Bubiyan Island has drawn fresh attention after Kuwait arrested four people linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for entering the island by sea to carry out “hostile acts”.
The incident has brought focus to the Gulf country’s largest island, which is home to strategic industrial projects and ports. Bubiyan also has an important place in Kuwaiti culture and history, from its traces of human presence since ancient times and old falconry practices, to serving as the setting for an important Kuwaiti film.
Here are five ways the island reflects Kuwaiti history and culture.
1. Pottery links to an older Gulf world
Bubiyan’s archaeological records suggests human activity going back more than 1,200 years, based on the unearthing of pottery fragments.
A 2022 study by Linda M Reinink-Smith of Kuwait University and archaeologist Robert Carter found torpedo jar fragments on the island's beach ridges. Published in Quaternary Research, the study dates the shards to the Sasanian period, circa 224 AD to 651 AD, and the early Islamic period, circa 650 AD to 800 AD.
Torpedo jars were large vessels used to transport goods across the Gulf and Indian Ocean trading world. Their presence on Bubiyan does not prove the island was a trading centre, but it does place it within the maritime networks of the late antique and early Islamic Gulf.
2. Bubiyan Island geography may explain its name
There is no direct Arabic translation of the island’s name, but Kuwaiti historian and former education minister Yaqoub Youssef Al-Ghunaim links it to the island’s geography and visibility to early seafarers.
“The truth is that we must know that Bubiyan is the large island within Kuwait’s territory,” he said in a 2011 interview on Kuwaiti state television. “It was clearly known to older Kuwaitis because, when Kuwaitis travelled towards Iraq or Iran, the island could be seen clearly with the naked eye.”
He said the name is linked to bayan, meaning something that is visible or apparent.
“They added the word 'Bu' to it, and then through the sound and musical rhythm of pronunciation, we began saying Bubiyan.”
3. Part of Kuwait’s fishing culture
An island of salt flats, mudflats and old coastal ridges, Bubiyan did not house a known ancient town or permanent settlement. But according to Al-Ghunaim, Kuwaitis once transported rocks there by ship to create what he described as a protective perimeter around part of the island.
“The old Kuwaitis, led by officials in the state, moved a quantity of rocks by ship and placed them at the corner,” he said. “They wanted to create a barrier and a centre, and indeed some Kuwaitis remained stationed there.”
Al-Ghunaim said the area was also historically used for fishing, including for zubaidi, or silver pomfret, a prized fish commonly served grilled or fried with rice, and closely associated with Kuwait’s coastal food culture.
4. Role in falconry trade
The island was also a place where falcons were caught for sale and training, in what Kuwaiti poet Saud Fallah Arshid Al-Gharib recalled as an older local practice.
In a 2010 interview with Al Anbaa, Al-Gharib described how his father travelled by boat to Bubiyan with other men to hunt falcons.
“They would take water and food in a waterskin, dig in the Bubiyan salt marshes, and place trees on the hut,” Al-Gharib said. “As for how to catch a falcon, my father had pigeons and a net, which he'd set up and sit inside the hut. If they caught birds, my father would return to Kuwait and sell them as wild falcons that needed training.”
Al-Gharib said the men used pigeons, a net and a tethered crow to lure the falcon close before it was trapped. The account places Bubiyan within a working practice built around boats, salt flats, temporary shelters and the trade in wild falcons.
5. Kuwaiti cinema turned Bubiyan into place of endurance
The island featured in the 2019 Kuwaiti drama Saat Zaman, which follows Abdul Latif, a Kuwaiti soldier patrolling a maritime area around the time of Kuwait’s liberation. After nearly drowning and being captured by Iraqi soldiers, he is left alone on Bubiyan, where he faces severe hardship.
In a review on X, Kuwaiti playwright Ahmed Fouad Al-Shatti reportedly rejected comparisons to the Tom Hanks film Cast Away. While praising the performance of actor Tariq Al Ali, he said the clunky script diminished the film’s impact.
