The Al-Marzouq family: from a market square in old Kuwait to the seafront house now called Sadu House
The first elected council was chosen in Yousef's home in 1938; later generations ran the municipality, audited the state and launched the Gulf's first magazine for women and the home.
In the heart of old Kuwait Town, near the Al-Bahar mosque and the vegetable market, there was an open square known as Barahat Al-Saba’an, later renamed Barahat bin Bahar. The Al-Marzouq family lived around it, with the Al-Sumait family as neighbours. From that square came names that run through modern Kuwaiti history: in the first legislative council, at the municipality, at the State Audit Bureau, and behind the Gulf’s first family magazine.
From a village in Najd
The historian Farhan Al-Farhan traces the family to Irmah, a small village in Najd, and to the Saba’an, the Subai’ tribe. Like many Kuwaiti families, he writes, they came to the coast when hardship and famine pushed people out of central Arabia.
The ancestor who gave the family its name was Marzouq. The line runs from him through Abdullah, Mohammed and Salman to a second Marzouq, whose four sons, Yousef, Mohammed, Jassim and Fahad, are the branches of the family today.
From the market to the sea
As the family’s trade grew, some of them moved from the market to the shoreline. There, in 1936, Yousef Al-Marzouq built the house that Kuwait now knows as Sadu House on Arabian Gulf Street. It was the first house in Kuwait to combine stone with reinforced concrete. In 1938 it passed to Shirin Behbehani.
In the last century, members of the family also went to India, trading in gold, pearls and other goods. Among the seafarers was Jassim Al-Marzouq, a long-haul trading captain, a nakhoda safar, who died on 1 November 1928.
The council of 1938
Al-Farhan cites Abdullah Al-Hatem’s book Min Huna Bada’at Al-Kuwait for a striking detail: the election of Kuwait’s first legislative council was held in Yousef Al-Marzouq’s house. Two of the fourteen members chosen were from the family, Yousef Al-Marzouq and Mohammed Al-Daoud Al-Marzouq, and both appear on the council list published by the Kuwaiti Information Office.
Later generations
The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia Al-Farhan quotes lists more: Fahad Marzouq Al-Marzouq on the Education Council in 1960; Ahmed Mohammed Al-Marzouq, head of the State Audit Bureau in 1965; Abdulwahab Daoud Al-Marzouq on the Municipal Council in 1966; and Jassim Khaled Daoud Al-Marzouq, born in 1933, a 1961 law graduate who ran Kuwait Municipality and went on to become Minister of Justice.
Then there is Ghanima Fahad Al-Marzouq, who grew up in the Jibla quarter. She founded Osrati (“My Family”) in 1964; its first issue came out in February 1965, making it the first magazine in the Gulf devoted to the family and to women, with her as its first editor-in-chief.
Photo: A wooden boom on display outside the National Museum on Arabian Gulf Street, a short walk from Sadu House. The boat did not belong to the family. By Zairon, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: Farhan Al-Farhan, “Al-Marzouq or Al-Marazeeq”, 2 January 2003, on the Kuwait History forum; “Ghanima Al-Marzouq, pioneer of family journalism”, Al-Anba, 27 March 2013; the 1938 council list from the Kuwaiti Information Office.
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