Echo of life

A son and his father were walking on the mountains. Suddenly, the son falls, hurts himself and screams: "AAAhhhhhhhhhhh! !!"

to his surprise, he hears the voice repeating, somewhere in the mountain: "AAAhhhhhhhhhhh! !!"
Curious, he yells: "Who are you?"
He receives the answer: "Who are you?"
Angered at the response, he screams: "Coward!"
He receives the answer: "Coward!"
He looks to his father and asks: "What's going on?"
The father smiles and says: "My son, pay attention." And then he screams to the mountain: "I admire you!" The voice answers: "I admire you!"
Again the man screams: "You are a champion!"
The voice answers: "You are a champion!"

The boy is surprised, but does not understand. Then the father explains: "People call this ECHO, but really this is LIFE. It gives you back everything you say or do. Our life is simply a reflection of our actions."

If you want more love in the world, create more love in your heart. If you want more competence in your team, improve your competence.
This relationship applies to everything, in all aspects of life; Life will give you back everything you have given to it.

CAN ANYONE BEAT THIS RESUME

RESUME
EDUCATION /Qualification:


1.Stood first in BA (Hons), Economics, Panjab University, Chandigarh,1952.
2.Stood first in MA (Economics), Panjab 1954.
3.Wright's Prize for distinguished performance at St John's College,Cambridge, 1955 and 1957.
4.Wrenbury scholar, University of Cambridge,1957.
5.DPhil (Oxford), DLitt (Honoris Causa); PhD thesis on India'sexport competitiveness.

OCCUPATION /Teaching Experience:

1.Professor (Senior lecturer, Economics, 1957-59.
2.Reader, Economics, 1959-63.
3.Professor, Economics, Panjab University, Chandigarh, 1963-65.
4.Professor, International Trade, Delhi School of Economics,Universit y of Delhi, 1969-71.
5.Honorary professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University,New Delhi,1976 and Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi,1996 and CivilServant.


Working Experience/ POSITIONS:

1.1971-72: Economic advisor, ministry of foreign trade.
2.1972-76: Chief economic advisor, ministry of finance.
3.1976-80: Director, Reserve Bank of India.
4.Director, Industrial Development Bank of India.
5.Alternate governor for India, Board of governors, Asian Development Bank.
6.Alternate governor for India, Board of governors, IBRD.
7.November 1976 - April 1980: Secretary, ministry of finance (Departmentof economic affairs); 8.Member, finance, Atomic Energy Commission; Member, finance, Space Commission.
9.April 1980 - September 15, 1982: Member-secretary, Planning Commission
10.1980-83: Chairman, India Committee of the Indo-Japan joint studycommittee September 16, 11.1982 - January 14, 1985: Governor, Reserve Bankof India.
12.1982-85: Alternate Governor for India, Board of governors,International Monetary Fund.
13.1983-84: Member, economic advisory council to the Prime Minister.
14.1985: President, Indian Economic Association.
15.January 15, 1985 - July 31, 1987: Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission.
16.August 1, 1987 - November 10, 1990: Secretary-general and commissioner, south commission, Geneva.
17.December 10, 1990 - March 14, 1991: Advisor to the Prime Minister of economic affairs.
18.March 15, 1991 - June 20, 1991: Chairman, UGC.
19.June 21, 1991 - May 15, 1996: Union finance minister.
20.October 1991: Elected to Rajya Sabha from Assam on Congress ticket.
June 1995: Re-elected to Rajya Sabha.
21.1996 onwards: Member, Consultative Committee for the ministry of finance.
22.August 1, 1996 - December 4, 1997: Chairman, Parliamentary standing Committee on commerce.
23.March 21, 1998 : Leader of the Opposition, Rajya Sabha.
24.June 5, 1998 : Member, committee on finance.
25.August 13, 1998 : Member, committee on rules.
26.Aug 1998-2001: Member, committee of privileges 2000 onwards: Member,executive committee, Indian parliamentary group.
27.June 2001: Re-elected to Rajya Sabha.
28.Aug 2001 : Member, general purposes committee.
29.May 22, 2004 onwards: Prime Minister of India.



BOOKS:

India's Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth -Clarendon Press, Oxford University, 1964; also published a large number of articles in various economic journals.

