A Love Letter to Failaka

A Brief Introduction to Failaka

Failaka is a small island off the coast of Kuwait. Dubbed “Archaeology Island” by Andrew Lawler, it has been occupied by various civilizations throughout its history. Today, it is largely abandoned due to the 1990 Gulf War. The oldest archaeological evidence we have of human settlement on the island comes from the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Around 2000 BCE, settlers from the kingdom of Dilmun in modern-day Bahrain came to control the island. They had a powerful trading network, connecting Mesopotamia, Magan, the Indus River Valley, and supplying ivory, copper, pearls and dates. There is evidence of Kassite, Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Achaemenid contact with or rule of the island. Around 300 BCE, Failaka became part of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire. They built a fortress containing the famous temple A, which appears on the 1KD bill. It was eventualyl abandoned and by the Early Middle Ages, the island may not have had a permanent population. But in the late Sasanian period, Nestorian monks from the Church of the East settled in the center of Failaka at a site known as Al-Qusur, also eventually abandoned.

In the 1600s, at a site along the coast known as Al-Quraniyah, Portuguese soldier-merchants may have inhabited a small fort. Others theorize it was Arab pirates who attacked the shipping lanes in the Gulf. Portuguese maps around this time called Failaka Ilha de Aguada, “the Island of the Well,” likely a reference to its fresh water. By the 1800s, Failaka appears to have been a densely populated island, with five permanent villages. In 1831, the island was likely stricken with plague and the population consolidated at Al-Zor, along the western coast. Near the end of the century, a maqam dedicated to Al-Khidr was constructed. Before the discovery of oil, islanders were farmers, and also participated in the pearl diving season. Beginning in 1958, formal archaeology began on the island, shedding light on its different periods of occupation. The island became a popular tourist destination, with hundreds of chalets built along the shore. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Failaka had a population of around 5,800 people. The inhabitants were forced to leave to the mainland and around 1,400 Iraqi soldiers made Failaka their base. The following year, the island was liberated, but the damage was severe and the island’s community was not fully re-established. Following the war, the island was used for military training. Archaeological missions continue, with exciting new discoveries made regularly. There is a small tourism industry. But the scars of war are visible. In the 90s, Jehan Rajab wrote, “it is not the first time Failaka has been deserted and doubtless it will come to life once again and thrive once more.”

“A Love Letter to Failaka”

The following is the preface for a work I wrote during my residency with FIKAR, entitled A Love Letter to Failaka: Descriptions of the Island throughout History. It was beautifully formatted and bound by Paperhouse Studio. I posted the introduction chapter here, which explores the sacred nature of the island. All of the photos below are mine.

I fall in love with places easily. When I was 20 it was Edinburgh, at 25 Sarajevo, at 30 Istanbul, and now at 35, Failaka Island. I once read on a twitter thread by Ali A. Olomi about astrology in the Islamic world that, “those born under Pisces or al hut are said to be changeable in mood, do not like to work and tend to exert little effort in labor, are clever, and can become obsessed with a place or thing. In fact, it is said they are enchanted by locations.” So, let’s chalk up this quirk to my sign.

I visited Failaka for the first time in January of 2020. I was captivated by the island. I captioned an Instagram post “Failaka is a strange place,” which was, I suppose, my first declaration of love to her. I’d visit another time before the year was out. My adoration for Failaka deepened through reading. At first, an academic paper here and there. I kept a word doc on my computer I jotted notes onto. Reading through people’s theses always felt deeply personal, notably Majed Almutairi’s “Archaeology of Kuwait” from 2011 and Zubaydah Ali M. Ashkanani “Middle-aged women in Kuwait: Victims of Change” from 1988. The latter is particularly interesting as she is discussing a Failaka that no longer exists, but maybe can again one day. I picked up a copy of Jehan Rajab’s Voice of the Oud after a visit to the Tareq Rajab Museum of Islamic Calligraphy. I have read and re-read the book many times since. When someone asks me for a reading recommendation I always point them here, as well as her other important work Failaka Island: the Ikaros of the Gulf. Jehan captured the island so beautifully through her photographs, research, and reflections on personal experiences she had there in the 1960s.

After reading a Gulf News article by Nirmala Janssen from 2004 about the Khidr shrine, I went down that rabbit hole. One evening, while googling various terms, a scan of Freya Stark’s Baghdad Sketches from 1937 came up on a used books website, featuring a photograph of the shrine. Freya captured Failaka at a very pivotal moment, just a few decades before formal archaeology would begin there. As I continued to read, Geoffrey Bibby’s name kept popping up and so I ordered a copy of Looking for Dilmun. As I flipped through the work, I found his drawing of a backwards looking gazelle, based on Dilmunite stamp seals, particularly charming. At school I designed lessons for my students to create pictorial maps of the island with Bibby’s gazelle in the center. Together, we read excerpts from Andrew Lawler’s article Archaeology Island and the submission to UNESCO to consider Failaka as a world heritage site. I began buying used copies of the Danish publications detailing their finds from Tell Sa’id and Tell Sa’ad. I started to recognize the names of important scholars: Jeppesen, Højlund, Kjaerum. Later I became familiar with Calvet, Salles, Potts, Howard-Carter. There are, of course, so many more that I cannot even begin to name here. In the fall of 2022, I visited the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures in Chicago in order to see the Lamassu they have. In the gift shop, I purchased a copy of Michael Rice’s Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf. His brief mention of Šiduri led me to start reading every translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh that I could get my hands on. Having taught history in both middle and high school, I was already familiar with the epic, but now I fixated on Šiduri’s speech.

In the fall of 2024, I applied to FIKAR’s residency program. Once accepted, I began reading more systematically. I divided my research into categories: the Bronze Age, the Hellenistic, the Medieval, Early Modern, Late Modern. I read every article on jstor that I could access and almost every article in the 2021 special issue of “Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy.” Every few days I would search the name of the island on ebay and abebooks. I got a copy of P.V. Glob’s Al-Bahrain and Thorkild Hansen’s Rejsedagbøger, mostly for sentimental value since both of the works are in Danish. I stayed on the island for a week with my friend Dana in December. During our time at the house, Dana translated and read excerpts of Khaled Salem Muhammad’s work Failaka Island: The Most Famous Kuwaiti Island. One of my clear deficits when studying Failaka is my inability to speak or read Arabic (which, of course, I could learn to do, but as we read–Pisces are lazy). I’m very grateful to those who have helped me to bridge this gap. As I read, every time I came across a passage that I found particularly beautiful, I pasted it on a google doc that I entitled “descriptions.” Over time, that document grew and grew. Here are a few videos I have made using these descriptions.

Jehan Rajab, The Voice of the Oud, 1993