The Oil Town of Ahmadi since 1946: From Colonial Town to

Nostalgic City

Reem Alissa

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Volume 33,
Number 1, 2013, pp. 41-58 (Article)

Published by Duke University Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/506690

[ Access provided at 15 Feb 2021 13:43 GMT from Western Kentucky University ]
The Oil Town of Ahmadi since 1946
From Colonial Town to Nostalgic City

Reem Alissa

T
his article brings to light a missing link in recent literature concerned with urban modernity in
the oil cities of the Persian Gulf. It moves beyond the Gulf city to focus on the urban site that ex-
perienced the region’s earliest manifestations of the modern: the company town. Bypassing the
dominant discourse of rentier state theory at the macroeconomic level, this article shifts attention to a
new discourse of oil as an agent of political, social, and cultural change at the level of the everyday urban
experience. Focusing mostly on the early decades of oil development in the Middle East, I use the Kuwait
Oil Company (KOC) town of Ahmadi as a case study. Apart from oil various actors were complicit in the
creation and playing out of Ahmadi’s urban modernity: KOC officials, the company’s architectural firm
Wilson, Mason and Partners, the process of Kuwaitization, Ahmadi’s architecture and urbanism, and
especially the town’s residents. I argue that Ahmadi’s colonial modernity, which was initially targeted at
the expatriate employees of the company during the 1950s, was later adopted by the Kuwaiti employees
of KOC after the country’s independence in 1961 and in turn mediated a drastically new lifestyle during
the 1960s and 1970s that rendered it a nostalgic city in the nation’s collective memory.
The article is divided into four sections. The first section discusses the foundational role played by
oil, KOC officials, and the company architects Wilson, Mason and Partners in Ahmadi’s architectural
and urban development. In outlining Ahmadi’s first planning policies KOC officials set in writing the
town’s structural hierarchy. This hierarchy reflected the company’s stratified organization of its employ-
ees based on grade, ethnicity, and housing provision, which was a key element of the town’s functioning.
The execution of these planning policies in conjunction with the use of the Garden City and Abadan
as urban models shaped Ahmadi’s first decade of urban existence under the aegis of colonial urban-
ism. The second section highlights KOC’s new public relations campaign aimed at assuaging criticisms
leveled against it following the Suez War. Through various publications, particularly the KOC’s English-­
language magazine the Kuwaiti and its Arabic-­language equivalent al- ­Kuwayti, the company publicized
and popularized its contribution to the modernization of the nation and its benevolent efforts toward the

Very special thanks go to Nelida Fuccaro for her outstanding organiza-
tion of the 2010 Middle East Studies Association (MESA) panel in which
a brief version of this article was presented. I remain forever grateful for
her insightful comments that have helped shape this article. I also thank
Joseph Godlewski for his careful review of the article. I would like to ac-
knowledge the BP Archive and the KOC Archive for their instrumental
contribution to this article. Finally, sincere thanks go to my PhD commit-
tee: Teresa Caldeira, Greig Crysler, and Nezar AlSayyad, my dissertation
chair and advisor, whose work and guidance has continuously inspired
my research. All translations are my own.

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 41

Vol. 33, No. 1, 2013 • doi 10.1215/1089201x-2072712 • © 2013 by Duke University Press
42 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

continued development of Ahmadi. This publicity
effort, it should be noted, was particularly focused
on the benefits modernization afforded Kuwaiti
employees. It also mitigated criticisms by showing
support for the Kuwaitization of the labor force,
that is, the progressive appointment of qualified
Kuwaitis to senior positions with the eventual aim
of a Kuwaiti takeover of the company. When the
process of Kuwaitization came to fruition in the
1960s, the urban structural hierarchy set up in the
previous decade was turned upside down as Ah-
madi gradually shifted from serving an expatriate
population to accommodating mostly Kuwaiti and
Arab residents. The third section of this article an-
alyzes the different ways in which Ahmadi’s urban
modernity affected the lifestyle of the newly up-
graded Kuwaiti employee. The analysis focuses on
the following three scales: the urban, the architec-
tural, and the social. The urban scale refers to the
level of the town plan and pays particular attention
to landscaping as a key element in this unfolding
modernity. The architectural scale focuses on the
single-­family housing unit and on how its design
fostered the model of a nuclear family structure
and a Western sense of neighborly relations. Lastly,
the social scale refers to certain codes of conduct
that were sustained through both Ahmadi’s built
environment and the company’s magazine al-­
Kuwayti as it instructed the new Ahmadi resident,
particularly its female population, on how to act
appropriately in this modern town. The last sec-
tion explains why Ahmadi is still perceived as a
nostalgic city in the collective imagination of Ku-
wait’s population. Drawing on oral evidence col-
lected during interviews with former residents, it
focuses on two overarching themes: the juxtaposi-
tion of old Kuwait Town and Ahmadi Town in the
1960s and 1970s on the one hand, and the juxtapo-
sition of 1960s and 1970s Ahmadi and its present
urban condition on the other — ​both comparisons
form the basis for the formulation of the former
KOC company town as nostalgic.
The Growth of a Colonial Company Town:
Ahmadi, 1946  –   56
Oil first came into prominence in the nineteenth
century in Russia and the United States, as ex-
emplified by the holdings of the Nobels and the
Rothschilds in the former and by John D. Rock-
efeller’s Standard Oil Company in the latter. The
turn of the twentieth century, however, saw the
successive emergence of major firms that came to
dominate the international oil industry. Known
as the “seven sisters,” these included the Gulf Oil
Corporation (GOC), the Texas Company (later
Texaco), the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey
(later Exxon), the Standard Oil Company of New
York (later Mobil), the Standard Oil Company of
California (later Chevron), the Anglo-­Dutch en-
terprise Royal Dutch Shell, and the Anglo-­Persian
Oil Company (APOC, later AIOC and BP).1 Both
GOC and APOC were instrumental in bringing
the oil-­r ich Middle East into prominence in the
early twentieth century.
The D’Arcy concession granted to William
Knox D’Arcy in 1901 eventually led to the striking
of oil in commercial quantities at Masjed Soley-
man in southern Iran in 1908. This was the first
oil-­producing area in the Middle East, leading
eventually to the formation of APOC in 1909.2
The majority of APOC’s shares were held by Royal
Dutch Shell. This proprietorial structure was re-
versed at the beginning of the World War I when
the British government became APOC’s major
shareholder in 1914.3 In the early 1920s oil conces-
sions were pursued in Eastern Arabia (which later
became part of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia),
Bahrain, and Kuwait by both APOC and its British
counterpart, the Eastern and General Syndicate
(EGS).
After traces of oil were found in Kuwait by
EGS in 1927, GOC took over its efforts toward se-
curing oil concessions.4 This, coupled with the
striking of oil in Bahrain five years later, immedi-
ately accelerated the ongoing concessionary battle

