IOR/R/15/2/1498

Reports, submitted by the Political Agent (Captain Charles Geoffrey Prior) or the Indian Assistant at the Political Agency in the Political Agent’s absence, detailing proceedings at Bahrain and elsewhere. The reports are organised under various headings, as follows:

• arrivals and departures of ships at Bahrain (with details of cargoes and their origins), and of the arrivals and departures of flying boats;
• the movements of British Government representatives (the Political Agent, the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf);
• news from elsewhere in the region (Nejd, including updates of Ibn Saud’s [‘Abd al-‘Azīz bin ‘Abd al-Raḥmān bin Fayṣal Āl Sa‘ūd] movements; Qatar, including Shaikh Abdullah’s [‘Abdullāh bin Jāsim Āl Thānī] actions and movements; and events at Qatif [Al-Qaṭīf]);
• news in Bahrain, including the activities of members of the Āl Khalīfah ruling family, economic news, including reports of bankruptcies, and updates on the year’s poor pearling season, including diminished pearl yields, and pearl trading activity;
• meteorological reports, including details of the minimum and maximum temperatures for each fortnight, and rainfall figures;
• miscellaneous news, including the visits of foreigners to Bahrain, activities of the American Mission’s representatives, a visit by geologists from Eastern General & Syndicate Limited.

Specific events of note include:

• disturbances at two Sunni schools in Bahrain, in which schoolmasters went on strike. Contributing causes to the disaffection, suggested by the Political Agent, include staff salaries, the school inspector’s preference for a schooling system ‘based on Beirut’, the rumoured curtailment of religious teaching, and an expansion of English teaching to the detriment of Arabic (ff 10-12);
• the opening by Shaikh Ḥamad bin ‘Īsá Āl Khalīfah of a new electric power station in Bahrain (f 24).