Bahrani

The Baharna (بحارنة) are the indigenous Shia Muslim inhabitants of Bahrain who inhabited the area before the arrival of Sunni Muslim Bedouin tribes from Najd, particularly by Banu Utbah in the 18th century which the Bahraini royal family is from. They are generally regarded by scholars and Bahraini people to be the original inhabitants of the Bahrain archipelago. Most Shi'i Bahraini citizens are Baharna. Regions with most of the population are in Eastern Arabia (Bahrain, Qatif, al-Hasa), with historical diaspora populations in Kuwait, (see Baharna in Kuwait), Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, the western coast of Iran, and United States. Some Bahrainis are from other parts of the world too. The origin of the Baharna is debated; there are different theories regarding their origins. Several Western scholars believe the Baharna originate from Bahrain's ancient population and pre-Islamic population which consisted of partially-Christianized Arabs, Arab Aramaic-speaking agriculturalists. a small amount of Persian Zoroastrians, and a smaller amount of Jews According to one historian, Arab settlements in Bahrain may have begun around 300 B.C. and control of the island was maintained by the Rabyah tribe, who converted to Islam in 630 A.D. There are some gaps and inconsistencies in the genealogies of those claiming descent from the Banu Abd al-Qays in Bahrain, therefore Baharna are probably descendants of an ethnically-mixed population of mostly Arab origins. The Bahrani Arabic dialect exhibits Akkadian, Aramaic and Syriac features. The sedentary people of pre-Islamic Bahrain were Arabean Aramaic speakers and to some degree Persian speakers, while Syriac functioned as a liturgical language. The Bahrani dialect might have borrowed the Akkadian, Aramaic and Syriac features from Mesopotamian Arabic. According to Robert Bertram Serjeant, the Baharna may be the last of the "descendants of converts from the original population of Christians (Aramaeans), Jews and ancient Persians (Majus) inhabiting the island and cultivated coastal provinces of Eastern Arabia at the time of the Arab conquest".