Photos taken by myself between 2020 and 2025 – please do credit me if you use them anywhere!

Kuwait’s Failaka Island has a long history of settlement at various sites, including the ancient Dilmunite town at Tell F3, the Hellenistic settlement at Tell F5, and the monastery at Al-Qusur. In the modern period, different villages populated the island. According to Agnieszka Pieńkowska, “Failaka in the Late Islamic period, especially in the early nineteenth century, may have been a densely populated island, with five large permanent villages, as well as numerous areas of seasonal occupation scattered on the south- eastern coast.” These permanent villages included Al-Qurainiyah, Al-Zor, Sa’idah, Sabahiya, and Kharaib al-Dasht.

This photo was taken by PV Glob in 1960

There are two forts on Failaka Island that date to the early modern period. One is in the north, near the archaeological site of Al-Qurainiyah. Andrew Lawler tells us that, “just to the southeast of the village is a small square rock fort dating to about the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Some researchers believe that this structure was constructed by Portuguese soldier-merchants who did frequent business in the region. Others suspect that Arab pirates built the base to attack the lucrative shipping lanes.” Jehan Rajab wrote that, “Niebuhr… mentioned that there had been a Portuguese fort in Kuwait and at first some thought it might have been on Failaka near the village of Qurainiya in the northern part of the island. Although locally known as the Portuguese fort, the crumbling remains did not really have the right characteristics and construction for such a building. It was more likely that at some period it had been partially built, and possibly never completed, by local people.” In addition to the one near Quraniyah, there is another early modern fort in the village of Al-Zor. Recent analysis is that, “they were most probably used to protect Al-Qurainiyah, Al-Zor, Al-Saida and Kharaib Ad-Desht inhabitants in case of danger.”

(1-2) Taken by Tareq Rajab in the early 1960s

So while at the beginning of the 19th century there were many villages around the island, around the year 1831, Failaka was likely stricken with plague. This severely depleted the population and caused people to consolidate at the village of Al-Zor. In 1839, the British commander James Felix Jones surveyed Kuwait/Koweit (also referred to as Grane) and Failaka (referred to as Pheleechi). Extracts of his report were published in the 1856 work Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government. In it he wrote, “Toor [Zor] the western… is the only [town] at present inhabited, the other[s] having been depopulated by the last plague. It contains seventy to eighty houses, and about a hundred and fifty inhabitants. They appear poor and miserable.” Archaeological evidence backs up the written records–showing that, “most of the settlements on Failaka were deserted by the end of the nineteenth century.” Although crops may have still been cultivated in the depopulated villages.

Screenshots from the film “The Silence” (filmed on Failaka in 1976)

The plague seems to have developed into a folk memory. In 1908, J.G. Lorimer wrote that on Failaka, “there is a local tradition… that the Portuguese once occupied the place. They are said to have been driven, first from Dasht and then from the centre of the island, by a plague of rats sent upon them by the Auliya.” More on awliya below. In 1937, Freya Stark wrote in Baghdad Sketches, “the island traditions tell of seven vanished cities with a final exodus owing to a plague of rats.” In her work The Voice of the Oud, Jehan Rajab wrote, “there is a persistent folk memory that said ‘rats overran the island.’” Throughout its history, Failaka has been known as a sacred place. At the turn of the century, J.G. Lorimer remarked that, “Failakah is remarkable chiefly for its tombs and shrines.” He reports that around the island’s primarily settlement, the village of Al-Zor, there were sixty or seventy graves of awliya or “friends of God” who were known for their piety. These graves included those of Mohamed al-Badawi, a devout man whose signet ring could not be removed after death and Shaikh al Gharib, “a foreigner who was washed up on the shore and was buried there.”

