The name of Mulla Saleh, and after him his children, is associated with a long period of Kuwait's history before and after the advent of oil, as they had early political, social, economic and developmental contributions in the history of Kuwait since the era of the seventh ruler of Kuwait, Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah (ruled from 1896 until his death in 1915) and from the rule of After him, up to the era of Abi Al-Istiqlal, Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, may God have mercy on him.
The family of Mulla Saleh is a well-known family in Kuwait, and they are descendants of Muhammad Saleh bin Abdullah Al-Abd Al-Rahman. Despite the conflicting statements about their origins between those who say that they are from the mainland of Persia, that they are from Muhammarah, and that they are from the Al-Faw region in southern Iraq, family references confirm that they are from the buildings of Anza and that they migrated to Kuwait in the middle of the nineteenth century under the leadership of their grandfather Muhammad Saleh Abdullah Al-Abd Al-Rahman Al-Anzi, and they lived in Fareej Al-Shuyoukh in the middle neighborhood of the capital (in the place where the State Mosque and the Stock Exchange building are currently located).
According to what Fawzia Saleh bin Saif Al-Roumi mentioned in her book titled “The History of the Exodus of Ancient Kuwaiti Families to Kuwait and Their Role in Building the State from the Inception of Kuwait to the Present Time” issued in 2005, this Al-Mulla family intermarried with many well-known Kuwaiti families such as: Al-Sinan, Al-Sumait, Al-Nisf, Al-Saleh, Al-Marzouq, Al-Khatib, Al-Nafisi, Al-Humaidhi, Al-Shaya, Al-Rashid, Al-Thaqib, Al-Adsani, Al-Muraikhi, Al-Mashari, Al-Zaben, Al-Zahim, and Bin Salama.
However, the most important intermarriage between them was with the Al-Sumait family from the seventies, because the dean of the family, “Muhammad Salih Abdullah Al-Abd Al-Rahman,” betrothed to his son Muhammad a girl from the Al-Sumait family, who is “Latifa bint Muhammad Al-Nasser Al-Sumait, who gave birth to her husband in 1878 a son whom they called Saleh after the name of his grandfather. And this Saleh is the one who was known later as “Mulla Saleh” because in the last years of the nineteenth century he used to frequent the Al-Razzaqah Mosque and Diwan (the meeting place for religious scholars at the time) and scooped from them the sciences of religion and jurisprudence until he became “Mullah”, a word usually used in Kuwait and Iraq Those who are familiar with the legal and jurisprudential sciences.
Freej Al-Shuyoukh
Thus, Mulla Salih was born in Fareej Al-Shuyoukh in the Al-Wasat neighborhood, but he grew up in Fareej Al-Sabaan, where his maternal grandfather lived, before moving to the area known as Darwazat Al-Abd Al-Razzaq (according to the Kuwait History website). The man grew up an orphan because his father died when he was eight years old, and his uncle, Rashid Al Mulla, took care of him. Like the children of his time, he joined one of the writers, so he memorized the Noble Qur’an and its sciences, reading, writing and arithmetic at the hands of the teachers of that time, including Sheikh Muhammad Al-Farsi. In a later period, he lived under the patronage of the fifth ruler of Kuwait, Abdullah bin Sabah, nicknamed Sheikh Abdullah II Al-Sabah (ruled from 1866 to 1892), and then under the patronage of the sixth ruler of Kuwait, Sheikh Muhammad bin Sabah (ruled from 1892 until his death in 1896), then the seventh ruler nurtured him. Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah until he was old and young. During this period, he learned more diverse knowledge at the hands of the best professors of that time, and he also traveled to India, where he studied some advanced sciences, such as English at Aligarh University, which enabled him to make his way in life, relying on himself with an outstanding self-sufficiency. Among the signs of this is that he worked in the trade of many commodities before he specialized in the sulfur trade as a young man, then he traveled to Al-Muhammarah in the Emirate of Arabistan when it was under the rule of the “Al-Mardaw” Al-Ka’bis, where he worked there as a clerk for Othman Al-Tamar, who was the agent of the Sheikhs of Kuwait in Muhammarah, until Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah closed the Kuwait Agency in Muhammarah.
Secretary to the Governor and Special Envoy
News of his success and brilliance (by the standards of that early time) reached the ears of Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah, so he returned him from Muhammarah to Kuwait and appointed him, at the age of thirty-one, as a junior clerk in his office, before promoting him in 1906 to the position of his private secretary (first secretary to the government) after he noticed his eagerness And his activity and sincerity, and that was the beginning of his political prominence. After years spent in the position of secretary to the ruler or secretary of the government, Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah appointed him as his official special envoy to neighboring countries, and he continued to hold this position during the reign of the next ruler, Sheikh Salem Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah (ruled from 1917 until his death in 1921) and in the following periods until 1921. 1941, bearing in mind that he accompanied Crown Prince Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah to Britain in 1953 when the latter went as a delegate from Sheikh Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah to represent Kuwait at the coronation ceremony of Queen Elizabeth II.
