'File 12/1 II Persian Claim to Bahrain, April 1946-December 1950' [‎6r] (11/20)

losing their properties. The Sunni Persians — they still
are Persians to all extent and purpose — travel abroad to
Persia and India, they speak Persian among themselves,
their children attend the Government schools and they all
belong to the Shafi sect, the Arabs and the Ruling Family
are Malikis. Commercially and socially they are closely
connected with the Holis Group of people who migrated from the Arab shores of the Gulf to the Persian side over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many of whom have since returned to the Arabian Peninsula. and have little sympathy with
their Shia countrymen. They never intermarry with the
Arabs, who regard them and the Holis Group of people who migrated from the Arab shores of the Gulf to the Persian side over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many of whom have since returned to the Arabian Peninsula. , as Persians. They
have vested interests in the country and in Persia they
are a minority so it is not likely that they would welcome
Persian domination. But here again there are young men
among them who are capable of wishing to see the Persians
in Bahrain and some of the older men are anti-British and
anti-Government. The sons of Mohomed Tyeb Khunji have
for a long time been suspect#!! and one of the sons of an
old Sunni Persian Shaikh, who died recently in Bahrain,
edits a newspaper in Teheran and his brother is in Govern
ment service there. Men of this type would willingly
lend their help to the Persian cause.
6. The Holis Group of people who migrated from the Arab shores of the Gulf to the Persian side over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many of whom have since returned to the Arabian Peninsula. are Sunni Persians, of the Shafi sect,
who have been established in Bahrain for several genera
tions. They and the Sunni Persians claim that their ances
tors were Arabs who migrated from Arabia to Persia many
centuries ago, some of them, later, recrossed the Gulf to
Bahrain and to other Arab states such as ^attar and Oman.
They call themselves Arabs but the Bahama and the Bahrain
Arabs invariably refer to them as Holis Group of people who migrated from the Arab shores of the Gulf to the Persian side over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many of whom have since returned to the Arabian Peninsula. . Few of them
have been in Bahrain for more than two or three generations
and in most cases, where the facts are known, the founders
of the families were persons of small importance such as
water carriers, charcoal burners and sweet makers. They
are not really liked by the Arabs or by the Bahama and they
do not intermarry with the Arabs. There have been a few