Omanعُمان

The south-east corner of Arabia was settled and trading long before Islam. Mesopotamian tablets of the third millennium BCE name a land called Magan that shipped copper and diorite up the Gulf, and archaeologists place much of it in today's Oman. The stone beehive tombs strung along the ridges at Bat and Al Ayn date from that era. Further south, Dhofar produced frankincense, the resin burned in temples from Egypt to Rome, and ports such as Sumhuram at Khor Rori grew rich on shipping it by sea and caravan.

Islam reached Oman in the lifetime of the Prophet, and in the eighth century the interior adopted Ibadism, a branch of Islam that elected its leaders, the imams, and allowed them to be removed if they ruled unjustly. For centuries political life swung between imams based in the interior, especially at Nizwa, and coastal rulers and outside powers. Persian dynasties controlled the coast at times, and local tribes fought over water and trade routes.

In 1507 a Portuguese fleet under Afonso de Albuquerque sacked the coastal towns and took Muscat, which it held as a naval station for about 150 years. The Ya'aruba imams united the tribes and expelled the Portuguese in 1650, then built a navy that chased them down the East African coast, taking Mombasa and Zanzibar. The same dynasty built or rebuilt the great interior forts at Nizwa, Jabreen and Rustaq. A civil war and a Persian invasion ended their rule, and in 1744 Ahmad bin Said, governor of Sohar, drove the Persians out and founded the Al Busaid dynasty that still reigns.

Under Sultan Said bin Sultan in the early nineteenth century Oman became a maritime empire, with possessions from the Makran coast of today's Pakistan to Zanzibar, where Said moved his court and planted cloves with slave labour. After his death in 1856 the British arbitrated a split: one son took Zanzibar, another Muscat. Deprived of its richest province and of the slave and arms trades, Muscat declined. The interior revolted under a revived imamate, and a 1920 treaty left the Sultan on the coast and the Imam inland until the 1950s, when the Sultan retook the interior with British help.

By the 1960s Oman under Sultan Said bin Taimur was one of the most closed states on earth, with a handful of schools, a single hospital and a gate in Muscat's walls shut at night. A rebellion in Dhofar, later led by Marxists backed by South Yemen, spread across the south. In July 1970 his son Qaboos deposed him in a palace coup, opened the country, and with British, Iranian and Jordanian support ended the Dhofar war by 1975, combining military action with roads, clinics and amnesties for rebels.

Qaboos ruled for almost fifty years, using oil revenue to build a modern state from roads and schools to the Grand Mosque and the opera house, while keeping power in his own hands. He died in January 2020 and his cousin Haitham bin Tarik succeeded him through a sealed letter naming his choice. Haitham has cut debt, introduced VAT, named his son crown prince in a new Basic Law, and in 2025 moved National Day to 20 November, the founding date of the dynasty, instead of Qaboos's birthday.

Oman has about 5.3 million residents, and roughly two in five are foreign, mostly workers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines who drive trucks, build roads, run shops and staff hotels. Omani citizens are a population of about three million, young, and increasingly urban around Muscat and the Batinah coast. The government's Omanisation policy reserves many jobs for citizens, which is why the taxi driver, the fort ticket seller and the tour guide are usually Omani while the café cook usually is not.

The Omani population itself is mixed by its history. Baluch families came from the Makran coast over centuries and served in the Sultan's armies; Lawati merchants of Indian origin built the walled quarter in Muttrah; thousands of Omanis born in Zanzibar and East Africa returned after the 1964 Zanzibar revolution and still speak Swahili at home. In Dhofar the mountain peoples speak Jibbali (Shehri) and Mehri, Modern South Arabian languages older than Arabic in the region, and in Musandam some villages speak Kumzari, related to Persian.

Tribal belonging still matters. Surnames often signal a tribe and its home town, and family ties decide marriages, business partners and who is asked to settle a dispute. Village life in the interior revolves around the falaj water system, the mosque and the sablah, a meeting room where men receive guests and discuss local matters. Hospitality is expected: a stranger who stops at a farm can find himself drinking coffee and eating dates within minutes.