1.  See J. H. Bamberg, The History of the British
Petroleum Company, vol. 2, The Anglo-­Iranian
Years, 1928  –  1954 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1994), 148.
2.  See R. W. Ferrier, The History of the British Pe- 3.  See Bamberg, The Anglo-­Iranian Years.
troleum Company, vol. 1, The Developing Years,
4.  See Ferrier, The Developing Years, 567.
1901  –  1932 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982), 89.
 Reem Alissa • The Oil Town of Ahmadi: From Colonial Town to Nostalgic City 43

between GOC and APOC in Kuwait. This battle
lasted until 1933, when GOC and APOC became
equal shareholders in the newly formed Kuwait
Oil Company (KOC).5 A year later KOC was finally
granted a concession by Kuwait’s ruler, Shaykh
Ahmad Al Sabah. Although the American GOC
and the British APOC jointly owned KOC, it was
effectively a British-­controlled company as APOC’s
majority shareholding was with the British govern-
ment, which had controlled Kuwait as a protector-
ate since 1899.6 Britain’s interest in Kuwait was ini-
tially strategic, but in 1938 it was cemented by the
striking of oil at Bahra. Oil operations, however,
were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II
and resumed in 1945. With the first oil exports in
1946, the colonial and imperial nature of Kuwait’s
relationship with Britain would come to be ex-
pressed spatially through architecture and urban-
ism. This was epitomized by the construction of
Ahmadi Town as the headquarters of KOC in 1947
in the middle of Kuwait’s barren desert.
As part of the 1945 Development Program,
KOC made a major decision to move oil op-
erations from their previous location at Magwa
closer to the rich Burgan oil field near the Dha-
har Ridge — ​which would soon become Ahmadi
(fig. 1). This early period marked the beginnings
of KOC’s structural hierarchy that maintained its
stratified logic through a division of labor based
on professional grade, ethnicity, and housing.
Managerial and senior staff were exclusively British
and American, junior or clerical staff and skilled
labor were Indians and Pakistanis, and at the bot-
tom of the scale were the Arab labor, which also
included Iranians. Most of the Arab employees of
KOC were Kuwaiti and Bedouin and came from
the neighboring Arabian Peninsula. Between 1945
and 1947 housing for company employees was tem-
porary and scattered among Magwa, Burgan, and
the old Kuwait Town. Senior staff were provided
with Nissen huts, which were later replaced by pre-
fabricated air-­conditioned houses. While Nissen
huts were steel structures shipped from Abadan
and London, the prefabricated air-­conditioned
housing units had bathrooms, kitchens, and sepa-
rate servants’ quarters. Junior or clerical staff were
initially housed in tents but later accommodated
in Nissen huts with latrines and fans but with no
air-­conditioning. Skilled and nonskilled labor were
allocated bays, or long concrete blocks, but most
of them had to build their own shelters from avail-
able materials, often scraps of wood and metal.7 As
the backbone of KOC policy, this structural hierar-
chy would soon become the driving force behind
Ahmadi’s architectural design and urban plan.
The Kuwait Building Program of 1947–51 was
devised by KOC to plan and construct the neces-
sary infrastructure to carry out oil operations — ​an
important element of which was a new town on the
Dhahar Ridge to be named Ahmadi after Kuwait’s
incumbent ruler Shaykh Ahmad Al Sabah. The
urban component of the Kuwait Building Program
called for the provision of permanent housing for
KOC staff, which was to be built in five different
stages during five years. In addition to a total of
1,450 residential units, the new town of Ahmadi
was to include administrative buildings, a hospi-
tal, a fire station, a post office, schools, and social
amenities such as staff clubs, shops, and pleasure
gardens.8
In 1947 KOC commissioned the British ar-
chitect James Mollison Wilson (1887–1965), the
founder of Wilson, Mason and Partners, to design
Ahmadi’s town plan, head offices, staff housing,
and mosques in collaboration with the company’s
building and civil engineering representatives in
London and Kuwait.9 Wilson’s work was greatly in-
fluenced by that of his mentor Sir Edwin Lutyens
(1869–1944), who designed and restored many
country houses and castles in Britain and con-
tributed to the planning and design of London’s
Hampstead Garden Suburb. More important, Wil-

5.  See Bamberg, The Anglo-­Iranian Years, 148.
6.  In conjunction with the Protectorate Treaty
the British government and KOC signed an ad-
ditional agreement in 1934 stipulating that
KOC was to remain a British company, giving
the British government significant powers. For
example, the oil concession was nontransfer-
able without the consent of the British gov- 8. See “Kuwait Building Programme — ​Housing,
ernment, which also acquired the rights of Municipal and Amenity Works: 1947  –  1951,” 1947,
preemption over Kuwaiti crude oil and refined file 68422/001, BP Archive.
products in the event of war. For more details,
9.  See “Prospectus for Wilson Mason and Part-
see ibid., 150  –  51.
ners,” 1976, file 198444, BP Archive.
7.  See “Kuwait Housing,” 1945, file 106787/001,
BP Archive, University of Warwick, Coventry.
44 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

Figure 1.  Diagram showing Dhahar or Ahmadi Ridge with Mina Al-­Ahmadi to its east, 1957, © BP plc

son’s work as Lutyens’s assistant between 1913 and
1916 for the planning of New Delhi in India pro-
foundly influenced his future approaches to town
planning and architecture, especially in places
such as Abadan and Ahmadi.10
First stationed in India and then in Mesopo-
tamia as a major in the British colonial establish-
ment, Wilson directed the Public Works Depart-
ment in Baghdad until 1926 and designed some
of the most important new public buildings of the
city.11 After his term in Iraq ended he returned to
Britain to set up his architectural practice.12 During
Wilson’s time in Baghdad the high commissioner
was Sir Arnold Wilson, who later became general
manager of APOC and hired Wilson in 1927 to de-
sign a general hospital in Abadan. This was his first
of a series of commissions by the oil company, as by
1944 Wilson was formally recognized as the official
architect of APOC.13 As company architect Wilson
went on to plan and design many of their projects,
which ranged from civic, commercial, and residen-
tial buildings to town planning in such places as
Masjed Soleyman, Abadan, Agha Sair, Gach Saran,
Kermashah, and Bandar Mashin in Iran; Kirkuk
for the Iraq Petroleum Company; and, in 1947,
Ahmadi for the KOC.14 Wilson’s town-­planning ap-

10.  See Mark Crinson, “Abadan: Planning and
Architecture under the Anglo-­Iranian Oil Com-
pany,” Planning Perspectives 12, no. 3 (1997):
341  –  59; Wilson, Mason and Partners, Wilson,
Mason and Partners: 60th Anniversary (London:
Wilson, Mason and Partners, 1986); and C. H.
Lindsey Smith, JM: The Story of an Architect
(London: Wilson, Mason and Partners, 1976).
11.  During Wilson’s period of office in Iraq, 14.  See Smith, JM, 63.
some of the important buildings he designed
were the University of Baghdad, the Agricul-
tural Institute, Baghdad Museum, the hospital
in Basra, and King Faisal’s palace.
12.  See Smith, JM.
13.  See Crinson, “Abadan,” 348.
 Reem Alissa • The Oil Town of Ahmadi: From Colonial Town to Nostalgic City 45

Figure 2.  Plan of Ahmadi, 1958, © BP plc

proach to Ahmadi was shaped by a variety of fac-
tors: his colonial background and experience with
Lutyens in Delhi, Garden City principles, KOC’s
building program policy, and, most important, his
planning and design of Abadan. Between 1912 and
1945 Abadan grew to be one of Iran’s first mod-
ern cities in a previously scarcely populated area
located at the estuary where the Tigris, Euphra-
tes, and Karun Rivers meet the Persian Gulf.15 As
Wilson’s first major APOC commission, Abadan
provided a model for Ahmadi. As in Abadan, he
replicated the structural hierarchy of the oil com-
pany at three different scales: the urban, the archi-
tectural, and the social.
At the urban scale, Ahmadi’s town plan was
divided into three sections: the north section, the
mid section, and the Arab Village, which was later
called the south section (fig. 2). The north section
was planned to accommodate KOC’s British and
American senior staff while the mid section was
designed to house Indian and Pakistani clerical,
financial, and technical (C.F. & T.) or junior staff.
The Arab Village or south section was planned
for KOC’s indigenous workers: Arabs, Kuwaitis,
Bedouins, and Iranians. Technically speaking,
this urban hierarchy not only reflected KOC em-
ployee grades but also replicated the company’s
policy of ethnic segregation, as was apparent in
the planning approach Wilson adopted in Abadan
and before that in Delhi. Indeed, Lutyens and Wil-
son’s overall urban plan of New or Imperial Delhi
(1912–30) clearly set a precedent for Abadan. In
his discussion of New Delhi, Anthony King has
pointed to its hexagonal grid containing certain
zones whose allocation was based on race, occu-
pational rank, and socioeconomic status.16 King

