Kāẓima

Kazimah, often written Kazma, was a name used for both a coastal place near the northwestern head of Kuwait Bay and a larger surrounding territory. It was associated with caravan movement between Mesopotamia and eastern or central Arabia. The geographical name consequently travelled beyond the settlement itself, appearing in descriptions and maps of the northern Gulf.

Seventeenth-century European cartographers placed Kazma with differing degrees of accuracy. Nicolas Sanson's map of 1652 showed it well inland; a later edition moved the label closer to the coast. Eighteenth-century maps continued to use Kazma, including Isaak Tirion's map of 1732 and maps issued by the Ottens brothers and Homann in 1737. Meanwhile, the names Al-Qurain and Kuwait increasingly identified the nearby coastal settlement. The cartographic record preserves overlapping names as the northern Gulf's commercial geography changed. Kazimah's history in this period therefore includes the persistence of an older coastal and regional name alongside the emergence of new port names.