Pearling Path

The Pearling Path is a trail of about three and a half kilometres through the old town of Muharraq, in Bahrain, which links the houses, shops and mosques of people who lived by the pearl. UNESCO inscribed it in 2012 as Pearling, Testimony of an Island Economy, together with three oyster beds offshore and the seashore at the southern tip of Muharraq island, where the pearling boats set out each summer.

For centuries the shallow waters around Bahrain produced some of the finest natural pearls in the world, and pearling was the main source of the islands' wealth. Each season divers went down again and again, weighted with stones and a nose clip, gathering oysters by hand while the crew hauled them up on ropes. The trade linked Bahrain with India and with the ports of the Iranian coast across the Gulf, and the merchants, captains, divers and craftsmen came from many communities, Arab and Persian among them.

The trail begins at Bu Maher Fort, built in 1840 on the southern tip of Muharraq, and passes merchants' houses such as the Siyadi house with its carved wooden doors and windows, the homes of divers, warehouses, coffee houses and a mosque. Pearling collapsed in the 1920s and 1930s, when Japanese cultured pearls flooded the market, and soon after oil was discovered in Bahrain in 1932. Restored buildings and new visitor centres along the path now keep the memory of the pearlers alive.