On 12 January, 2002 the Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Center for Culture and Research opened its doors once again as a forum for debate and exchange on current cultural, social and political issues.

Built on the land of the original majlis of Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, the current building is a modern reconstruction.

Since 2002, more than 400 artists, speakers, philosophers and poets have visited the Shaikh Ebrahim Center to share their art and thoughts in this venue dedicated to the open exchange of ideas and knowledge. To accommodate an ever larger audience, a new auditorium opened in December 2008, with a seating capacity of around 300.

SHAIKH EBRAHIM BIN MOHAMMED AL KHALIFA (mid 19th century – 1933)

Shaikh Ebrahim bin Mohammed Al Khalifa was born in the middle of the 19th century, the son of Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, the fourth ruler of Bahrain. He was the sixteenth of eighteen sons. He was nineteen when his father, Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, was exiled to India in 1869.

The battle in which his uncle was killed and his father exiled seemed to have affected him most and colored his future writing and poetry with melancholy. These events marked the young man and, unlike the paths chosen by his father and uncle, led him to avoid the field of politics. He immersed himself in the pursuit of .knowledge and found solace in poetry His first educational tour was to Makkah sometime during the 1870s, where he studied under a number of distinguished Shaikhs. Of this experience, the Bahraini historian Mohammed Ali Al Tajer wrote in his … ” book Muntadam Al Dorain that Shaikh Ebrahim ,possessed good intellect, was well versed in language literature and history as well as being aware of the “ intellectual movements of the time.