Oman's history begins with a scent. In the Dhofar mountains, in the far south of the country, grows the Boswellia sacra tree, the source of frankincense, the aromatic resin that the ancient world valued almost as highly as gold. From at least two thousand years before Christ, camel caravans carried this "white gold" along the legendary Incense Route. It crossed southern Arabia and ran north through Yemen and present-day Saudi Arabia towards Mecca, Petra, Damascus and the great markets of the Mediterranean, from Egypt to Rome. Frankincense was essential in the temples and funeral rites of almost every ancient civilisation, and its trade made the kingdoms that controlled it fabulously rich.
Dhofar was one of the hearts of that world. In 2000 UNESCO added the site known as the "Land of Frankincense" to the World Heritage List. It includes the frankincense trees of Wadi Dawkah and the remains of the fortified caravan oasis of Shisr, which some identify with the legendary lost city of Ubar, "the Atlantis of the Sands". It also includes the ancient trading ports of Khor Rori (ancient Sumhuram) and Al Baleed, on the coast at Salalah. From these ports, frankincense was shipped to India and the Persian Gulf, drawing Oman into a maritime economy that already linked three continents in Antiquity.
Further north, the region was also known in ancient times for its copper. Sumerian texts mention the land of "Magan" as a supplier of this metal, and many historians identify it with present-day Oman, whose mines were supplying Mesopotamia as early as the third millennium BC. The archaeological sites of Bat, Al-Khutm and Al-Ayn, also World Heritage Sites, preserve Bronze Age towers and necropolises that bear witness to an early and sophisticated civilisation. Copper and perfume, copper and sea: from the very start, Oman was a country turned towards long-distance trade.
Oman was one of the first regions to embrace Islam. According to tradition, around the year 630 the Prophet Muhammad sent his envoy Amr ibn al-As with a letter addressed to Abd and Jaifar, the two sons of Julanda who ruled the country at the time. Both accepted the new faith peacefully, without military conquest. The faith came by agreement, not by the sword, and that left a lasting mark on Omani identity.
After the Prophet's death and the split between Sunnis and Shias, Oman took a third path, rare in the Islamic world: Ibadism, the most moderate and pragmatic branch of the Kharijite movement. Ibadism rejects the idea that leadership of the community must fall to the Prophet's family or to the Quraysh tribe. It holds that the imam, the leader of the faithful, should be chosen for his piety and ability, and can be removed if he fails. That austere, elective principle made Oman a unique case. It is still the only country in the world with an Ibadi majority, a tradition many see as key to explaining its religious tolerance and its commitment to neutrality.
The Imamate of Oman grew out of that ideal. Around the year 751, the Ibadi scholars in Nizwa elected the first imam, Al-Julanda bin Masud. This gave shape to a theocratic state that stood its ground against the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. Nizwa, in the mountainous heart of the country, became the spiritual and political centre of the imamate. Over the following centuries the Ibadi imamate went through periods of glory and of fracture. Elected imams governed the mountainous interior, while the more cosmopolitan coast often fell under the sway of outside dynasties and powers. That tension between the tribal, Ibadi interior and the commercial coast would run through the whole of Omani history.
When the spice route shifted towards the Indian Ocean, Oman caught the eye of the first European colonial power in the region. In 1507 a Portuguese fleet under Afonso de Albuquerque took Muscat and other ports on the Omani coast. Their strategic position at the mouth of the Gulf made them key pieces of Portugal's Indian Ocean empire. For almost a century and a half, the Portuguese held the coastal strip and controlled trade. They built fortresses there, and the twin forts of Al Jalali and Al Mirani still guard Muscat bay. The interior, meanwhile, stayed in the hands of the Ibadi imams.
Driving out the Portuguese was the feat that forged modern Oman. In 1624 Nasir bin Murshid was elected imam. He founded the Ya'ruba (or Yaruba) dynasty, united the tribes and waged a systematic war to win back the ports. Nasir died in 1649, a year before the final victory: in 1650 his cousin and successor Sultan bin Saif retook Muscat and drove the Portuguese out of the country for good. It was one of the first times an Asian power had managed to push Europeans out of a strategic position, and it turned Oman from prey into hunter.
