Bahrain restores pearls of its heritage
By Digby Lidstone
Published: December 21 2009 17:24 | Last updated: December 21 2009 17:24
Natural pearls from Bahrain once fetched the highest prices among western jewellers, prompting the likes of Jacques Cartier to visit the small Gulf state to procure them. In its heyday in the early 1900s, the pearl industry employed an estimated 17,500 people and was the lynchpin of the Bahraini economy.
These days, pearling is all-but extinct in the Gulf. The arrival of cultivated pearls from Asia punctured the market in the 1930s, coincidentally just as prospectors struck oil, turning Bahrain into the first Arab oil state. Yet the government is now trying to preserve what remains of its pearling heritage, in the hope of luring well-heeled visitors back to the islands.
The focus of the programme is the island of Muharraq, former capital of Bahrain, where 17 historic houses are being restored, many of them once owned by pearl merchants, or connected with the trade.
“Our aim is to create a journey through the historical sites,” says Sheikha Mai bint Mohammed al-Khalifa, minister for culture and tourism, who has led the project. “Our goal is to have everything ready by 2011, when there is a heritage meeting in Bahrain.”
The meeting will be the first regional summit in 12 years of the world heritage arm of Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, which recently chose Bahrain as its headquarters for the Arab world.
Sheikha Mai has been courting the agency since her days as a junior official, and succeeded in having Qal’at al-Bahrain, a 16th-century fort built over a bronze age settlement, listed as a world heritage site in 2007. Two similar applications are pending at Unesco, relating to fields of neolithic burial mounds as well as the pearling project.
“The region has suffered from a lack of conventions protecting historical monuments, and our proposal for establishing a regional centre was intended to encourage greater awareness in Arab countries,” says Karim Hendili, cultural adviser to Unesco. “Bahrain has been particularly active in protecting its heritage, so it was a natural choice.”
Ironically, many historical sites have been saved by the comparatively slow pace of urban development in Bahrain, which saw its oil reserves dwindle as its neighbours struck lucky. Both Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had thriving pearling industries early last century, yet few traces remain.
Shaikha Mai began the restoration programme in 2003 after her grandfather’s house on Muharraq was demolished.
Ten houses have been restored so far and opened as museums, many of them funded by the private sector, including locally based banks, such as Arcapita, Investcorp, Kuwait Finance House and BBK.
Raising private capital in the current business climate has not proved easy, says Sheikha Mai. Yet local bankers say there are mutual benefits from association with such schemes.
“When you’re in a tax-free environment there’s something of an obligation to pay your dues, but there are considerable benefits in terms of branding,” says a European financier based in Manama.
The houses, many of them 19th-century structures built of palm, timber and mud-brick, line a 3km route that ends at one of Muharraq’s few remaining natural bays. Three surviving oyster beds have been identified off the north of Bahrain to be included in the heritage listing.
Tourism is a valuable industry for the kingdom, generating about 10 per cent of gross domestic product. If Bahrain can crack the lucrative niche market of heritage tourism, its pearling industry may not be so defunct after all.
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