OTHER ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

Adam Smith Prize, University of Cambridge, 1956
Padma Vibhushan, 1987
Euro money Award, Finance Minister of the Year, 1993;
Asia money Award, Finance Minister of the Year for Asia, 1993 and 1994

INTERNATIONAL ASSIGNMENTS:

1966: Economic Affairs Officer
1966-69: Chief, financing for trade section, UNCTAD
1972-74: Deputy for India in IMF Committee of Twenty on InternationalMonetary Reform
1977-79: Indian delegation to Aid-India Consortium Meetings
1980-82: Indo-Soviet joint planning group meeting
1982: Indo-Soviet moni toring group meeting
1993: Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting Cyprus 1993: Human Rights World Conference, Vienna

RECREATION:
Gymkhana Club, New Delhi; Life Member, India International Centre, New Delhi


Name: Dr Manmohan Singh

DOB: September 26, 1932
Place of Birth: Gah (West Punjab)

Father: S. Gurmukh Singh

Mother: Mrs Amrit Kaur

Wife: Mrs Gursharan Kaur

Children: Three daughters



Indian Prime Minister seems to be the most qualified PM all over the world.

FOR YOUR KNOWLEDGE

1. Coca-Cola was originally green.

2. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.

3. The name of all the continents ends with the same letter that they start with.

4. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.

5. There are two credit cards for every person in the United States .

6. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters
only on one row of the keyboard.

7. Women blink nearly twice as much as men!

8. You can't kill yourself by holding your breath

9. It is impossible to lick your elbow.

10. People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you
Sneeze, your heart stops for a millisecond.

11. It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky.

12. The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the
toughest tongue twister in the English language.

13. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to
Suppress a sneeze; you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck
and die.

14. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents great king from
History. "Spades" - King David; "Clubs" - Alexander the Great;
" Hearts" - Charlemagne; "Diamonds" - Julius Caesar.

15. 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987, 654,321

16. If a statue of a warrior on a horse has both front legs
in the air, the person died in battle. If the
horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle.
If the horse has a all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural
causes.

17. What do bullet proof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers and
laser printers all have in common?
Ans. - All invented by women.

18. Honey - This is the only food that doesn't spoil.

19. A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.

20. A snail can sleep for three years.

21. All polar bears are left handed.

22. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive
from each salad served in first-class.

23. Butterflies taste with their feet.

24. Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

25. In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

26. On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.

 27. Shakespeare invented the word 'assassination' and 'bump'.


28. Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.


29. The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

30. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.


 31. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the
body to squirt blood 30 feet.


32. Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over
million descendants.


33. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in
your ear by 700 times.


34. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.


35. Most lipstick contains fish scales.


36. Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different


37. And finally 99% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.

Some Jokes

1. Srdr: I haven’t slept all night in the train.

Frnd: Y?
Srdr: Got upper berth.
frnd: Y didn’t u Exchanged?
Srdr: oye, there was nobody 2 Xchng in the lower berth...


2. Sardar tells a girl "Come 2 my house at night, nobody will b
there....... ...... Girl goes at night & really nobody was there


3. A SARDAR went 2 a BANK to open a S.B. A/C. After seeing the Form
He had gone to DELHI for filling up. U know y?
FORM says “FILL UP IN CAPITAL ".


4. A sardar invested 5 Lakhs in a business and Suffered huge Loss.
Does u know what the business was?
. . . .. . . . . . . . He opened a Hair Cutting Saloon in Punjab village!

5. A Teacher lecturing on population - In India after Every 10 sec a women gives birth to a kid.
A Sardar stands up- we must find & stop her


6. Sardar-why r all these people running?
Man- This is a race, the winner will get the cup.
Sardar-If only the winner will get the cup, why r others running?


7. 19 SARDARS WENT 4A FILM.ON ASKING THEM Y THEY CAME IN A BIG GROUP OF 19?
THEY REPLIED THAT THE FILM WAS ONLY FOR ABOVE 18...


8. Teacher: "I killed a person" convert this sentence into future tense.
Sardar: The future tense is "u will go to jail".


9. Srdr gets ready ,wears tie, coat ,goes out, climbs tree, sits on the
branch regularly. A man asks why he does this. Srdr: "I've been
promoted as branch manager


10. A dog was chasing a Sardar and the Sardar was laughing.


A bystander: why are u laughing?
Sardar: I have an Air cell phone but still hutch network is following
me.


Banta called his friend, Santa, and told him that he recently met the woman of his dreams. Now what should he do?

