Muharraq was originally part of
Dilmun, a
Semitic speaking
Bronze Age polity. Later, it became the city of Arwad on the island of
Tylos (as Bahrain was referred to in antiquity), believed by some (including
Strabo and
Herodotus) to be the birthplace of
Phoenicia. At the end of Persian rule, Bahrain came under the domination of the
Seleucid Greeks, and Muharraq was the centre of a pagan cult dedicated to the ox god,
Awal. By the 5th century AD, Muharraq had become a major centre of
Nestorian Christianity, which had come to dominate the southern shores of the
Persian Gulf. As a sect, the Nestorians were often persecuted as heretics by the
Byzantine Empire, but Bahrain was outside the Empire's control, offering safety. The names of several of Muharraq's villages today reflect this Christian legacy, with Al-Dair meaning 'the monastery' and Qalali meaning a 'monk's cloisters'. Taken by the
Portuguese (1521) and the
Persians (1602), Al-Muḥarraq passed to the control of the
Āl Khalīfah dynasty in 1783 with the rest of Bahrain. ==Culture==