʿite. Demonstrations supporting Iran did indeed take place in Bahrain in 1979 when Ayatollah Ṣādeq Rūḥānī revived the old Iranian territorial claim to the Amirate, accusing the ruler of oppressing his people, declaring that the Iranian Majles that had renounced claims to the archipelago in 1970 had been illegal, and announcing that Iran still regarded Bahrain as its 14th Province, pending the decision of the future National Assembly on the matter. Iranian Foreign Minister Ebrāhīm Yazdī dismissed Rūḥānī’s pronouncements as personal opinion. Despite this denial, Bahraini Prime Minister Shaikh Ḵalīfa vehemently denounced the Iranian claim, and stressed that Manāma sought to establish cordial relations with the new Iranian regime on a basis of mutual trust and that they would not allow anyone to divide the two peoples. On September 24, Rūḥānī returned to the offensive threatening to “annex” Bahrain unless its rulers adopted “an Islamic form of government similar to the one established in Iran” (Ramazani, 1986, p. 49). Prime Minister Mehdī Bāzargān officially denied that his country had any expansionist designs in the Persian Gulf region, claiming that Rūḥānī’s pronouncements were unauthorized and worthless. Bāzargān’s ambassador to Riyadh, Moḥammad Javād Rażawī, declared that Iran respected other nations’ sovereignty and had no claims or ambitions on any part of the Persian Gulf. Shortly thereafter, Bāzargān’s deputy, Ṣādeq Ṭabāṭabāʾī, went to Bahrain to ease the mounting tension (Ramazani, 1986, p. 49). The normalization of relations between Bahrain and Iran was sealed by the visit of Iranian Foreign Minister Ṣādeq Ḡoṭbzāda to Manāma in 1980.

On 13 December 1981, however, Bahrain announced that it had arrested a group of “saboteurs” allegedly trained in Iran. The Bahraini interior minister then charged that the group had planned to assassinate Bahraini officials and that it belonged to the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain, which had its headquarter in Tehran, adding that its “sixty” members were all Shiʿites (Ramazani, 1986, p. 50). Yet, despite the fact that not a single Iranian was arrested in connection with the coup plot, Bahraini officials blamed the revolutionary regime for organizing the incident. Political relations between the two countries further deteriorated as the conservative Arab monarchies on the Persian Gulf, joined in the Gulf Cooperation Council since 1981, implicitly extended their support to Baghdad in the Iran-Iraq War (q.v.).

 

Bibliography:

Fereydoun Adamiyat, Bahrain Islands: A Legal and Diplomatic Study of the British-Iranian Controversy, New York, 1955, pp. 155-203.

Maurice Fougerouse, Bahrein: Un exemple d’économie post-pétrolière au Moyen-Orient, Paris, 1983, pp. 21-58.

M. A. Manshur Garakani, Sīāsat-e Englīs dar Ḵalīj-e Fārs wa tārīḵ wa joḡrāfīā-ye Jazāʾer-e Bahrain, Tehran, n.d.

J. B. Kelly, “The Persian Claim to Bahrain,” International Affairs 33/1, January, 1977, pp. 51-70.

Majid Khadduri, “Iran’s Claim to the Sovereignty of Bahrayn,” The American Journal of International Law 45/4, October, 1951, pp. 631-47.

J. G. Lorimer, Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman, and Central Arabia, pp. 836-999.

Saʿīd Nafīsī, Baḥrayn. Ḥoqūq-e 1700-sala-ye Īrān, Tehran, 1333 Š./1954-55.

Jahāngīr Qāʾemmaqāmī, Baḥrayn wa masāʾel-e Ḵalīj-e Fārs, Tehran, 1341 Š./1962-63.

Rouhollah K. Ramazani, Iran’s Foreign Policy 1941-1973: A Study of Foreign Policy in Modernizing Nations, Charlottesville, 1975, pp. 411-27.

Idem, The Foreign Policy of Iran, 1500-1941: A Developing Nation in World Affairs, Charlottesville, 1966, pp. 247-50.

Idem, The Persian Gulf: Iran’s Role, Charlottesville, 1972a, pp. 45-56, 125-39.

Idem, Revolutionary Iran: Challenge and Response in the Middle East, Baltimore, 1986, pp. 48-53, 131-33.

Idem, “The Settlement of the Bahrain Dispute,” Indian Journal of International Law 12/1, 1972b, pp. 1-14.

ʿAlī Zarrīn-qalam, Sar-zamīn-e Baḥrayn: Az Dawrān-e bāstān ta emrūz, Tehran, 1337 Š./1958-59, pp. 85-104, 332-34.

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(X. De Planhol, X. De Planhol, J. A. Kechichian)

Originally Published: December 15, 1988

Last Updated: August 24, 2011

This article is available in print.
Vol. III, Fasc. 5, pp. 506-510