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The Origin of the Baharna.
Disclaimer: This thread lightly touches on some of the debates regarding the origin of the Baharna. I am no expert, I am just a Bahrani history fan girl.
The Origin of the Baharna.
Disclaimer: This thread lightly touches on some of the debates regarding the origin of the Baharna. I am no expert, I am just a Bahrani history fan girl.
The Baharna are the indigenous, Shia Muslim, ethnoreligious group of Eastern Arabia/Bahrain Island. There are Bahrani diaspora communities in Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Oman, Iran and Iraq.
Unlike the tribal Arabs of the Gulf region, their ancestry is subject to debate. They’re according to scholars ‘Arabs without a pedigree’.
Many Baharna claim they’re the descendants of Abdul Al Qays. Banu Abdul Al Qays is an ancient Arab tribe belonging to the Rab’iah branch of the Northern Arabian tribes, which settled in Eastern Arabia around the 2nd century AD.
Ptolemy mentioned Abdul Al Qays in 150 AD - ‘Abucaei’ (Abdul Al Qays) as one of the many tribes that inhabited Eastern Arabia. Both Greek and early Arab historical sources confirm the presence of this tribe in Eastern Arabia.
Some Baharna, in particular the inhabitants of the village ‘Bani Jamra’, claim southern Yemeni ancestry. It is believed that there existed an ancient pre-Islamic Yemeni tribe called ‘Al-Jamarat’ which matches the name of the village (Bani Jamra).
The genealogical history of the Baharna consists of many gaps and inconsistencies. Many scholars have turned to the Bahrani dialect to fill in the gaps. The Bahrani dialect carries the ancestral story of the Baharna.
The pre-Islamic Eastern Arabia population consisted of partially Christianized Arab tribes which spoke in various Arab dialects; a mobile Persian-speaking population (Persian administrators & merchants) and non-tribal, sedentary, Aramaic-speaking farmers.
Linguists have identified the presence of agricultural terms used by Bahrani farmers which have no Arabic cognates and instead argue these terms originate from the Akkadian and Aramaic languages.
It is believed that the ancestors of the Baharna may have spoken in Aramaic or ‘a form of Arabic heavily influenced by Akkadian or Aramaic’ which would explain why the Bahrani dialect has Akkadian and Aramaic borrowings.
And so, some scholars such as Serjeant have come to the conclusion that the Baharna are the descendants from the original population of Bahrain Island; Christians (Aramaeans), Jews and Majus.
It is widely believed that the Baharna (Banu Abd Qays) are one of the earliest established Shia communities i.e. they immediately sided with Imam Ali Ibn Abi Talib (AS) following the succession crisis. This means that the Baharna were Shia since the 7th century.
Some believe that the Baharna converted following the rise of the Safavid empire, which has been debunked. The existence of renowned Bahrani religious scholars from the 13th century e.g. Sheikh Maitham Al-Bahrani, illustrates the pre-Safavid presence of Shi’ism in Bahrain.
Another piece of evidence which attests to the presence of Shi’ism in Bahrain as early as the 7th century AD is the existence of Eastern Arabian sahaba - The sahaba of Imam Ali (as).
Imam Ali (AS) had companions from Bahrain e.g. Sa’sa’a Bin Sohan Al-Abedi/ الصحابي صعصعة بن صوحان العبدي, a descendent of the Abd Al Qays tribe. He was born in Al-Qatif and buried in Bahrain. Al-Abedi and his brothers fought along side Imam Ali (as).
To conclude, the Baharna are a fascinating group of people with a rich and dynamic history which unfortunately is not appreciated enough.