15.  See Kaveh Ehsani, “Social Engineering
and the Contradictions of Modernization in
Khuzestan’s Company Towns: A Look at Abadan
and Masjed-­Soleyman,” International Review of
Social History 48 (2003): 361  –  99.
16.  See Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban De-
velopment: Culture, Social Power, and Envi-
ronment (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1976), 244.
46 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

cities, Howard’s Garden

City aimed to combine
socially egalitarian work
and living conditions in
a town and country set-
ting.20 Both Wilson and
British KOC employees
who resided in Ahmadi
introduced the garden
a spect of t his u rba n
model to Kuwait through
the landscaping of the
company town. By means
of a trial and error ap-
proach, early British resi-
dents succeeded in iso-
lating plants that could
survive in Kuwait’s harsh
desert environment. To
encourage the landscap-
Figure 3.  Aerial view of Ahmadi, 1956, KOC Archive ing of Ahmadi KOC sold
seeds and plants at very
emphatically states that “Delhi, of all Indian cities, low prices and held regular garden competitions
represents a textbook case of colonial urban de- that were very popular among residents.21 Indeed,
velopment.” 17 In Abadan socio-­spatial segregation since the first tree was planted in 1948, Ahmadi
was also reinforced through the planning of small grew to become a lush green oasis. In spite of Wil-
townships in four or five distinct areas with each son’s success at implementing the garden compo-
housing specific ethnicities and employee grades.18 nent of Howard’s model, Ahmadi’s socio-­spatial
According to Mark Crinson, the company consid- segregation clearly suggests that he did not con-
ered small townships more easily and efficiently form to Howard’s social ideals given the town’s in-
controllable than large ones.19 egalitarian living conditions.
Wilson’s planning and architectural ap- The architectural scale of Wilson’s plans re-
proach in Abadan also followed the Garden Sub- flected this socio-­spatial segregation in the hier-
urb model, which he applied in Ahmadi as well. archical allotment of houses and lot sizes, which
The Garden Suburb was a popular model of varied in the north, mid, and south sections of the
urban planning used prolifically in the early to town. Figure 3 shows a view of picturesque North
mid-­t wentieth century throughout the world, es- Ahmadi with its spacious houses and lots in the
pecially in Britain, where the model originated. background and the slightly smaller houses of the
The Garden Suburb owed its inspiration to Eb- mid section with the undersized orthogonal row
enezer Howard’s utopian idea of urban planning, housing for labor in South Ahmadi in the fore-
which spurred the Garden City Movement in the ground (fig. 3). The plan of the senior staff house
early twentieth century. In an attempt to solve the reveals a high standard of living: air-­conditioned
deplorable living conditions in British industrial and fully furnished, this was a sizable detached

17.  Ibid., 182. 20.  For more on Howard’s Garden City, see Eb-
enezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-­m orrow
18.  See Crinson, “Abadan,” 350  –  51.
(London: S. Sonnenschein, 1902).
19.  See ibid., 350.
21.  Mrs. X, interview by the author, Kuwait,
30 March 2010. In response to their wishes,
the identities of the former Ahmadi residents
interviewed remain anonymous. They have
been identified by the random assignment of
different capital letters that do not appear in
their actual names. These letters are preceded
by the title of either “Mr.” or “Mrs.” to indicate
gender and marital status.
 Reem Alissa
Figure 4.  Left: Senior staff house plan. Middle: Junior or C.F. & T. house plan. Right: Labor house plan, 1947, © BP plc
house surrounded by a large garden. As an exam-
ple, figure 4 shows the left portion of the house
plan that includes bedrooms, a bathroom, and one
room for the children with services on the right
side inclusive of a kitchen separated from the ser-
vant quarters by a yard (fig. 4). In contrast, the ju-
nior or C.F. & T. staff house was semidetached and
significantly smaller in size than its senior counter-
part. Neither fully furnished nor air-­conditioned,
the junior house was equipped with only an oven
and stove in the kitchen and closets. Although
there was a WC for servants at the back of the yard,
junior staff did not have the luxury of live-­in help.
The plan for the house designed for the labor
force had only two rooms, an inner courtyard and
a miniscule store and cooking area furnished only
with a stove and a sink. With barely any outdoor
space, the houses were also wall-­to-­wall with their
neighbors (fig. 4). This review of the architectural
scale in preindependence Ahmadi also suggests
how social segregation was deployed at the micro
level of domestic furniture. A similar architectural
hierarchy was used in Abadan: European senior
staff were allocated large villas set in spacious
gardens, workers’ neighborhoods consisted of
row houses with high walls and small courtyards,
22.  See Ehsani, “Social Engineering,” 384.
23.  Mr. Y, interview by the author, Kuwait, 11
February 2010.
• The Oil Town of Ahmadi: From Colonial Town to Nostalgic City 47
and mid-­level staff housing combined elements of
both.22
The social scale also reflects how KOC’s eth-
nic inequalities became embedded in Ahmadi’s
colonial architecture and urbanism. For example,
regardless of their actual professional qualifica-
tions, certain groups remained confined in spatial
terms to their specified grade level, as one of the
first Kuwaiti employees of the company recalled:
Even an English driver was senior staff. The se-
nior staff was for the nationality not the experi-
ence. The English doctor was senior staff but the
Indian doctor was junior staff. And when you are
admitted in the hospital, there is a ward for se-
nior staff and a ward for junior staff. And the arti-
sans and laborers were separate. The doctors and
nurses for juniors were treating juniors as well as
artisans. But the doctors in the junior staff never
treated the senior staff. No, they were all British,
the doctors and nurses for the seniors were all
British. So British treat British, and Indians treat
Indians and down the line.23
As in Abadan, these ethnically segregated
enclaves were also spatially policed. The north sec-
tion, exclusive to British and US senior employees,
was guarded by company security who prevented
48 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

access to nonwhite residents.24 In fact, non-­English
or non-­A mericans, specifically Arabs, were to be
confined to their own designated space, as epito-
mized by the labeling of their quarters inside Ah-
madi as the Arab Village. The Arab Village was
similar in concept to Abadan Town in that it was
meant for the exclusive housing of natives with the
aim of keeping them physically and socially sepa-
rated from expatriate staff areas. Unlike Abadan
Town, however, which was constructed spontane-
ously by laborers working at the refinery who were
not provided housing by the company,25 the Arab
Village was part of Ahmadi’s planned complex.
The Arab Village was also part of a long-­t erm
capitalist strategy pursued by the KOC in order to
cut the costs of the skilled labor force it imported
from India in the late 1940s and throughout the
1950s. This is evident in the company’s vision of
the “model village” as a site for the birth, rearing,
education, and training of the children of KOC
Arab employees who would eventually replace the
foreign skilled labor. In addition, their living sit-
uation “in better conditions than in the town of
Kuwait” was seen as increasing their loyalty to the
company.26 Therefore, the motivation behind the
development of an Arab Village was also profit-­
driven as KOC sought to produce its own cheap,
local, loyal, and docile skilled labor force.
This combination of socio-­spatial segrega-
tion and capitalist motivations was a staple of
urban development in other oil camps and towns
such as those in Venezuela, Iran, Bahrain, and
Saudi Arabia. Robert Vitalis and Kaveh Ehsani
posit these motivations as driven by two elements:
paternalism and racism on the one hand, and wel-
fare and colonialism on the other. In his ground-
breaking book America’s Kingdom, which focuses on
the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO)
camps in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Vitalis explains
how the company used paternalism and welfare — ​
that is the provision of social benefits such as hous-
ing, social amenities, and recreational facilities — ​
to secure employee loyalty and used racism to
prevent class solidarity and unionization.27 Unlike
Vitalis, both Ehsani and Crinson use the notion
of colonialism to explain Abadan’s segregationist
character. Although the company towns discussed
above were not part of colonies per se, like many
other sites affiliated with colonial or imperial
powers they were used as laboratories for the ex-
perimentation of new ideas and practices in pro-
fessional urban planning that glaringly combined
elements of colonial urbanism.28
KOC: The Benevolent Modernizer and Champion
of Kuwaitization, 1957  –  60
Ahmadi’s years as an oil colony came to an end as
a result of the nationalization of the Suez Canal
by Egypt’s Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser on 26 July
1956. This event and the subsequent Suez War fa-
mously fueled the fire of Pan-­A rabism and anti-­
imperialism throughout the Arab World. Conse-
quently, Kuwait’s political climate was destabilized.
A general strike and a boycott of British and French
goods followed, led by various local groups such as
youth organizations, the committee of merchants,
which consisted of Kuwait Town’s major busi-
ness owners, and ordinary citizens. Furthermore,
ten unsuccessful bombs were planted in the oil-­
producing areas of Mina al-­A hmadi, Ahmadi, and
Magwa.29 These events did not cause any major
disruption in oil production or in KOC’s routine
operations. In their aftermath, however, the oil
company’s standing came under serious scrutiny

