Kuwaitالكويت

People lived on Failaka Island in Kuwait Bay by around 2000 BC, when it was an outpost of the Dilmun trading culture centred on Bahrain. After Alexander's campaigns, a Greek garrison built a fort and temple there and called the island Ikaros. On the mainland, the bay offered one of the few good harbours at the head of the Gulf, and the name Kuwait comes from a small fort (kut) that stood there.

In the early 18th century clans of the Bani Utub moved from central Arabia to the bay. In 1752 they chose Sabah bin Jaber as their leader, and the Al Sabah have ruled ever since. The town grew on long-distance trade: Kuwaiti dhows carried dates from Basra to India and East Africa and returned with timber, spices and cloth, while caravans linked the port to Aleppo and Baghdad. Pearling and boat-building employed most men.

Ottoman Iraq claimed authority over Kuwait, and in 1899 Sheikh Mubarak, known as Mubarak the Great, signed a secret agreement giving Britain control of foreign relations in return for protection. Kuwait stayed a British protectorate until 1961. The Saudi-backed Ikhwan attacked in 1920 and were stopped at the Red Fort in Jahra; the town then built a mud wall whose gates still stand along today's ring road.

Oil was found at Burgan in 1938 and exported from 1946. Within a generation the old mud town was bulldozed and replaced by a planned modern city of ring roads, ministries and suburbs. Independence came on 19 June 1961, Iraq immediately claimed Kuwait, and British and then Arab League troops deterred an attack. A constitution in 1962 created the National Assembly, which became the most assertive elected body in the Gulf.

On 2 August 1990 Iraq invaded, annexed Kuwait as its 19th province and held it for seven months. A US-led coalition drove Iraqi forces out, and liberation came on 26 February 1991, but retreating troops set more than 600 oil wells on fire. The years since brought reconstruction, the vote for women in 2005, repeated clashes between parliament and government, and in May 2024 the suspension of parliament by Emir Mishal. From 28 February 2026 Kuwait was struck by Iranian missiles and drones as part of the wider Iran war, hitting the airport, oil and power infrastructure.

Kuwait has about 5 million residents, but only around a third are citizens. The rest are foreign workers and their families, above all from India, Egypt, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Pakistan and Syria, working under the kafala sponsorship system. They run shops, build, cook, clean, nurse and teach, and their presence shapes the food, the languages heard and the city's districts.

Citizenship is tightly held and carries a full welfare package: state jobs, housing loans, free health care and education. Among citizens, old distinctions still matter: the hadhar (settled town families, including the merchant elite) and the badu (families of Bedouin origin), Sunni and Shia, and those of Persian or Najdi descent. Since 2024 the state has revoked tens of thousands of citizenships, mostly of people naturalised by marriage or through disputed files, a campaign that has divided families.

The bidoon (literally 'without') are stateless residents, around 100,000 people whose families never received citizenship when it was registered after 1959. Many lack documents, which limits their access to jobs, schooling and marriage registration. Their status is one of the country's most sensitive human-rights issues.

Social life revolves around the diwaniya, an evening gathering usually held by men in a reception room or tent attached to a family home. Guests drop in, drink tea and coffee, and talk business, football and politics. Diwaniyas have been the informal heart of Kuwaiti political debate for decades, and candidates campaign by visiting them. Women run their own gatherings, work across the public sector and have sat in parliament since 2009.

Islam is the state religion and Islamic law is a principal source of legislation. Most citizens are Sunni, following the Maliki school like the ruling family, and around a third are Shia. Mosques of both communities stand throughout the city, and relations have been generally calm, although an Islamic State suicide bombing at the Imam Sadiq mosque in 2015 killed 27 worshippers.

The Grand Mosque, completed in 1986, is the largest in the country and the one open to visitors. Its tours explain prayer, the building's Andalusian and Moroccan decoration and Kuwaiti Islamic practice. Friday prayer at midday brings the city to a halt, and during Ramadan evening prayers fill mosques and car parks.

