Tylos

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This article is part of the series on: History of Bahrain

Ancient Bahrain

Dilmun

Tylos and Mishmahig

Awal

Historical region

Islam in Bahrain

Al-Ala'a Al-Hadrami

Qarmatians

Portuguese occupation

Muqrin ibn Zamil

Antonio Correia

Safavid hegemony (1602-1717)

1717 Oman invasion of Bahrain

Al Khalifa and the British Protectorate

1783 Al Khalifa invasion of Bahrain

Perpetual Truce of Peace and Friendship (1861)

First Oil Well (1932)

20th Century Bahrain

March 1965 Intifada

1981 coup d'état attempt

Uprising 1994-2000

2000s in Bahrain

Forum for the Future

Topical

Military history of Bahrain

Timeline of Bahrain history

Bahrain was referred to by the Greeks as Tylos, the centre of pearl trading, when Nearchus came to discover it serving under Alexander the Great. ^[1] From the 6th to 3rd century B.C. Bahrain was included in Persian Empire by Achaemenians, an Iranian dynasty.^[2] The Greek admiral Nearchus is believed to have been the first of Alexander's commanders to visit this islands, and he found a verdant land that was part of a wide trading network; he recorded: “That in the island of Tylos, situated in the Persian Gulf, are large plantations of cotton tree, from which are manufactured clothes called sindones, a very different degrees of value, some being costly, others less expensive. The use of these is not confined to India, but extends to Arabia.”^[3] The Greek historian, Theophrastus, states that much of the islands were covered in these cotton trees and that Tylos was famous for exporting walking canes engraved with emblems that were customarily carried in Babylon^[4].

It is not known whether Bahrain was part of the Seleucid Empire, although the archaeological site at Qalat Al Bahrain has been proposed as a Seleucid base in the Gulf^[5]. Alexander had planned to settle the eastern shores of the Gulf with Greek colonists, and although it is not clear that this happened on the scale he envisaged, Tylos was very much part of the Hellenised world: the language of the upper classes was Greek (although Aramaic was in everyday use), while Zeus was worshipped in the form of the Arabian sun-god Shams^[6]. Tylos even became the site of Greek athletic contests ^[7].

The name Tylos is thought to be a Hellenisation of the Semitic, Tilmun (from Dilmun)^[8]. The term Tylos was commonly used for the islands until Ptolemy’s Geographia when the inhabitants are referred to as 'Thilouanoi'^[9]. Some place names in Bahrain go back to the Tylos era, for instance, the residential suburb of Arad in Muharraq, is believed to originate from "Arados", the ancient Greek name for Muharraq island^[10].

The ancient Greeks speculated as to whether the Phoenicians were originally from Tylos. According to the 19th century German classicist, Arnold Heeren: “In the Greek geographers, for instance, we read of two islands, named Tyrus or Tylos, and Aradus, which boased that they were the mother country of the Phoenicians, and exhibited relics of Phoenician temples.”^[11] The people of Tyre in particular have long maintained Gulf origins, and the similarity in the words “Tylos” and “Tyre” has been commented upon.^[12]

With the waning of Seleucid Greek power, Tylos was incorporated into Characene or Mesenian, the state founded in what today is Kuwait by Hyspaosines in 127BC. Inscriptions on coins found in Bahrain indicate that Hyspoasines occupied the islands, (and they also mention his wife, Thalassia). From the third century B.C. to arrival of Islam in the seventh A.D., Bahrain was controlled by two other Iranian dynasties of Parthians and Sassanids.

By about 250 B.C., Seleucids lost their tritories to Parthians, an Iranian tribe from Central Asia. 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. ^[13]

In the third century A.D., the Sasanids succeeded the Parthians and held area until the rise of Islam four centuries later. ^[14] Ardashir, the first ruler of Iranian Sassanians dynasty marched forward Oman and Bahrain and defeat Sanatruq ^[15] (or Satiran^[2]), probably the Parthian governor of Bahrain.^[16] He appointed his son Shapur I as governor of Bahrain. Shapur constructed a new city there and named it Batan Ardashir after his father.^[2] At this time, Bahrain incorporated in the southern Sassanid province covering over the Persian Gulfs southern shore plus the archipelago of Bahrain.^[17] 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 ^[2] (In Middle-Persian/Pahlavi means "ewe-fish".^[18]) included the Bahrain archipelago which earlier called Aval, but later, in the Islamic era, became known as Bahrain. ^{[2] [17]}

By the fifth century Bahrain was a centre for Nestorian Christianity, with Samahij the seat of bishops. In 410, according to the Oriental Syriac Church synodal records, a bishop named Batai was excommunicated from the church in Bahrain. ^[19]It was also the site Bahrain of worship of a shark deity called Awal. Worshippers reputedly built a large statue to Awal in Muharraq, although it has now been lost, and for many centuries after Tylos, the islands of Bahrain were known as ‘Awal’.

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