Dress is a visible sign of national identity. Omani men wear the white collarless dishdasha with a tassel at the neck, an embroidered kumma cap or a wrapped massar turban, and on formal occasions the curved silver khanjar dagger at the waist, which also appears on the national emblem. Women wear abayas in public, often over bright dresses, with regional styles in Dhofar and the interior. Civil servants are required to wear national dress at work.

Society is conservative but less showy and less rigid than in some neighbouring states. Women vote, drive, study in large numbers and hold ministries, while family and religious norms shape most decisions. Public criticism of the Sultan is off limits, political parties do not exist, and the elected Majlis al-Shura has only advisory power. Omanis tend to describe their national character as tolerant, modest and calm, and the country's diplomacy mirrors that picture.

Islam is the state religion, and Oman is the only country where most Muslims follow Ibadism. Ibadism grew out of the early disputes over the leadership of the Muslim community and developed in Basra before Omani scholars brought it home. It is neither Sunni nor Shia. Its best-known principle is that the community should choose its imam on merit and may remove him, and its style is sober: simple mosques without high minarets in older villages, restraint in dress and speech, and a strong emphasis on moral conduct.

Ibadis are estimated at about half to three-quarters of Omani citizens; the rest are Sunni, especially in Dhofar and among the Baluch, with a Shia minority including the Lawati. The state does not publish sect statistics, and official language stresses a single Omani Islam. Friday sermons are circulated by the ministry, and sectarian speech is prohibited. For visitors this translates into a religious climate that is devout but rarely confrontational.

The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat, opened in 2001, is the country's showpiece: a prayer hall with one of the largest hand-woven carpets and chandeliers in the world, open to non-Muslim visitors on weekday mornings. It is untypical, however. Most Omani mosques are small, whitewashed village buildings, some with carved mihrabs centuries old, such as the one in the Friday mosque of Bahla or the mosques of Nizwa and Samail.

Religious practice sets the country's calendar. Prayer times structure the day, Friday midday prayer closes shops, and Ramadan changes everything from office hours to the time families eat. Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha are the great family holidays, when towns empty as people return to their villages and shuwa pits are dug for the feast. Visitors are expected to respect the Ramadan fast in public.

Oman allows other faiths to worship on land granted by the Sultan. Muscat has Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches in Ruwi and Ghala, and two Hindu temples in Old Muscat, one of them more than a century old and built by Gujarati traders. Proselytising to Muslims is illegal, and religious offences are prosecuted, but the country presents interfaith tolerance as part of its identity and hosts a ministry-backed exhibition on the theme.

Oman has more than 500 forts, castles and watchtowers, and they are the country's signature building. Most were built of mud brick and stone to guard oases, trade routes and harbours. Nizwa Fort's huge round tower was built in the seventeenth century to command the town and the road to the coast; Bahla's walls enclose an entire oasis and are on the UNESCO list; Jabreen, built as a palace and school, has painted wooden ceilings and carved doors. Many were restored from the 1980s onward and now serve as museums.

The aflaj (singular falaj) are the reason the interior can be inhabited at all. They are channels, some underground for kilometres, that carry water by gravity from springs and aquifers to villages and palm gardens. Water is divided by time, measured traditionally by sundials and stars, and shares are owned, inherited and sold separately from land. Five aflaj systems are inscribed by UNESCO, and walking beside one through a village garden is among the most Omani experiences a visitor can have.

Traditional houses in the interior villages of Al Hamra, Misfat al Abriyeen and Birkat al Mawz were built in several storeys of mud brick with palm-trunk ceilings and small windows to keep out the heat. Many were abandoned as families moved into concrete houses from the 1970s, and a growing number are being restored as guesthouses. On the coast, merchants' houses of coral stone with wooden balconies survive in Muttrah and Sur.

Sur was the country's shipyard. Carpenters there built wooden dhows, including the large ocean-going ghanjah with its carved stern, from Indian teak without drawings, and a yard still builds and repairs boats by hand. The Jewel of Muscat, a reconstruction of a ninth-century ship sewn together with coconut rope, sailed from Oman to Singapore in 2010 and is now displayed there, a symbol of the seafaring past.

