Manama

Manama appears in Islamic chronicles by the middle of the fourteenth century, a small port on the northern shore where fresh springs met a sheltered anchorage. The Portuguese took the islands in 1521 and built at nearby Qal'at al-Bahrain; Persian rule followed early in the seventeenth century, and in 1783 the Al Khalifa family crossed from the Arabian mainland and took control. Manama grew as their commercial town while the ruling family long kept its seat on Muharraq across the water.

Pearls made the modern city. Through the nineteenth century Manama handled the Gulf's pearl trade and the re-export business that came with it, drawing Persian, Indian, Jewish and Arab merchants whose houses and warehouses still stand in the lanes behind the waterfront. Treaties with Britain from 1820 onwards brought a political agency and a measure of order; a customs administration was reorganised in the 1920s, and the port's free-trading habits date from that period.

The pearl trade collapsed in the early 1930s under competition from Japanese cultured pearls and the Great Depression, just as oil was struck at Jebel Dukhan in 1932 — the first strike on the Arabian side of the Gulf. Oil revenue paid for roads, schools, a deepwater harbour and, from the 1970s, a banking sector that made Manama one of the Gulf's leading financial centres. Reclamation pushed the shoreline far out into the bay, so that Bab Al Bahrain, once a customs house at the water's edge, now stands well inland. The capital was also the focus of the large protests of 2011, centred on the Pearl Roundabout, which were put down and the monument demolished.

Manama is the most cosmopolitan city on the Arabian side of the Gulf, and has been for a century. Roughly half of Bahrain's residents are foreign workers, and the capital is where that shows most: Malayalam, Urdu, Tagalog, Bengali and English are heard as often as Arabic, and Hindu temples and churches stand within a short walk of mosques in and around the old centre. Shia and Sunni Muslims live in the same city, and Ashura processions through the streets each Muharram are among its most visible public occasions.

Pearl-diving heritage runs through local identity — the fidjeri work chants sung by divers' crews, dhow building, and the museums and restored houses that record it. Majlis hospitality, in which guests are received with cardamom coffee and dates, remains the basic social form, and Ramadan and the two Eids shape the calendar more than anything else.

The city is also comparatively liberal by regional standards. Cinemas, art galleries and licensed bars operate openly, women drive and work throughout the economy, and weekend crowds come across the causeway from Saudi Arabia for restaurants and entertainment. Visitors are still expected to dress modestly in public, to avoid eating in daylight during Ramadan, and to treat religion and the ruling family as subjects for respect rather than debate.

Manama itself has something over 700,000 residents, and most of Bahrain's roughly 1.6 million people live in the continuous built-up area that runs from the capital west to Seef and east across the causeway to Muharraq. Housing spreads over reclaimed land, and new towers keep rising at Bahrain Bay and along the Financial Harbour while the older souq blocks stay low, crowded and cheap.

The working week runs Sunday to Thursday. Banking, insurance, government, retail and hospitality dominate employment in the capital, with heavy industry — the aluminium smelter, the refinery — placed elsewhere on the island. In summer the day splits in two, with errands done early and social life resuming after dark in malls, restaurants and parks. Friday is quiet until after midday prayers.

Everyday concerns are the cost of imported goods, housing pressure, traffic, and, for many Bahrainis, the sectarian tilt of public-sector hiring. Migrant workers from South Asia and the Philippines make up a large share of the workforce and live mainly in the older central districts. The causeway to Saudi Arabia works as a social artery in both directions, and its weekend queues are a fixed part of the city's rhythm.

Manama eats Gulf food with strong Persian and South Asian accents. Machboos — spiced rice cooked with fish or meat, close to a biryani — is the national dish, and ghoozi, whole roast lamb over rice, is the feast version. Gulf seafood is central: hamour, which is grouper, and safi, or rabbitfish, grilled whole or stewed with tomato and tamarind, alongside the local prawns. Flatbread comes straight from the tannour, a clay oven whose walls the dough is slapped against.

Balaleet, sweet vermicelli under a thin omelette, is a standard breakfast; samboosa are the usual iftar snack during Ramadan, when harees and thareed reappear on tables. The city's best-known sweet is halwa Bahraini, a dense, chewy, translucent paste flavoured with saffron and rosewater and studded with nuts, made in long-established shops in Muharraq and sold across the souq.

The everyday drink is karak: strong tea boiled with milk, sugar and cardamom, sold for small change at roadside cafeterias at any hour. Indian, Filipino, Lebanese, Iranian and Yemeni restaurants are as much a part of the city's food as Bahraini cooking, and Adliya's restaurant streets add a further layer of international kitchens. Alcohol is served in licensed hotels and restaurants but is not sold in ordinary shops.