24.  Ibid.; Mr. W, interview by the author, Ku-
wait, 27 January 2010; and Ismaeil Ahmed
(Team Leader, Building Maintenance, Ahmadi
Services Group), interview by the author, Ku-
wait, 2 November 2009.
25.  See Crinson, “Abadan,” 342.
26.  “Kuwait Building Programme,” 1947, file
68422/001, BP Archive.
27.  See Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom:
Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stan-
ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007),
19  –  20. For more on the use of paternalism and
urban design in company towns to counter the
influence of labor unions, see Margaret Craw-
ford, Building the Workingman’s Paradise: The
Design of American Company Towns (London:
Verso, 1995).
28.  See Ehsani, “Social Engineering,” 376. For
more on colonially affiliated sites used as lab-
oratories for the experimentation of profes-
sional urban planning, see Nezar AlSayyad,
ed., Forms of Dominance on the Architecture
and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise (Alder-
shot, UK: Avebury, 1992); King, Colonial Urban
Development; Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics
of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991); Brenda S. A.
Yeoh, Contesting Space in Colonial Singapore:
Power Relations and the Urban Built Environ-
ment, Singapore (Singapore: Singapore Uni-
versity Press, 2003); and Paul Rabinow, French
Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environ-
ment (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).
29.  See Robert L. Jarman, ed., Foreign Office An-
nual Reports from Arabia, 1930  –  1960: Iraq, Jor-
dan, Kuwait, Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Yemen,
4 vols. (London: Archive Editions, 1993), 4:261.
 Reem Alissa • The Oil Town of Ahmadi: From Colonial Town to Nostalgic City 49

forcing Arab labor to move to

an area located between Magwa
and Ahmadi that accommodated
contract and permanent labor-
ers, their families, and a num-
ber of shopkeepers. 30 This in-
formal settlement was variously
referred to by KOC officials as
a “slum area,” “primitive area,”
or one that housed the “fringe
population” (fig. 5). By the end
of 1952 it housed 666 families, of
which 511 were company employ-
ees.31 Located near the main en-
trance of KOC’s property on the
north senior section, this “slum
area” was considered a major eye-
sore, prompting the company to
resettle this “fringe population”
in 1954. 32 Yet instead of mov-
ing these families into Ahmadi’s
Figure 5.  The first unnamed informal settlement for Arab labor located on the border of A r ab V illage, one t housand
Ahmadi’s north section, KOC Archive households (seven hundred of
which included KOC employees)
as a result of the barrage of letters of complaint were resettled in a new camp called Badawiyyah,
sent by Kuwaiti oil workers to members of the rul- which was located six miles east of Ahmadi. KOC
ing family, who were often approached as a third provided the residents with free transportation, as
party to redress grievances. Newly established local they were ordered to dismantle their own houses
newspapers such as al- ­Ittihad (the Union), al- ­Fajr and rebuild them in the new site (which only had a
(the Dawn), and al- ­Sha’ab (the People) also voiced basic road layout) in the span of two days.33
strong criticism. The most critical of these were al-­ Critical of KOC’s treatment of its Arab work-
Fajr and al- ­Sha’ab, which exposed the unjust living ers, al- ­Fajr exposed the fact that these workers
conditions Arab and Kuwaiti oil workers endured were forced to live in deplorable conditions while
in the settlement of Badawiyyah. This was a new Indian and Pakistani employees got preferential
site that accommodated Arab workers who were treatment. Even more critical was al-­S ha’ab, an
previously settled as informal communities on the Arab nationalist – leaning newspaper that was al-
border of Ahmadi because of the unavailability of most solely dedicated to delegitimizing the com-
company housing inside the town. pany. 34 In an article published in 1958 Khalid
The history of these communities is quite in- Khalaf, the editor of al-­Sha’ab, discussed the de-
structive regarding the company’s arbitrary settle- plorable living conditions of Badawiyyah: about
ment policies. Once the construction of the Arab ten thousand people lived in one thousand “hov-
Village was completed in the middle of the 1950s els” that “merely consist[ed] of four walls and a
it was occupied by Indian and Pakistani workers, ceiling.” He described them as “unhygienic” with

30.  See “Labour Transport,” 1945–1953, file
59729/001, BP Archive.
31.  J. M. Pattinson to KOC Board, “Kuwait Hous-
ing,” 15 April 1953, file 59729/002, BP Archive.
32.  J. M. Pattinson to D. M. S. Langworthy, “Arab
Housing — ​Kuwait,” 6 March 1953, file 59729/
004, BP Archive.
33.  See “Arab Families’ New Camp near Faha-
heel,” Kuwaiti, 9 December 1954.
34.  Khalid Khalaf, the editor of al-­Sha‘ab, was
hired by the KOC in 1957 as chief editor of its
first Arab publication Risalat al-­Naft (The Oil
Newsletter). After he expressed his desire to
write about the Suez Canal events, he was im-
50 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

“humans and animals living together and drink-
ing from the same polluted water.” 35 These damag-
ing complaints in addition to the strikes, boycotts,
and bombings following the Suez events forced the
KOC to begin a major campaign in 1956 with the
establishment of a public relations office in Kuwait
Town.36 The aim of this campaign was to polish
KOC’s tarnished reputation with various initiatives
pursued through the local and Arab media. These
initiatives famously included the publication in
1957 of the company’s first Arab magazine Risalat
al-­Naft (Oil Newsletter), the use of the Kuwaiti and
Lebanese press to recruit skilled Arab labor, the
periodic broadcast of news publicizing the advan-
tages of life in Ahmadi, and the publication of arti-
cles in the Arab and local press that presented the
company in a very positive light.37 In particular, the
KOC positioned itself as urban modernizer on the
one hand, and as champion of Kuwaitization on
the other. This course of action was very effective
in gaining local and regional consensus, especially
with Britain’s strategic decision to relinquish its
status as protector and grant Kuwait full indepen-
dence in 1961.
As Kuwaitization ultimately aimed at the na-
tionalization of the oil company, KOC made sure to
publicize its various efforts toward this end. These
included an increase in the sponsorship of local
training programs for the Kuwaiti employees of the
company, sending Kuwaitis abroad on scholarships,
and promoting and appointing Kuwaiti nationals
to more senior positions. In conjunction with the
professional advancement of Kuwaiti nationals,
KOC fashioned itself as modernizer by building
modern housing and recreation facilities for the
indigenous population in Ahmadi and by contrib-
uting to the nation’s wealth — ​all of which were well
publicized in the Kuwaiti  and in al-­Kuwayti.
The Kuwaiti was a weekly magazine circu-
lated to KOC’s English-­speaking employees and
affiliates. A major source of information and en-
tertainment, the magazine’s contents ranged from
British, world, and oil news to local community
events, including social functions and sports. In
1957 the Kuwaiti  sharply shifted its focus from in-
ternational, British, and Ahmadi news to articles
dealing with the architectural, urban, and social
development of Ahmadi Town and Kuwait City.38
In addition to emphasizing oil wealth’s contribu-
tion to Kuwait’s modern state projects, the Kuwaiti
showcased KOC as the benevolent modernizer
of Ahmadi with a specific focus on the services it
offered to Kuwaiti residents. Examples of this in-
clude a 1959 article discussing KOC’s solicitation of
the opinion of Kuwaiti employees regarding new
housing designs in South Ahmadi (fig. 6) and a
1961 article on the completion of a new shopping
center in South Ahmadi to be run by the Kuwaiti
government (fig. 7).39 During the late 1950s the Ku-
waiti also repeatedly published aerial photographs
that traced Ahmadi’s architectural and urban
development since its establishment to show the
company’s progress and its continuous investment
in its urban infrastructure. For example, figure 8
shows an aerial view of the town in 1961 compared
Figure 6.  Kuwaiti KOC workers discussing a design for housing in
South Ahmadi, 1959, Kuwaiti, 2 December 1959, KOC Archive

