Fintas before the suburbs: 170 houses, 30 wells and 600 palms by the sea

Before the middle of the twentieth century, Fintas was a small village on the coast south of Kuwait Town. Its people farmed and took part in the sea trades at the same time. The writers who described Kuwait in the first half of the century agree on three things about it: it sat on the sea, it was agricultural, and it had a mosque where Friday prayers were held.

Three early descriptions

• J. G. Lorimer, in the Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf: 16 miles south of Kuwait Town.
• Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Rasheed, in his History of Kuwait: about 17 miles south, around 300 people, a Friday mosque and several gardens.
• H. R. P. Dickson: one of the coastal “Qusur” villages, with 170 houses, its people drawn from various Arab tribes, as in Kuwait Town and Fahaheel.

Thirty wells and three donkey teams

Dickson counted about 30 wells, some brackish and some sweet at a depth of 20 feet. Each well mouth was 20 feet across on every side, wide enough for three teams of donkeys to haul water at once. One sweet-water well the villagers knew as Sulaisil has since disappeared, and its site is forgotten.

He judged its farming richer than Jahra’s despite the smaller cultivated area: barley, lentils, watermelon, radish and onion, 600 date palms, and sidr and ushar trees. Its farms sent vegetables to the capital.

School and clinic

A boys’ school opened in Fintas in 1945; by 1951 it still had no more than 45 pupils. The Education Department opened a girls’ school there in 1951. The Public Health Department built a health centre in 1953; before that, care came by car, with a doctor, a nurse and medicines on board.

A spring retreat

Fintas was among the first places townspeople headed for spring camping and the mid-year school break. Al-Bitha magazine published a teacher’s account of a trip there in 1946, and in September 1952 a poem titled “On the Shore of Fintas”. The poet Ahmad Meshari Al-Adwani wrote the widely known song “Ya Sahil Al-Fintas”.

Today the village is a town that has all but merged with Abu Halifa, Mangaf and Fahaheel, once separate villages themselves.

Photo: a farm in Al-Wafra, southern Kuwait, in 2009; it is not Fintas. By Ahmadk, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: Yaqoub Al-Ghunaim, “Ya Sahil Al-Fintas”, Al-Watan newspaper, quoting Lorimer, Dickson and Abdulaziz Al-Rasheed, via the Kuwait History forum; and Khaled Al-Mubailesh, Kuwaiti Families in the Old Quarters and Villages, Fintas page on kuwaitpast.com. Both read 29 October 2026.