In 1925, Al Jahra administratively followed Kuwait City, and the population lived on the cultivation of palm trees and a little wheat and barley.

During the Gulf War, the outskirts of Al Jahra was also the site of an infamous shootout with the Allied destruction of a stalled Iraqi convoy as it retreated up Mutla Ridge on Highway 80 between 25 and 26 February 1991.

The US Army received orders by General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. to not let anybody in or out of Kuwait City and to effectively blockade the retreating Iraqi convoys within a 100-mile (160-km) radius.

[5] Schwarzkopf commented in 1995 on the military action:[6] A number of damaging fires have been known to have occurred in recent times in Al Jahra.

On 25 August 2007, politician Massouma al-Mubarak was forced to resign from her post as health minister following a fire in a hospital which killed two patients.

At least 49 people were killed and about 80 others wounded when the grooms' wife, sought revenge for her husband's second marriage, poured petrol on a tent where women and children were celebrating and set it on fire.

[8][9] Mohammed Emwazi - (1988 – 2015), was a British militant of Kuwaiti origin seen in several videos produced by the Islamist extremist group Islamic State (IS) showing the beheadings of a number of captives in 2014 and 2015.

Al Jahra is located 32 kilometres (20 mi) north-west of Kuwait City and is connected by a series of ring roads.