Al-Zarah (Bahrayn)

[1] In the early Islamic period it was considered to be part of the region of al-Bahrayn, which then encompassed much of the eastern Arabian shoreline and adjacent territories,[2] and mentions of it were included in accounts of the area by geographers such as Ibn al-Faqih (fl.

[3] The anonymous author of the Kitab al-manasik wa-amakin turuq al-hajj wa-ma'alim al-jazirah, writing in the ninth or tenth centuries, described it as laying between al-Uqayr and Qulay'a, and added that its inhabitants fed primarily on dates and fish.

The Saudi historian Hamad al-Jassir identified al-Zarah with the modern al-Awamiyyah, five kilometers west of al-Qatif, while D. T. Potts suggested that it may have been located at the more southerly Dhahran.

[6] By the early seventh century al-Bahrayn had come to be dominated by the Arab tribes of Abd al-Qays, Bakr ibn Wa'il, and Tamim,[7] but the town itself was also likely host to a considerable population of non-Arab residents.

During the ridda wars in the caliphate of Abu Bakr, the Persian governor Azad Peroz and a number of Magians refused to pay the jizya and fortified themselves in the town, which was then subjected to a siege by al-Ala ibn al-Hadrami.