Under the Ya'ruba, Oman became a naval power. They pursued the Portuguese beyond their own shores and seized possessions from them in the Persian Gulf and, above all, in East Africa: Mombasa, Pemba and Zanzibar came under Omani influence. The imamate grew rich on maritime trade and built great works such as Jabrin castle and irrigation systems. But the power it had gathered ended up splitting the dynasty. A civil war over the succession, made worse by a Persian invasion that occupied part of the country, plunged Oman into chaos by the 1730s and opened the way for a new dynasty.
Order was restored by Ahmad bin Said, governor of Sohar, who drove out the Persians and was proclaimed imam on 20 November 1744. He founded the Al Bu Said dynasty, which still rules Oman today. Under his successors, and above all under Said bin Sultan (who ruled from 1804 to 1856), Oman reached its peak as a maritime empire of the Indian Ocean. Its fleet and merchants dominated the routes between Arabia, Persia, India and the Swahili coast of East Africa, making it the greatest indigenous power in the western Indian Ocean in the 19th century.
The empire's centre of gravity moved south. Around 1840, Said bin Sultan effectively moved his capital from Muscat to the island of Zanzibar, off present-day Tanzania, and turned it into a first-rate trading hub. There he promoted a plantation economy based on cloves, which made Zanzibar one of the world's largest producers. He also encouraged Indian merchants to settle there and finance the business. When he died in 1856, the empire was split between two of his sons. One inherited Oman and Muscat, the other the Sultanate of Zanzibar, and from then on the two went their separate ways.
That prosperity rested on a brutal foundation that honest history cannot hide: the slave trade. Oman was one of the main players in the Indian Ocean slave trade, one of the oldest human trafficking routes in the world. Caravans and ships carried captives seized in the interior of East Africa to the markets of Zanzibar, one of the largest in the world. From there they were taken to the clove plantations, to Arabia, to Persia and to India. Slave labour kept both the plantations and much of the sultanate's trade going. Throughout the 19th century, British pressure to abolish the trade gradually wore down that system, and with it one of the economic pillars of Omani power.
The decline of its maritime empire drew Oman into the orbit of the dominant power in the Indian Ocean: Britain. The first formal treaty was signed on 12 October 1798, when the sultanate was looking for support against the threat of the Wahhabis from the Arabian interior. New agreements followed throughout the 19th century, such as the 1891 treaty of friendship, navigation and commerce. Oman was never formally a colony, but it became a de facto protectorate, dependent on London for its defence and foreign policy. The loss of Zanzibar, the end of the slave trade and the arrival of steamships, which made the dhows obsolete, sank the country into a long economic decline.
The 20th century deepened the rift between the coast and the interior. In 1913 the tribes of the interior restored the Ibadi imamate and rebelled against the sultan in Muscat. The conflict ended with the 1920 Treaty of Seeb, which granted the interior imamate de facto autonomy. Tension flared up again in the 1950s with the Jebel Akhdar War (1954-1959). With British military support, the sultan crushed the imamate and unified the whole territory under his rule by force, ending more than a thousand years of elective imamate.
That unification was the work of Said bin Taimur, sultan from 1932 to 1970, whose reign is remembered as one of the most closed and austere on the planet. Fearful of foreign influence and of losing control, Said kept Oman in near-total isolation. He banned radios, sunglasses, Western trousers and smoking in public, and even banned building new houses or leaving the country without permission. When oil began to flow in the late 1960s, the sultan hoarded the revenue instead of investing it. By 1970 the country had only a few kilometres of paved road, three schools and a handful of doctors, while a rebellion raged in the south.
