We woke up in a new country with everything new to explore! What fun! And look at what we have to explore!

Maybe we should clarify in case there are any Bahrainis reading this. For everyone (except Bahrainis) reading this, we are in Manama. Most maps show Manama encompassing pretty much everything on this side of Bahrain… however… for Bahrainis we are not in Manama. Manama is more so the “downtown” area in the centre of what Bahrainis may consider “greater Manama”. We found this out when we told our driver we were going to Manama, told him the hotel name, and he said that that wasn’t Manama. Shocked, haha. But it was fine in the end. “Manama” is only a few blocks away, hehe. But enough intricacies, we don’t need to make this post any longer than it is already going to be. (And this is your fair warning, this post ended up being long).

We leave the hotel and start walking. Where are we going? Well, you saw it last night! Off we go.

It really makes it seem like Manama/Bahrain are very densely populated, but we can tell you that that isn’t the case around the whole of Manama. Just a few metres away, there is a huge construction project underway. Not entirely sure what this may become one day… seems a bit high and big for a roadway… Let us know if you know, or when it is completed! You look one way to the construction, look the other and you see the Isa Cultural Centre and Al Fateh Grand Mosque.

The signs said to just walk across this construction site to get to the mosque, so it’s what we are doing. It at least let us get up close to the Isa Cultural Centre.

But, just around the corner is the Grand Mosque! So, if you allow us to make our interpretation after visiting many mosques both inside and out… this is a “newer” mosque as it was constructed in 1988, but it is emulating an older style of construction. We would say that this mosque slightly resembles the mosque in Muscat more so than the one in Abu Dhabi, but it has the same style of domes and thin minarets. We’ve read that this style became more prevalent during the Ottoman Empire, and maybe that’s what these mosques are aiming to emulate? We could be completely wrong.

And now time to go inside. They are open to the public from Saturday to Thursday from 9 am to 4 pm. You go in the main door, talk to the “front desk” and then they supply a guide. When we entered a tour had just started in English, so we quickly joined them. The tour was a mix of information, with a little being said about the actual architecture of the mosque and a lot being taught about Islam itself.

Very interesting to see first the preparations that must be done for both men and women before praying (ablution) and then the actual act of worship. We had seen it done many times, but this was the first where it had all been explained like on the above displays. The second display shows what muslims must say while they pray, where the fifth one is the most important. Our guide went through each statement and explained what it meant and how it applied to both Islam and life as a whole. It was very interesting. Only once the tour was done could we take pictures of the inside of the mosque. The others had done so before the tour had begun, but since we were late we had to take our chance now. I couldn’t take any selfies, so we leave you with the mosque itself. Of noteworthiness in this mosque is that the dome was the largest fibreglass dome in the entire world.

While we took pictures my partner asked the guide a few more questions, explaining that we had visited other mosques in the area as well. Overall it was a nice and informative visit to the Al Fateh Grand Mosque. Definitely worth the visit.

Then it was off in any random direction to see a bit more of Manama. As we were walking we started to notice that many of the large buildings in this area of the city were large hotels. Do they get that many tourists here? It’s probably the best time of the year to visit Bahrain as it’s the middle of the winter and temperatures are “only” around 25-30°C. In the middle of the winter. We assume that Bahrain must reach at least 50°C in the summer as other places in the region have told us they do.

While we were following the map we noticed that we could visit a little beach-looking area so, of course, we went there. It was an interesting spot. We would call it more of a parking lot than a beach, and there were lots of cars parked here just looking out over the bay, but it was definitely a nice view.

From here you can see over towards the other island where the airport is located, but the view above is back towards Manama, what we would call the “downtown” area.

There wasn’t tooooo much going on at the time, but along the parking lot there are plenty of little stalls that seem to sell food and things like that. Maybe in the evenings when the temperatures go down a little and people are off work this place becomes very lively?

But, we should keep walking. We start heading back towards that view along what we would call the Corniche of Bahrain… but we have no idea if that’s accurate or not. The walkway has the distance you’ve covered marked along it, but we only see one person running. Again, maybe in the evenings?

About halfway to our next destination we come up to this.

Zoom in on that sign and look at the absolute masterpiece that they are planning on building here. The island complex is going to be absolutely beautiful. It is set to be the National Assembly of Bahrain. You can easily search it online to see some more sketches of what the building will look like eventually. It seems like “eventually” is the key word as it is listed as “on hold” at the moment. Doesn’t seem like too much is going on at the moment.

