The Emirate of Kuwait hardly resembles the city-State it was at the start of the 20th century. The discovery of oil in 1938 rapidly transformed the tiny tribal

Sheikh Mubarak was the founder of the modern state of Kuwait. But the man who actually led Kuwait to modernity was his son Abdullah Mubarak Al-Sabah, one of the

Mubarak Al-Sabah took control of his tiny state in 1896, just as the Ottoman Empire seemed on the point of swallowing it up. He then played for time by manipula