mediately dismissed by the KOC. Since then he
issued al-­Sha’ab, which, according to Khalaf,
was “a free newspaper which would refute the
imperialists’ falsehood.” “Taken from al-­Sha’ab
Newspaper (Kuwait): ‘The Complete Story of
Al-­Sha’ab,’ ” 25 December 1958, file 106988/002,
BP Archive.
35.  “Taken From al-­Sha’ab Newspaper (Ku-
wait),” 25 September 1958, file 106988/005, BP
Archive.
36.  See “Risalat Al-­Naft: Criticism and Analy- 39.  See “Models of New Type Family Houses
sis,” 1957, file 106863/005, BP Archive. Discussed by Senior K.O.C. Payroll Employees,”
Kuwaiti, 2 December 1959; and “How the New
37.  See “Public Relations,” 16 April 1957, file
Shopping Centre Project Was Planned,” Ku-
106863/011, BP Archive.
waiti, 15 February 1961.
38.  See, e.g., “The History of Football in Ku-
wait,” Kuwaiti, 24 January 1957; “Foundations
and Growth of Education in Kuwait,” Kuwaiti,
31 January 1957; “The Progress of Physical Ed-
ucation in Kuwait,” Kuwaiti, 14 February 1957;
and “Kuwait Schools Are Fine Examples of
Modern Architecture,” Kuwaiti, 11 April 1957.
 Reem Alissa • The Oil Town of Ahmadi: From Colonial Town to Nostalgic City 51

with a shot taken in 1955 (fig. 8).40

The KOC public relations cam-
paign was not limited to modern
architecture and urban planning.
In fact, the Kuwaiti also began
publishing extensive articles on
employees’ promotions, training
programs, and scholarships avail-
able to Kuwaitis. For instance, in
1960 it publicized the appoint-
ment of the first Kuwaiti mem-
bers to the KOC board of direc-
tors, Feisal Mansour Mazidi and
Mahmoud K halid Al-­A dsani. 41
The many articles devoted to
Kuwaiti employees sent for train-
ing in the United Kingdom at- Figure 7.  Modern shopping center in South Ahmadi, 1961, Kuwaiti, 9 December 1961,
KOC Archive
tested to KOC’s diligence toward
Kuwaitization.
KOC’s image as benevolent modernizer and
champion of Kuwaitization seeking the professional
advancement of the Kuwaiti employee was strategi-
cally deployed to counter, or at least to appease,
the critical uproar following the Suez events. This
course of policy was not unique to KOC but was fol-
lowed by many other oil companies throughout the
world as a sort of textbook recipe to quell criticisms.
This can be seen clearly in Venezuela with the pro-
cess of “Venezolanization” and the efforts on the
part of the oil company to promote social and eco-
nomic development and in Saudi Arabia with AR-
AMCO’s public relations’ dissemination of its idea
of “firm-­a s-­development-­mission.” 42 Along similar
lines KOC promoted itself as an agent of modern-
ization in order to legitimize its continued pres-
ence in Kuwait as a foreign-­controlled company in
charge of an extremely lucrative extractive industry.

The Urban, Architectural, and Social Scales:

1960s and 1970s
The process of Kuwaitization was actually imple-
mented in Ahmadi a few years after its announce-
ment, as by the mid-­1960s educated Kuwaitis and Figure 8.  Aerial photos comparing Ahmadi’s urban development
Arabs started to be appointed to more senior posi- in 1961 with that in 1955, Kuwaiti, 15 June 1961, KOC Archive