We continue walking, but my partner doesn’t let me take any more selfies because he’s busy doing some 360 filming. We walk beside the giant construction we had seen before we went to Al Fateh Grand Mosque, then along the actual Corniche of Manama where they have parks, restaurants, marinas, and a dolphin resort. At the end of this short walk we look back to where we came from. It doesn’t look so far, right?

Well, we don’t make it to our final destination because we get sidetracked by the Art Centre. We can’t pass up an opportunity to see a bit more of Bahraini culture, right? In we go!

The Art Centre has two exhibitions, both of which seem like they are temporary exhibition spaces. The first one has an exhibit called Whispers by Mohamed Taqi where he explores his love of colour, art, and composition as a whole.

The other exhibit is Objects of Living by third year students in the Interior Design Program at the University of Bahrain and it’s showing different pieces of furniture and the process by which they were made, all while keeping an eye on sustainability.

The pieces were very cool, with the majority being miniatures of what would be the end product. Lots of interesting ideas coming from this project.

And with that, we’re done. We can’t tell if the Cultural Hall next to the Arts Centre has anything / is open to the public, so we don’t enter. We keep walking towards our final destination of the day, but along this street there are a lot of embassies (at least we assume they are embassies) from different countries and some of their designs are pretty cool!

The first is Iraq, and it reminds us of what the Ishtar Gate must look like. The second one you should recognize… it’s Oman! It even kind of reminds us of the Khasab Castle! We enjoy seeing the country’s “iconic architecture” here as their (supposed) embassies.

But that’s enough “side quests,” time for our actual final destination. The buildup starts from outside with a bunch of sculptures welcoming you to this space as you drive up from your car (unless you’re like my partner that only knows how to walk).

But no more suspense, our main destination is the Bahrain National Museum, welcome!

And the buildup continues outside of the main building with even more sculptures. It must be amazing inside!

And now, time to enter. We’re getting really excited just by the entrance. Just so that you realize what we’ve walked in these past two minutes (without a million pictures): first we were on the street with the first set of sculptures, then we walked through the large gate into the museum area, then we walked through a bunch of palm trees and green space before reaching the parking lot, then there is interesting architecture outside of the museum itself, then there are the statues that we pictured above, and then you get to the main entrance. Very, very nice entrance to the museum.

As if this post wasn’t long enough already, we’re only just entering the National Museum, and it seems quite big. If you’ve read the whole day so far, maybe take a little break at this point before we continue, hehe. We couldn’t take a break, but maybe you can. But we continue forward!

The lobby had the object of the month in it, which was this violin that belongs to Mr. Mohamed Ismail Al-Mass who played along with Mohamed bin Faris, the pioneer of popular music in Bahrain. The violin was bought in 1940 in Iraq, and the 100 fils notes were inside of the violin. It is believed that the notes were inside because they would bring a livelihood for the instrument’s musician.

And now on to the main exhibits. First up? ‘Graves’.

First, let’s try to give a brief history of the people of this time. Between 2250 and 400 BCE the Dilmun were the predominant civilization in and around Bahrain. Although their importance and power varied greatly throughout this time period, it seems as though they were strategically positioned on trade routes between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. They were also able to control all of the maritime trade in the Arabia/Persian Gulf at the height of their powers. So, you can see their importance. But that’s not all, Dilmun is also mentioned in Sumerian mythology as being a divine place, a garden of paradise. Some people speculate that this may have been the inspiration for the Garden of Eden. Uuuuuu.

With that bit of context, let’s talk about their graves. Most civilizations have specific practices around their dead, and Dilmun is no exception. The Dilmuns had a unique practice of creating burial mounds for their dead. The burial mounds number in the thousands, with some estimates reaching 150,000 throughout Bahrain. These mounds seem to have been constructed above ground with interconnecting walls, and then a mound above them. The man or woman would typically be placed on their right shoulder in the fetal position for burial. You can see the recreation in the below picture. Although the practice declined in popularity from the middle of the Dilmun period, it was practiced until the final days of the civilization.

These preserved burial mounds are the most notable archaeological landmark within Bahrain and are the most dense conglomeration of tumuli from the Bronze Age found anywhere in the world. Because of this, they are part of UNESCO’s World Heritage list. Very cool and interesting.

