Structuring the Trade Caravans Among Kuwait and its Neighbors During the First Half of the Twentieth Century

The present study discusses the camel-based trade conveys among Kuwait, Najd, Iraq and the Levant during the first half of the twentieth century. These conveys mainly depended upon camels as carriers of goods and items, primarily the food items and clothes, from the Gulf trade ports to the internal parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Similarly, in the Levant and Iraq, camels were used prior to the development of the modern means of transportation via a vast network of the desert trade routes. More importantly, these conveys also benefited from the prosperity of the Kuwait’s marine trade; thus, they- the marine trade as well as the conveys- made up a trade support for one another.
More specifically, the current study aims at tracking the local names used for the trade conveys. It also attempts to uncover their structures through tackling the numbers of the persons involved and the work done by each of them and the preparations they made to launch these conveys. Therefore, these conveys were divided into five main types: the number of the camels, the number of the working persons with these caravans, the number of these conveys, the type of goods carried through them and their variations or kinds, and the people receiving these conveys. The researcher in this study depends upon various authentic sources including local and foreign documents and written sources.