40.  See “Ahmadi from 17,000 Feet — ​Today . . .
and in 1955,” Kuwaiti, 14 June 1961.
41.  See “Appointments to Kuwait Oil Company
Board of Directors,” Kuwaiti, 17 August 1960.
42.  Vitalis, America’s Kingdom, 123. For more Salas, The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and So-
detail on strategies used by foreign oil compa- ciety in Venezuela (Durham, NC: Duke Univer-
nies to legitimize their continued presence in sity Press, 2009).
Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, see Miguel Tinker
52 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
tions. Indeed, it was during this time that Ahmadi
began to experience a sea change in its established
demographic and urban order as qualified Ku-
waitis and Arabs began gradually to replace Ah-
madi’s British, US, Indian, and Pakistani residents
in the north and mid sections of the town. As these
urban areas had been originally planned to house
expatriate families, once they were occupied by
a growing Kuwaiti population they became the
vehicle of a new urban lifestyle that did not exist
in Kuwait’s old town. For the first time Ahmadi’s
north and mid sections began to house Kuwaiti
residents, many of whom were previously living in
the old town. This new lifestyle and its impact on
the newly upgraded Kuwaiti employee will be ana-
lyzed following the three scales introduced at the
beginning of this article: the urban, the architec-
tural, and the social.
The urban scale refers to the macro level of
Ahmadi’s master plan focusing specifically on land-
scape elements such as its garden culture and pub-
lic parks. The analysis of this urban scale shows how
Ahmadi as inspired by the Garden Suburb model
introduced the notion of recreational landscap-
ing to Kuwait, positioning the town as the nation’s
most popular green public space. After indepen-
dence and with the gradual opening up of Ahmadi
to the Kuwaiti population in the early 1960s and
1970s, the town served as a popular weekend desti-
nation for the nation’s residents. According to one
former resident,
When I was in high school [in the early 1970s]
every Friday all of the people from al-­Deirah [Ku-
wait Town as referred to by locals] would come
to Ahmadi. They would cruise around the senior
garden next to the Display Center, cars with girls,
cars with boys, and cars with families. They would
cruise around a few times then they would head to
the souk [market]. The boys and girls would stay in
their cars and this cruising was like their flirting.
This happened every Friday.43
In addition to cruising, droves of people came to
picnic on any patch of grass they could find, even if
43.  Mrs. Z, interview by the author, Kuwait, 18 45.  “Development Plan Report, 1974 –  1978: Ad-
February 2010. ditional Recreation Area-­A hmadi, 1975,” file
49284/003, BP Archive.
44.  Mrs. V, interview by the author, Kuwait, 8
April 2010. 46.  “al-­Ahmadi multaqa lil-­mutanazihin” (“Ah-
madi, a Recreational Destination”), Al-­Kuwayti,
1973.
• 33:1 • 2013
it happened to be on someone’s private front gar-
den.44 In fact, the massive gathering of crowds in
Ahmadi’s green spaces, both public and private,
led to a proposal by the KOC to develop a “suitable
semi-­formal picnic and garden area” in the mid
section in order to avert the presence of picnic-­
goers in the residential areas and reduce conges-
tion in the public gardens.45 The following passage
is translated from al-­Kuwayti, which described such
scenes in 1973 as follows: “We find families scat-
tered here like bees to a hive. Children running,
adults singing and loud music beaming from the
radio, and ladies preparing food. All at a large pic-
nic surrounded by sheer happiness.” 46 In the pre-­
independence period the use of Ahmadi’s element
of landscape was restricted to its expatriate popu-
lations. After independence, however, it was sud-
denly open to Kuwait’s public at large following,
quite ironically, the principle of egalitarianism em-
bedded in Howard’s Garden City prototype.
Moving to the micro level of the architec-
tural scale, I want to shift the discussion to the
ways in which the KOC promoted the maintenance
of the aesthetic beauty of the single housing unit
by targeting female readers of al- ­Kuwayti maga-
zine. The KOC attempted to maintain certain
codes of conduct as acceptable norms in urban
living by enforcing the appropriate upkeep of the
Ahmadi house. The company linked the mainte-
nance of the house’s aesthetic beauty to the so-
cially acceptable activities that took place within
it. The following is an article from the column
“Rukn al-­Mar’ah” (“Women’s Corner”) published
in al-­Kuwayti in January 1962: “Your house is an ex-
pression of yourself as it appears in the street or to
your neighbors; so don’t allow it to become a place
for hanging your laundry. You can allow it to be a
beautiful place full of roses and green leaves for
your family’s enjoyment, where you may drink tea
or coffee with your dear guests.” 47
This is just one example of how KOC used
al- ­Kuwayti as a sort of manual of urban living tar-
geting the new Kuwaiti resident of Ahmadi. Here,
47.  “Sharfat manziluki” (“Your House’s Front
Porch”), Al-­Kuwayti, 20 January 1962.
 Reem Alissa
domestic activities, particularly those on display
throughout Ahmadi’s architectural facade, were
presented as the embodiment of modern urban
living. Consequently, KOC’s rigorous effort to
maintain an orderly, clean, and beautiful town
was a theme that was voiced several times in in-
terviews with former residents. Indeed, to a large
extent this theme of Ahmadi as “beautiful” seems
to have been a major component of the appeal the
town came to command in Kuwait. As suggested
by a former male Kuwaiti employee who lived in
the north section in the 1960s, “Early on, people
used to be jealous of those who lived in Ahmadi
because it was so quiet, well-­planned, clean, aes-
thetically pleasing, the garbage was collected
nicely, the colors of the houses were always clean
and vibrant. I mean the maintenance in Ahmadi
was continuous.” 48
The single housing unit also reformed the
Kuwaiti family structure and its established norms
of neighborly relations, especially in light of the
fact that a majority of Kuwaiti families who had
just moved into Ahmadi’s north and mid sections
in the early 1960s previously lived in what is col-
loquially called al- ­bayt al-­’arabi (the Arab house)
in old Kuwait Town. Al-­Bayt al-­’arabi was the tra-
ditional housing unit that usually accommodated
the larger extended family with its rooms orga-
nized around a central courtyard in which the
family’s social activities took place. The residential
units that were originally designed for the British
and American nuclear family brought to Kuwait a
new housing typology, which impacted the Kuwaiti
family both culturally and socially in two signifi-
cant ways. First, the Ahmadi single-­f amily house
completely inverted the plan of al- ­bayt al-­’arabi by
relegating the house’s centrifugal social space to
the perimeter in the form of an exposed front yard
and semi-­exposed backyard. Second, the Ahmadi
house limited the extended nature of the Kuwaiti
traditional household to a nuclear one. In turn,
these changes in domestic configuration decisively
impacted the lifestyle of the Kuwaiti resident. The
socially extroverted architectural facade encour-
aged a strong sense of neighborly relations that
transcended kin, the principle that organized
48.  Mr. V, interview by the author, Kuwait, 8 49.  Mrs. V, interview by the author, Kuwait, 8
April 2010. April 2010.
• The Oil Town of Ahmadi: From Colonial Town to Nostalgic City 53
urban living in the old Kuwait Town. In this con-
nection Mrs. Z explained: “We were so far from al-­
Deirah [the colloquial name used to refer to Kuwait
Town or Kuwait City] and our relatives there, so
all you have is who surrounds you. So the relation-
ships between the neighbors were very strong.” In
addition, the primacy of the mother’s role as house
manager in the new nuclear family structure fos-
tered a sense of independence, as a former resi-
dent suggests:
I married and left my family’s house when I was
fifteen years old. So I was a child just going back
and forth from school and home. My family
was strict. You know in those days it wasn’t easy
to leave the house for example to go to the cin-
ema. So in Ahmadi I felt a sense of coming into
my own, a sense of independence and a sense of
being. I have my own house, my own place. It’s
different before I had to share everything with my
sisters.49
The social scale conveys how KOC was able
to manufacture a certain image of Kuwaiti women
now living in Ahmadi through means that aimed
at molding their social behavior. In the same way
that Ahmadi introduced a new form of urbanism
to Kuwait, the town’s environment and the al-­
Kuwayti magazine were instrumental in promot-
ing the novel notion of the uncovered, beautiful,
and subservient Ahmadi wife. Here the magazine
again targeted Kuwaiti women by directly address-
ing them in several articles in the al- ­Kuwayti col-
umn “Rukn al-­M ar’ah” in 1962. Unlike its Eng-
lish counterpart (“For Women Only”), “Rukn
al-­Mar’ah” was instructive rather than suggestive
or entertaining. For example, it included many ar-
ticles that emphasized how it was a duty for women
to maintain their physical beauty through makeup
and physical exercise. There were also numerous
articles that emphasized women’s expected acqui-
escence to their husbands, and these were accom-
panied by photographs of white women (fig. 9).
“Rukn al-­M ar’ah” also repeatedly published ad-
vertisements of the latest Western fashion, which
differed markedly from Kuwaiti traditional female
attire. Indeed, several interviews suggest that Ku-
waiti women who moved to Ahmadi in the 1960s
54 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

wait Town. In some instances,

the Kuwaiti resident was co-
erced into acceptable norms
of modern urban living that
were directly inculcated by the
company magazine. In others,
it was Ahmadi’s built environ-
ment that served as a backdrop
for these modern lifestyles to
unfold. Either way, Ahmadi’s
urban modernity as experi-
enced by its earliest resident
Kuwaiti families was crucial in
the formulation of the notion
of Ahmadi as a nostalgic city.

The Nostalgic City: al-­Hayat

Figure 9.  The article on the top right instructs the Ahmadi wife on how to appease her
distraught husband. Below on the right is an article that instructs her on the maintenance
of her bosom’s beauty. al-­Kuwayti, 13 January 1962, KOC Archive
suddenly discarded the abaya (body robe) and
boshiya (face and head cover) in favor of the skirts
and shirts fashionable at the time in order to be
commensurate with Ahmadi’s urban environment.
Although the same type of sartorial shift also oc-
curred in Kuwait City, it was not as expected, fast,
or as confident as it was in Ahmadi.50 Therefore,
both the al- ­Kuwayti magazine and Ahmadi’s de-
signed urban environment promoted the Kuwaiti
woman’s adherence to the town’s ideal of a mod-
ern wife — ​that is, one who was subservient, made
up, and clad in the latest Western fashion.
Ahmadi’s three scales of development — ​t he
urban, the architectural, and the social — ​variously
mediated new lifestyles for the Kuwaiti employee
and his family that contrasted those of old Ku-
Hilwah fi al-­Ahmadi ­
(Life Is Beautiful in Ahmadi)
Over the years Ahmadi has
acquired a special place in the
collective memory of Kuwaitis.
There is a general consensus
among Kuwait is and non-­
Kuwaitis alike on the legacy of Ahmadi as a city
that was extremely popular at a certain point in its
past, more precisely in the 1960s and 1970s. More-
over, in the recollection of many former residents
Ahmadi has become a nostalgic city they yearn
for.51 Nostalgia is commonly understood as a “sen-
timental longing or wistful affection for a period
in the past.” 52 It is in this sense that the word is
used here, along with Fred Davis’s key observation
of nostalgia as “a past imbued with special quali-
ties, which, moreover, acquires its significance
from the particular way we juxtapose it to certain
features of our present lives.” 53 Interviews with for-
mer residents reveal two overarching themes in
this regard: the juxtaposition of old Kuwait Town
and Ahmadi in the 1960s and 1970s on the one