There were many other things to go along with the graves, including the implements used for them, but the most interesting to us were these objects that were discovered in the royal burial mounds in A’ali. You can see the importance that the Dilmun placed on their funerary practices if they were burying gold and other such precious stones with their dead. (Most graves were robbed in antiquity, hence why these are mostly small or fragments. The female figure on the right is a replica because the original is in the British Museum in London.)

Well, we told you that the burial mounds as shown above started declining in “popularity” into the Late Dilmun period, and here we show you that they were replaced by these “bathtub sarcophagi” which were used throughout the Near East. Sometimes these “bathtub sarcophagi” seemed to have been actual bathtubs as they had holes at the bottom that had been plugged.

And now it’s out of the ‘Graves’ exhibit and onto the ‘Dilmun’ exhibit.

Much of the information we told you above comes from here, and with some from the internet to make the story flow a bit more. Here we also saw an “old friend” in a madbasa, where they made “date-juice extract.” Sounds and looks familiar to what we have seen in many of the other countries we’ve visited on this trip!

And now we will pass along some Sumerian mythology (inscribed on clay tablets around 2000 BCE), as there is no record of Dilmun mythology. We gave you a taste above, but this is transcribed word-for-word from a sign at the museum.

“The earliest [legend] tells how Enki, god of the sweet water beneath the world, and Ninhursag, goddess of the earth, dwelt in Dilmun. And Enki blessed Dilmun with sweet water and all the fruits of the earth:

“Another story tells how, when the gods would destroy mankind in the Great Deluge, Enki saved one man, Ziusudra, by instructing him to build an Ark, and, after the flood waters subsided,

“After many years the mighty Sumerian hero Gilgamesh came, in his quest for immortality, to Ziusudra the immortal in the land where old age is unknown. From him he learned how to dive to the seabed and pluck the flower that restores youth, and with it set forth for his home. But a snake came up from the deeps and stole and ate the flower. Whereupon it cast off its skin and regained its youth, thus cheating mankind of immortality.”

All of that on a single sign, but my partner has always enjoyed mythology and had never heard of these myths before, so we hope you enjoyed reading them all word for word as much as we did. And we also hope you learned a little something along the way!

After all of this typing (reading for you), you’d be forgiven to think we’ve covered a lot of the museum. Not even close. Next up we have a HUGE section, ‘Customs and Traditions’.

First up we will show you and teach you about births as represented in the picture above. Once a woman has given birth she is given a ritual cup of water and three dried dates. The umbilical cord is then buried in the mosque if it is a boy or the kitchen if it is a girl. A rooster or a chicken is then slaughtered. The baby is then rubbed with salt and herbs, wrapped in cotton cloth and placed in a cradle where the call to prayer is recited into their right ear and the beginning of the prayer is recited into their left ear. The following day the child will be named, typically receiving the name of their grandparent according to the baby’s sex. After seven days the baby is given their first bath at which point a goat or lamb are slaughtered, cooked, and shared with the neighbours. All of this occurs away from their home because after a 40 day period, to allow the mother to recover, her and the baby return to the baby’s father’s house accompanied by the mother’s female relatives that are carrying the baby’s things (see the picture below). At this point the father welcomes them home, usually with a gift for both the mother and for the baby.

The next big milestone in a child’s life is his first haircut. This is celebrated by weighing the cut hair against coins, with the coins then being given to nearby children. When the child gets their first tooth or takes their first steps it is celebrated by throwing nanoon. This is when a basketful of sweets, nuts, and coins is thrown over the head of the child (or anyone being celebrated) and the things are picked up by children. A demonstration of this is given in the below picture.

Speaking of teeth; whenever a child loses their baby teeth they take that tooth along with seven date stones, hold it in a fist and point it to the sky. They then yell “take this donkey’s tooth and give me a gazelle’s tooth!” and then throw their fistful towards the sun.

Now on to the next important portion of a child’s development, their education.

Children, both boys and girls, would attend Qur’anic schools from the age of five or six. These classes were held at the teacher’s house, and the time in school varied based on the child’s talent. The children would first learn the pronunciation of vowels from the short chapters of the Qur’an and would then use the longer chapters to learn grammar. The teaching was completed when all of the Qur’an had been learned. At this point the student was deemed to have graduated and they would parade around the neighbourhood with their teacher and classmates dressed in their best clothes, with a dagger on their waist and a sword in their hand. They would carry incense and rose-water around with them while they entered people’s homes, proclaimed their thanks to Allah, and would then receive some coins.

