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.

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.

[6][7] Building 586 in Muharraq houses the headquarters of the Civil Aviation Affairs, an agency of the Ministry of Transportation.