Salmiya

I have posted on this blog some time ago an unusual Seh Mihraba rug from the Shindand market area in west Afghanistan. I had bought it from my friendly Afghan carpet sellers Mirwuis and Syed who used to have a small shop in Kuwait’s Souq Mubarakia. They frequently offered a variety of rugs from Afghanistan and Iran on the Friday market in the Al-Rai industrial area next to the notorious 4th Ring Road, just behind the nurseries. Opposite to the animal market, there is what is called the Iranian market where you may find in fact everything you might be looking for. The whole area is very fascinating. My friends and I liked to go there, if possible every weekend. I would like to post another, much more typical, Seh Mihraba rug here. Tareq Rajab, Kuwait’s former Director of the Department of Antiquities and Museums in Kuwait and owner of two most marvelous private museums in Jabriya (the museum for calligraphy I had a chance to visit shortly before leaving Kuwait for good in 2007),...

This is (almost) the title of a wonderful production of Tareq Rajab Museum , written by Mr. Rajab’s wife Sehan in 1999. When I had moved to Kuwait in 2001, the island, about 20 km east of the shores, mesmerized me from the beginning. Interested in the archaeology of the region, the at least two archeological sites there, one from the Bronze Age and a small Greek Temple dating to Alexander the Great, immediately attracted my attention. Amazingly, none of my new colleagues had visited the island and very few others I asked had ever been there. It was said that it was no longer inhabited since the Iraqi invasion and expulsion in 1991. I was told that there was a ferry boat from Ras Salmiya every now and then. So, I decided to make a trip on the first Eid holidays after I had settled in Kuwait. The Island was first mentioned by Greek geographer Strabo (d. 25 CE). The Greek, who had built an outpost on the island during Alexander’s conquest of Asia (336-323 BCE), called it Ikaros...