The first state-run schools started in 1919 with the Al-Hidayah Al Khalifiya Boys’ School in Muharraq, but by 1928 there were already seven state schools around the country, including one for girls. These first schools ran six days a week (Fridays were off, just like the Qur’anic schools) and the children studied Arabic language, Islam, history, geography, science, and arithmetic. All examinations were done orally, and the school lasted for seven years.

Alright, we’ve now taken care of childhood and education, the next step? Marriage, we suppose!

First thing is first, you need two people to get married. Traditionally marriage occurred between cousins, but, if that was not suitable then a female matchmaker was used. After much investigation by the matchmaker she would setup an introduction between the female members of both families. If they agreed, the father was then consulted. If the man was deemed acceptable then the male members of his family would get together to determine the wedding date, the dowry payment, and the gift of clothing they would make. This gift of clothing (dazeh) is very important as the women of the groom’s family bring this to the bride on the wedding day and present it to her along with the dowry money. But hold on, we’re getting wayyyy ahead of ourselves. The wedding actually starts two days before!

Two days before the wedding there is a “Good-Luck Party” (jelwa) held for the bride. While the bride sits in the middle of the room women recite religious songs and they hold a green cloth over her head while singing joyful songs and they all give the bride-to-be their well wishes for the marriage.

Now let’s jump ahead to the night before the wedding. While everyone (guests) else are singing and dancing, the bride-to-be remains modestly in a separate room as she prepares for the wedding day by having a henna party. Here her hands and feet are decorated by a specialist (khad dabadh). It was believed that if the bride was to be seen before her wedding day her face would lose its beauty.

Okay, we’ve seen two days before, the night before, now time for the main event. The day of the wedding! I know you’re excited. So, you of course need a venue, and for that there is the Wedding Room. It is a room at the bride’s house that is decorated by a specialist (mufaresh) and it is done by bringing carpets, mirrors, seats, and decorations from relatives, neighbours, and the mufaresh themselves. While all of that is being prepared the bride is getting ready. A big step is the hair beautician (achafa) that is hired to do the bride’s hair on the wedding day. She is typically someone who has taken care of the bride’s hair since she was a young girl, and her tools are mainly natural herbs and oils. She can then put on the dazeh from above (the gift of clothes) as well as all of the gold she can. Some gold is new, made at the local goldsmith months before the wedding day, while other pieces are from relatives and/or neighbours. Now, with all of this gold, the new clothes, her hair done, and the henna done the night before, the bride now sits in the Wedding Room. The female guests go around the bride and examine her dress, hair, and jewelry all while the bride sits in silence with her eyes closed just waiting. The bride would look something like the woman below.

Now the party can start! The Wedding Orchestra (idda) comes to play music! A group consisting of 20 to 30 members, where the majority (if not all) are women, comes to play traditional folk music during the wedding (also used during other festivities). On the wedding night the festivities start at the groom’s house with the groom and the male relatives receiving guests there before having a procession towards the bride’s house. Once at the bride’s house the groom would wait in the Wedding Room until the bride was brought out on a carpet by four women, as shown below. The marriage would then be consummated with the Wedding Orchestra playing loudly.

Hold on, we’re not done yet! Now sheep or goats are slaughtered on the wedding night to be used in tomorrow’s wedding feast! This will be served in the Wedding Room with the male relatives and male friends of the groom arriving to congratulate him. Any additional food was kept for the neighbours.

Since we’re already into the next day, now comes the Morning Gift. This is a gift presented by the groom to his bride on the day after the wedding. It was typically jewelry or money, and part of this is used to pay the hair beautician from yesterday. Now, we move on to the last part of the wedding, the Bride’s Guests. We’re now on the third day after the wedding. The bride is waiting in the Wedding Room wearing her finest jewelry. The groom’s mother and relatives lead the procession to visit the bride and are welcomed by the groom’s mother with traditional food and sweets.

And, as far as we can tell, that’s a traditional Bahraini wedding! Quite the party! It would be quite amazing to see in person. It kind of reminds us of the Nepali wedding we participated in a few years ago, that also took place over multiple days with various different ceremonies. But that’s a story for another day.

