Pre-Islamic Bahrain - Tylos

/ bahranihistory
Pre-Islamic Bahrain - Tylos
Bahrain was referred to by the Greeks as Tylos, the centre of pearl trading, when Nearchus came to discover it serving under Alexander the Great.[1] From the 6th to 3rd century BC Bahrain was included in Persian Empire by Achaemenians, an Iranian dynasty.[ 2] The Greek admiral Nearchus is believed to have been the first of Alexander's commanders to visit this islands, and he found a verdant land that was part of a wide trading network; he recorded: “That in the island of Tylos, situated in the Persian Gulf, are large plantations of cotton tree, from which are manufactured clothes called sindones, a very different degrees of value, some being costly, others less expensive. The use of these is not confined to India, but extends to Arabia.”[ 3] The Greek historian, Theophrastus, states that much of the islands were covered in these cotton trees and that Tylos was famous for exporting walking canes engraved with emblems that were customarily carried in Babylon.[ 4] Ares was also worshipped by the ancient Baharna and the Greek colonists.[ 5]
It is not known whether Bahrain was part of the Seleucid Empire, although the archaeological site at Qalat Al Bahrain has been proposed as a Seleucid base in the Persian Gulf.[ 6] Alexander had planned to settle the eastern shores of the Persian Gulf with Greek colonists, and although it is not clear that this happened on the scale he envisaged, Tylos was very much part of the Hellenised world: the language of the upper classes was Greek (although Aramaic was in everyday use), while Zeus was worshipped in the form of the Arabian sun-god Shams.[ 7] Tylos even became the site of Greek athletic contests.[ 8]
The name Tylos is thought to be a Hellenisation of the Semitic, Tilmun (from Dilmun).[ 9] The term Tylos was commonly used for the islands until Ptolemy’s Geographia when the inhabitants are referred to as 'Thilouanoi'.[10] Some place names in Bahrain go back to the Tylos era, for instance, the residential suburb of Arad in Muharraq, is believed to originate from "Arados", the ancient Greek name for Muharraq island.[11]
Herodotus's account (written c. 440 BC) refers to the Io and Europa myths. (History, I:1).
According to the Persians best informed in history, the Phoenicians began the quarrel. These people, who had formerly dwelt on the shores of the Erythraean Sea (the eastern part of the Arabia peninsula), having migrated to the Mediterranean and settled in the parts which they now inhabit, began at once, they say, to adventure on long voyages, freighting their vessels with the wares of Egypt and Assyria...
-Herodotus
The Greek historian Strabo believed the Phoenicians originated from Bahrain.[12] Herodotus also believed that the homeland of the Phoenicians was Bahrain.[13][14] This theory was accepted by the 19th-century German classicist Arnold Heeren who said that: "In the Greek geographers, for instance, we read of two islands, named Tyrus or Tylos, and Arad, Bahrain, which boasted that they were the mother country of the Phoenicians, and exhibited relics of Phoenician temples."[15] The people of Tyre in particular have long maintained Persian Gulf origins, and the similarity in the words "Tylos" and "Tyre" has been commented upon.[16] However, there is little evidence of occupation at all in Bahrain during the time when such migration had supposedly taken place.[17] Later classicist theories were proposed prior to modern archaeological excavations which revealed no disruption of Phoenician societies between 3200 BC and 1200 BC.[18]
With the waning of Seleucid Greek power, Tylos was incorporated into Characene or Mesenian, the state founded in what today is Kuwait by Hyspaosines in 127 BC. A building inscriptions found in Bahrain indicate that Hyspoasines occupied the islands, (and it also mention his wife, Thalassia).