Santa said, "Send her some flowers, and on the card invite her for a home-cooked meal."
Banta liked the idea, so he invited the woman.
The day after the meal Santa calls Banta and asks about the meal.
Banta, "It was a flop idea."
Santa, "Didn't the girl come to your house?"
Banta, "She did, but she refused to cook

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American romantic movement.The South's most renowned literary artist of the 19th century spent most of his productive years as a struggling journalist in large northern cities. Born on 19 January 1809, in Boston, Mass., Poe was the second child of David and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, both active theatrical performers on the East Coast of the United States. His father mysteriously disappeared in 1810, and after his mother's subsequent death, in December 1811, he became the foster son of John Allan, a prominent Richmond, Va., tobacco merchant who gave Poe many childhood advantages. In 1826 he attended the University of Virginia, leaving after only a few months to join the United States Army. His first volume of poems, entitled Tamerlane and Other Poems, was privately published in 1827; a second volume, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, appeared in 1829 shortly after he was honorably discharged from the army. Aided by his foster father, he entered West Point in 1830 as a cadet but was soon discharged for failing to heed regulations. Beginning in 1829, influential writers and journalists like John Neal and John P. Kennedy began to support his efforts to attain literary prominence. Poems,, a third volume of poetry, was published in 1831.


Thoroughly trained in the classics and in the rhetoric and aesthetics of the Scottish common-sense school of philosophers, Poe was, according to the critic Robert D. Jacobs, indeed a southerner by temperament and inclination. Many of his formative years were spent in the southern cities of Richmond and Baltimore, the latter being the home of his blood relatives. Choosing a literary career after the death of his foster father, Poe began to contribute critical reviews to the Richmond Southern Literary Messenger in 1835 and later became its editor for two years. He married Virginia Clemm, his cousin who was less than 14 years old, in 1836. Until his death in 1849, Poe worked tirelessly as an editor and a reviewer, composing at the same time poetry, fiction, reviews, and essays of the highest literary excellence. He contributed to several noted American periodicals and newspapers; and in October 1845 he edited and briefly owned his own magazine, Broadway Journal.
Poe published his only major long piece, The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, in 1838 and a short story collection, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, in 1839. His poem "The Raven," printed in the New York Evening Mirror on 29 January 1845, brought him considerable recognition. Tales, a second collection of short stories, and a third volume of poems, The Raven and Other Poems, appeared in 1845. After the death of his wife in January 1847, he continued to write and to pursue his ambition of owning his own magazine. In early October of 1849, while traveling to New York to marry Sarah Royster Shelton, a widowed former sweetheart, Poe stopped in Baltimore, where he was later found ill on a city street. He died in a Baltimore hospital on 7 October 1849. His unexpected death was noted by nearly every significant newspaper and magazine in the eastern United States.

A controversial figure, Poe has been the subject of much speculative analysis. Generally, his biographers conclude that his instability as a person was in part due to the pressure of being a journalist. Although periodically he experienced poverty and the ill effects of poor health, Poe managed to perfect a variety of literary forms. He absorbed the current wave of romantic thought, which in his day brought significant changes in literary theory and practice. His classical bent, along with his background in Scottish philosophy and aesthetics, contributed to his theory of unity of effect and to his ideas about the short poem. He and Nathaniel Hawthorne introduced the ambiguities of symbolism in their Gothic tales, and Poe is credited with defining the short story as a distinct literary form. His attempts to formulate an objective method for writing poetry had some impact upon the French Symbolist poets of the later decades of the 19th century. In the area of popular literature, he is said to have fathered the modern detective story and some forms of science fiction.

Poe believed his art - all art - should be evaluated by international, rather than national or regional, standards, but he was, nonetheless, frequently identified at the time with the South. He did not defend his region's politics or social customs, like other antebellum southern writers, but his lyricism was common to southern poets. Raised a Virginian, Poe sometimes posed as the southern gentleman, even if transcending regionalism in his work.

A Dream

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed-
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream- that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar-
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?

Robert (Lee) Frost (1874-1963)

Robert Frost born in San Francisco Mar. 26, 1874, was one of America's leading 20th-century poets .He was four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. An essentially pastoral poet often associated with rural New England, Frost wrote poems whose philosophical dimensions transcend any region. Although his verse forms are traditional--he often said, in a dig at archrival Carl Sandburg, that he would as soon play tennis without a net as write free verse--he was a pioneer in the interplay of rhythm and meter and in the poetic use of the vocabulary and inflections of everyday speech. His poetry is thus both traditional and experimental, regional and universal.