Well, the last thing left is to have your own family, we suppose. “The family is the most important feature of any Bahraini’s life.” It plays a major role in any Bahraini’s life to instil social values, and therefore create a “more stable and co-operative society.” Within the family itself the social status increases with age with the grandfather considered the head of the household. His word is final on any marriage agreement, and it is important to marry within the family or with families of similar social status to strengthen the family’s position in society and strengthen the social values of the family and society.

And what to do with your family? Well, many festivities in Bahrain (and Islamic culture as a whole) are celebrated with the family and the community. One such important event is Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. During this month muslims worldwide (if able) fast from sunrise to sunset, and its observance is one of the five pillars of Islam in commemoration of the Prophet Muhammad’s first revelation. A vital person during this month in Bahrain is the Ramadan Drummer (Al-Musaher), the person that goes around beating his drum alerting people to have their last meal before fasting begins at sunrise. In the middle of Ramadan he collects girga’oun (mixed sweets, dried figs, and nuts) and on the first day of Eid people give him money, rice, and corn. (We’re unsure if the Ramadan Drummer exists in other Islamic countries or not, if you know, let us know!). Why does he collect girga’oun in the middle of the month? For the Girga’oun celebrations! During this night the children go around to their neighbours’ houses asking for girga’oun while young people form bands and perform dances in order to receive some money or girga’oun. And at the end of Ramadan comes Eid Al Fitr, a week-long celebration to mark the end of Ramadan. Families will put on their best clothes and exchange well wishes. Celebrations include musical groups, traditional dances, and the Muraddah dance. The Muraddah dance is done by the women of the family on the first afternoon of Eid where they form two facing lines, link hands, and move backwards and forwards while singing. This dance doesn’t have any instruments, instead the rhythm is kept by the women’s feet hitting the ground.

The next festivity tied to the Islamic calendar is that of “The Children Go To Sea” (pictured below). Directly from the museum sign, “On the 9th day of Dhu’l Hijja, pilgrims in Mecca pray at Arafat. The children of Bahrain celebrate this day with the ceremony of Hiya Biya. They walk to the seashore to throw baskets of green sprouts and cereals (hiya) into the sea while singing the song of Hiya-Biya.” From our own research, Dhu’l Hijja is the twelfth month of the Islamic calendar, an important month because the Hajj (Pilgrimage) takes place on the eighth, ninth, and tenth day of this month.

Okay, but we mentioned that Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and Dhu’l Hijja the twelfth, so what is the Islamic calendar? Luckily for us (and our probably majority Western audience) they had a plaque explaining that as well.

We will start from the biggest time period and work our way down. The Islamic year is based on the lunar cycle with 12 months, each with 29 or 30 days. This means that the year lasts 354 days compared to the Gregorian calendar with 365.25 days (a solar calendar). The start of the Islamic calendar begins in the Gregorian year of 622 CE when the Prophet Mohammed left Mecca for Madinah (Hijrah). So when did we visit this museum? In 2023 CE or 1444 AH (AH = Anno Hegirae = Year of the Hijrah). Now, we can take this year and divide it into six seasons, each of approximately two months according to the stars visible in the sky. The seasons are: late autumn, winter, spring, early summer, late summer, and early autumn. And now we’ve made it to the individual days. Days are divided into five parts, corresponding to the five prayer times. These are: morning prayers at first light, noon prayers when the sun is vertical in the sky, afternoon prayers when an object and its shadow are of equal size, evening prayers a few minutes after sunset, and night prayers when the sky is no longer red. We’ve become accustomed to these divisions in the day because the call to prayer happens at each of these time points during the day from all mosques in all of the cities we have visited so far. (All of this information is in the above picture, but probably too small to properly read).

Alright, if we don’t hurry up we’ll never leave this room. All of this is still the same Customs and Traditions room of the museum. A LOT of information. Unfortunately that means we will skip over some information and reeeeeeeally skim some other information. We think we captured the most interesting bits though!

Number 1 of skimmed information, Bahraini fashion. Bahraini fashion is known for its beauty and for the complex embroidery done by women, typically with fine laced bands made of gold or silver thread for the women or silk thread for the men. It had a lot of explanation on how to make each article of traditional wear for children, women, and men, but here we will just show you two pictures of women working to make these articles of clothing and then two pictures of women and men wearing the clothes. (Plus, you’ve seen the other pictures and they’ve all been wearing traditional clothes as well).

