Pre-Islamic well found on Kuwait’s Failaka Island

An ancient water well dating back to the 7th-8th century has been discovered on Failaka Island in Kuwait. The pre-Islamic well is 15 feet long and 13 feet wide, an unusually large example, built next to an ancient water channel. What makes it truly unique is that it is still producing abundant water.

Failaka Island is an island in the Persian Gulf 12 miles off the coast of Kuwait City. Its location 60 miles south of where the Shatt al-Arab, the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, discharges into the Persian Gulf, has made the island prime real estate since Sumer. It was settled around 2000 B.C. by traders from Ur who used its strategic location to protect their maritime routes, building two ports on its excellent natural harbors. Mesopotamian-style buildings have been unearthed on Failaka’s southwest harbor containing artifacts from as far away as India as well as cylinder seals documenting the sale and movement of goods.

Failaka became part of the Dilmun Kingdom, a commercial and cultural hub of the region encompassing modern-day Kuwait, Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia, around 1800 B.C. It flourished under Dilum until the middle of the 1st millennium B.C., and was still well-populated when Alexander the Great explored it in the 4th century B.C. In the Hellenistic era, Failaka came under the rule of the Seleucid Empire and later was annexed by Rome. It attracted new settlers in the early Christian era, and a Christian community was active there through the 9th century, well into the Islamic period.

With such a long and diverse history in such a small space, Failaka is an unparalleled source of archaeological evidence about commerce, culture and life in the Persian Gulf over thousands of years. Excavations began in 1958, and after a brief interruption during the first Gulf War when Iraqi troops occupied the island as part of Sadam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, they have continued ever since, uncovering more than 90 archaeological sites across 10 major areas.

A joint Kuwaiti-Slovakian archaeological mission has been excavating the Al-Qusour area in the center of the island since 2019. The location is rich in archaeological materials from the early Christian, pre-Islamic and Islamic periods. The well was discovered in the ruins of a large building, dated by pottery fragments to the 7th and 8th centuries. Even the fragments are of archaeological importance: one of them bears the stamp of a gazelle, the logo of its maker. The excavation also uncovered more than 11 pounds of gemstones, including rubies and amethysts.

Archaeologists believe it was the home or administrative building of a very wealthy person. At more than 1,000 square feet in area, it is the largest home found on the island. It had high defensive walls surrounding it, and little wonder give the huge wealth in gemstones it contained.