Among equals: merchant–ruler relations and state creation in Kuwait

Most conceptions of the beginning of Kuwait involve the notion that its formation came with the first influx of Arabian peninsula tribes to the area. Actually, the historian Ahmad Mustafa Abu-Hakima gives the year 716 for the founding of Kuwait City. The actual founders of what would become the political entity of Kuwait, the Bani Utub, did not arrive until the early eighteenth century, and were thus not the first inhabitants. They were, however, the most powerful. Gradually, families of this tribe built the basis for political rule in Kuwait by managing internal and external challenges. Consequently, Kuwait's future political and economic elites were cut from the same historical and social cloth.

Legend and the scant historical records that exist portray the Bani Utub as a loose grouping of tribal families who emigrated from the Arabian peninsula. After the Bani Utub settled in Kuwait, they took advantage of its natural port to develop trade links and build a small pearl-diving industry. As Jill Crystal has documented, the Bani Utub were believed to be composed of three principal family branches: al-Sabah, al-Khalifa, and al-Jalahimah. These families compromised among themselves to determine that the al-Sabahs would be responsible for political functions, the al-Khalifas for economic functions, and the al-Jalahimas for security affairs. The year 1752 was the first recorded year of al-Sabah rule. In the 1760s, a dispute between the al-Sabahs and the al-Khalifas resulted in the latter's departure for Qatar.