A'Ali Pottery And Burial Mounds

Or as the sign reads A'Ali Bottery

A'Ali is the town in which pottery making is known for as well as its burial mounds. It has been this way for many years and from the looks at the shop today it has no signs of letting up. There is a small show room as you enter this door. You can see how they use some of the pottery for decorations by using lights inside. It was quite interesting, even the brightly colored bears although there was a strange choice of colors for the painting.

In the back of the showroom you can venture outside where they make the pottery

There are two pottery stations where men sit down in a hole with their pottery wheel fast at work. They turn out hundreds of pieces of pottery and send them to the back for fire.

I was quite amazed at how they just set the pottery out some piled up in the corner, some fancy ones on a stand ready to be bought. We chose a couple of pieces and man sanded them down for us.

I got the pitcher and small minaret in the back. They are a nice addition to my slow growing collection of local pottery pieces.

While in A'Ali we decided to head to the burial grounds around the corner. There are several places of see the burial mounds for there are over 17,000 of them. I'm sure there are people who find these types of things highly interesting I wasn't impressed at all. First there is no information provided at the sites. Thrill me with information if nothing else. And as you'll see if the country of Bahrain doesn't take such an interest in preserving these sites it makes a visitor like me disappointed.

The area is extremely large and there has to be hundreds here. I wouldn't know the exact number because there is not tourist information available of how many there are here. I also took note of two other things

Right in front of the burial mounds where we drove the car up were mounds of building trash that was dumped with no regard nor respect for the site. I finding a theme here in Bahrain when it comes to history and it is much like the attitude I've found in Saudi and it isn't positive.

It was difficult to miss this new housing being built practically right on top of the burial mounds themselves. There were mounds (remind ourselves they are graves of actual people) right up to the walled villas. And of course the construction waste ended up being dumped there as well. I joked with my friend "Burial mounds there, garbage mounds there and haunted houses there" I found the whole thing a bit sad.