Prior to the modern urbanization of Kuwait, the old city was encircled by a mudbrick wall for protection. There were five gates from which you could enter the city. The wall was torn down in 1957, but the gates were kept for posterity. The wall that was torn down was actually the third in a series of different mudbrick walls, which are detailed below.

In the 1600s, a tribal confederation known as the Bani Khalid controlled the region. The name “Kuwait” is derived from “Kut” meaning “little fort,” referring to the summer residence of the Bani Khaled leader Barrak, built around the year 1680. Around this time, Kuwait (then known as Grane) was just a small fishing village. Abu Hakima writes in his work The Modern History of Kuwait that, “local tradition states that the town was not walled from the beginning because the Bani Khalid authority was respected by other Bedouin tribes.” In the 1700s, a group of tribes known as the Bani Utub migrated to the region from Central Arabia, due to drought. With the new, larger population, the settlement began to grow and the first wall was constructed around the town. Hakima continues, “no date for the building of the wall is given but it is estimated to have been around 1760, eight years after the Bani Khalid had lost their influence among the Arab tribes.” In her work Kuwait Transformed, Farah Al-Nakib writes, “in 1760 Sabah I built a wall around his small settlement, signaling the moment when Kuwait became an independent, viable, and self-sufficient town.”

The old photo above was taken in 1936 by Frederick G. Clapp, the second comes from this post

In 1811, the second wall was built to accommodate the growth of the town and its population. Hakima tells us about a traveler who visited Kuwait in 1863 and remarked that the town had 15,000 inhabitants and that the gates of the wall were left open after sunset to allow the Bedouins to enter and have an evening meal inside. Hakima writes that, “the only condition enforced upon them when entering the gates was to lay their arms outside to ensure the town’s safety… although the wall was built of mud and could be heavily damaged by rain, it still served as an adequate defense against raids as recently as the early twentieth century.”

Mubarak Al-Sabah ruled Kuwait between 1896 and 1915. Nakib tells us that, “in 1904, John G. Lorimer estimated…. thirty-five thousand inside the town, two thousand in the villages. Kuwait experienced a period of unprecedented economic and demographic growth from the 1890s until around 1920 due a pearling and trading boom throughout the region…. whereas in 1904 the town’s population was thirty-five thousand, by 1913 it had grown to fifty thousand.” Souad M. Al-Sabah writes in her book on Mubarak that despite the external dangers during his reign, he chose not to reinforce the old wall or build a new one. When asked why, he responded, “I am the wall.”

The images above are from Kuwait Transformed

In 1920, the third and final wall was erected under Sheikh Salim Al-Mubarak. Nakib writes, “a boundary dispute between Mubarak’s son Salem and Ibn Sa’ud, the ruler of Najd… led to a bloody battle… in Jahra–an agricultural village twenty miles west of Kuwait Town under Al Sabah jurisdiction in October 1920. It was in this context that Salem ordered the building of a new wall.” The historic photographs below comes from the 1928 work H.M.S. Emerald – Gibraltar, India, Ceylon, China, Dutch East Indies, Persian Gulf by Nicholas Surtees Villiers. A description for one copy on abebooks described the work as, “a rare account of the maiden voyage of HMS Emerald, which was called in to assist in the defence of Kuwait whilst the town was under threat from Ikhwan raiders. It provides an excellent account of the Emerald’s two-month stay at Kuwait, giving a good physical description of the town and the preparations for its defence.”

In Voice of the Oud Jehan Rajab tell us that the third wall built in 1920 originally had four gates: Jahra, Shamiya, Braiasi/Al Shaab, and Dasman (Maqsab was added in 1927). Shamiyah Gate was named this because it was located close to Al-Shamiya Village, mainly known for the freshwater wells it possessed. Travelers stopped there before continuing onto Bilad Al-Sham (the Levant).

The images above are screenshots from old documentaries

According to a wonderful short work on Dame Violet Dickson by Claudia Al Rushoud, Dickson remembered that, “when I came to Kuwait in 1929 the desert of Arabia and the hinterland of Kuwait were to me a great and rather frightening unknown. Outside the city walls, the narrow camel paths led away from the Shamiya wells to the south, disappearing into the dusty haze of early summer.”

This old photo of Al Shamiya gate comes from this article

The English travel writer Freya Start visited Kuwait in the 1930s. She wrote in her work Baghdad Sketches, “the police who sit in the gatehouses… lounge on their seat or square in a windowless den brewing coffee and keep their eye on who goes in or out. As I stroll by and say ‘Peace be upon you,’ they invite me to share whatever their meal may be.” In 1939, the American doctor Dr. Lewis R. Scudder came to Kuwait. In the 1969 National Geographic article Aladdin’s Lamp of the Middle East, he reminisced, “the gates were locked at night, and you had to get a watchman up to let you through. Most houses were one story high, made of mud or coral rock with mud interiors.” In his work Shipmasters of Kuwait, Khaled H. Bourisly writes that the final wall had 26 war towers and that in the Kuwaiti dialect, such towers are referred to as ‘ghowals.’

The photos come from Voice of the Oud by Jehan Rajab and a work by Sulaiman Al-Awadhi

The wall was demolished in 1957 as part of the First Master Plan, which dramatically changed Kuwait’s urban landscape,. Robert Fabbri writes in his chapter “Fragmentarium” in the book Urban Modernity in the Contemporary Gulf, “Soor (‘wall’ in Arabic) is the street that replaced the empty corridor left by the demolition of the old city wall in the 1950s. Fringed by a vegetated buffer zone, the Green Belt, Soor Street delineates the inner urban core from the suburbs.”

In the 1960s, Saba George Shiber came to Kuwait as an architect. The images and captions below come from 1969 work The Kuwait Urbanization.

As aforementioned, the gates of the old wall were preserved for posterity. Today, you can find them dispersed around Kuwait City. Bourisly describes them as “silent spectators to the changing history of this country.” The images below are from the book Altatawur Aleumraniu Waltakhit fi Alkuayt [Urban Development and Planning in Kuwait 1952-1980] by Al-Mousa, Abdul Rasul Ali, published in 1981 and listed on abebooks for nearly $400

You can see Al Maqsab Gate across from Holy Family Cathedral. According to Bourisly, this gate was added in 1927. He writes that Maqsab, “is a term used to refer to the place where lamb, cows, and camel were slaughtered.” Rajab writes that a slaughterhouse near the gate used to toss refuge into the sea, which attracted sharks.

You can see Al-Jahra Gate on a roundabout near the Sheraton Hotel.

Here are more photos of Jahra Gate, which come from the flickr of Brett Jordan, 248, an old magazine and postcards listed for sale on eBay or delcampe, KOC Archive, the flickr of Verity Cridland and Mark Lowey.

You can see Shamiya Gate near Phase 3 of Shaheed Park.

Bader Al Shaiji writes that in the black and white picture (dated to 1971) you can see, “the roundabout of Shamia Gate. At the bottom of the picture, we see a mosque and next to it some houses were removed and the place is now a site that includes the Ooredoo Company Tower and the western part of the ministries complex.” The other older photos come from the book Kuwait by Ralph Shaw.

You can see Al Shaab Gate in Shaheed Park.

Here is an old postcard of Al Shaab Gate

You can see Dasman Gate along Gulf Road in Bneid al Gar (listed “Al-Sharq Gate” on google maps)