Tales of the Imamate from the Sultanate

Nizwa, Oman

Oman is a land of forts, perfect sandcastle forts; pale honey-colored and smooth-sided, with round towers, square keeps, machiolated parapets, arrow slits, cannon and massive wooden iron-studded doors, they are a veritable medieval desert fantasy sprung to life. Nizwa’s fort is no exception although Ibn Battuta would not have seen it - the 17th century fort which has the largest circular tower in the country, took 12 years to build. From its corner towers one has a panoramic view over the whole oasis of Nizwa framed and hemmed in by a ridge of ancient, coal-black serrated crags.

The interior of Nizwa fort

Nizwa’s souk has been renovated to resemble an old souk with little shops clustered together in a central square, half the goods stacked outside; typical Omani products are the wooden, studded chests which were used for storage – the more elegant being used to store the most prized possessions such as special occasion clothing and jewelry - pottery frankincense burners, ewers and water holders, and woven palm and leather baskets. The walled and gated souk lies at the foot of the castle and with impeccable timing I arrived at lunchtime when everything was closed and everyone had gone home…. nonetheless all the merchandise which was outside had been left there unattended. I can’t imagine many places in other parts of the world where there would be anything left. Oman’s 2.5 million denizens are apparently a very law-abiding people – Omanis routinely park their cars, leave the engine running and go into a shop. It never occurs to them that their vehicle will not be there when they come out.

Typical Omani chests in Nizwa souk

Turtle Beach & The Road to Nizwa

Sur to Nizwa, Oman

Before leaving the region of Sur, I paid a visit to Ras al-Jinz, a tiny beach which belies its immense importance to several endangered turtle species; loggerhead, green, Olive Ridley and Hawksbill. On a small stretch of sand under honey-colored cliffs, female turtles come up on to the beach at night to lay upwards of 100 eggs deep in the sand.

The beach at Ras al-Jinz

After about 50 days the eggs hatch all at once, and guided instinctively by the moonlight the tiny black creatures, about two inches long, set off determinedly for the sea. Only a few meters separate their birthplace from the ocean but they are treacherous – birds, crabs and foxes catch them on the sand, and if they reach the ocean alive, fish and sea birds await them. For this reason they swim far out to sea for hours after hitting the water. It is not surprising that only about 1 of every 50 survives.

The government of Oman is arguably the most proactive in the Arab world with regard to conservation in general, and the turtles are no exception. Many have had little satellites attached to their shells so their movements can be tracked to enable us to learn more about them. The day of my visit a dead turtle lay on the beach – a female who for whatever reason had not made it back to sea, (males do not leave the sea). It seemed symbolic both of the struggle the little hatchlings face at the very start of their lives, to the ongoing pressures turtles face as adults sharing their habitat with increasing human encroachment and the attendant detritus that 21st century man in the form of 6 billion people brings to the earth.

Of cyclones and dhows and the Spangled Emperor

Sur, Oman

“We continued our voyage for a day and a night and came to the roadstead of a large village on the seashore called Sur, from which we saw the city of Qalhut on the slope of a hill, and seeming to us to be close by. “

Sur is no longer a village but a small and delightful town, I immediately liked its laid-back charm and its lovely old port. Sur is not on the itinerary of most tourists which is both a bit of a blessing and a curse for the town. In Ibn Battuta’s day Qalhat, a few miles up the coast, was clearly the more important city of the two, so he devotes few words to Sur.

View of Sur towards the Gulf of Oman

Sur means ‘fortified wall’ in Arabic so it comes as no surprise to see lots of crenellated walls even on modest, modern houses, having become something of a leitmotif of the city. I decided to visit two of the city’s forts despite the fact that neither of them had been built in Ibn Battuta’s day. In the 18th century, having seen off 200 years of Portuguese rule, Bilad castle was built to defend Sur from land attack from discontented tribes further inland, and Sunaysilah fort was built overlooking the sea to defend from sea-borne attack from everyone else. The former was closed, and I was the only visitor at the latter. A classic square-built fort with a round tower with arrow slits and cannon holes at each corner, it has been extensively renovated and the only complaint is that you cannot get on to the upper levels where the views out over the sea must be delightful.

The renovated upper courtyard interior of the fort.

