The Land of Frankincense

Dhofar Province, Oman

One cannot speak about Dhofar without mentioning frankincense. Along with gold and myrrh, it was one of the gifts given by the magi at the birth of Christ. Frankincense is the milky-white resin of the boswellia sacra tree, an unprepossessing scarred and gnarly old thing which nonetheless was the source of the vast wealth of various South Arabian kingdoms for millennia. There are several species of boswellia, but boswellia sacra gives the best resin and it is grown in very few places. Dhofar produces the finest resin of all.

“…they possess incense trees; these have thin leaves, and when a leaf is slashed there drips from it a sap like milk, which then turns into a gum. This gum is the incense, and it is very plentiful there.”

So wrote Ibn Batutta about Hasik whence some consider the best frankincense to come, but it is the trunk which is ‘slashed’ to extract the resin, not the leaves. Clearly he did not see the trees or the harvesting of the incense, but the procedure would have been explained to him and he may have thought it like a euphorbia whose leaves do extrude a kind of sticky, milky substance when cut.

The strange-looking frankincense tree with its divine-smelling resin of medicinal, preservative and, some say, aphrodisiac qualities.

The aphrodisiac qualities of the coconut, abalone and shark fish

Dhofar coast, Oman                 20 Dhul Qadah, 1428

Dhofar is supposedly a blessed place. It has long been considered by its inhabitants to have some special divine protection. I was told this during my visit, and Ibn B was told the same thing;

“One of the special properties and marvels of this city is that no one approaches it with an evil design but his guile turns on himself and he is prevented from attaining it.” 

Even the author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea writing in the 1st century AD wrote of the special atmosphere of the site of Khor Rouri, known to the Greeks as Moscha, which he felt must have the protection of a god. Ironically, nowadays the locals believe there are jinn or jinni, there and most people would never visit after dark for fear of them. (As has been mentioned on this site, the Arabic word ‘jinn’ is the origin of the English word ‘genie’ of Aladdin’s lamp fame.) 

Khor Rouri was built by a Hadhramut King sometime around the 1st century BC, for the export of frankincense. But like al-Baleed it suffered a reversal of fortune and today it is an isolated inlet (‘khor’ means inlet separated from the sea by a sand bar) home to flamingoes, herons and eagles.

Khor Rouri - photograph taken from the ruins of the city looking out towards the Arabian Sea