And number 2 of skimmed information, and our last stop, water. A very important thing to point out as this is a relatively small island with a majority desert climate. The drinking water used to be brought to people from natural springs that would occur around Bahrain in leather bags. Many of these water carriers were women and they would have to carry bags of water for their regular customers. To keep track of the water they had delivered they would make notches in a stick or knots on a rope, and only once they had 100 such marks would they receive one rupee of payment. This system kept operating until fresh water started being brought by boat, and that was only until the installation of piped water. In this picture you can see a woman with her leather bag of water.

And with that we are done our whirlwind tour of Customs and Traditions. A LOT of information, but we found it all very interesting. We hope you did too! But we’re not done yet! We leave Customs and Traditions to go upstairs to Trades and Crafts.

Okay, this room doesn’t have as many signs as downstairs, so it will be a quicker room to go through and to explain. You saw all the demonstrations downstairs, and its similar upstairs with it being setup to look like (what we believe to be) a market. There are little stalls with different people doing different jobs along a hallway. We think you can make out what each person is working on.

And then comes the most important industry in Bahrain before the discovery of oil, pearling.

Some of these pearling ships were pretty big and could have between 60 and 80 people onboard. What did all of these people do? Glad you asked. Onboard there was the captain, the captain’s assistant, the singer, divers, pullers, trainees, puller’s/diver’s assistants, and the cook(s). How were they paid? At the end of the season the shares of what they had earned would be distributed amongst the workers depending on their jobs with the divers receiving two shares, the pullers one share, and the singer two shares. The singer was a very important role on the dhows to keep everyone’s spirits up. In the room they had some songs that they would sing while out on the Gulf.

And what would they bring in? All of these pearls. We’ve seen other pearls around the Gulf countries in different museums as they all relied on pearling to different degrees, but there isn’t any harm in looking at some more.

Alright, we told you that this room was a bit faster. Off to Tylos and Islam!

Another very short room, even though it is a pretty big piece of history. The very short history is that Tylos was the name given to Bahrain while part of Alexander the Great’s empire. After the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great a maritime expedition “discovered” the island (filled with people and a thriving civilization) and it was incorporated into the maritime empire. During these years there were heavy Greek influences in Bahrain, among many other regional influences as it was such an important maritime hub. This can be seen in the changing jewelry and stele.

And finally we move onto the last room of the museum, the Documents and Manuscripts. You can tell we’re starting to get a little tired as well with so much reading of all the information. We should have probably come here first thing as soon as it opened. But, like all other rooms in the museum, this was a cool room.

So, this will turn into a “who’s who” of documents with very little explanations and lots of pictures because some of these documents were very interesting. As soon as we walked in we saw documents pertaining to pearling, of course. But these were generic documents, what was interesting was what was beside them… For a country that was so dependent on pearling, no taxes were levied on the pearls or the divers themselves. The only direct tax was on dhow registration licences. So how did the State make all of their money? Well, when the pearling season did well the people of Bahrain became more wealthy. And when people have more money, they buy more things, specifically imported things. The government would therefore levy duties on these imports. How much could they actually make? Well, in 1928/1929 the fees for pearling and import duties amounted to 1,124,000 rupees out of a total government revenue of 1,125,000 rupees. So… pearling was very important!

Now come the pictures! With documents that have English on them we will reproduce what they say in case it’s not possible to read them from the picture (in quotation marks for directly off of the page). If they don’t have English, just the caption will be reproduced.

Document #1: A notice on slavery. “The public are reminded that it is forbidden to own slaves in Bahrain. Any person who imports, exports, buys, sells, or owns any person as a slave is liable to punishment by imprisonment and fine.” Dated August 11, 1937.

Document #2: The Italian invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia). “1. The public are informed that, until further notice, the import of goods from Italy or goods which have been manufactured in Italy is forbidden. 2. The Government of Bahrain is taking this action, which is similar to the action taken by most of the other Governments of the world, in order to prevent the continuance of Italy’s war against Abyssinia.” Dated November 10, 1935.

Document #3: “Sheikh Isa’s congratulations sent to Abdulaziz Al Saud on his recovery of his ancestral lands. Dated 1913.” We had to include this as we had learned so much about this while visiting several locations in Riyadh.

Document #4: “Jami’Al-Usul Fee Ahadeeth Al-Rasoul by Ibn Al Atheir. A collection of sayings of the Prophet Mohammed; this copy was made by Mohammed bin Ayoub Al Zar’i in 1286, and is the oldest manuscript in the Museum.”

