Bilad al-Qadeem (Arabic: البلاد القديم, The old country) is a suburb of Manama, the capital city of Bahrain.

In the 1600s, the visiting Portuguese explorer Pedro Teixeira noted that the town cultivated an extensive amount of wheat and barley.

[2] Prior to the Portuguese invasion in 1519, Bilad al-Qadeem served as the provincial capital of Bahrain and did so again later when Safavid rule was restored in 1602.

The town was traditionally a centre for Twelver Shi`ism, particularly in the Usuli theological thought, and was the seat of the chief mujtahid of the islands, who was the second most influential political figure after the Persian governor.

The cleric, locally known as Shaikh al-Ra'is (Arabic: شيخ الرئيس), was carefully chosen from the Safavid capital, Isfahan.