50.  Mrs. X, interview by the author, Kuwait, 30
March 2010.
51.  During my field research in Kuwait, rela-
tives, friends, and acquaintances often asked
me what my research was about. As soon as
I explained that it was an urban history of
Ahmadi, the almost universal response was
“Allah! al-­A hmadi!” said in a nostalgic tone
with a bright smile, even by those who had
no direct relation to Ahmadi. Allah, of course,
is the word for god in Arabic; however, in the
Kuwaiti dialect it can also refer to a sense of
awe or the equivalent of “wow” in English, as
used in this instance. Curiosity as to why this
was almost always the reaction led me to in-
vestigate further the notion of Ahmadi as a
nostalgic city.
52.  Oxford Dictionaries, s.v. “Nostalgia,” ac-
cessed 20 May 2011, http://oxforddictionaries
.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0565910#m_en_
gb0565910.
53.  Fred Davis, “Yearning for Yesterday: A Soci-
ology of Nostalgia,” in The Collective Memory
Reader, ed. Jeffrey K. Olick, Vered Vinitzky-­
Seroussi, and Daniel Levy (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 448.
 Reem Alissa • The Oil Town of Ahmadi: From Colonial Town to Nostalgic City 55

hand, and the juxtaposition of 1960s and 1970s
Ahmadi and its present on the other. Using these
two themes as a framework, I argue that Ahmadi
to this day remains a nostalgic city in Kuwait’s col-
lective memory.
When describing Ahmadi or discussing their
recollections of it in the 1960s and 1970s, many
former residents compare it to old Kuwait Town.
Although oil revenues began to finance grand
state projects and new housing developments in
the 1950s, old Kuwait Town had yet to be demol-
ished.54 Moving into Ahmadi’s north section from
old Kuwait Town was a dramatic change, as Mrs.
X suggests:
It was so well organized, streets were numbered,
streets were asphalt, there were bicycle paths. It
was like a British village. Completely organized
from services, water was available to houses. In
Sharq [a section in Kuwait Town] we had water
tanks. In Ahmadi water was supplied through
pipes, just like now, so was the gas. If anything
went wrong, you’d call maintenance and they
would come and fix it. I mean we took these
things for granted. In Sharq we didn’t have any-
thing, water tanks came to supply water, and there
was electricity but not at the level of Ahmadi, the
wires were disorganized and out in the open. And
it was quiet, it didn’t have Kuwait’s traffic, even
when we used to visit Kuwait on the weekends, I
felt so relaxed when we came back to Ahmadi.55
Likewise, Mrs. Z described it as “different
than al- ­Deirah. I mean the houses are all like the
ajaanib’s [foreigners], one story with gardens. It’s
got playing fields. I mean it’s like a tourist desti-
nation, a place for recreation. There were even
playgrounds for children between the residences,
I mean this did not exist in al- ­Deirah. We had cin-
emas. It had many things. Lots of activities.”   5 6
Ahmadi was clearly seen as a very desirable place
to live in the 1960s and 1970s. Its desirability was
mostly attributed to its different and superior ar-
chitectural quality and urban services compared
with Kuwait Town. Ahmadi’s foreign architecture,
as epitomized by its description by Mrs. X as a
“British village,” seems to have been a major at-
traction. One ex-­resident concisely described the
town’s superiority in the following terms, “Ahmadi
in the old times was paradise, was the good life,
there’s nothing like it in Kuwait because there was
nothing in Kuwait at that time.” 57
At the same time, almost all interviewees
consistently juxtaposed Ahmadi’s contemporary
deterioration with its 1960s and 1970s urban glory.
During these discussions two common themes
were utilized to explain the divergent past and
present. The first was that of architectural and
urban chaos and the second urban religious and
cultural conservatism. Architectural and urban
chaos in present Ahmadi was largely attributed
to the indiscriminate use of wastah, that is, of per-
sonal connections to obtain services and favors
and often bypassing the law. Mr. Z recalled:
The case used to be that it was impossible for resi-
dents to make any alterations to the house. One
was not allowed to change the fence, or increase
its height . . . paint it a different color . . . build an
addition. It was against the law. But eventually this
changed after the liberation [Kuwait’s liberation
from the Iraqi occupation of 1990–  91]. After that
everyone did what they pleased, it was chaotic.
They would bring outside contractors and make
additions or extensions. Some people would even
leave and rent out their house. Unfortunately
these behaviors began to take over in Ahmadi.
The older Ahmadi residents weren’t like this.58
In Ahmadi’s early decades of development,
from the late 1940s until the late 1970s, modifica-
tions in the built environment were not allowed

54.  The combination of members of the rul-
ing family having authority over government
funds and experts with conflicting agendas led
to the squandering and waste of these funds
and to the drastic delay of proposed develop-
ment in Kuwait, at least for a significant part
of this decade. See Jarman, ed., Foreign Office
Annual Reports from Arabia, 4:714. For more on
the development of Kuwait City, see Geoffrey
E. French and Allan G. Hill, Kuwait: Urban and
Medical Ecology (New York: Springer-­Verlag,
1971); Richard Trench, ed., Arab Gulf Cities: Ku- 55.  Mrs. X, interview by the author, Kuwait, 30
wait City (Chippenham, UK: Archive Editions, March 2010.
1994); Evangelia Simon Ali, “Retracing Old Ku-
56.  Mrs. Z, interview by the author, Kuwait, 18
wait,” in Kuwait: Art and Architecture, ed. Ar-
February 2010.
lene Fullerton and Geza Fehervari (United Arab
Emirates: Oriental Press, 1995), 173–88; H. V. F. 57.  Mr. Y, interview by the author, Kuwait, 11
Winstone and Zahra Dickson Freeth, Kuwait: February 2010.
Prospect and Reality (New York: Crane, Russak,
58.  Mr. Z, interview by the author, Kuwait, 18
1972); and Saba George Shiber, The Kuwait Ur-
February 2010.
banization (Kuwait: Kuwait Municipality, 1964).
56 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
without the company’s permission.59 According to
Mr. Z and various interviewees, this is not the case
in Ahmadi at present. Illegal expansion, such as
the addition of rooms and diwaniyyat (rooms for
male social gatherings) and subletting, has become
the norm, which has a deleterious impact on the
town’s architectural and urban form. Illegality has
also extended to social behavior as reckless driving
and speeding inside the town has increased noise
levels and created an unsafe outdoor environment.
In most of the interviews there was a consensus
that this shift began in 1975 as the management of
the town changed following the nationalization of
the company. Furthermore, Ahmadi’s more recent
urban deterioration was attributed to the Iraqi oc-
cupation of Kuwait in 1990–91.
The architecture and urbanism of Ahmadi
in the town’s glorious days of the 1960s and 1970s
were also juxtaposed with the contemporary sub-
urbs of Kuwait City. Mrs. W acknowledged the
latter’s architectural beauty and described their
houses as palaces, but as “palaces without gardens.”
She also criticized the houses of Kuwait City’s sub-
urbs for their lack of harmony, as each one com-
peted with the next in terms of style and grandeur
without fostering a sense of the town spirit Ahmadi
was known for in its early decades.60 Ahmadi’s con-
temporary lack of spirit may be attributed to the
fact that many of its current residents are no lon-
ger KOC employees but are illegally renting houses
there. Interviewees were disturbed by the presence
of the Bidoun (stateless people residing in Kuwait)
who started to squat in South Ahmadi’s abandoned
houses during the Iraqi invasion as the Iraqi army
removed them from the informal settlement in
Um Al-­Hayman.61 Since 1995 the company has at-
tempted to evict them but with limited success.
Religious and cultural conservatism is an-
other prominent theme raised in the interviews in
relation to Ahmadi’s present degradation. Several
residents emphasized the transformation of Ah-
59.  Mrs. W, interview by the author, Kuwait, 27
January 2010.
60.  Ibid.
61.  Bidoun is the short form of bidoun jinsiyyah,
which means “without citizenship.” This term
refers to people who have resided in Kuwait
since as the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury until the present but have failed to pro-
• 33:1 • 2013
madi society into one entrenched in traditional
mores. This phenomenon may be a result of the in-
creased connectedness of Ahmadi’s urban and cul-
tural fabric to that of larger Kuwait’s over the past
few decades coupled with the successive departure
of its expatriate residents and their distinct urban
culture. Ghunaim Al-­Adwani, the team leader of
Ahmadi’s Community Services, had the following
to say in this regard:
Unlike the past now about 80 percent of Ahmadi
residents are Kuwaiti. Of course the culture
changed, the Kuwaiti man wants a diwaniyyah, Ku-
waitis differ largely from the ajaanib [foreigners],
the ajaanib want a gathering center such as clubs
and restaurants, now with the Kuwaitis the cul-
ture is completely different. We find difficulties in
bringing them together, because they want their
own privacy. So the clubs have become much less
popular, unlike in the past, unless there are enter-
tainment venues for children such as swimming
competitions and girgay’aan [a children’s event
marking the celebration of ‘Id ].62
Some of Ahmadi’s architectural elements also sug-
gest these changes. The once uniform feature of
every house was its property fence, referred to as
berdi, made from compacted reeds imported from
Iraq. At various instances former residents referred
to it as “aesthetically pleasing” and mentioned its
cooling qualities. Most important, the fence was
below eye level, allowing for the partial exposure
of the Ahmadi house and thus highlighting its wel-
coming nature. Since this material became diffi-
cult to obtain in the early 1980s as a result of the
Iran-­Iraq War, KOC began using a local material
called curby, which is made from cheap corrugated
metal.63 Former and current residents repeatedly
complained of the poor aesthetic quality of curby,
pointing to the increased height of fences around
the houses of families with conservative leanings.
In effect, now the entire house and its garden have
become completely masked, thus rescinding the
cure Kuwaiti citizenship for various reasons. 62.  Ghunaim Al-­Adwani (Team Leader, Com-
For more on the Bidoun, see Jill Crystal, Kuwait: munity Services, Ahmadi Services Group), in-
The Transformation of an Oil State (Boulder, CO: terview by the author, Kuwait, 2 November
Westview Press, 1992); Anh Nga Longva, Walls 2009.
Built on Sand: Migration, Exclusion, and Society
63.  Mr. Z, interview by the author, Kuwait, 18
in Kuwait (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997);
February 2010.
and Mary Ann Tetreault, Stories of Democracy:
Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
 Reem Alissa • The Oil Town of Ahmadi: From Colonial Town to Nostalgic City 57