After his father's death in 1885, when young Frost was 11, the family left California and settled in Massachusetts. Frost attended high school in that state, entered Dartmouth College, but remained less than one semester. Returning to Massachusetts, he taught school and worked in a mill and as a newspaper reporter. In 1894 he sold "My Butterfly: An Elegy" to The Independent, a New York literary journal. A year later he married Eli nor White, with whom he had shared valedictorian honors at Lawrence (Mass.) High School. From 1897 to 1899 he attended Harvard College as a special student but left without a degree. Over the next ten years he wrote poems, operated a farm in Derry, New Hampshire and supplemented his income by teaching at Derry's Pinkerton Academy.


In 1912, at the age of 38, he sold the farm and used the proceeds to take his family to England, where he could devote himself entirely to writing. His efforts to establish himself and his work were almost immediately successful. A Boy's Will was accepted by a London publisher and brought out in 1913, followed a year later by North of Boston. Favorable reviews on both sides of the Atlantic resulted in American publication of the books by Henry Holt and Company, Frost's primary American publisher, and in the establishing of Frost's transatlantic reputation.
He passed away on january 29,1963.
some lines from his famous My November Guest
My Sorrow, when she's here with me,



Thinks these dark days of autumn rain


Are beautiful as days can be;


She loves the bare, the withered tree;


She walks the sodden pasture lane.






Her pleasure will not let me stay.


She talks and I am fain to list:


She's glad the birds are gone away,


She's glad her simple worsted grady


Is silver now with clinging mist.

His famous quation :

''The kind of Unitarian


Who having by elimination got

From many gods to Three, and Three to One,

Thinks why not taper off to none at all.''

CAPITAL CITIES PART 1

1. Capital of United States of America = Washington DC

2. Capital of China = Beijing


3. Capital of Japan = Tokyo


4. Capital of India = New Delhi


5. Capital of Pakistan = Islamabad


6. Capital of Nepal = Kathmandu


7. Capital of Sri Lanka = Colombo


8. Capital of Bangladesh = Dhaka


9. Capital of Bhutan = Thimphu


10. Capital of Singapore = Singapore


11 .capital of Switzerland=. Berne


12. Capital of Kuwait = Kuwait City


13. Capital of Qatar = Doha


14. Capital of Saudi Arabia = Riyadh


15. Capital of UAE = Sharjah


16. Capital of Bahrain = Manama


17. Capital of Canada = Ottawa


18. Capital of Australia=Canberra


19. Capital of Holland = Amsterdam


20. Capital of Brazil = Brasilia


21. Capital of Italy = Rome


22. Capital of South Africa=Pretoria


23. Capital of Malta = Valletta


24. Capital of Oman=Muscat

Geography and climate of Kuwait

Kuwait is located in the north-east corner of the Arabian Peninsula. It is one of the smallest countries in the world in terms of land area. The flat, sandy Arabian Desert covers most of Kuwait. There is little difference in the country's altitude with the highest point in the country being 306 m (1,004 ft) above sea-level.It has nine islands, all of which with the exception of Failaka Island are uninhabited.With an area of 860 km2 (330 sq mi), the Bubiyan is the largest island in Kuwait and is connected to the rest of the country by a 2,380 m (7,808 ft) long bridge.The land area is considered arableand sparse vegetation is found along its 499 km long coastline. Kuwait City is located on Kuwait Bay, a natural deep-water harbor.


Kuwait has some of the world's richest oil fields with the Burgan field having a total capacity of approximately 70 billion barrels (1.1×1010 m3) of proven oil reserves. During the 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires, more than 500 oil lakes were created covering a combined surface area of about 35.7 km2 (13.8 sq mi). The resulting soil contamination due to oil and soot accumulation had made eastern and south-eastern parts of Kuwait uninhabitable. Sand and oil residue had reduced large parts of the Kuwaiti desert to semi-asphalt surfaces. The oil spills during the Persian Gulf War also drastically affected Kuwait's marine resources.


The spring season in March is warm and pleasant with occasional thunderstorms. The frequent winds from the northwest are cold in winter and spring and hot in summer. Southeasterly winds, usually hot and damp, spring up between July and October; hot and dry south winds prevail in spring and early summer. The shamal, a northwesterly wind common during June and July, causes dramatic sandstorms.

