Once an important hub for Indian Ocean trade, Oman today may be considered unassuming but its history is etched into some of the Middle East’s wildest landscapes
The national emblem of Oman is the khanjar — a curved dagger, shaped roughly like the letter ‘J’. Khanjar are ubiquitous in Oman. They appear on the national flag, on police cars, banknotes and coins. Khanjar sculptures adorn roundabouts; depictions of khanjars have been engraved on Rolex watches. Not long ago, khanjars were emblazoned on the tailfins of Oman Air planes — until someone considered that perhaps knives and passenger jets do not mix.
The city was known to Ancient Greeks as ‘the hidden port’ — its old deep-water harbour concealed under the cliffs. It prospered from the 16th to the 19th centuries — firstly as a Portuguese foothold in Arabia, then as the capital of an Omani Empire that extended to Pakistan and Zanzibar.
Before I leave Muscat, I stop at the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque. The largest in the country, it opened in 2001 as a spiritual landmark of the national renaissance. Minarets rise over marble courtyards and pigeons coo under swooping arches. The prayer hall is cool and cavernous, built from materials sourced from across the globe: chandeliers made of Austrian crystals; teak from Myanmar; a carpet from Iran, crafted with 1.7 million knots.
Not far from the mouth of Wadi Bani Awf is the behemoth of Nakhal Fort, its turrets linked by rambling stairways and topped with iron cannons that are white-hot to the touch in the midday sunshine. There are more — Nizwa with its hulking keep, Al Hazm with its three-metre-thick walls. Their towers are aligned to catch soothing breezes and their gatehouses designed so cauldrons of boiling honey could be tipped on assailants from above.
Though Musandam is a peninsula, it might be better considered an island — it’s technically an exclave of Oman, separated from the rest of the country by a narrow strip of UAE territory. The peninsula was still free of tarmac as late as the 1990s — Haneef first came here as a truck driver in the 1980s, steering lorries over gravel roads.
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