The Island of Birds; a mystery not solved

Arabian Sea coast, Oman

“We continued our journey from the roadstead of Hasik for four days, and came to the Hill of Lum’an, in the midst of the sea. On top of it is a hermitage built of stone, with a roofing of fish bones, and with a pool of collected rainwater outside it.”

The accepted opinion about this – nobody has ever identified the Hill of Lum’an - is that it is Hallaniya, one of the Kuria Muria islands. The only major drawback about this explanation is that Ibn B said he had taken 4 days to get there and it is only 20 miles from Hasik. But after speaking with Salem who explained that his parents had once undertaken a boat journey to Sur when the wind dropped and they did not move an inch for days, it became a possible explanation for the puzzle, although I still did not like it – when Ibn B got stuck in the doldrums in the Sea of China he mentioned it, so if it had taken him 4 days to travel to an island 20 miles away, why had he not explained why?

In any event Ibn B’s words proved to be an insurmountable problem for me as I could not get to Hallaniya. I could have rented a basic dhow from Mirbat, and I went to its little harbor to inspect the possibilities. I was not encouraged, the idea of being the only woman on such a boat did not appeal to me for various reasons. The trip might last for 12 hours or if the weather turned nasty for any number of days. I abandoned the idea of even beginning negotiations on the price and looked for another way.

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 

Lost tombs and catastrophe, and the Land of al-Ahqaf

Salalah, Dhofar province, Oman            12 Dhul Qadah, 1428

I am struck by how many habits and customs remain intact from Ibn Battuta’s day almost 700 years ago. Mohammed and I were having lunch in Mirbat overlooking the sea when he idly picked up ‘The Travels [of Ibn Battuta]’ and read,

“One of their good customs is to shake hands with one another in the mosque after the morning and afternoon prayers; those in the front row turn their backs to the qibla, and those in the row next to them shake hands with them. They do the same thing after the noonday prayer on Friday, all of them shaking hands with one another.”

“But this is still done to this day”, exclaimed Mohammed surprised and seemingly rather delighted that this custom had been around at least since the 14^th century, “It is disappearing now as the older men die off and foreign imams come to the mosques who do not know the custom”, he added, “but the old men still like to do this.” Earlier in the day we had visited Taqah castle which has been restored as an ethnographic museum. In one of the rooms hanging on the wall were some woven palm leaf prayer mats which he said people still used. Ibn Battuta had noted as much,

"In every one of their houses, there is a prayer mat of palm leaves hung up inside the house, on which the master of the house performs his prayers exactly as the people of the Maghreb do..."

The restored Taqah fort where the wali, or governor, lived.

This led to another, little-known fact; Ahmed, a young colleague of Mohammed, was remarking on the similarity of the language between the people of Salalah, eastern Yemen and Morocco. Ibn B had noted this in 1329,

"Another strange thing is that the people of this city of all men most closely resemble the people of the Maghreb in their ways...."

This led him to suppose that the legend of the Himayrite King (of Yemen) who had conquered north-west Africa and whose troops had then stayed, must in fact be true. By now experience has taught me that despite occasional skepticism on the part of locals about some of his writings, Ibn B is usually right and I have learned not to be swayed by the naysayers. But on occasion - and the Morocco connection was one of them - I wonder about fleeting fanciful notions on his part. But once again the keen oberver is right.

The Rain Shadow, the khareef, and the lost city of al-Baleed.

Salalah, Dhofar province, Oman     6 Dhul Qadah, 1428 AH

I have been discombobulated. I have not been able to access my website for weeks; in Iran on certain servers it is blacklisted for reasons unknown and in Dubai both Girl Solo and Typepad are wholly inaccessible for reasons equally unknown, all of which has left me chomping at the bit. This is not a good position to be in when you are trying to arrange travel to places that were already off the beaten path in the 14th century, and to which the passing centuries have not improved accessibility. The final straw - the shutter button on my camera sheared clean off leaving me completely adrift – I feel as if I have been without an umbilical cord for the past two months.

I am thus happy to be back on Ibn B’s trail again in the company of Mohammed Saeed, mohdsr@hotmail.com an extremely knowledgeable and affable guide to these parts. This is going to be one of the most difficult parts of the trip to pull together – I have been trying for several months – so in the meantime I start with the easy stuff which is how I come to be driving to al-Baleed of a fine, tropical November Monday morning…….

The flora of this part of the Omani coast resembles that of South Asia with its poinsiana and frangipani trees, bougainvillea, banana and coconut groves