The powder keg blew in the south. In the marginalised, impoverished province of Dhofar, an insurgency emerged in the early 1960s and by 1965 had turned into an organised guerrilla movement. The Dhofar Liberation Front drew first on Arab nationalism and later on a Marxism-Leninism backed by communist South Yemen. It sought to overthrow Said bin Taimur's ultra-conservative regime and, in its most radical phase, to bring revolution to the whole peninsula. The Dhofar War (1965-1975) became a Cold War conflict in miniature, with the rebels backed by South Yemen, China and the Soviet Union.
The old sultan's inability to deal with the crisis brought about his fall. On 23 July 1970, with British support, his own son Qaboos bin Said removed him in a bloodless palace coup and sent him into exile in London, where Said bin Taimur died two years later. Qaboos was young and had trained at Britain's Sandhurst military academy. He took power determined to modernise the country and to win the war by other means.
His strategy combined weapons and development. With British help, including SAS special forces, and with support from the Shah's Iran and from Jordan, Qaboos strengthened the army. At the same time he offered the rebels an amnesty, brought schools, clinics and water wells to Dhofar, and won much of the population over to his side. It worked: by 1975 the insurgency had been defeated and the sultan declared the war over. Victory in Dhofar consolidated Qaboos's power and gave him the stability he needed to transform the country.
The reign of Qaboos bin Said lasted almost half a century, until 2020, and is known in Oman as the Nahda, the "renaissance". A week after the coup, the sultan unified the country under the name Sultanate of Oman. It had been called the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, a reflection of the old division. He then launched a rapid, oil-funded modernisation. In 1970 the country had barely any schools or hospitals. Within a few decades it had a road network, universities, health centres, an international airport, the monumental Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque and the Royal Opera House Muscat. Life expectancy and literacy soared.
Qaboos ruled as an absolute, paternalistic monarch with no political parties, but he cultivated an image of restraint and consensus. In foreign policy he shaped the trait for which Oman is most admired today: an active neutrality that turned the sultanate into a discreet mediator between rival powers. Oman kept up dialogue with Iran and with the Gulf monarchies, with the United States and with players across the spectrum. It served as a back channel for negotiations as delicate as those that led to the Iran nuclear deal. That role as a bridge, which many link to the Ibadi tradition of moderation, is still the country's diplomatic signature.
Qaboos died on 10 January 2020 with no children. The succession, which he had prepared in secret, passed to his cousin Haitham bin Tariq Al Said, until then Minister of Heritage and Culture. Haitham took the throne with the task of upholding the Nahda's legacy in a harder context. The economy still depends on oil, youth unemployment persists and the country needs to diversify. His "Vision 2040" plan aims to reduce that dependence through tourism, logistics, energy and mineral resources. Today's Oman, with its restored forts, its nature reserves and its reputation as a safe and welcoming country, is still betting on its historic role as a crossroads between Arabia, Africa and Asia.
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The Batinah is the strip of low, fertile land that runs between the foot of the Hajar Mountains and the coast of the Gulf of Oman, north of Muscat. Watered by the wadis that come down from the mountains and by a dense network of aflaj, it has been one of the richest farming regions in the country for centuries, with large date palm groves, fruit crops and busy coastal fishing. Its climate and soil made it one of the most populated areas of Oman.
Its coastal position also made it a region of contact and trade, open to the Gulf and the sea routes. Towns and villages of the Batinah supplied sailors and merchants to Oman's great Indian Ocean trade, and the region always kept the twin farming and seafaring character that sets it apart from the mountainous interior.
In the Middle Ages the port of Sohar was one of the most important cities in the whole Islamic world, a hub of sea trade between Arabia, Persia, India and China. It was so prosperous that popular tradition links it with Sinbad the Sailor, the legendary seafarer of the Thousand and One Nights, whom many consider a son of this land of sailors. Medieval Arab geographers praised its wealth and its traffic in goods.
Sohar was also the birthplace of key figures in Omani history: from here Ahmad bin Said, the city's governor, drove out the Persian invaders in the 18th century and in 1744 founded the Al Bu Said dynasty, which still rules today. The city keeps its fort by the sea and has regained a leading economic role in modern times thanks to its industrial port and free zone, one of the hubs of the country's economic diversification.
