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Matthew Patay's
Note of the Month
October 2008
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Map and flag images provided by Graphic Maps
This month's featured note
is from Bahrain.
The denomination is 1 Dinar and the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money
(SCWPM) Number is P-New.
The note is dated L.2006 but
was issued in (2008).
(front)
The banknote is red and purple on multicolored underprint.
Al-Hidaya Al-Khalifia school for boys is at left.
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The following information
was obtained from:
Bahrain Ministry
of Education
A Brief History of Education in
Bahrain and the Al-Hidaya Al-Khalifia School for Boys
(For the full article, please refer to
the link above.)
Quranic schools (Kuttab) were the only form of education in Bahrain at the beginning of this century. They are traditional schools aimed at teaching children and youth the reading of the Holy Quran.
Many people of Bahrain had felt that this type of education did not fulfil the academic efficiency that match with the spirit of age. After the First World War, things have been changed and Bahrain became widely open upon the modern western renaissance. Political and social changes have occurred in the country that caused the rise of social and cultural awareness among people.
Due to all these, a demand for modern educational institutions different from (Kuttab) has appeared in terms of system, curricula and objectives.
Before 1919, a number of prominent citizens in Muharraq Island had discussed and agreed to establish a modern formal school. A number of the Royal people (Shaikhs) has endorsed this call and contributed for this project.
1919 marked the beginning of modern public school system in Bahrain. Al-Hidaya Al-Khalifia school for boys was opened at the northern tip of Muharraq. The first Committee of Education consisted of several leading merchants and was presided over by the late Shaikh Abdulla bin Isa Al-Khalifa who was popularly known as 'the Minister of Education'. He was also responsible for the management of Al-Hidaya school.
In 1926, the Education Committee has opened the second public school for boys at Manama.
In 1928 the first public school for girls was opened at Muharraq.
Due to the financial and administrative difficulty faces by the Education Committee, the schools came under the direct control of the government in 1930.
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The following information
was obtained from:
Wikipedia the free
Encyclopedia
Bahrain
(For the full article, please refer to
the link above.)
The Kingdom of Bahrain (in Arabic: Mamlakat al-Ba?rayn, literally Kingdom of the Two Seas) is an island country in the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia lies to the west and is connected to Bahrain by the King Fahd Causeway, which officially opened on 25 November 1986. Qatar is to the south across the Gulf of Bahrain. The planned Qatar–Bahrain Friendship Bridge will link Bahrain to Qatar as the longest fixed link in the world
Bahrain is the Arabic term for "two seas", referring to the freshwater springs that are found within the salty seas surrounding it. Bahrain's strategic location in the Persian Gulf has brought rule and influence from the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and the Arabs, under whom the island became Islamic. Bahrain is associated with Dilmun which is mentioned by Mesopotamian civilizations. During its history it was called by different names such as Awal, then Mishmahig, when it was a part of the Persian Empire. From the 3rd to 6th century BC, Bahrain was included in Persian Empire by Achaemenians, an Iranian dynasty. From the 3rd century BC to the arrival of Islam in the 7th century AD, Bahrain was controlled by two other Iranian dynasties of Parthians and Sassanids. By about 250 BC, Parthian dynasty brought the Persian Gulf under their control and extended their influence as far as Oman. Because they needed to control the Persian Gulf trade route, the Parthians established garrisons in the southern coast of Persian Gulf. In the 3rd century AD, the Sasanids succeeded the Parthians and held the area until the rise of Islam four centuries later. Ardashir, the first ruler of Iranian Sassanians Dynasty marched forward Oman and Bahrain, and defeated Sanatruq. At this time, Bahrain incorporated in the southern Sassanid province covering over the Persian Gulf's southern shore plus the archipelago of Bahrain. The southern province of Sasanids was subdivided into three districts of Haggar (now al-Hafuf province, Saudi Arabia), Batan Ardashir (now al-Qatif province, Saudi Arabia), and Msihmahig (In Middle-Persian/Pahlavi means "ewe-fish"). Until Bahrain adopted Islam in 629 AD, it was a center of Nestorian Christianity. Early Islamic sources describe it as being inhabited by members of the Abdul Qays, Tamim, and Bakr tribes, worshiping the idol Awal.