Powers and influence
His influence reached the point of suggesting names to fill vacant positions, as he did when he recommended Sheikh Abdulaziz Qasim Hamadeh to replace the resigned Zubairi judge, Sheikh Abdul Mohsen bin Ibrahim Ababtain, and then when he responded to Sheikh Hamada’s request that Sheikh Ahmed Attia al-Athari be his assistant. In addition, the powers of Mulla Salih included authorizing the ruler to conclude deals with some, such as a deal or a contracting monopoly on purchasing the guts of slaughtered animals from the markets in order to market them abroad (according to the book From Here Begins Kuwait).
The hostility of the envious
For these reasons, coupled with the ruler's trust in him, his envy increased, and some harbored hatred for him and classified him as an influential person who presents secret reports to the ruler and makes his chest angry with activists calling for political reform and popular participation in power and intrigues between the two parties, fabricating lies against some employees, in a way Former minister and ambassador Khaled Suleiman Al-Adsani repeated it more than once in his memoirs about the period in which he held the position of a member and secretary of the first and second Legislative Councils in 1938, and Al-Adsani was not satisfied with that, but hinted that Mullah Saleh exploited his position for enrichment and personal benefits, and gave all the reasons for the failure of the Legislative Council, And before him, the elected municipal councils, against Mullah Salih and those he called the influential entourage, accusing Mullah Salih of interfering in the municipal elections, falsifying the results and buying off debts to win the favor of his nephew, “Nif al-Yusuf al-Nisf” and put him at the head of the municipal council as a replacement for him (i.e. for Al-Adsani). This is despite the fact that Al-Adsani contradicted himself when he admitted in more than one place that the disputes between members of the legislative and municipal councils for the most insignificant reasons and their interest in their commercial interests and their submission to their personal whims were many, which hindered business.
Opposition to the legislature
Abdullah Khaled Al-Hatem says in his book “From Here Kuwait Begins” (Dar Al-Qabas Press / Kuwait / 1980) that when Sheikh Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, nicknamed Jaber Al-Kabir (ruled from 1921 until his death in 1950) agreed in July 1938 to a proposal from those who called the They called themselves the “National Youth Bloc” to establish an elected legislative council, and after the elections were held and 12 members of this bloc won, they pressed to get rid of Mullah Saleh, who was opposed to the idea of the Legislative Council, so the latter left Kuwait heading to Baghdad, where he resided for some time.
Back to Kuwait
After disputes arose between the members of the council themselves on the one hand, and between them and the government on the other, and after the government resolved to dissolve the bloc and seal its headquarters with red wax, Mulla Saleh returned to Kuwait to exercise his previous job until the year 1941. In this year, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Jaber appointed him as director. For the Passports Department, he was the first Kuwaiti to occupy this position in the history of the country until his death in August 1958. While the position of the government secretary (head of government clerks) concerned with political reviews and correspondence between Kuwait and foreign parties was devolved to his son Abdullah until the date of his death in June 1955, then to his son Badr bin Abdullah until 1962, bearing in mind that Badr bin Abdullah (the grandson of Mulla Saleh) born in 1937 became, after independence, the director of the Foreign Department when it was established. He also assumed the position of honorary consul of the Kingdom of Norway to Kuwait until his death in Beirut in June 1969, and his brother succeeded him in the position of consul. Najeeb Abdullah Al-Mulla.
Travel documents leave
The researcher and writer in Kuwaiti heritage, Dr. Yaqoub Al-Ghunaim, in an article he wrote in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida (24/6/2012) about the history of Kuwaiti passports and the organization that was in force at the time of Mulla Saleh. He says that the travel documents in Kuwait at that time were very simple and that whoever wanted to travel had to go To the office of Mulla Saleh, the latter writes a letter addressed to the British political representative in the country, including the name of the passport applicant, his nationality, and a certificate of no objection to travel, and gives him the letter to direct it to the British delegation, which provides him with what is required after paying a fee of one rupee. Al-Ghunaim went on to say that travel documents in that era were just a 30-centimetre-long paper topped with the emblem of the British Empire and bearing a photo of its owner if he was male, and without a photo if the owner of the document was female, and it was valid for travel for one year only. However, he explained that travel documents to both Saudi Arabia and Iran were different and issued by the ruler of Kuwait. For Saudi Arabia, the document was a small piece of paper topped with the old emblem of Kuwait (two opposite red flags), and it was spent in exchange for two rupees, and it included a visa saying, “So-and-so is a citizen of Kuwait, please facilitate his travel.” As for Iran, the document was called (knowledge and news) and was written in the same format for one rupee.
