46 Fun Facts About Kuwait

The name "Kuwait" comes from an Arabic diminutive of Kut, meaning what?

Fortress built near water is what kut means, and the diminutive makes Kuwait a 'little fort': the name belonged first to the 18th-century trading town on the bay and only later to the whole country.

Kuwait has land borders with just two countries: Iraq to the north and west, and which other to the south?

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait long left a slab of desert between them as a shared Neutral Zone; they finally divided it in 1969, yet they still split the revenue from the oil beneath it equally.

About two in every three people living in Kuwait belong to which group?

Foreign nationals, mostly workers from South and Southeast Asia, outnumber Kuwaitis about two to one, and few can ever naturalise: citizenship is kept for families settled in Kuwait before 1920.

Which Kuwaiti island, inhabited since the Bronze Age, was named Ikaros by the ancient Greeks?

Failaka got the name on Alexander the Great's orders, after the Aegean island where Icarus was said to have fallen from the sky, and the ruins of a Greek temple still stand on it.

Which family has ruled Kuwait since settler clans picked one of its members as sheikh in the 1750s?

Al Sabah rule began by choice, not conquest: the families who settled the town appointed one of their own, Sabah bin Jaber, as sheikh, and his descendants have held the post ever since.

In 1899 Kuwait's ruler Mubarak the Great signed a deal handing control of his foreign affairs to which power?

Britain promised naval protection in return, and the deal suited Mubarak: fearing the Ottomans were about to annex Kuwait, he agreed to cede no land and receive no foreign agents without London's consent.

Before oil, which luxury trade was the basis of Kuwait's economy until a Japanese invention helped ruin it?

Pearling was killed off by Japan's cultured pearls and then the Great Depression, which emptied the market for luxuries; by luck, oil was struck in 1938 just as the old trade was dying.

In the pre-oil era, Kuwait's craftsmen were known around the coasts of Arabia for making what?

Boats were the town's other living: a shipbuilding trade grew up to serve Kuwait's long-distance sea merchants, and its wooden craft won a name for quality along the coasts of Arabia.

Kuwait's oil age began in 1938 with a strike at which field, now ranked the world's second largest?

Burgan ranks behind only the Ghawar field across the border, yet the Second World War kept it shut in: development stopped, and no crude was shipped until 1946, eight years after the strike.

Kuwait's state oil company sells petrol at thousands of European filling stations under which brand name?

Q8 is a pun you hear when you say it aloud: Kuwait's state oil company bought Gulf Oil's filling stations across western Europe in 1983 and relaunched them under the new name three years later.

In 1960 Kuwait and four other states met in Baghdad to found which organisation?

OPEC was the exporters' answer to the big Western oil companies, which had just cut the price they paid for crude without asking; the five founders, Venezuela among them, banded together to stop it happening again.

After his army overran Kuwait in August 1990, Saddam Hussein declared the country to be what?

Iraq's 19th province was an old claim revived: Baghdad had insisted Kuwait was rightfully its territory within a week of Kuwaiti independence in 1961, and backed down only when troops arrived from abroad to deter it.

Why does Kuwait celebrate its national day on 25 February, not the June independence date?

The summer heat won out after a single June national day in 1962: from 1963 the party moved to 25 February, the date the emir of the day, Abdullah Al-Salim, had come to the throne in 1950.

The Kuwait Investment Authority holds what distinction among sovereign wealth funds?

The world's oldest, it began as an investment board in the City of London, eight years before Kuwait was even independent, to put surplus oil money to work for future generations.

As of 2026, which Kuwaiti currency unit is the most valuable in the world, at over three US dollars each?

Dinar notes break into 1,000 fils rather than 100, and the central bank pegs the rate to a basket of currencies instead of letting it float, which has kept one dinar above three dollars for years.

Before the 1990 invasion, Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait of what?

Pumping too much oil pushed the price down just when Iraq, deep in debt after its war with Iran, needed every dollar; Baghdad also accused Kuwait of stealing crude from the Rumaila field on the border.

The US-led campaign to free Kuwait opened in January 1991 with weeks of air strikes under which code name?

Desert Storm followed Desert Shield, the five-month build-up of coalition troops in the region; after more than five weeks of bombing, the ground assault drove the occupying army out within days.

Roughly how many Kuwaiti oil wells did retreating Iraqi troops set ablaze in 1991?

Hundreds of wells burned for months under smoke so thick that it blotted out the sun over Kuwait City and cooled the air beneath; the last one was not capped until November.

Which community, Kuwait's largest foreign group at about 400,000 before the Gulf War, was almost entirely gone by 1992?

Palestinians paid for their leaders' public backing of Saddam Hussein: most who fled the occupation were never allowed back, and many who had stayed were driven out in the weeks after liberation.

In 2005 Kuwait's parliament gave women the right to do what?

Vote in elections, and stand in them too: the emir had decreed it back in 1999, only for tribal and Islamist members of the elected chamber to block the change, and no woman won a seat until 2009.

In 1993 Kuwaiti authorities foiled a plot to assassinate which former US president on a visit to be honoured?

George H. W. Bush had led the coalition that freed Kuwait and was coming to be thanked; blaming Iraqi intelligence, his successor Bill Clinton fired 23 cruise missiles at its Baghdad headquarters that June.

At the heart of Kuwaiti social life is the diwaniya, which is what?

A regular gathering of men, held in a room set apart from the family house, where news, business and politics get talked through; Kuwait's pro-democracy movement of 1989 spread from one such evening to the next.

Most Kuwaiti citizens, like the ruling family, follow which branch of Islam?

Sunni Muslims are the clear majority of citizens and Shia a sizeable minority; the exact shares are outside estimates, because the census does not tell the two apart, and the constitution names only Islam as the state religion.