The foothills of the Hajar Mountains, in the Batinah, are dotted with monumental fortresses that once controlled the passes between the coast and the interior. Nakhal Fort, perched on a rock beside a palm oasis and the hot springs of Ain A'Thawwarah, is one of the most photographed castles in Oman. Not far away, the huge Rustaq Fort, in a valley famous for its hot springs, served at different times as the country's capital and as the seat of imams of the Ya'ruba dynasty.
These fortresses were not purely military: they worked as centres of government, justice and tax collection, and the life of the surrounding districts was organised around them. Their presence is a reminder that the Batinah, for all its farming and trading character, was also a stage for the power struggles between the coast and the interior that run through the whole of Omani history.
Al Wusta, whose name means "the middle one", is Oman's central region: an immense stretch of desert and gravel separating the mountainous, populated north from Dhofar in the south. It is by far the least inhabited part of the country, a landscape of stony plains and sands that merge inland into the Rub' al Khali, the "Empty Quarter", the largest continuous sand desert on the planet. For millennia, this territory was crossed only by the Bedouin tribes who knew its scarce wells and pastures.
Its coast, on the Arabian Sea, is a long, lonely strip with very rich fishing grounds, where the upwelling of cold water draws abundant marine life. Ports such as Duqm, once a fishing village, have in recent years become the hub of major port and industrial projects aimed at diversifying the Omani economy beyond oil.
In the heart of Al Wusta, the Jiddat al-Harasis plateau was the setting for one of the world's great conservation stories. There, the Arabian oryx — a white desert antelope that was hunted to extinction in the wild in the 1970s — was successfully reintroduced from animals bred in captivity. The Arabian Oryx Sanctuary became a World Heritage Site, although it later lost that status after its protected area was reduced, in a much-debated case about the balance between conservation and resource extraction.
The region is also the territory of the Harasis, a Bedouin tribe that keeps its own language and its deep knowledge of the desert. Alongside the oryx, gazelles, Arabian wolves and other species adapted to one of the most extreme environments on the planet survive here, in an area where human and animal life has always depended on the coastal fog and the rare wells.
Musandam is a mountainous peninsula at the northern tip of Arabia, separated from the rest of Oman by territory belonging to the United Arab Emirates: an exclave, meaning a part of the country physically cut off from its main body. Its importance is huge and very old, because it overlooks the southern shore of the Strait of Hormuz, the sea passage that carries a crucial share of the world's oil. Whoever controls Musandam watches over the entrance to the Persian Gulf, which is why the peninsula has always had a strategic value out of all proportion to its size.
Its geography is spectacular: the Hajar Mountains drop straight into the sea, forming deep-water inlets between walls of bare rock that have earned the name "fjords of Arabia", even though their geological origin is tectonic rather than glacial. It is one of the most rugged and sparsely populated areas of the country.
Musandam's isolation preserved a unique culture. Its traditional inhabitants, grouped in tribes such as the Shihuh and the Kumzari, developed a way of life suited to a very harsh environment, moving between fishing villages on the coast and mountain settlements with the seasons. In the village of Kumzar people speak Kumzari, an Iranian language mixed with Arabic that exists nowhere else in the world, a sign of the close contact across the strait with the Persian shore.
Fishing was the basis of survival for centuries, and even today the coastal villages live largely from the sea. Musandam has historically been part of the sphere of the Sultanate of Oman, and its people keep a strong identity of their own within the country. The mix of steep mountains, hidden villages and waters rich in marine life makes this region a world apart.
The capital of Musandam is Khasab, a port that was once a Portuguese stronghold, thanks to its commanding position over the strait, and a 17th-century fort still stands there. For a long time the town also lived off busy trade, sometimes smuggling, with the nearby Iranian coast, only a few dozen kilometres away across the sea. Today Khasab is the gateway for tourism in the region.