His offspring between trade and government work
Mulla Saleh married more than one woman, so he gave birth to his eldest son Muhammad (Muhammad the First), who did not live long, then he had another son who gave him the same name, Muhammad Saleh Al Mulla (born in 1940, studied in Lebanon, chose the path of trade and headed the Arab Club for the first time in 1969, then From 1992 to 1995, he is an honorary member of Al-Hilal Club, Al-Shabab Al-Saudi Club, Al-Wasl Club of the United Arab Emirates, Dhofar Club of Oman, and an honorary member of the clubs Al-Zamalek, Al-Ahly and the Egyptian Arsenal). Muhammad Salih al-Mulla (Muhammad II) gave birth to a son, whom he named Salih. The latter was active in the political field and won a seat in the National Assembly in 2008. However, the most famous among the sons of Mullah Saleh is his son Abdullah from his first wife, who was born in 1915 and was among the first 300 Kuwaiti students to join the American Missionary School in Kuwait in 1930, what Enables him to be fluent in English proficiency.
The truth is that Abdullah Mulla Saleh Al-Mulla did not only succeed his father in the position of government secretary, nor did he rise to the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs responsible for the government’s relations with oil companies, and accompanying Sheikhs Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah and Abdullah Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah, may God have mercy on them, in their political and private trips only. Moreover, he is also active in the commercial field. With the discovery of oil in 1938 and the entry of Kuwait into a new era of economic and living development, he realized early, with his awareness, insight and foresight for the future, the need of his country and businessmen for all kinds of technology, commodities and modern means of transportation, so he established the “Al-Mulla Group” that expanded and extended and covered many sectors such as: cars Environmental devices, safety and security means, office equipment, engineering services, consulting, informatics, and others.
The beginning was in 1938 when Abdullah Al-Mulla opened with Jamal Saleh a small store for electronic appliances and household appliances in Al-Safat Square, which soon achieved amazing success, which prompted him in 1947 to establish a commercial enterprise in which his son Badr Al-Mulla participated, and it undertook the import and distribution of American Chrysler cars . After his death in 1955, the leadership of the institution devolved to his son Badr until the latter’s death in 1969, when the flag was taken over by the other son, Najeeb Abdullah Al-Mulla, who introduced in 1972 to Kuwait and the Middle East for the first time Japanese Mitsubishi cars and their sports and four-wheel drive models, which achieved great sales. It even became the second best-selling brand in Kuwait due to its size and fuel economy.
Secretary to the Government.. Sir Wakhan Bahadur
Mulla Saleh, far from all that his opponents and envious people propagated, was known for his generosity, generosity, and other good qualities that can be found in detail in a book written by researcher Muhammad Ibrahim Al-Shaibani, issued by the Manuscripts, Heritage and Documentation Center in the State of Kuwait in 2003 under the title “Secretary of the Government.” Among the landmarks of Kuwait that are attributed to him is the Mulla Saleh Al-Mulla Mosque located on the southern bank of Fahd Al-Salem Street in the Salhia area, which was built by Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah at his own expense in 1919, and the Ministry of Awqaf renovated and restored it in 1953. This is noteworthy that the high-end area of Salhia was named by this name in memory of Mulla Saleh, in appreciation of his great services to Kuwait, and the family has an old antique Diwan on Al-Khaleej Al-Arabi Street. Among the estimates that the man received was the title of “Sir” and the title of “Khan Bahadur” by the British government, and they are two titles that Britain does not grant except to people who have a prominent role in the civilizational progress of their countries. In addition, Shaya Al-Shaya, Vice-President of the Municipal Council in Kuwait in 2010 suggested that one of the country’s streets be named after the man. Mulla Saleh Al-Mulla on one of the streets of Kuwait.
In addition to the aforementioned personalities belonging to the family of Mulla Saleh, there is his daughter, the social and human rights activist Lulwa Mulla Saleh Al Mulla (she worked in freelancing for three decades and chaired the Board of Directors of the Women's Cultural Association, and she was awarded the Legion of Honor from France in 2017). There is also his granddaughter, Ambassador Nabila Abdullah Mulla Saleh Al-Mulla (she studied in Kuwait and the American University in Beirut and obtained higher degrees in politics and international relations. She is the first female ambassador in the history of Kuwaiti diplomacy when she was appointed ambassador to Zimbabwe in 1993, and she is also the first Arab and Muslim to serve as ambassador for her country in The United Nations in 2004, noting that she held the position of ambassador to more than 12 countries, the last of which was the ambassador to Belgium and the European Union).
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Infographic:
Governor's Secretary:
News of his talent and brilliance reached the ears of Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah early
– Special official envoy of Sheikh Mubarak Al-Sabah to neighboring countries
He accompanied Crown Prince Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salem Al-Sabah to Britain in 1953
– His enthusiasm, activity, and sincerity were the beginning of his political prominence
Dr.. Abdullah Al-Madani