Christians are a large foreign population, and several churches, Catholic, Coptic, Anglican and Orthodox, operate openly in Kuwait City, some on land granted by the state decades ago. A small number of Kuwaiti Christian families also exist. Proselytising to Muslims is illegal, and religious material for distribution is restricted at customs.

Religion shapes public law in ways visitors notice: the total ban on alcohol, the ban on importing pork, fines for eating in public in Ramadan, and criminal penalties for insulting religion, including online.

Before oil, Kuwait faced the sea. Its shipwrights built the boom, a large ocean-going dhow, and its captains, the nakhodas, were known across the Indian Ocean. Seasonal voyages carried dates from Iraq to India and East Africa and brought back teak, rice, coffee and spices. The sailors' songs and the ship names still appear in national memory.

Pearling was the other pillar. Each summer the fleet spent four months on the banks, with divers working in debt to their captains and the captains in debt to the merchants. The collapse of the trade in the 1930s, when cultured pearls arrived, came just before oil, and many former divers went to work for the oil company. A pearl diving festival and the maritime museum keep the memory alive.

Inland, Bedouin tribes grazed camels and sheep and traded with the town. Their weaving, Al Sadu, uses geometric patterns in black, red and white wool on ground looms, and Kuwait's programme to teach it has been recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage safeguarding (check). Sadu House on the Gulf Road preserves it through a weavers' cooperative.

Winter still pulls Kuwaitis back to the desert. From November to March families set up camps with generators and carpets on the plains north and west of the city, and falconry and camel racing continue. The same desert holds scars of 1991: trenches, oil lakes and, in some areas, unexploded ordnance.

Kuwaiti food is built on rice, spices and the sea. Machboos, spiced rice cooked in meat stock with dried black lime, is the national dish, and mutabbaq samak, fried zubaidi (silver pomfret) on seasoned rice, is the dish Kuwaitis are proudest of. Zubaidi season in late summer is followed closely, and prices at the fish market rise with demand.

Old trade routes show in every pot: baharat spice mixes from India, saffron and rosewater from Persia, date syrup from Iraq's groves. Slow wheat dishes like jireesh and harees fill Ramadan tables, and sweets such as luqaimat and the saffron cake gers ogaily come out with tea.

Coffee is a ritual. Arabic coffee with cardamom is poured from the dallah into small cups, always with the right hand, and served with dates; you shake the cup to signal you are done. Karak tea and a strong specialty coffee culture, with hundreds of independent cafés, fill the evenings in a country with no bars.

The foreign population has given Kuwait deep Indian, Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian and Filipino food scenes. Mall food courts and delivery apps are part of daily life, and Kuwait has one of the highest obesity rates in the world, a subject of public health campaigns.

Kuwait holds some of the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and oil pays for most of the state budget. In 1953 it created the first sovereign wealth fund, now the Kuwait Investment Authority, and in 1976 set up the Fund for Future Generations, which saved the country during the occupation, when the government in exile ran on its investments.

The city itself is a product of oil money and 1950s planning: ring roads radiating from the old town, residential blocks with numbered streets, and landmark buildings by international architects. The Kuwait Towers, designed by the Danish architect Malene Bjørn and opened in 1979, and the National Assembly building by Jørn Utzon are the best known. More recently, the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre and the Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Centre added a major arts and museum district on the Gulf Road.

Politics has been the country's distinguishing feature. For six decades the elected National Assembly questioned ministers, blocked budgets and brought down governments, which gave Kuwait a lively press but also long periods of deadlock. Emir Mishal's suspension of parliament in 2024 and rule by decree ended that for now, with a promise of constitutional review.

Large projects such as the Sheikh Jaber Causeway (2019), the Silk City plan in the north, a metro and the national part of the GCC railway have been announced for years, with mixed progress. The 2026 Iran war hit the airport, refineries and power and water plants, and the cost of repair and security now competes with those plans.