Maps of Failaka Island

1519 – Failaka as Ilha Feleq: in his work The Origins of Kuwait, B.J. Slot writes, “there is… another possible indication of Kuwaiti names on a very early map. It is on a splendidly painted map on vellum. This so-called Atlas Miller, produced c. 1519, is attributed to two of the most famous Portuguese cartographers, Lopo Homem and Pedro Reinel. In the middle the Gulf there is an land called Ilha Feleq, which looks seductively like Faylaka, although the island is much too big.” (19) The images of the map below come from the Library of Congress. They write, “the map presented here is from the Miller Atlas… produced for King Manuel I of Portugal in 1519 by cartographers Pedro Reinel, his son Jorge Reinel, and Lopo Homem and miniaturist António de Holanda, the atlas contains eight maps on six loose sheets, painted on both sides. The maps were richly decorated and illuminated. The atlas takes its name from Emmanuel Miller, who purchased it in 1855 from a bookseller in Portugal. Miller’s widow sold it to the National Library of France in 1897.”

Failaka as Ikaros: This map was created in Paris by Antoine Augustin Calmet and P. Starckman. Interestingly, it marks lower Iraq as Eden, Bahrain as Tylos, and (arguably) Failaka as the ancient Ikaros. Because of ancient sources including Strabo and Arrian, many older maps include an island named Ikaros in the Gulf, although the geography is typically inaccurate. This map benefits from updated knowledge of the geography of the region

Some contemporaries seem to have doubted Failaka as the ancient Ikaros. According to Slot, in the 1700s the French cartographer Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d’Anville wrote, “the maps we have of the Gulf show a small island with the name Peluche, otherwise Aguada on the Portuguese maps, but it is not far enough from the mouth of the Euphrates and the Tigris to be identified with the mentions of Ichara in Ptolemy and Plinius.” The map seen below was created by D’Anville, who also mentions that ancient writers, including Ptolemy, referred to Kuwait Bay as Sacer Sinus, which means the holy or sacred bay. He labels Failaka as “Agoada ou Peluche.” More on both below.

1563 – Failaka as Ilha de Aguada: The Atlas of Lázaro Luis was produced in Portugal in 1563. Off the coast of Kuwait is “Ilha de Aguada” (Island of the Well). Slot writes, “there can be no doubt that Ilha de Aguada is the island Faylaka, and, as such, these maps are the oldest historical maps containing indisputable references to parts of Kuwaiti territory.” (pg 12)

1652 – Failaka without a name: Slot writes, “in 1652, a map appeared in France which showed a place called Kadhemq. This seems to stand for Kazima, a locality of Kuwait.” (56) Guillaume Delisle (1675-1726) was a French cartographer. The Dutch Otten brothers published a version of his map of the Ottoman Empire. Kuwait is referred to as Cathema. You can see Failaka clearly, although it is without a name.

1660 – Failaka as Ilha de Aguada: The map below was produced in 1660 by Johannes Vingboons, a Dutch cartographer. You can see Failaka is still referred to as the Island of the Well.

1660s – Failaka as Ilha de Aguada: The map below is, “a small Dutch atlas, probably the collection of a director of the Dutch East India Company… it should be dated between 1645 and 1666. The presence of warning signs near Ilha de Aguada shows that European ships had passed through.” (51)

1700s – Failaka as Peleche: Slot writes, “in the course of the eighteenth century, the Portuguese name Ilha de Aguada was replaced on some maps and nautical charts with Peleche or Peluche, a version of the Arab name Faylaka which approaches the local pronunciation of the name.” (89) The first map below was produced by Samuel Thornton in 1716, the second by Gerrit de Haan in the 1760s.

1740 – Failaka as Peleche: this French map dates to 1740 (marking the pearl bank by Bahrain is interesting!)

1700s – Failaka as Feludsje: in the 18th century, many maps began to refer to mainland Kuwait as some version of “Grain.” The German cartographer Carsten Niebuhr participated in the Danish Arabia expedition from 1761 to 1767, chronicled by Thorkild Hansen. The map below comes from Niebhur’s work Beschreibung von Arabien, and is the earliest to mention the name Kuwait/Koueit. Failaka is “Feludsje.”