The classic way to see the fjords is on board a dhow, the traditional wooden boat, on trips that wind through the inlets between cliffs, stop at remote villages and often come across dolphins. Cruises on the Strait of Hormuz, with their turquoise waters hemmed in by ochre mountains, have turned this forgotten corner of Oman into one of its most amazing landscapes and an increasingly popular nature destination.
Muscat grew up as a natural harbour wedged between the rugged Hajar mountains and the waters of the Gulf of Oman. It was a deep-water anchorage where large ships could take shelter. Its strategic value at the entrance to the Persian Gulf made it a coveted prize. The Portuguese occupied it in 1507 and built the twin forts of Al Jalali and Al Mirani, which still flank the old bay beside Al Alam palace. In 1650 the Omanis of the Ya'ruba dynasty drove them out, and Muscat became the sultanate's main port.
For centuries the city was the cosmopolitan, commercial face of Oman, in contrast with the tribal, Ibadi interior. Its old district of Mutrah, with its maze-like souq and its corniche facing the sea, keeps the feel of that port of Indian, Persian and Baluchi merchants. After Qaboos came to power in 1970, Muscat became a modern, low-rise capital. By decree it keeps its traditional architecture, and its crowning landmark is the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, one of the great mosques of the Islamic world.
At the eastern end of the coast, the town of Sur was for centuries Oman's great seafaring centre and one of the main wooden dhow shipyards in the whole Indian Ocean. Its slipways launched the boats that traded with India, the Persian Gulf and, above all, East Africa. Sur was closely tied to the Zanzibar routes and to the trade that sustained the Omani empire in the 19th century. Its sailors knew the monsoons like no one else, and their families were spread across both shores of the empire.
Today Sur keeps that legacy alive in its traditional shipyard, where dhows are still built by hand using centuries-old techniques. It also lives on in the white lighthouse of the fishing village of Ayjah, at the entrance to its lagoon. The town is also the gateway to the turtle coast, and it holds the memory of a time when Oman's fate was decided at sea.
On the easternmost cape of the Arabian Peninsula, where the continent first sees the sunrise, the beach of Ras al-Jinz is one of the most important green turtle nesting sites in the world. Every year thousands of females come out of the sea at night to lay their eggs in the sand, in a cycle that has repeated since time immemorial. The area is protected as a nature reserve and has a scientific and visitor centre that controls access so the animals aren't disturbed.
The area also has very deep historical roots. At the nearby site of Ras al-Hadd and at Ras al-Jinz itself, archaeologists have found Bronze Age remains, including pieces of bitumen bearing the imprint of ship planks. This is proof that more than four thousand years ago this coast was already linked by sea to the Indus Valley civilisation. From the very beginning, Oman's eastern tip was a window onto the ocean.
Between Muscat and Sur, the eastern foothills of the Hajar Mountains are cut through by wadis, the canyons that channel the water from rare but torrential rains and that have been a source of life in an arid country for thousands of years. Wadi Shab is one of the most famous: a gorge with sheer walls where you walk among palm trees and oleanders to a series of turquoise pools and a waterfall hidden inside a cave. Wadi Bani Khalid, which is easier to reach, offers large crystal-clear pools surrounded by palm groves at the foot of the mountains.
These oases are not just a natural spectacle. For centuries their waters fed villages and gardens through the falaj, the clever system of irrigation channels that shares out water from springs and wadis with a precision handed down from generation to generation. The wadis of the eastern Hajar show how Omani civilisation managed to tame a hostile land, and today they are some of the most visited landscapes in the country on the way to the desert.
Inland, the east coast gives way to the Sharqiya Sands, popularly known as the Wahiba Desert: a sea of orange dunes that rise to nearly 150 metres and stretch across thousands of square kilometres. This is the historical territory of the Bedouin, the nomadic tribes who for centuries crossed these sands with their camels and herds of goats, finding their way by the stars and by a detailed knowledge of the terrain, the wells and the seasonal pastures.
In 1986 the Wahiba Desert was the subject of a famous scientific expedition by the Royal Geographical Society, which catalogued its extraordinary biodiversity and its Bedouin culture. Today traditional nomadic life has largely given way to settled living, but the desert is still where visitors can get close to that way of life: camps, camel rides, 4x4 safaris over the dunes and nights under some of the starriest skies in Arabia.
