Bahrain

Bahrain is an archipelago of low desert islands in the Gulf, joined to Saudi Arabia since 1986 by a causeway. Its name means ‘two seas’, perhaps for the freshwater springs that once bubbled up through the salt water offshore. Land reclamation has pushed much of the coast outwards. Inland the main island rises to the low hill of Jebel Dukhan, and nearby a lone mesquite, the Tree of Life, has survived for about four centuries in the desert.

Bahrain was the heart of Dilmun, a Bronze Age trading power between Mesopotamia and the Indus valley, and thousands of burial mounds around A’ali date from that age. Greek writers called the island Tylos. Islam arrived in the seventh century; the Portuguese held a fort here from 1521 until 1602. A run of British treaties, the first in 1820, made it a protectorate. In 1932 oil was struck at Jebel Dukhan, the first find on the Arab side of the Gulf, and Bahrain became independent in August 1971.

Pearling shaped the old town of Muharraq, where a trail of merchants’ houses, offshore oyster beds and a seashore fort is a World Heritage Site. Muhammar, rice sweetened with dates, comes with grilled fish, and Bahraini halwa is stirred for hours in copper pans. Since 2004 the desert circuit at Sakhir has hosted Formula One. The economy runs on oil refining, an aluminium smelter opened in 1971, banking and Islamic finance, and visitors who drive across the causeway.