Figure 10.  Left: Berdi, 1958, KOC Archive. Right: Curby, 2010, photograph by the author

neighborly and more sociable character of past
Ahmadi urbanism (fig. 10). In terms of urban life
this growth in religious and cultural conservatism
drastically reduced the popularity of the sporting
events, parties, celebrations, and social gatherings
for which Ahmadi was known in the past. Indeed,
various former residents criticized the few events
that continue today as being sexually segregated — ​
a social segregation largely absent in past Ahmadi.
Oil and Nostalgic Urbanism
The discovery of oil and the urgency of its exploita-
tion on the part of a foreign company necessitated
the building of an elaborate industrial infrastruc-
ture in Kuwait — ​a key element of which was the
company town of Ahmadi. As a result Ahmadi’s ar-
chitecture and urbanism became the primary site
where Kuwaiti employees of the company experi-
enced urban modernity in the 1960s and 1970s. In
introducing the company town as a modern archi-
tectural and urban prototype, this article crosses
the boundaries of the oil city in the Persian Gulf as
a spatially bound entity that developed out of pre-­
oil urban sites. In doing so it starts to fill an evident
gap in the study of oil urbanism and urbanization
in the region.64 Within the span of six decades the
socio-­spatial attributes of Ahmadi’s architecture
and urban life shifted from the colonial to the
national, signposting the introduction of key ele-
ments of urban modernity to the Kuwaiti resident:
landscaped public space, the nuclear family house,
and a new urban environment and social attitudes.
This modernity was experienced differentially by
Ahmadi’s foreign and local residents as the geopo-
litical climate shifted across time.
In 1946 oil dictated the location and urban
form necessary to replicate familiar urban sur-
roundings for the company’s British and American
senior employees. This urban form was achieved
through the export of British planning practices
in conjunction with KOC official policies that used
the town of Abadan in Iran as a precedent. The
company architectural firm Wilson, Mason and
Partners designed Ahmadi as an urban oasis in the
middle of Kuwait’s barren desert. Wilson’s colonial
background, Garden City principles, and his expe-
rience with Lutyens in Delhi influenced the design
and planning approach to Ahmadi. A structural
hierarchy, the foundational planning tool of this
oil town, reflected different employee grades and
ethnicities at the urban, architectural, and social
scale, rendering Ahmadi’s first decade one of co-
lonial urbanism.
The Suez event of 1956, which swelled the
rising tide of Pan-­A rabism and anti-­imperialism
throughout the Arab world and Kuwait, marked
a new phase in Ahmadi’s urbanism, making its
previous decade as an “oil colony” unsustainable.
At this juncture the KOC seamlessly veered from
being a highly stratified neocolonial organization

64.  For literature on oil-­fueled architectural
and urban development in Persian Gulf cities,
see Shiber, The Kuwait Urbanization; Yasser
Elsheshtawy, ed., Planning Middle Eastern Cities:
An Urban Kaleidoscope in a Globalizing World
(London: Routledge, 2004); Yasser Elsheshtawy,
ed., The Evolving Arab City: Tradition, Moder-
nity, and Urban Development (London: Rout-
ledge, 2008); Asseel Al-­R agam, “Towards a
Critique of an Architectural Nahdha: A Kuwaiti
Example” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania,
2008); and Mohammad Al-­Jassar, “Constancy
and Change in Contemporary Kuwait City: The
Socio-­Cultural Dimensions of the Kuwait Court-
yard and Diwaniyya” (PhD diss., University of
Wisconsin-­Milwaukee, 2009).
58 Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East • 33:1 • 2013

to an advocate of nationalism. This was achieved

through a tactfully constructed public relations
campaign that presented the company as an agent
of modernization and champion of Kuwaitization.
With national independence in 1961 and Ahmadi’s
demographic shift from a largely expatriate popu-
lation to one including almost exclusively Kuwaiti
residents, the town’s architecture and urbanism
became the platform upon which the indigenous
residents came to experience modernity. Here new
forms at the urban and architectural scale and new
norms at the social scale forged a novel lifestyle for
the Kuwaiti resident of Ahmadi during the 1960s
and 1970s. Such new forms and norms were largely
viewed in a positive light: Ahmadi became a popu-
lar destination, instilled a sense of familial inde-
pendence, promoted strong neighborly relations,
and prescribed certain mores in modern urban liv-
ing. In the eyes of former residents these particular
instances of urban modernity reinforced Ahmadi’s
image as a nostalgic city. This image remains so
powerful in Kuwait that it has become the primary
premise on which the Ahmadi Township Redevel-
opment master plan is based. Although still at the
drawing board at the time of writing, this plan is
KOC’s current effort toward the comprehensive
urban redevelopment of Ahmadi in a manner
that preserves its architectural and urban heritage
while accommodating contemporary Kuwaiti liv-
ing standards.65 The image of Ahmadi as a nostal-
gic city is one that evinces the historical agency of
oil in Kuwait as promoter of social change at the
level of the everyday lived experience set within
the backdrop of changing modern urbanism.

65.  Ahmed Khalil (Senior Engineer Projects, Ah- for Oil: Corporate Colonialism, Nationalism,
madi Redevelopment Team), interview by the and Urban Modernity in Ahmadi, 1946–92”
author, Kuwait, 5 November 2009. For more on (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley,
the ATR, see Reem Alissa, postscript, “Building 2012).