Screenshots from the film “The Silence” (filmed on Failaka in 1976)

In 1908, Lorimer reported a population of 500 on Failaka and reiterated that all of the islanders lived in Al-Zor village. Rich merchant families and foreigners were apparently not allowed to settle on the island, to ensure that the local populace was not oppressed. In 1937, when Freya Stark visited Failaka, she described Zor as follows,

“except for one or two sidr or nebk trees, one or two palms enclosed in crumbling walls of gardens, nothing here is precipitous or abrupt: the lines are horizontal or gently undulating like the sea around them, and the small town on the western side lies with its one-storied flat-roofed houses, the sun-whitened mud of their walls and its prodigal spaces, almost as flat as the rest of the island and as open to the steps of the sun.”

In the 1960s, Thorkild Hansen noted that there was a well outside of Al-Zor where women gathered to fetch water. He wrote, “the water is mostly salty, almost undrinkable during long periods of drought. But after the rare rains the water level in the well rises. In other places it can be nice to see the sun emerge after a rainy day. In Failaka, you look forward to the first glass of water.”

Screenshots from the film “The Silence” (filmed on Failaka in 1976)

A British map from 1916 that names Zor!

Around the time Failaka started to become a tourist destination in the 1970s and 80s, people were moving out of Zor and into the newer neighborhood, closer to the archaeological sites. Some of the old village began to be demolished to make way for newer structures. For instance, rows of government houses being constructed near Shuaib Mosque. According to the NCCAL, “Al-Zor lies in the middle of the west side of the island and first existed as a village in the 18th century. During this time houses were still made of mud bricks. It gradually extended and in the 20th century it became a small town containing the notable palace of the Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah, today the Heritage Museum. In the 1950s and 1970s-1980s, urban programs appeared and in 1954 the school (containing classrooms, gymnasium, and a performance hall) was constructed. Another contemporary building program resulted in two large buildings (probably for the school staff), a dispensary, and a water tower (today included in the Heritage village).”

(1) at the Heritage Museum on Failaka today (2-4) taken by Rajab (5) from this website

The NCCAL contines, “despite suffering from abandonment and war damage, the entire ensemble retains a remarkable coherence and integrity… abandoned buildings, now in decay and especially concentrated in and around Al-Zor village, provide a rich repertoire of building materials, construction techniques, and architectural styles from the 1950s to the end of the 1980s. This abandonment, albeit traumatizing, has resulted in the protection of Failaka Island from further development that could have impacted existing urban fabric, the island’s landscape and natural environment, as well as the archaeological areas. Notably, the twentieth-century displacement of people did not cut the bond to the island of the former inhabitants, and people from Failaka still retain a close attachment, often returning to the island and keeping social connections and traditions alive.” As aforementioned, while parts of Al Zor began to be demolished before the invasion, much of it remains intact, rendering it really the only place in Kuwait one can see what “old Kuwait” looked like.

From the documentary “The Kuwaiti Islands”

Here are maps of Failaka that show where Zor is located:

The structure below seems to have been an important area of the village. Photos 1-2 are screen shots from archival footage in old documentaries, photo 3 taken by Tareq Rajab in the 1960s, photo 4 is from the film “The Silence”, and photo 5 is an old image on display today at the Heritage Museum

Unfortunately, I believe that it no longer stands today. The mosque is Shuaib Mosque, which was renovated before the invasion to this more modern style

This first photograph below was taken by Tareq Rajab standing atop Shuaib Mosque looking towards the high school. I took the second image in 2025, which shows the destruction of much of the old buildings

This section does at least partially stand – below are images taken by Tareq Rajab in the 1960s

A screenshot from acrhival footage alongside a photo I took in 2025

Failaka’s government housing appears to have been built in the 1970s, demolishing much of old Zor to make way for them. Here are aerial photographs showing the government houses, from facebook:

In the first image you can see Shuaib mosque in the foreground and Taher in the background. There area between them is where the government housing is now located, so all of these old buildings in Zor no longer exist

Here is a “then and now” I composed using an old photograph of Rajab’s showing Taher mosque and the buildings around it in the 1960s:

On the other side of the road, a bit more of Zor exists today, around Imam Shafi’i Mosque. I took the first image below in January of 2023 and the second in December of 2024. The third dates to the 1960s and was taken by Rajab.