Eastern Arabia
Tylos

The island of Bahrain was referred to by the ancient Greeks as "Tylos" (Ancient Greek: Τύλος) and was known for its pearls. From the 6th to 3rd century BC Bahrain was part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. The Greek admiral Nearchus is believed to have been the first of Alexander's commanders to visit the island, and he found a verdant land that was part of a wide trading network. He recorded: “In the island of Tylos, situated in the Persian Gulf, are large plantations of cotton trees, from which are manufactured clothes called sindones, of different degrees of value, some being costly, others less expensive. The use of these is mostly confined to India, but extends also to Arabia.” The Greek historian, Theophrastus, states that much of the archipelago was covered in these cotton trees and noted that textiles were a major industry. According to him, Tylos was also famous for exporting engraved walking canes popular in Babylon.

It is not known whether Bahrain was part of the Seleucid Empire, although the archaeological site at Qalat Al Bahrain has been proposed as a Seleucid base in the Persian Gulf. Alexander had planned to settle the eastern shores of the Persian Gulf with Greek colonists, and although it is not clear that this happened on the scale he envisaged, Tylos was very much part of the Hellenised world: the language of the upper classes was Greek (although Aramaic was in everyday use), while Zeus was worshipped in the form of the Arabian sun-god Shams. Tylos even became the site of Greek athletic contests.

The name Tylos is thought to be a Hellenisation of the Semitic "Tilmun" (from Dilmun). The term "Tylos" was commonly used for the archipelago; Ptolemy 's Geographia when the inhabitants are referred to as "Thilouanoi" ("inhabitants of Tylos"). Some place names in Bahrain go back to the Tylos era; for instance, the residential suburb of Arad, located in Muharraq, is believed to originate from "Arados", the ancient Greek name for the island of Muharraq.

The Greek historians Herodotus and Strabo both believed the Phoenicians originated from Bahrain. This theory was accepted by the 19th-century German classicist Arnold Heeren who said that: "In the Greek geographers, for instance, we read of two islands, named Tyrus or Tylos, and Arad, Bahrain, which boasted that they were the mother country of the Phoenicians, and exhibited relics of Phoenician temples." The people of Tyre in particular have long maintained Persian Gulf origins, and the similarity in the words "Tylos" and "Tyre" has been commented upon.

Herodotus 's account (written c. 430 BC) refers to Phoenicians inhabiting the shores of the Persian Gulf:

According to the Persians, who are best informed in history, the Phoenicians began the quarrel. These people, who had formerly dwelt in the far east and then to the shores of the Erythraean Sea, having migrated to the Mediterranean and settled in the parts which they now inhabit, began at once, they say, to adventure on long voyages, freighting their vessels with the wares of Egypt and Assyria...

With the waning of Seleucid Greek power, Tylos was incorporated into Characene, the state founded by Hyspaosines in 127 BC in modern-day Kuwait. A building inscription found in Bahrain indicates that Hyspoasines occupied the islands.
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