Which black shape sits at the hoist of Kuwait's flag?

A trapezium in black, the colour of battles: the flag's four colours are tied to a 13th-century Arab poem that speaks of white deeds, black battles and green lands.

Before 1961, Kuwait's flag was which two colours, like other Gulf Arab states?

Red and white, with the country's name in white Arabic script: Kuwait adopted it early in the First World War, after a friendly warship fired on a Kuwaiti vessel flying the same red Ottoman flag as the enemy.

Kuwait's parliament building is the work of Jørn Utzon, the Danish architect best known for which landmark?

Sydney Opera House: Utzon quit that job in 1966 after bitter rows over cost, seven years before it opened; his Kuwait National Assembly was finished in 1982.

Short of natural fresh water, Kuwait has met most household demand since the 1950s by doing what on a large scale?

Use desalination: until seawater distillation plants went up from the early 1950s, fresh water had to be shipped in from the Shatt al-Arab, and the plants still supply the great bulk of daily needs.

What verified Asian record did Mitribah in Kuwait set in 2016?

Highest temperature: logged at 54.0 °C, the reading was accepted only after the World Meteorological Organization had the sensor re-tested, and in 2019 it confirmed 53.9 °C, one of the hottest readings it recognises anywhere.

Aircraft wrecked a fleeing Iraqi column in 1991 on which nicknamed road?

Highway of Death was the name given to Highway 80, the road to the Iraqi border, after aircraft caught the retreating column frozen in one vast traffic jam in the war's last days and left the road lined with wrecks.

Machboos, a traditional Kuwaiti dish, is meat or fish served on a bed of what?

Spiced rice, usually basmati: the meat is chicken or mutton, but in a country that grew up as a port the topping can also be fish or shellfish from the Gulf.

Kuwait is often nicknamed the "Hollywood of the Gulf" because of what?

Its television soap operas and theatre: in the 1980s, the golden age of Kuwaiti drama, its serials were watched across the Arab world, and actors from all over the Gulf settled in Kuwait to make their careers.

Kuwait's footballers won which trophy in 1980?

Asian Cup, won as hosts: nine days earlier the same South Korean side had beaten Kuwait 3-0 in the group stage, and Kuwait handed back the exact scoreline in the final.

A Kuwaiti prince got the 1982 World Cup referee to do what?

Disallow a goal France had just scored: Kuwait's players had stopped at a whistle from the crowd, and Prince Fahad argued until the referee gave way; France still won 4-1, and the referee never took another international.

Kuwaiti shooter Fehaid Al-Deehani won gold at Rio 2016 competing under what banner?

Independent athlete: with Kuwait suspended by the IOC, the army officer refused to carry the Olympic flag at the opening ceremony, saying he would carry only Kuwait's, then became the first Kuwaiti to win Olympic gold.

Al-Sadu, the Bedouin craft kept alive at a museum house in Kuwait City, is a traditional form of what?

Weaving: Bedouin women work the wool on a loom pegged flat to the ground, building bold geometric patterns that echo the desert, and Sadu House still teaches the craft.

How did Kuwait win US Navy escorts for its oil tankers under Iranian attack in the 1980s?

Put them under the US flag: Kuwait had asked the Soviet Union for the same protection, and once Moscow agreed Washington followed, its warships escorting the re-registered tankers through the Gulf from 1987.

The Souk Al-Manakh crash that hit Kuwait's economy in the 1980s was a crash of what?

An unofficial stock market, where shares were bought with post-dated cheques: when prices slumped in 1982 investors could not honour them, and the unpaid debts ran to tens of billions of dollars.

What was the Kuwait Fund set up to do?

Lend to poorer countries: created in 1961, the year of independence, the Kuwait Fund makes cheap development loans, at first to Arab states and, since 1974, to developing countries anywhere.

Opened in 2019 across Kuwait Bay, the Sheikh Jaber crossing is what?

A sea bridge, among the longest in the world when it opened: it crosses Kuwait Bay by way of two artificial islands to reach the northern shore, the site planned for a megacity called Silk City.

What name, short for the Arabic for 'without nationality', is given to Kuwait's large population of stateless residents?

Bedoon is short for 'without nationality': in the 2010s more than 100,000 people, many from families in Kuwait for generations, claimed citizenship, yet since 1985 the state had classed them as illegal residents.

What is the shamal, which sweeps Kuwait almost without a break through June and July?

A dusty north-west wind: the shamal blows hot and dry across Iraq and the Gulf states, and in Kuwait it is the force behind the dramatic sandstorms of early summer.

What did Kuwait's rulers do to parliament in both 1976 and 1986?

Dissolved it, the first time for five years; the second shutdown lasted until 1992, when the emir made good on a promise given in exile during the Iraqi occupation.

In the ardah, a traditional Kuwaiti dance, facing rows of men sway to drums and chanted poetry while holding what?

Swords: the men stand shoulder to shoulder with light blades in hand while a poet chants verses for them to sing back, and the dance is a fixture of weddings and national celebrations around the Gulf.

Iraq long claimed Kuwait because the Ottomans had counted it part of a territory governed from which city?

Basra: the Ottomans counted Kuwait as a district of their Basra province while leaving its rulers to govern themselves, and Iraq later cited that paper status to claim the whole country.

Mubarak the Great seized power in Kuwait in 1896 by doing what to the ruler, his own brother?

Killing him: it was a rare act of political violence in Kuwait, and with the Ottomans backing the dead ruler's allies, Mubarak spent his reign looking abroad for a protector.

In 1985 pro-Iranian militants attacked Kuwait's ruler with what?

A car bomb: it went off among the cars of his motorcade and he survived; Kuwait was then lending Baghdad billions for its war with Iran, yet five years on it was Iraq, not Iran, that invaded.