Bahrain · Metalwork / Blacksmithing
Souq Al Tawaweesh (the historic Manama silver market, now part of the Bab Al Bahrain market area)
The forging, hammering, and intricate engraving of silver in Manama's old Souq Al Tawaweesh, a historic silver market now part of the Bab Al Bahrain market area, sustained for nearly 75 years by one of Bahrain's best-known and longest-serving silver craftsmen, Abdulrazzaq Khalid Roomi Al Roomi, who died in 2026 at the age of 96. Born in Al Amarah, southern Iraq, in 1932, Al Roomi came to Bahrain in 1948 and joined his father, Khalid, who himself worked as a silver craftsman at a shop in the same Souq Al Tawaweesh, directly extending a family silversmithing tradition across an international border and multiple generations. Al Roomi remained devoted to the traditional craft throughout his long life, learning its techniques as a child and spending decades working with fire, hammer, and intricate engraving; his small shop near Bab Al Bahrain retained elements of the trade's history until his later years, including photographs and stories stretching from the 1940s to the present day. His death marks the departure of a familiar face from the old market, where his name had been closely associated with silver craftsmanship for generations of Bahraini and Gulf customers. Bahrain's wider gold and silver market -- with stores in the old Gold Souq owned by the same families for close to 200 years, the earliest goldsmiths in this part of Bahrain documented as of Indian origin -- developed as a natural extension of the country's historic pearl trade, with Bahraini pearls and locally crafted gold and silver jewelry long sold alongside one another in the same market district.
Risk level: Critically Endangered · Not independently inscribed
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