A French map from 1763 with Failaka marked as “Isle Peluche”

A French map from 1775 with Failaka marked as “I. Peluche”

1800s – Failaka as Ilha de Aguada: the older name of “Island of the Well” continued in some maps, for instance on this Dutch map that was made in the 1800s

This map was created by Aaron Arrowsmith and dates to 1816

I first saw this map on the instagram of Doti Watkins. It dates to 1828 and was made after the Gulf was surveyed by Lieutenants John Michael Guy and George Barnes Brucks in 1825 (a few years before the plague of 1831, when islanders still lived in the various villages and not just Al-Zor).

This map was created by Francis Rawson Chesney, who, in the 1830s, “traveled by steamboat 1,200 miles down the entire navigable length of the Euphrates, from Birecik, Turkey, down through Syria and Iraq, to the Persian Gulf, in order to prove the feasibility of a new short travel route between India and Britain; while the commercial exploitation of route never materialized, Chesney’s survey had a grand legacy, as its charts served as the authoritative source maps of the Euphrates an Tigris for decades, the blueprints for political, military and commercial activities and scientific and archaeological discovery – one of the great masterpieces of inland hydrography of the 19th century.” You can read the narrative of his expedition here. I cannot seem to find any descriptions of Kuwait/Failaka by Chesney, so I wonder if he based his map on the one above.

This map was created by Philippe Vandermaelen and dates to 1827

This map was created by Heinrich Berghaus and dates to 1835

This British map dates to 1863 and “accompanies The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From January 1863 to December 1864 Volume XVII : Article V (pages 32-112), entitled ‘Remarks on the Tribes, Trade, and Resources around the shore line of the Persian Gulf ‘ by Lieutenant-Colonel Lewis Pelly.” The second map is another versi o n.

Late 1800s – Failaka as Failaka: this British map dates to 1871 and was created by George Percy Badger. It is entitled, “A revised map of Omân and the Persian Gulf, in which an attempt has been made to give a correct transliteration of the Arabic names.”

This British map was created in 1910

According to this website, “Raunkier travelled to Rihadh in 1912 at the behest of the Royal Danish Geographical Society. His object was to examine the possibility of a second expedition that would rival that of Niebuhr. The journey was fraught with danger and the local tribes received him with extreme hostility. This is the rare first edition in Danish covering the research trip by the Royal Danish Geographical Society in East and Central Arabia in 1912. The author was a leading Danish explorer of the time and he left Copenhagen in 1911 and travelled through Kuwait via Istanbul and Baghdad and then onto Riyadh and the Gulf visiting Bahrain on the way.” You can see Failaka on the map from his work.

According to the Qatar Digital Library, the map below, “shows the limits of Koweit [Kuwait] and adjacent country indicating relief, hydrology and settlement. A line in red ink and a boundary in green ink indicates different possible boundaries. It is included as Annex number 5 to the Anglo-Turkish Agreement, as part of the collection of documents signed 29 July, 1913.”

This map from 1915 or 1916 is, “an attractively drawn colour pictorial topical map… designed for Newnes by Byron Studios… part of a series for public consumption, with their advert listing other Strand “Authentic Maps for the War” for Europe, the Dardanelles, and Balkan States. This is undated, but the text explains it was issued while relief columns were on their way to lift the Ottoman Siege of a British Force at Kut Al Amara (Dec 1915 – Apr 1916). British Indian Expeditionary Force D had been sent to secure Basrah and the Shatt Al Arab to protect the flow of Persian oil that the Royal Navy now depended on, and had overreached itself in a failed advance on Baghdad. In addition to locations of present interest, the captions reflect an appreciation for the region’s ancient history, culture, landscapes, and economic potential, as well as a demonstration of British imperial ambition and reach. Ancient locations include Ctesiphon, the ruins of the Tower of Babel, traditional site of the Garden of Eden, Ur, Ezra’s Tomb, Susa, etc. Old hills, old reservoirs, ancient bridges, and extensive ruins are also marked. Closer to the present, there is the Pilgrim route to Mecca, the significance of Karbala, oil and bitumen wells, water wells, boat bridges, forts and fortified country houses, ferries, telegraph offices.”

