History of Bahrain - Ancient History

Ancient History

Bahrain has been proposed as the possible site of Dilmun, a land mentioned by Mesopotamians as a trade partner, source of raw material, copper, and entrepot of the Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilization trade route. The earliest mentioning of Dilmun is Mesopotamian sources was in the Early Dynastic III Period, when Ur-Nanshe (circa 2520 BC) proclaimed that;

"the ships of Dilmun, from the foreign land, brought him wood as a tribute".

However, the exact location of Dilmun is unclear, it might be associated with the islands of Bahrain, Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and nearby Iranian coast in the Persian Gulf. One of the early settlements discovered in Bahrain suggests that Sennacherib, king of Assyria (707–681 BC) attacked northeast Arabia and captured the Bahrain islands.

From the 6th century BC to the 3rd century BC Bahrain was included in the Persian Empire by the Achaemenids, an Iranian dynasty. Bahrain was referred to by the Greeks as "Tylos", the centre of pearl trading, when Nearchus discovered it while serving under Alexander the Great. From the 3rd century BC to the arrival of Islam in the 7th century AD, Bahrain was controlled by two other Iranian dynasties, the Parthians and the Sassanids. By about 130 BC, the 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 along the southern coast of the Persian Gulf.

In the 3rd century AD, the Sassanids succeeded the Parthians and held the area until the arrival of Islam four centuries later. Ardashir, the first ruler of the Iranian Sassanid dynasty marched to Oman and Bahrain and defeated Sanatruq (or Satiran), probably the Parthian governor of Bahrain. He appointed his son Shapur I as governor of Bahrain. Shapur constructed a new city there and named it Batan Ardashir after his father. At this time, Bahrain incorporated the southern Sassanid province covering the Persian Gulf's southern shore plus the archipelago of Bahrain. The southern province of the Sassanids was subdivided into three districts; Haggar (now al-Hafuf province, Saudi Arabia), Batan Ardashir (now al-Qatif province, Saudi Arabia), and Mishmahig (now Bahrain Island) (In Middle-Persian/Pahlavi it means "ewe-fish").