The Hajar Mountains run across northern Oman in a great arc parallel to the coast, separating the narrow coastal plain of the Batinah from the desert interior. It is the highest mountain range in eastern Arabia, with peaks above 3000 metres, and its geology, made of layers of marine rock that were lifted and folded, has made it a famous place for studying the Earth's crust. For thousands of years these mountains were both a barrier and a refuge: they cut the Ibadi interior off from coastal influences and sheltered the tribes that kept the imamate going.
On their slopes, human ingenuity made up for the lack of water with the falaj system, channels that use gravity to carry water from high springs down to gardens and villages, sharing it out under community rules that are centuries old. Several of these aflaj of Oman are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The Hajar is also a world of forts and watchtowers that controlled the mountain passes, reminders of the struggles to control the mountains.
Jebel Akhdar, the "Green Mountain", is a plateau about 2000 metres high whose cool climate allows something unthinkable in the rest of the country: terraced orchards of pomegranates, walnuts, apricots and, above all, roses. Every spring the mountain villages gather the petals to distil the famous Omani rose water, a product with a long tradition. The villages cling to the edges of cliffs and their terraces step down over the drop.
Jebel Akhdar gave its name to one of the decisive conflicts of 20th-century Oman: the Jebel Akhdar War (1954-1959), in which the Sultan of Muscat, with British military support, defeated the forces of the Ibadi imamate holding out on these heights. That victory ended the old autonomy of the interior and unified Oman under the sultan's authority. Today the mountain, once almost inaccessible, has become a destination for nature and relaxation.
Jebel Shams, the "Mountain of the Sun", is the highest peak in Oman, at over 3000 metres. Its biggest draw is not the summit but the chasm that opens at its feet: Wadi Nakhr, a dizzying gorge with walls more than a thousand metres high that has earned the nickname "Grand Canyon of Arabia". Along the edge of the cliff runs the Balcony Walk, an old path that linked villages perched on the rock and is now one of the most spectacular hikes in the country.
For centuries these heights were the territory of shepherds and small communities who farmed tiny terraces and wove wool rugs, a craft still practised today. The harshness of the land made the Jebel Shams massif a stronghold of traditional life, barely touched by the modern world until a few decades ago.
Some of Oman's most beautiful and oldest villages survive on the slopes of the Hajar. Misfat al-Abriyeen is a mountain village of stone and mud houses huddled on the rock, whose terraces of dates, bananas and lemons are watered by a falaj that winds between the gardens. Its maze of alleys and its hanging palm grove have made it a symbol of rural tourism in Oman. Al Hamra, at the foot of the mountain, is one of the oldest settlements in the country, with multi-storey mud-brick houses that have stood for centuries.
In Al Hamra, the Bait al Safah house museum keeps traditional crafts alive, such as grinding grain, making bread and oil, and distilling, showing how people lived in these mountains before oil. Both villages illustrate the earthen architecture and the community management of water that made human life possible in such a dry environment, and today they are windows onto pre-industrial Oman.
In the mountainous interior, surrounded by a vast palm oasis, Nizwa was for centuries the political and spiritual centre of Oman. Here, around the year 751, the Ibadi scholars elected the first imam, and the city became the capital of the imamate and a centre of religious learning, with schools that taught Ibadi law and theology. It is known as "the pearl of Islam" for this role as the spiritual beacon of the interior, in contrast to commercial Muscat on the coast.
Its signature monument is Nizwa Fort, from the 17th century, crowned by a huge round defensive tower, one of the largest in Arabia, built under the Ya'ruba dynasty to withstand artillery. At its foot, the traditional souq still sells dates, silver, pottery and the famous khanjar, the curved Omani daggers. Every Friday morning, Nizwa's lively goat market brings together livestock farmers from the interior in a scene that has barely changed in generations.
