Pearling, Testimony of an Island Economy

Before oil, the Gulf's fortune was fished from the seabed. Bahrain's pearling economy, dominant from the 2nd century until Japanese cultured pearls undid it in the 1930s, survives as a single narrative trail: three offshore oyster beds, the Bu Mahir fortress from which dhows set sail, and seventeen buildings in Muharraq — merchants' residences, shops, storehouses and a mosque. UNESCO inscribed this testimony of an island economy in 2012, the last complete record of the pearling tradition.