'File 19/218 (C 84) Bahrain Succession' [‎80r] (161/210)

and went to Rumaitha taking my secretary Mr. Narayan.
Before going I gave orders for all flags to be flown
at half mast in order that the public should know
what had happened. I stopped on the way at Shaikh
Salman's house at Rafaa, he had gone to Rumaitha but
the news was not known there.
A little distance from Rumaitha I met a long pro
cession of about 60 cars with the Bahrain Petroleum
Company^ ambulance in the centre. I turned off the
road. The leading car and the whole procession stopped
and Shaikhs Mohomed, Abdullah and Salman got out and
had a conversation with me on the roadside, Shaikh
Mohomed was the spokesman and he told me that he wished
me to know at once that the family had chosen Shaikh
Salman to succeed his father and now they were taking
Shaikh Hamad to the cemetery at Rafaa. They asked me
to follow their car. All along the road the proces
sion was joined by cars which had been going out to
Rumaitha. The procession turned off the main road
across the desert to the little cemetery near the
Hanaini well in the valley below Rafaa. Shaikh Abdul—
latif, one of the Sunni Qadis, was waiting here with
a great crowd of people, all the inhabitants of the
two Rafaas. On the cliffs below the fort there were
many hundreds of women. The service was taken by
Shaikh Abdullatif, Shaikh Hamad was buried close to
the grave of Shaikh Salman bin Ahmad who was the second
ruler of Bahrain and who lived early in the 19th century.
Among the large crowd of people who were present were
Dr. Snow and Dr. Harrison, Jews, Indians, Persians and
Arabs. After the funeral I returned to Manamah. On
the way I met several cars full of people driving out
to