Jarwanid

The Jarwanids were an Arab dynasty of the Bani Malik clan that ruled al-Qatif and al-Ahsa in eastern Arabia in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Their founder Jarwan ibn Nasir al-Maliki, based at al-Qatif, drove out the forces of the Muntafiq chief Saʿid ibn Mughamis and overthrew the Usfurids around 1383, establishing an emirate over the old Bahrain region.

Contemporary writers such as Ibn Battuta and Ibn Hajar called them extreme Rafida. Modern scholars debate whether they were Ismaʿilis or Twelver Shiʿites, though Twelver scholars filled the judgeships and the office of market inspector under their rule, and prayers were said in the mosques according to the Shiʿite formula.

Arabic sources date the emirate to 1392 to 1417. The Jabrids of the Banu Uqayl Bedouin clan deposed and killed its last ruler in al-Qatif and by 1440 had taken over al-Ahsa, Qatif and the Bahrain islands.