From 1622 to the present time the control over Bahrein has been contested between the Persians and Arabs, and as the Persian power has been on the wane, the Arabian star has been in the ascendent. In 1711 the Sultan bin Seif wrested Bahrein from Persia; in 1784 the Uttubbi of El Hasa conquered it. They have held it ever since, despite the attempts of Seyid Said of Oman, of the Turks and Persians, to take it from them. The Turks have, however, succeeded in driving them out of their original kingdom of El Hasa, on the mainland of Arabia opposite, and now the Bahrein is all that remains to them of their former extensive territories. The royal family is a numerous one, being a branch of the El Khalifa tribe. They are the chiefs of the Uttubbi tribe of Arabs. Most of them, if not actually belonging to that strict sect of Arabians known as Wahabi, have strong puritanical proclivities. Our teetotalers are nothing to them in bigotry. If a vendor of intoxicating liquor started a shop on Bahrein, they would burn his house down, so that the wicked who want to drink any intoxicating liquor have to buy the material secretly from ships in the harbour. Many think it wrong to smoke, and spend their lives in prayer and fasting. Church decoration is an abomination to the Wahabi; therefore, in Bahrein the mosques are little better than barns with low minarets, for the very tall ones of other Mohammedan sects are forbidden. The Wahabi are fanatics of the deepest dye; 'there is one God, and Mohammed is his prophet,' they say with the rest of the Mohammedan world, but the followers of Abdul Wahab add, 'and in no case must Mohammed and the Imams be worshipped lest glory be detracted from God.' All titles to them are odious; no grand tombs are to be erected over their dead, no mourning is allowed; hence the cemetery at Manamah is but a pitiful place--a vast collection of circles set with rough stones, each with a small uninscribed headpiece, and the surface sprinkled with helix shells. The Wahabi would wage, if they dared, perpetual war not only against the infidel, but against such perverted individuals as those who go to worship at Mecca and other sacred shrines. The founder of this revival is reported to have beaten his sons to death for drinking wine, and to have made his daughters support themselves by spinning, but at the same time he felt himself entitled to give to a fanatical follower, who courted death for his sake, an order for an emerald palace and a large number of female slaves in the world to come.