The capital city is safat or kuwait city. Now contruction are going on for a new city. Maliya, murgab and sharq are the main locations in the City.All the main  governement offices are situated in this area. Bank headquaters like Burgan Bank, National Bank of kuwait,Commercial Bank of Kuwait and Gulf Bank are  located in this area.

HISTORY OF KUWAIT

In the 4th century B.C.the ancient Greeks colonized an island of Kuwait's coast, now known as Failaka, and named it "Ikaros". By 123 B.C., the region came under the influence of the Parthian Empire and was closely associated with the southern Mesopotamian town of Charax. In 224 A.D., the region fell under the control of Sassanid Empire and came to be known as Hajar. By the 14th century, the area comprising modern-day Kuwait became a part of the Islamic caliphate.


The first permanent settlers in the region came from Bani Khalid tribe of Nejd and established the state of Kuwait. In 1756, the people elected Sabah I bin Jaber as the first Amir of Kuwait. The current ruling family of Kuwait, al-Sabah, are descendants of Sabah I. During the rule of the Al-Sabah, Kuwait progressively became a center of trade and commerce. It now served as a hub of trade between India, the horn of Africa, the Nejd, Mesopotamia and the Levant. Up until the advent of Japanese pearl farming, Kuwait had one of the largest sea fleets in the Persian Gulf region and a flourishing pearling industry. Trade consisted mainly of pearls, wood, spices, dates and horses.

By the late 19th century, much of the Arabian Peninsula came under the influence of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans acknowledged the autonomy of al-Sabah dynasty but still claimed sovereignty over Kuwait.

In 1899, Kuwait entered into a treaty with the United Kingdom that gave the British extensive control over the foreign policy of Kuwait in exchange for protection and annual subsidy. This treaty was primarily prompted by fears that the proposed Berlin-Baghdad Railway would lead to an expansion of German influence in the Persian Gulf. After the signing of the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913, then Amir of Kuwait, Mubarak Al-Sabah, was diplomatically recognized by both the Ottomans and British as the ruler of the autonomous caza of the city of Kuwait and the hinterlands. However, soon after the start of World War I, the British invalidated the convention and declared Kuwait an independent principality under the protection of the British Empire. The 1922 Treaty of Uqair set Kuwait's border with Saudi Arabia and also established the Saudi-Kuwaiti neutral zone, an area of about 5,180 km² adjoining Kuwait's southern border.

On 19 June 1961, Kuwait became fully independent following an exchange of notes between the United Kingdom and the then Amir of Kuwait, Abdullah III Al-Salim Al-Sabah. ReserThe Gulf rupee, issued by the reserve Bank of India, was replaced by the Kuwaiti dinar. The discovery of large oil fields, especially the Burgan field, triggered a large influx of foreign investments into Kuwait. The massive growth of the petroleum industry transformed Kuwait from a poor pearl farming community into one of the richest countries in the Arabian Peninsula and by 1952, the country became the largest exporter of oil in the Persian Gulf region. This massive growth attracted many foreign workers, especially from Egypt and India.

Kuwait settled its boundary disputes with Saudi Arabia and agreed on sharing equally the neutral zone's petroleum reserves, onshore and offshore. After a brief stand-off over boundary issues, Iraq formally recognized Kuwait's independence and its borders in October 1963. During the 1970s, the Kuwaiti government nationalized the Kuwait Oil Company, ending its partnership with Gulf Oil and British Petroleum.

In 1982, Kuwait experienced a major economic crisis after the Souk Al-Manakh stock market crash and decrease in oil price. However, the crisis was short-lived as Kuwait's oil production increased steadily to fill the gap caused by decrease in Iraq's and Iran's oil production levels following the events of the Iran–Iraq War. In 1983, a series of six bomb explosions took place in Kuwait killing five people. The attack was carried out by Shiite Dawa Party to retaliate Kuwait's financial support to Iraq during its war with Iran.

USAF aircraft (F-16, F-15C and F-15E) fly over Kuwaiti oil fires, set by the retreating Iraqi army during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.Kuwait had heavily funded Iraq's eight year-long war with Iran. After the war ended, Kuwait declined an Iraqi request to forgive its US$65 billion debt. An economic warfare between the two countries followed after Kuwait increased its oil production by 40 percent. Tensions between the two countries increased further after Iraq alleged that Kuwait was slant drilling oil from its share of the Rumaila field.

