Here is a blog post with links to other collections of old photographs of Kuwait

Jehan Rajab was a British woman who married a Kuwaiti man named Tareq Rajab in 1958. In addition to publishing several works, she co-founded the Tareq Rajab Museum and the New English School with her husband. In her work Voice of the Oud, she mentions specific years marked by a catastrophe that happened in Kuwait:

• 1831 – Failaka was stricken possibly with plague, which severely depleted the population
• 1871 – a disastrous year for pearl diving, Old Kuwaitis used to say “so and so” was born in Senat al Tuba’a, the year of sinking
• 1900 – this year is mentioned in the records as a particular bad year for shark attacks, one of the dangers for pearl divers
• 1931 – locusts invaded the town of Kuwait and destroyed everything in their path (which apparently is also happening now)
• 1934 – torrential rains fell, and many houses fell apart
• 1961 – one particularly bad sandstorm roared over the whole of Kuwait in a rose red cloud

Here are photos of old Kuwait from her work:

1930s: taken by Alan Villiers, from the Royal Museums Greenwich

1937: from an article by Freya Stark in Volume 5, Issue 6 of The Geographical Magazine

1950s: Here are some lovely photos of Kuwait from this flickr album

1950s: by Mondadori Portfolio (Getty Images)

1950s: by “marka/touring club italiano” (alamy)

1950s: from LIFE magazine’s photo archives on google

1952: The photograph was posted on 248. The book on the first zoo in Kuwait was found on ebay.

1959: an article entitled “Development in Kuwait”

From Getty Images by the Royal Geographical Society

From the Mary Evans Picture Library

From the flickr of Essam Al Jheme

From Al-Hajery’s website