Palgrave's description of Manama's coffee houses in the mid-19th century portrays them as cosmopolitan venues in contrast to what he describes as the 'closely knit and bigoted universe of central Arabia'. Palgrave describes a people with an open – even urbane – outlook: "Of religious controversy I have never heard one word. In short, instead of Zelators and fanatics, camel-drivers and Bedouins, we have at Bahrain something like 'men of the world, who know the world like men' a great relief to the mind; certainly it was so to mine."