On 2 August 1990, Iraqi forces invaded and annexed Kuwait. Saddam Hussein, then President of Iraq, deposed the Amir of Kuwait, Jaber Al-Sabah, and installed Ali Hassan al-Majid as the new governor of Kuwait. During the Iraqi occupation, about 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians were killed and more than 300,000 residents fled the country. After a series of failed diplomatic negotiations, the United States-led coalition of thirty-four nations fought the Persian Gulf War to remove the Iraqi forces from Kuwait. On 26 February 1991, the coalition succeeded in driving out the Iraqi forces, restoring the Kuwaiti Amir to power. Kuwait paid the coalition forces US$17 billion for their war efforts

During their retreat from the coalition, the Iraqi armed forces carried out a scorched earth policy by damaging 737 oil wells in Kuwait, of which approximately 600 were set on fire. It was estimated that by the time Kuwait was liberated from Iraqi occupation, about 5 to 6 million barrels (950,000 m3) of oil was being burned in a single day because of these fires.

Oil and soot accumulation had affected the entire Persian Gulf region and large oil lakes were created holding approximately 25 to 50 million barrels (7,900,000 m3) of oiland covering 5% of Kuwait's land area.[ In total, about 11 million barrels (1,700,000 m3) of oil was released into the Persian Gulf[ and an additional 2% of Kuwait's 96 billion barrels (1.53×1010 m3) of crude oil reserves were burned by the time the oil fires were brought under control. The fires took more than nine months to extinguish fully and it took Kuwait more than 2 years and US$50 billion in infrastructure reconstruction to reach pre-invasion oil output. Kuwait has since largely recovered from the socio-economic, environmental, and public health effects of the Persian Gulf War.

Ancient History

The Greeks

In 3rd century BC, the Ancient Greeks colonized the island, Failaka, on today's Kuwait coast under Alexander the Great and named it "Ikaros". Some believe the name came from an island off the Greek coast, where it is believed that the mythical Icarus was buried, which resembled Failaka. Others however believe it was named so due to its heat and the belief that it was close to the sun.

In 127 BC, out of the ruins of the Seleucid Greek Empire, Characene was founded at the head of the Persian Gulf in borders similar to present day Kuwait. Its capital was Charax Spasinou, "The Fort of Hyspaosines". The city was an important port in the trade from Mesopotamia to India and provided port facilities for the great city of Susa, further up the Tigris River. Trajan, the Roman emperor, visited Charax in 116 AD, during his invasion of Parthia, and watched the ships leaving for India. He reportedly lamented the fact that he was not younger so that he could, like Alexander, have gone there himself.

The Founding of Kuwait

The Anaza and Bani Utbah (Early Migration and Settlement)


Kuwait was founded in the early eighteenth century by members of the Bani Utbah tribe in the year 1705. Kuwait was then known as Guraine; the Bani Utbah established the town and port of Guraine and called it Kuwait ("little fort," from kut, "fort", ultimately derived from Persian kud, meaning "city") In the first half of the eighteenth century, the great grandfather's of the Al-Khalifa , Al-Sabah , and Al-Jalahma arrived at Kuwait.[2][clarification needed] They were descendants of the Anizah tribe who gradually migrated in the early eighteenth century from Nejd to the shores of the Persian Gulf. According to one local tradition, the Sabahs migrated south to flee drought in Najd in 1710, but found conditions bleaker. Finding conditions no better there, they finally migrated north to Kuwait where they found water and consequently settled. On the last leg of the journey they moved to the north and arrived at Kuwait in 1716. When they arrived at Kuwait, the great grandfather's of the Al-Khalifa , Al-Sabah , and Al-Jalahma found a settlement by the Bani Utbah . Possibly the Bani Utbah had built a fortress from which the name Kuwait, a diminutive of kut or fortress, derives. Al Khalifa, Al-Sabah and Al Jalahma then entered under the umbrella of the Bani Utbah. They also raised the Al Sulami flag which belongs to the Bani Utbah. This flag was mentioned by John Gordon Lorimer in his gazetteer as being a stripped flag with four red stripes and 3 white stripes.[3] It was raised on their ships during wartime and in the pearl season and on special occasions such as weddings and during Eid and in the “ Ardha of war” [4] The Bani Utbah migrated from Kuwait in 1732 to Zubarah and Furaiha in Qatar passing the torch to the Al Khalifa, Al-Sabah,and Al Jalahma.