Craft traditions include silver jewellery and khanjar daggers from Nizwa, pottery from Bahla, weaving by the Bedouin of the Sharqiyah, and rose water distilled on Jebel Akhdar each spring. Frankincense from Dhofar remains part of daily life, burned to scent homes and clothes. Modern Oman also invests in culture: the Royal Opera House Muscat opened in 2011, and the National Museum opened in 2016 beside Al Alam Palace.

Omani cooking reflects the sea routes. Rice arrived from India and Persia, spice mixes (bzar) blend cumin, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon and dried lime, and Swahili and Baluchi dishes came home with returning families. The result is less fiery than Indian food and more aromatic than much of Arabian cooking. Fish from the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, especially kingfish, tuna and sardines, is the everyday protein on the coast.

The great feast dish is shuwa. For Eid, families marinate goat, lamb or beef in spice paste, wrap it in banana or palm leaves and sacks, and lower it into a communal underground oven for a day or two. Neighbours share the same pit, and opening it is a village event. Other festive dishes include harees, a slow-cooked porridge of wheat and meat, and arsiya, rice and meat pounded together, both served at weddings and in Ramadan.

Hospitality follows a set order. A guest is offered dates and qahwa, a pale, cardamom-flavoured coffee poured from a dallah into small cups, and often Omani halwa, a dense sweet of sugar, ghee, starch, rosewater and saffron cooked for hours in copper cauldrons. Refusing entirely is impolite; after two or three cups, shaking the cup signals that you have had enough. Halwa makers in Barka, Nizwa and Muttrah guard their recipes.

Everyday eating outside the home happens at Indian, Pakistani and Kerala-run cafés that serve biryani, chapati, dal and karak tea at very low prices, and at shawarma stands. Omani restaurants are fewer and mostly serve family groups in floor seating rooms. Dhofar has its own flavours: coconuts, bananas and papaya grow around Salalah, and roadside stalls in the khareef sell coconut water and grilled meat.

Dates are the heart of the diet and the economy of the oases. Oman grows more than 250 varieties, from sticky Khalas to dark Fardh, and the harvest in early summer is a social season. Camel milk and meat are part of Bedouin tradition, and camel racing remains popular. Alcohol has no role in Omani food culture; it is served only in licensed hotels and bars for foreigners.

Oman covers about 310,000 square kilometres, and most of it is gravel plain and sand. The Al Hajar mountains form an arc along the north, rising to about 3,000 metres at Jebel Shams, and cut by wadis that fill with water after storms. Between the mountains and the Gulf of Oman lies the fertile Batinah coast; south of them the interior runs into the Wahiba (Sharqiya) Sands and eventually the Empty Quarter. Musandam, the northern tip, is an exclave of fjord-like inlets on the Strait of Hormuz.

The south is a different world. Dhofar catches the edge of the Indian Ocean monsoon from late June to September, the khareef, when fog and drizzle turn the hills around Salalah green and waterfalls appear in Wadi Darbat. The same moisture supports the frankincense tree, Boswellia sacra, which grows wild in the dry valleys behind the mountains. The khareef is now a major domestic and Gulf holiday season.

Oman's coast is one of the richest wildlife areas in Arabia. Green turtles nest year-round at Ras al Jinz and Ras al Hadd, loggerheads on Masirah Island, and the Arabian Sea hosts a resident population of humpback whales that never migrates. The Arabian oryx was reintroduced to the central desert in the 1980s, although poaching and a shrunken reserve cost the site its UNESCO listing in 2007, the first ever removed from the list.

Oil was found in commercial quantities in the 1960s and exported from 1967. Oman's reserves are modest by Gulf standards, and oil and gas still provide most government revenue. Vision 2040 aims to diversify into logistics through the ports of Sohar, Duqm and Salalah, into green hydrogen, mining, fisheries and tourism. The government introduced VAT in 2021 and announced a personal income tax on high earners from 2028, a first in the Gulf.

Daily life is shaped by distance and heat. Towns are strung along new highways, air conditioning runs most of the year, and families spend summer evenings in malls, on the corniche or in the mountains. The biggest infrastructure project now is Hafeet Rail, a line from Sohar to Al Ain and Abu Dhabi under construction, which would give Oman its first railway.