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It will probably’t vie with the glitz and glamour of neighbouring Dubai and Qatar, however the tiny island nation of Bahrain has a wealthy historical past, and lately a clutch of wonderful museums has sprung as much as protect its heritage.
Hidden away in pockets of conventional structure amid the city sprawl, they make for a rewarding few days’ exploration, says George Kipouros in Wanderlust – and, for the curious, there are different extra energetic methods to have interaction with native tradition, from live shows of the native conventional music to classes in pearl diving, as soon as the island’s most important business.
Bahrain means two seas in Arabic, maybe a reference to the submarine freshwater springs the place the world’s finest oyster beds are discovered.
From the fourth to the primary millennium BC, Bahrain lay on the coronary heart of a civilisation that specialists consider was Dilmun, the buying and selling nation referred to in historic Mesopotamian texts. Deep within the island’s coronary heart lies an enormous desert discipline of burial mounds, which type the world’s largest historic necropolis.
Lots of the treasures discovered there are displayed within the new Nationwide and Qala’at al-Bahrain museums. These embody finely carved soapstone seals, and likewise votive choices of pearls, and useless snakes, suggesting a ritual that will have been linked to the parable of Gilgamesh, which was a mannequin for the Biblical story of Eden.
Within the fantasy, Dilmun is as a paradise the place Gilgamesh finds the flower of immortality in a freshwater sea, solely to have it stolen by a serpent. Specialists counsel the “flower” was a pearl: Gilgamesh recovers it like a pearl diver, with stones tied to his toes.
Within the outdated city of Muharraq, a path known as the Pearling Path connects a collection of wonderful Nineteenth-century buildings, together with elaborate pearl retailers’ mansions. Amongst them are a dozen or so charming small museums, galleries and live performance halls overseen by the Sheikh Ebrahim Centre for Tradition, which have fun the island’s up to date arts and conventional tradition.
See pearldiving.bh for data on pearl-diving journeys
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