A brief history lesson

Old Kuwait Town. Photo courtesy of British Petroleum Archives collection.

I love driving and walking around Kuwait City. It's my favourite part of the country. I'm shocked at how many new buildings are coming up in the city - the crane:building ratio is starting to compete with Dubai!

But the new stuff is not what makes me love that part of town so much - it's actually the old buildings that I get so attracted to everytime I drive around. I'm glad that so many of the old original buildings that were on the verge of collapse have finally been renovated - like the nurse's residence near Amiri Hospital and the old American Mission Hospital. I'm hoping that the palaces of Sheikh Khaz'al (behind the British Embassy and new diabetes hospital - the smaller palace of the two is more commonly known as Qasr al-Ghanim) get fixed up as well - they used to be beautiful but have almost completely disintegrated. It's such a shame that our government waits so long before finally deciding to preserve such significant bits of our history. They either tear everything down or wait until it completely falls apart, and then they decide to build a "replica village" to recreate what they tore down or neglected all these years.

There's so much history in Kuwait City that so many people, especially young Kuwaitis, just don't know about. So I'm gonna take a few minutes now to share some random little historical tidbits about Kuwait City (and environs). Many of you might already know some of these, but I'll only include facts that were unknown to at least three people that I have previously shared them with.

* The old Kuwait Town used to be built on a hill, with a gradual incline leading up from the sea toward the soor (old town wall). Both the wall and the hill were leveled after the advent of oil urbanization.
* The sea actually used to reach the first line of houses that are now on the non-sea-side of the Gulf Road (where many old diwaniyas still stand, and where the front gate of the Dickson House is). (I'm surprised at how many people I encounter don't know this!)
* In the old town, the old mudbrick houses built directly along the seafront were usually painted a bright white, and as you went further up the hill towards the desert the walls of the houses became progressively duller, until reaching the houses along the soor which were mostly unpainted and brown (mudbrick). This progression from white paint to brown mudbrick reflected the affluence of the families living inside the town (the most affluent lived on the sea, and so on up the hill).
* Four out of the five original gates of the old town wall are still standing today (the fifth was destroyed during the Iraqi invasion in 1990). Most people drive past at least one of these gates on a regular basis, on the Sheraton round-about (known as Jahra Gate), which many non-Kuwaitis actually think is just some fake monument that was built to beautify the round-about! In fact, the round-about was built because of the gate's position.
* Speaking of which, Jahra used to actually be a beautiful desert oasis. So was Fahaheel.
* In the old Kuwaiti mudbrick houses, it is usually 10˚ cooler when standing in the central courtyard (although it is outdoors), than when standing outside the gates of the house (the walls were built extremely thick to absorb the heat).
* Most old mudbrick houses consist of long and relatively narrow rectangular-shaped rooms of similar width. This is because they always used to use chandal (wooden) beams on the ceilings that were imported from India, all of which were delivered pre-cut into the same size (hence the uniformly narrow width of all rooms). The first house to break this pattern was the Dickson House, formerly the British Political Agency - in the very early 1900s Captain W. Shakespeare, one of the first PA's to Kuwait, added the second storey to the Agency in which he built a large drawing room, that had to have much larger chandal beams custom-made, and which held Kuwait's first ever fireplace (much needed too, as Kuwait's winters used to be freezing in those days!).
* Kuwait's first airport was in Nuzha.
* Ever wonder why, until recently, Kuwait had such strict laws concerning visitor visas? According to Zahra (Dickson) Freeth, in the 1960s, Western hippies used to transit in Kuwait on their way to India, and they used to leave the airport and "hang out" on the streets around town, waiting for their connecting flight. A bunch of free-loving hippies on the streets of a just-barely-modernizing Kuwait...what an interesting image!
* I could go on like this for hours, so I'll end here with a photo. This is of the gate of the old Seif Palace, and this quote was added around 1918. In Arabic it says "Low dammat lighairek ma ittasalat ilaik" which, in my own crude translation, is: "If it was left to others it would not have passed on to you." It has been speculated that this quote alludes to the way Sheikh Mubarak I came to power (I'm not going to enter into controversy here - not yet - not until I am armed with my PhD!). Anyway, of course, the quote will always remain subject to interpretation, and different people have different explanations for it. If you look carefully when driving past you can see the quote from the street, but be careful because you kind of have to crane your neck while simultaneously keeping your eyes on the road!