The map below dates to May of 1954 and is based on the 1913 map above

In 1929, H.R.P. Dickson was appointed as British Political Agent to Kuwait. According to Voice of the Oud by Jehan Rajab, he and his wife Violet traveled to Failaka for the first time in 1935. According to this website, the map was first published in 1937

From the 1949 article “On the Flora of Kuweit” by B. L. Burtt and P. Lewis

This article from 1960

Drawn by Birte Lund in 1960 as part of the Danish Archaeological Expedition to Kuwait

In this 1961 work Six Weeks in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, you can see the rough outline of Failaka Island, although it is not labeled

In 1964, Saba George Shiber published The Kuwait Urbanization

In 1969, Geoffrey Bibby published Looking for Dilmun

From Forty Years in Kuwait, published 1971, by Violet Dickson and Voice of the Oud by Jehan Rajab. Rajab’s is my favorite map, although there is one mistake on it: as you can see from the maps found from archaeological papers, the information on UNESCO, and the map from the Kuwait National Museum below, Tell Khazneh is northwards and F4 is known as Al Khan.

1970s or 80s(?) Oxford Map of Kuwait

From Theresa Howard-Carter’s 1972 article “The Johns Hopkins University Reconnaissance Expedition to the Arab-Iranian Gulf”

From the book Archaeological Investigations in the Island of Failaka, 58-64, published 1973, by the Kuwait Ministry of Guidance and Information

Here is a map from the Arab Tourism Encyclopedia 1973-1974

A series of maps from 1987 listed for sale on abebooks. The seller says that they are a, “unique composite pilot’s atlas made up of 13 Joint Operations Graphics. The 3RD section (4 sheets including NH-39-9, NH-39-13, NG-39-1, NG-39-5) covers from Al-Faw and Bubiyan Island on the Kuwait-Iraq border, down the Gulf coast through Failaka Island and the east of Kuwait City, via Mina Saud, Ras al Khafji, and Al Mishab, then inland into Dikakah.”

A map dated to 1990, was listed for sale on eBay

From an article from 1990 about Al-Qusur

From the 1992 book Kuwait: A Nation’s Story by Peter Vine and Paula Casey

(1993) The Stamp Seals of Failaka: An Aesthetic Analysis, Safwat Ali Nour El-Din

From the 1995 article Coastal morphology of Failaka Island

From the article Hellenistic Ikaros – Failaka by Andreas P. Parpas, Archaeological Science in the Arabian Gulf: A Study of Bronze Age Pottery from Kuwait Using Portable X-Ray Fluorescence, Spatial assessment of pre-20th-century settlements on Failaka Island

Maps primarily from French archaeological papers about Failaka

From the article Optimal Urban Land Use in Failaka Island by Ajeel Al-Zaher and Mohamed Aziz

From this book on Internet Archive

This book seen on Internet Archive

This website has a few maps, including this one which is from the 2006 work “Failaka Island: The Most Famous Kuwaiti Island, History and Heritage” by Khaled Salem Muhammad

The 2014 article “New French-Kuwait Research in the Hellenistic Fortress”

From this 2018 article

This post (Fig. 1: Map of Failaka with archaeological sites presented during the Nitra conference (map H.David-Cuny 2010-2017, after the KSAM topographic base)

Fig. 1 : carte des sites archéologiques de l’île de Faïlaka (carte H. David-Cuny 2010-2015, d’après fond topographique KSAM)

The 2021 issue “Archaeological Failaka” in the journal Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy

The 2021 article “Contribution to the geology of Failaka Island, Kuwait: Evidence from sedimentological and petrographic data from the NE part of the island”

A map of archaeological sites seen in the different archaeological books about Failaka, published by the Danish mission, listed here. This one was taken from “The Beads”

Here you can see another updated, version, after more archaeological discoveries – published in (2021) Tell F3 on Failaka Island: Kuwaiti-Danish Excavations 2012-2017