British archaeologist honoured with OBE proud to unearth remarkable past of 'second home' Bahrain

Professor Timothy Insoll has helped to reveal the Gulf nation's rich Islamic history, but has also worked on other periods

Professor Timothy Insoll won an OBE in the recent New Year's Honours list in the UK. Photo: Professor Timothy Insoll

For more than two decades, the British archaeologist professor Timothy Insoll has been engaged in a fascinating enterprise: uncovering the rich history of Bahrain.

He has helped to reveal the secrets of Bilad Al Qadeem (the capital of the island during the Abbasid caliphate), recorded Islamic inscriptions and discovered much about the country’s Christian past.

For these and other achievements, and what they have done for UK-Bahraini relations, Prof Insoll was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the recent UK New Year Honours list.

Prof Insoll, 58, the founder and director of the Centre for Islamic Archaeology at the University of Exeter in the UK, told The National that the honour recognised not only his work, but also that of Bahraini colleagues. He hopes that it will generate “a lot more publicity for the rich archaeology of Bahrain”.

Journey of discovery

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  The site of a Christian building discovered under the ruins of an ancient mosque in Muharraq, Bahrain. Khushnum Bhandari / The National

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  This wall was found under an ancient mosque in the middle of a Muslim graveyard in Muharraq. Khushnum Bhandari / The National

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  A living area, kitchen and workshops in a Christian home that likely belonged to a bishop dating back to the fourth century. Khushnum Bhandari / The National

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  Teams will resume excavations and dig deeper into the site this month. Khushnum Bhandari / The National

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  Experts at the archeological site have uncovered the first concrete evidence that Christianity existed in Bahrain before the spread of Islam. Khushnum Bhandari / The National

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  The archeological site is inside a cemetery where families still come to pray for the departed. Khushnum Bhandari / The National

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  The excavation project began in 2019. Khushnum Bhandari / The National

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  Across the burial ground are wooden plaques with inscriptions in memory of those who have passed away. Khushnum Bhandari / The National

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  Dr Salman Al Mahari, director of archaeology and museums at the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities in Manama, says work will resume aiming to find more treasures of the past. Khushnum Bhandari / The National

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  A small glazed pottery piece with the mark of a cross found at the excavation site. Photo: Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities

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  Experts from the UK's Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies of the University of Exeter with a Bahraini team excavating the site. Photo: Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities

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  A closer view of the excavation site that uncovered a Christian dwelling under a 300-year-old mosque in Bahrain. Photo: Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities

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  An aerial view of an excavation site. Photo: Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities

“More or less anywhere that you dig in Bahrain, you find archaeology; it’s just so densely packed with archaeology, it’s absolutely amazing,” Prof Insoll said.

Since 2001, Prof Insoll has spent about a month each year, usually in November, in Bahrain carrying out archaeological work.

His long association with the Gulf nation began when he saw that there was “a gap” in its archaeology, with detailed work having been carried out, for example, on the Dilmun civilisation (about 2300BC to 500BC) and the Tylos period (300BC to 300CE), but with much less analysis of the more recent Islamic period.

He approached the Crown Prince, Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, who since 2020 has also been the Prime Minister, with a view to studying Bahrain’s Islamic archaeology.

“It was early in my career then and I was very lucky in the Crown Prince deciding that he would support this financially, as did the Arts and Humanities Research Board [now the Arts and Humanities Research Council] in the UK. It’s just grown from there,” he said.

Without the Crown Prince's “financial and moral support”, Prof Insoll and his colleagues “wouldn’t have been able to achieve half the things that we’ve done”.

Digging deeper

Prof Insoll’s interest in the Islamic period came because when he started training as an archaeologist three decades ago, art historians and architectural historians dominated research.

“They looked at beautiful buildings and palaces and artworks that are produced by the elites,” he said. “The actual archaeology of the everyday people, the middle classes, was neglected.

“All the sorts of things we would take for granted in non-Islamic archaeology, if I can put it like that – looking at diet, looking at mortality patterns, looking at identities – weren’t being studied in Islamic archaeology.”

Carried out under the auspices of the Early Islamic Bahrain project, his work in Bahrain began with excavations on the outskirts of Manama and has since encompassed sites across the country.

Professor Timothy Insoll has worked closely with Bahraini authorities to provide unique insight into the country's heritage. Photo: wikimedia commons

Bahrain’s archaeological richness is the result, Prof Insoll said, of its geographic position, which made it a stopping-off point for traders who brought material from India and China before heading up the Gulf. Bahrain was also just a “short hop” by boat to Saudi Arabia.

Prof Insoll has co-operated closely with Dr Salman Almahari, director general of antiquities for the Bahrain Authority of Culture and Antiquities, and said that the input of Bahraini archaeologists has been central to the projects he has been involved with.

Prof Insoll’s wife, Dr Rachel MacLean, herself a distinguished archaeologist, has also been a key colleague. The couple wrote the book An Archaeological Guide to Bahrain.

At Bilad Al Qadeem, the Bahraini capital in the 9th and 10th centuries, Prof Insoll and his colleagues have uncovered, among much else, housing, shops and a mosque. The Al Khamis Visitor’s Centre has subsequently been developed there, representing the first on-site display of Islamic archaeology in this part of the Gulf.

Another key initiative has been creation of Bahrain’s first inventory of pre-1900 Islamic funerary inscriptions. These were scattered across the country, but are now catalogued and protected.

Groundbreaking projects

The first known Christian church was discovered in Samaheej, a village on the northern coast of Muharraq Island. Photo: Professor Timothy Insoll

A recent project has been the excavation of the first known Christian building in Bahrain. Built by the Nestorian Church or Church of the East, this was probably the palace of a bishop who controlled a large area of the Gulf region.

“It’s a very substantial building,” Prof Insoll said. “We found it underneath a mound in a cemetery, which the local community knew about, so we’re very grateful to them. They had this idea that a Christian building was there and they were proven right.”

This building was occupied from the middle of the fifth century to the middle of the eighth century, when the population converted to Islam.

Many objects from this site, such as coins, glass, pottery and plaster crucifixes, have been taken to the Bahrain National Museum.

Bahrain is “very proud” of its identity as a Muslim nation, but Prof Insoll said that the authorities have always been relaxed about the exploration of previous periods.

“That was one of the attractions for me working there,” he said. “We’ve always had the ability to investigate what we wanted and not to feel constricted in how we’ve interpreted it. They’ve always been open with regard to their past.”

While Prof Insoll has spent much of his career investigating Bahrain’s archaeological heritage, he has also carried out extensive work elsewhere, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, with eastern Ethiopia being an important current location.

Alongside the Crown Prince of Bahrain, a key figure to have supported his work is Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Ruler of Sharjah, who supports Prof Insoll’s position as Professor of African and Islamic Archaeology.

“Without Sheikh Sultan’s generosity, none of this could have taken place on a broader scale because I wouldn’t have had the institutional home in order to be able to do the research,” he said.

The University of Exeter is, Prof Insoll said, the top-ranked UK university for Arabian and Islamic studies and among the best globally, something that Sheikh Sultan’s support has been central to.

In November he was in Bahrain looking at a qanat water channel system in Hamad Town in the north of the country, and he is working with the Ministry of Municipalities Affairs and Agriculture to create the park on the site.

So, about a quarter of a century since his association with Bahrain began, Prof Insoll is continuing to reveal the archaeological secrets of the Gulf nation.

“It’s my second home. I’ve absolutely loved it. My daughter has been there since she was one year old. It’s such a long period of time,” he said.