Document #5: “Driving licences issues by the Bahrain Government. Dated 1932.”

Documents #6: Qur’ans. Of course we had to include these as they are mainstays of any respectable museum in the region.

Document #7: “The Al Adrisi Map”. This map will have a bit more of an explanation to it, and it’s the last document so that’s okay.

Abu Abdulla Mohammed bin Mohammed, known as Al Shareif Al Idrisi, lived between 1100-1166 CE and created a book about geography called ‘Nozhat Al Moshtaq Fee Ekhtiraq Al Aafaq’. In the book he divided the world into seven regions, and each of them had ten maps created, for seventy maps in total. These maps eventually made their way to Europe and played a crucial role in the development of geographical studies during the Renaissance period. In 1938 Konrad Keller published these maps as one and called it ‘The Al Adrisi Map’. The Iraqi Scientific Council then traced that map back to its origins and published the map that you see above in 1951. Interestingly, maps used to be drawn with the North towards the bottom, and with that you should be able to orient yourself and work out all of the geography as known in the 1100s.

Pfew. Done. We should really take a break now… maybe you should too. But, we can’t. We say we’re done, but we’re only done the main/permanent exhibit. Back to the lobby and to an exhibit which does not seem permanent, the visit of the Pope to Bahrain in November 2022. While in Bahrain he participated in the “Bahrain Forum for Dialogue: East and West for Human Coexistence”. These are some of the things Pope Francis used while in Bahrain.

Noooooow we can say we’re done the museum. With this picture of the lobby which has the satellite view of Bahrain on it we can start making our way to the exit.

And we take a picture of a door as we make our way out because we have been taught that intricately decorated doors are a sense of pride in the Middle East, at least that’s what our Arabic lessons have taught us!

Well… we half lied. We’re not done the museum yet. It’s time to enter the Art Gallery that’s right beside the entrance/exit. We’ve already been in the museum for two and a half hours, what’s a little more? In we go to ‘The Living Sea’!

We don’t think there’s much more to explain about what we’re about to show you than what’s on the sign as we go in, so we’ll dive right in (yes, that was done on purpose). 

The images throughout the exhibit are from three separate expeditions done by both Prince Hussain Aga Khan and Simone Piccoli off the coasts of Mexico (Revillagigedo Islands), Tonga (Vava’u), and Egypt (Sataya & Elphinstone). The pictures were great, and they were further enhanced by videos of these expeditions showing and explaining how it was to dive with these majestic creatures. It would be so cool to be able to see these animals in the wild!

Since this is an exhibit that is partnered with Focused On Nature, it has to go beyond “just” photography and has to try to promote environmental causes. In this light there were signs with information about the different animals photographed, with the biggest signs reserved for the sharks and turtles. 

Well! We’ve finished the Bahrain National Museum! We hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as we enjoyed visiting the museum. You definitely need to visit it if you’re in Bahrain. And you can see how late it is now from the change in lighting from when we went in to when we left. Not like we spent three hours inside or anything, hehe. 

Now we can take some pictures on the grounds of the museum. First of the statues we saw on our way in, then of the structure we had talked about before that’s between the parking lot and main entrance, and then we even went to check out the Bahrain National Theatre from the outside. 

But it’s time to get back to the hotel. My partner is pretty tired, and we think you may never come back to our blog if we just keep writing and writing. 

On our way back towards the hotel we pass by Beit Al Quran, a museum dedicated to ancient Quran manuscripts. Maybe we can go there later on! 

We turn around this corner, and in the middle of Manama we see this. What could it be? We have two guesses. Guess number 1 is oil related because it’s Bahrain, but a little strange to have that in a residential area. Guess number 2, which is more likely, is water storage. But it looks more oil-related to us because of our preconceptions. 

Well, let’s get some food in this mall. My partner is now pretty hungry.

No food whatsoever. Pretty much every store in the mall is for cellphones; cases, cables, screen protectors, whatever you want, except food. But, we saw some live marine animals in this randomly placed aquarium! Haha. 

Okay, but now we’re really done our day. We eat from a restaurant close to the hotel. We took this picture because this is a meat plate… without meat? We were pretty disappointed when we opened it, but the meat ended up being underneath the rice and it was delicious. Now it’s time for a much deserved rest as we recharge for another busy day tomorrow! Good night from Manama!