| Group: | Bahārna البحارنة |
| Regions: | Bahrain, Qatif, Al-Hasa |
| Languages: | Arabic (Bahrani Arabic, Gulf Arabic) |
| Religions: | Shia Islam |
The Bahārna (Arabic: بحارنة) are an ethnoreligious group of Shia Muslim Arabs indigenous to the historical region of Bahrain. They are generally regarded to be the original inhabitants of Eastern Arabia.[1] They inhabited the area even before the arrival of the Banu Utbah in the 18th century which the Bahraini royal family descends from.[2] Most Bahraini citizens are Baharna. Regions with most of the population are in Eastern Arabia (Bahrain, Qatif, al-Ahsa), with significant populations in Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Iraq, and Hormozgan province of Iran.[3] [4]
The origin of the Baharna is debated;[1] there are different theories regarding their origins. Several Western scholars believe the Baharna originate from Bahrain's ancient population and pre-Islamic population which consisted of partially-Christianized Arabs,[5] Aramaic-speaking agriculturalists,[6] [7] [8] Persian Zoroastrians, and a small amount of Jews.[1] According to one historian, Arab settlements in Bahrain may have begun around 300 B.C. and control of the island was maintained by the Rabyah tribe, who converted to Islam in 630 A.D.[9]
Local anecdotal evidence suggests that the Baharna's ancestry is diverse as some word variants spoken in the dialects of the native people of the villages of Bani Jamra and A'ali are only used in places as far as Yemen and Oman, indicating southern Arabian ancestry.[10] Many Baharna families descended from members of the Banu Abdul Qays, who were mostly Nestorian Christians before the seventh century,[11] as-well as the Anizah tribe which is a cousin tribe the Abd Al-Qays and are both part of the greater Rab’ia tribe. Many are also from the Bani Tamim tribe, such as the ruler of Bahrain during the early islamic era, and Al-Azd.[12]
The Bahrani Arabic dialect exhibits Akkadian, Aramaic and Syriac features.[13] [14] The sedentary people of pre-Islamic Bahrain were Aramaic speakers and to some degree Persian speakers, while Syriac functioned as a liturgical language.[7] The Bahrani dialect might have borrowed the Akkadian, Aramaic and Syriac features from Mesopotamian Arabic.[15]
According to Robert Bertram Serjeant, the Baharna may be the last of the "descendants of converts from the original population of Christians (Aramaeans), Jews and ancient Persians (Majus) inhabiting the island and cultivated coastal provinces of Eastern Arabia at the time of the Arab conquest".[6] [16]
The term Bahrani serves to distinguish the Bahrana from other Bahraini ethnic groups, such as the ethnic Persian Bahrainis who fall under the term Ajam, as well as from the Sunni Arabs in Bahrain who are known as Al Arab ("Arabs"), such as Bani Utbah.[17] In the United Arab Emirates, the Baharna make up 5% of Emiratis and are generally descended from Baharna coming around 100–200 years ago.
In Arabic, bahrayn is the dual form of bahr ("sea"), so al-Bahrayn means "the Two Seas". However, which two seas were originally intended remains in dispute.[18] The term appears five times in the Qur'an, but does not refer to the modern islandoriginally known to the Arabs as "Awal".
Today, Bahrain's "two seas" are instead generally taken to be the bay east and west of the island,[19] the seas north and south of the island, or the salt and fresh water present above and below the ground.[20] 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.[21]
An alternate theory offered by al-Ahsa was that the two seas were the Persian Gulf and a peaceful lake on the mainland Near Al-Ahsa, known as Al-Asfar Lake; still another provided by Ismail ibn Hammad al-Jawhari is that the more formal name Bahri (lit. "belonging to the sea") would have been misunderstood and so was opted against.[20]
Language and culture
Geography
Bahrani People