Kingdom of Bahrain. Information.
BAHRAIN, officially the Kingdom of Bahrain. is a borderless island country in the Persian Gulf and is the smallest Arab nation. Area - 665 sq.km. Population - 698 585 (2005) Capital - Manama. Bahrain has been inhabited by humans since ancient times and has even been proposed as the site of the Biblical Garden of Eden. Its strategic location in the Persian Gulf has brought rule and influence from the Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, and finally the Arabs, under whom the island became Muslim. Bahrain was in the ancient times known as Dilmun, later under its Greek name Tylos , as Awal as well as under the Persian name Mishmahig when it came under the imperial rule of the Persian Empire. The islands of Bahrain, positioned in the middle south of the Persian Gulf, have attracted the attention of many invaders throughout history, such as the Al-Khalifas. Bahrain is an Arabic word meaning "Two Seas", and is thought to either refer to the fact that the islands contain two sources of water, sweet water springs and salty water in the surrounding seas, or to the south and north waters of the Persian Gulf, separating it from the Arabian coast and Iran, respectively. Some scholars believe this to be an folk etymology for the much older, non-Semitic term, Bahran; according to some scholars Bahran originates from Varahrdn, the later form of the old Avestan Verethragna - a Zoroastrian divinity that is the hypostasis of victory. A strategic position between East and West, fertile lands, fresh water, and pearl diving made Bahrain long a center of urban settlement. Pearl diving was the main economy until cultured pearls were invented in early twentieth century and more when oil was discovered in 1930s. About 2300 BC, Bahrain became a centre of one of the ancient empires trading between Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and the Indus Valley (now in Pakistan and India). This was the civilization of Dilmun (sometimes transliterated Telmun) that was linked to the Sumerian Civilization in the third millennium BC. Bahrain became part of the Babylonian empire about 600 BC. Historical records referred to Bahrain with names such as the "Life of Eternity", "Paradise", and Eden. Bahrain was also called the "Pearl of the Persian Gulf". Until Bahrain embraced Islam in 629 AD, it was a centre for Nestorian Christianity. In 899, a millenarian Ismaili sect, the Qarmatians, seized hold of the country and sought to create a utopian society based on reason and the distribution of all property evenly among the initiates. The Qarmatians caused widespread disruption throughout the Islamic world: they collected tribute from the caliph in Baghdad; and in 930 sacked Mecca and Medina, bringing the sacred Black Stone back to Bahrain where it was held to ransom. They were defeated in 976 by the Abbasids. Until 1521, when the Portuguese conquered the Awal Islands, "Bahrain" referred to the larger historical region of Bahrain that included Ahsa, Qatif (both now constitute the eastern province of Saudi Arabia) and the Awal (now the Bahrain) Islands. The region stretched from Basrah to the Strait of Hormuz in Oman. This was Iqlim al-Bahrayn "Bahrayn Province" and the Arab inhabitants of the province, descendants of the Arab tribe Bani 'Abdu l-Qays, were called Baharna after it. Since the Portuguese conquest, "Bahrain" has referred to the area that is now the modern state of Bahrain. From the sixteenth century to 1743, control of Bahrain drifted between the Portuguese and the Persians. Ultimately, the Persian Afsharid king, Nadir Shah, invaded and took control of Bahrain. In the late eighteenth century, the al-Khalifa family invaded and captured the islands from their base in neighbouring Qatar. In order to secure Bahrain from returning to Persian control, the Emirate entered into a treaty relationship with the United Kingdom and became a British protectorate. Oil was discovered in 1932 and brought rapid modernization and improvements to Bahrain. Bahrain was actually the first place to find oil in the whole region. It also made relations with the United Kingdom closer, evidenced by the British moving more bases to the island nation. British influence would continue to grow as the country developed, culminating with the appointment of Charles Belgrave as an advisor; Belgrave established modern education systems in Bahrain. After World War II, increasing anti-British sentiment spread throughout the Arab world and led to riots in Bahrain. In 1960, the United Kingdom put Bahrain's future to international arbitration and requested that the United Nations Secretary-General take on this responsibility. In 1970, Iran simultaneously laid claim to both Bahrain and the other Arabic Gulf islands. However in an agreement with the United Kingdom it agreed to "not pursue" its irredentist claims on Bahrain if its other claims were realised. The following plebiscite saw Bahrainis confirm their independence from Britain and their Arab identity. Bahrain to this day remains a member of the Arab League and Gulf Cooperation Council. The British withdrew from Bahrain on August 15, 1971, making Bahrain an independent emirate. The oil boom of the 1980s greatly benefited Bahrain, but its downturn was felt badly. However, the country had already begun to diversify its economy, and had benefited from the Lebanese civil war that began in the 1970s; Bahrain replaced Beirut as the Middle East's financial hub as Lebanon's large banking sector was driven out of the country by the war. After the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, Bahraini Shi'a fundamentalists in 1981 orchestrated a failed coup attempt under the auspices of a front organisation, the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain. The coup would have installed a Shi'a cleric exiled in Iran, Hujjatu l-Islam Hadi al-Mudarrisi, as supreme leader heading a theocratic government. In 1994, a wave of rioting by disaffected Shia Islamists was sparked by women's participation in a sporting event. The Kingdom was badly affected by sporadic violence during the mid-1990s in which over forty people were killed in violence between the government and Islamists (see 1990s Uprising in Bahrain and Torture in Bahrain). Currency : Bahraini dinar (BHD)
Full information about stamps of Bahrain you can find on site:
www.bahrain-stamps.com
