Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa

Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa (1872–1942) was Hakim (ruler) of Bahrain from the death of his father, Isa bin Ali, on 9 December 1932 until his own death on 20 February 1942, and had been deputy ruler in fact since 1923. The second of Isa bin Ali's sons to survive to adulthood, he ruled through the adviser Charles Belgrave, founded municipal government, and presided over the beginning of Bahrain's oil age: the first well on the western shore of the Gulf entered production in 1932. He is not his great-grandson, the present King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa (born 1950), who has his own record in this museum. ^{1 2}

Hamad was born on 6 February 1872, the second-born of Sheikh Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa's eight sons — his elder brother died in 1893 — and received a private education. After the unrest that followed the application of British Indian law in Bahrain, the British forced his father to abdicate in 1923, and Hamad was officially proclaimed Deputy Ruler on 26 May 1923. In 1926 Charles Belgrave arrived as government adviser, and under Hamad's deputy rule Bahrain gained municipal government and reforms in education, surveying and internal security. He had already, as crown prince, established the first customs office in Manama in 1917 and built a port in 1923. On his father's death on 9 December 1932 he succeeded as Hakim, his appointment being made official on 9 February 1933. ¹

Hamad's reign was the age of oil's arrival. Under the Bahrain Petroleum Company the search he authorised bore fruit in 1932, when the first oil well on the western side of the Persian Gulf began production. A bridge linking Manama with Muharraq island opened in 1941, and electricity, water, health and education services were developed across his territory. He lived from about 1925 at the Al-Sakhir Palace, and held the British honours KCIE and CSI. ¹

Hamad married four times and had ten children, among them Salman bin Hamad (1894–1961), who succeeded him, and a younger son also named Abdullah (1915–1973). His younger brother Abdullah bin Isa Al Khalifa (1883–1966), the education minister and chief judge, has his own record in this museum; the brotherhood of the two men is recorded once, in Hamad's data record, and the father–son edge to Salman is recorded once, in Salman's. Hamad died on 20 February 1942 at Al Rumaitha and was buried in the Al Hunaynya Cemetery next to his ancestor Shaikh Salman bin Ahmed Al Khalifa. ^{1 2}

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