A few kilometres away, the town of Bahla is home to one of the most impressive collections of earthen architecture in the world. Its huge mud-brick fort, built on foundations that go back centuries, stands next to kilometres of mud walls that once surrounded the oasis. Bahla Fort was the first site in Oman to be added to the UNESCO World Heritage List, in 1987, and restoring it was a challenge because of how fragile the material is.
Bahla was an important tribal centre and a regional capital under several dynasties, and it is famous for its traditional pottery, the heir to a long craft tradition. The town is also wrapped in an air of mystery: in Omani folklore, Bahla is the land of genies (jinn) and magic, and many local legends credit its walls and its great tree with supernatural powers. History and myth intertwine in this inland oasis.
If the forts of Nizwa and Bahla speak of war, Jabrin Castle (or Jabreen) speaks of splendour. Built in 1670 by Imam Bil'arab bin Sultan of the Ya'ruba dynasty, at the height of Omani power, it is more a palace than a fortress: its rooms still have wooden ceilings painted with floral and calligraphic motifs, carved windows, passageways and decorated chambers that show the refinement of 17th-century court life.
Jabrin was not only a residence but also a centre of learning, with spaces for teaching astronomy, medicine and Islamic law. The imam who had it built is buried inside. The castle sums up the moment when Oman, after driving out the Portuguese and spreading its power across the Indian Ocean, could afford the luxury of art and culture, and today it is one of the best-preserved historic buildings in the country.
Dhofar, in the far south of Oman, was the world centre of frankincense for thousands of years. The Boswellia sacra tree grows in its mountains, and its resin, the "white gold" of the ancient world, fed one of the most famous trade routes in history. From the Dhofari ports of Khor Rori (ancient Sumhuram) and Al Baleed, frankincense travelled by sea to India and the Gulf, and overland by caravan to the Mediterranean. In 2000 UNESCO recognised this legacy by adding the "Land of Frankincense" to the World Heritage List.
That wealth gave rise to legends: in the desert interior of Dhofar, some researchers have identified the fortified oasis of Shisr with Ubar, the mythical lost city "of a thousand pillars" that Arab tradition placed in the southern sands. The frankincense trade, together with tourism, is still an economic factor in the region today, and the souqs of Salalah fill the air with the scent of the resin that made this land famous three thousand years ago.
Salalah, the capital of Dhofar and Oman's second city, experiences something unique in the whole Arabian Peninsula: the khareef, the southwest monsoon. Between June and September, while the rest of Arabia bakes, the mountains around Salalah catch the moisture from the Indian Ocean and are covered in persistent mist, waterfalls and a green blanket that turns the desert into an almost tropical landscape. This microclimate filled the region with coconut palms, banana plants and fodder fields, and today it draws crowds of visitors from the Gulf every summer, escaping the heat.
The city and its coast also keep a strong historical and cultural identity, with ties to both Arabia and East Africa. Near Salalah is the tomb traditionally attributed to the prophet Job (Nabi Ayyub), a place of pilgrimage, and the archaeological remains of Al Baleed, evidence of the region's trading past. Salalah is the gateway to a different Oman: wetter, greener and more turned towards the ocean.
Dhofar holds a central place in the modern history of Oman. It was here, in the mid-1960s, that the insurgency broke out that gave its name to the Dhofar War (1965-1975), an uprising that was first nationalist and then Marxist, backed by communist South Yemen, and that aimed to overthrow the regime of Sultan Said bin Taimur. The province's long neglect, leaving it poor and ignored, had been the breeding ground for the rebellion.
The war became tied up with a change of era across the whole country. After the 1970 coup, the new sultan Qaboos, who had been born in Salalah, combined the military offensive with a development plan for Dhofar: schools, clinics, wells and amnesties that gradually won over the population. By 1975 the insurgency had been defeated. That victory in the south strengthened Qaboos's hold on power and marked the start of the Nahda, the renaissance that modernised Oman. Dhofar thus went from a hotbed of rebellion to a symbol of national reconstruction.
Hardly anything that happened to Oman happened on its own: these are the histories next door.