Islam
In 899 AD, a millenarian Ismaili sect, the Qarmatians, seized 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 disruption throughout the Islamic world; they collected tribute from the caliph in Baghdad, and in 930 AD sacked Mecca and Medina, bringing the sacred Black Stone back to Bahrain where it was held to ransom. They were defeated in 976 AD by the Abbasids. The final end of the Qarmatians came at the hand of the Arab Uyunid dynasty of al-Hasa, who took over the entire Bahrain region in 1076. They controlled the Bahrain islands until 1235, when the islands were briefly occupied by the ruler of Fars. In 1253, the bedouin Usfurids brought down the Uyunid dynasty and gained control over eastern Arabia, including the islands of Bahrain. In 1330, the islands became tributary to the rulers of Hormuz, though locally the islands were controlled by the Shi'ite Jarwanid dynasty of Qatif. Until the late Middle Ages, "Bahrain" referred to the larger historical region of Bahrain that included Ahsa, Qatif (both now within the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia) and the Awal Islands (now the Bahrain Islands). The region stretched from Basrah to the Strait of Hormuz in Oman. This was Iql?m al-Bahrayn "Bahrayn Province". The exact date at which the term "Bahrain" began to refer solely to the Awal archipelago is unknown. In the mid-15th century, the islands came under the rule of the Jabrids, a bedouin dynasty that was also based in al-Ahsa and ruled most of eastern Arabia. The Portuguese invaded Bahrain in 1521 in alliance with Hormuz, seizing it from the Jabrid ruler Migrin ibn Zamil, who was killed in battle. Portuguese rule lasted for nearly 80 years, during which they depended mostly on Sunni Persian governors. The Portuguese were expelled from the islands in 1602 by Abbas I of the Safavid dynasty of Iran, who instituted Shi'ism as the official religion in Bahrain. The Iranian rulers retained sovereignty over the islands, with some interruptions, for nearly two centuries. For most of that period, they resorted to governing Bahrain indirectly, either through Hormuz or through local Sunni Arab clans, such as the Huwala. During this period, the islands suffered two serious invasions by the Ibadhis of Oman in 1717 and 1738. In 1753, the Huwala clan of Al Madhkur invaded Bahrain on behalf of the Iranians, restoring direct Iranian rule.
Al-Khalifa conquest
In 1783, an alliance of Sunni Arab clans from the Arabian coast, led by the Al Khalifa, invaded and took control of Bahrain from the Persians and their Huwala allies, establishing an independent emirate. The Al Khalifa, however, had to weather a series of Omani invasions between 1799 and 1828. It was under the Al Khalifa's rule, in 1845, that a section of the Dawasir tribe from southern Nejd settled in Bahrain. The Al Khalifa at times extended their authority to the northern shores of Qatar and the fort of Dammam on the Arabian coast. (See main article: 1783 Al Khalifa invasion of Bahrain). Rule of the Sunni al-Khalifa tribe "resulted in a gradual attrition in the position of the Shi'a community" as Sunni Arabs were brought in from other parts of Arabia and soon formed the urban population including the ruling class, the military, and much of the merchant class. Land ownership slipped from the Shia "through a system of heavy taxes and other extortions and were reduced to cultivating the palm groves as feudal peasants of their Sunni overlords" [26]. After the Saudis conquered al-Hasa and Qatif in 1796, the Al Khalifa briefly became their tributaries. When the Saudis re-established their power in the region in the 19th century, they attempted again to bring the emirate of Bahrain under their control, resulting in many battles and skirmishes between the two dynasties. This however, was opposed by the British, who by that time had become highly influential in the Persian Gulf, viewing it as essential to their control of India. Britain's policy in the Persian Gulf at this time stipulated "uncompromising opposition" to the Saudis in Bahrain. In 1859, a British naval squadron was sent to protect the islands, and the British resident in the Persian Gulf notified the Saudi ruler Faisal ibn Turki Al Saud that it viewed Bahrain as an "independent emirate". In 1861, the British imposed a protection treaty on the emir of Bahrain, ending Saudi efforts to bring the islands under their sphere of influence as a protectorate. The treaty was the culmination of a series of treaties with the British, beginning in 1820, and ending with British withdrawal in 1971. The population of the island at the time was estimated to be around 70,000 persons. In the early 1920s the islands were rocked by disturbances between the Dawasir and the Shi'ite Baharna of Bahrain. As a result, most of the Dawasir were compelled to leave Bahrain and settle on the Arabian mainland as subjects of Ibn Saud.
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(back)
Pearl and Sail Monument is at left, galloping Arabian horses are at right.
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The following information
was obtained from:
ArabianHorses.org
Arabian Horses
(For the full article, please refer to
the link above.)
Origin of the Arabian Horse
The origin of the Arabian horse remains a great zoological mystery. Although this unique breed has had a distinctive national identity for centuries, its history nevertheless is full of subtleties, complexities and contradictions. It defies simple interpretation.
When we first encounter the Arabian, or the prototype of what is known today as the Arabian, he is somewhat smaller than his counterpart today. Otherwise he has essentially remained unchanged throughout the centuries.
Authorities are at odds about where the Arabian horse originated. The subject is hazardous, for archaeologists' spades and shifting sands of time are constantly unsettling previously established thinking. There are certain arguments for the ancestral Arabian having been a wild horse in northern Syria, southern Turkey and possibly the piedmont regions to the east as well. The area along the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent comprising part of Iraq and running along the Euphrates and west across Sinai and along the coast to Egypt, offered a mild climate and enough rain to provide an ideal environment for horses. Other historians suggest this unique breed originated in the southwestern part of Arabia, offering supporting evidence that the three great river beds in this area provided natural wild pastures and were the centers in which Arabian horses appeared as undomesticated creatures to the early inhabitants of southwestern Arabia.
Because the interior of the Arabian peninsula has been dry for approximately 10,000 years, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for horses to exist in that arid land without the aid of man. The domestication of the camel in about 3500 B.C. provided the Bedouins (nomadic inhabitants of the middle east desert regions) with means of transport and sustenance needed to survive the perils of life in central Arabia, an area into which they ventured about 2500 B.C. At that time they took with them the prototype of the modern Arabian horse.
There can be little dispute, however, that the Arabian horse has proved to be, throughout recorded history, an original breed-which remains to this very day.
Neither sacred nor profane history tells us the country where the horse was first domesticated, or whether he was first used for work or riding. He probably was used for both purposes in very early times and in various parts of the world. We know that by 1500 B.C. the people of the east had obtained great mastery over their hot-blooded horses which were the forerunners of the breed which eventually became known as "Arabian."
About 3500 years ago the hot-blooded horse assumed the role of king-maker in the east, including the valley of the Nile and beyond, changing human history and the face of the world. Through him the Egyptians were made aware of the vast world beyond their own borders. The Pharaohs were able to extend the Egyptian empire by harnessing the horse to their chariots and relying on his power and courage. With his help, societies of such distant lands as the Indus Valley civilizations were united with Mesopotamian cultures. The empires of the Hurrians, Hittites, Kassites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and others rose and fell under his thundering hooves. His strength made possible the initial concepts of a cooperative universal society, such as the Roman empire. The Arabian "pony express" shrank space, accelerated communications and linked empires together throughout the eastern world.
This awe-inspiring horse of the east appears on seal rings, stone pillars and various monuments with regularity after the 16th century B.C. Egyptian hieroglyphics proclaim his value; Old Testament writings are filled with references to his might and strength. Other writings talk of the creation of the Arabian, "thou shallst fly without wings and conquer without swords." King Solomon some 900 years B.C. eulogized the beauty of "a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots," while in 490 B.C. the famous Greek horseman, Xinophon proclaimed: "A noble animal which exhibits itself in all its beauty is something so lovely and wonderful that it fascinates young and old alike." But whence came the "Arabian horse?" We have seen this same horse for many centuries before the word "Arab" was ever used or implied as a race of people or species of horse.
The origin of the word "Arab" is still obscure. A popular concept links the word with nomadism, connecting it with the Hebrew "Arabha," dark land or steppe land, also with the Hebrew "Erebh," mixed and hence organized as opposed to organized and ordered life of the sedentary communities, or with the root "Abhar"-to move or pass. "Arab" is a Semitic word meaning "desert" or the inhabitant thereof, with no reference to nationality. In the Koran a'rab is used for Bedouins (nomadic desert dwellers) and the first certain instance of its Biblical use as a proper name occurs in Jer. 25:24: "Kings of Arabia," Jeremiah having lived between 626 and 586 B.C. The Arabs themselves seem to have used the word at an early date to distinguish the Bedouin from the Arabic-speaking town dwellers.
This hot blooded horse which had flourished under the Semitic people of the east now reached its zenith of fame as the horse of the "Arabas." The Bedouin horse breeders were fanatic about keeping the blood of their desert steeds absolutely pure, and through line-breeding and inbreeding, celebrated strains evolved which were particularly prized for distinguishing characteristics and qualities. The mare evolved as the Bedouin's most treasured possession. The harsh desert environment ensured that only the strongest and keenest horse survived, and it was responsible for many of the physical characteristics distinguishing the breed to this day.
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For more information about Bahrain visit:
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