Journey Interrupted: Al Ain, Thesiger, Buraimi, Sohar and Ras al Suwaidi

On 7^th April 1948, Wilfred Thesiger rode his camel into the settlement that is today called Al Ain.  His party approached the settlement from Abu Dhabi, and travelled through the red sand dunes that still protect the town on that side. 

“... we approached Muwaiqih, one of the eight small villages in the Buraimi oasis.  It was here that Zayid (sic) lived.  As we came out of the red dunes on to a gravel plain I could see his fort, a large square enclosure, of which the mud walls were ten feet high.  To the right of the fort, behind a crumbling wall half buried in drifts of sand, was a garden of dusty, ragged palm-trees, and beyond the palms the isolated hog’s back of Jabal Hafit (sic) about ten miles away and five thousand feet high.  Faintly in the distance over the fort I could see the pale-blue outlines of the Oman mountains...”  (1, p. 268)

Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the first president of the UAE, was born in Al Ain and the town is still a centre of political power in the country.  The town has a National Museum, a Palace Museum, restored forts, archeological sites, a zoo, a large modern fruit and vegetable market and livestock and camel market, as well as those contemporary icons of the Middle East – Shopping Malls.  However Al Ain’s shopping malls are strictly utilitarian. 

Oases offer the visitor a good opportunity to view the ancient ‘falaj’ system which was (and still is in places) used to irrigate the date plantations.   

Al Ain means “the spring” in Arabic and the town is part of the Buraimi Oasis which was divided when the border between the UAE and Oman was agreed on.  The reason for the division was tribal allegiance as Thesiger explained,

 “Zayid, as Shakhbut’s representative, controlled six of the villages in Buraimi.  The other two acknowledged the Sultan of Muscat as their nominal overlord...” (2, p. 271)

Omanis and Emiratis move freely between the two towns divided only by a border fence and the distinctive headdress of Omani men is a common sight on the streets of Al Ain. 

For the traveller who has ended up in Buraimi, neighbouring Al Ain offers reasonable accommodation and is easy to drive around.  Excepting during peak hours when the town’s residents become possessed of the mad driver genie that lives at the heart of all Gulf States citizens.  A word of warning – if you decide to drive around Al Ain buy a map.  The town sprawls around oases and wadis and the sharp ridges of the foothills of Jebel Hafeet intrude into the outer suburbs.  Confusing?  It seems not until you are faced with your desired destination on the other side of an unbridged wadi.    

Between 50 million and 30 million years ago the Tethys seaway covered most of  northern Africa, Jordan, Syria and Iraq.  It extended across this area and joined the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean sea.  Proof of this is the fossils of all descriptions which are found in the area, including large fossilized corals which are found in the Jebel Hafeet area. 

Jebel Hafeet is not, as is often claimed, the highest mountain in the UAE, but is certainly the best known.  The road to the top of the mountain climbs almost 12 kilometres around 21 corners and has been featured on “Drive” and other motoring shows on television.  Every year in January a cycling competition up the mountain attracts international competitors. 

Thesiger described striped hyena, Arabian tahr and Arabian leopard on the mountain. None of these animals are seen on the mountain today.

Thesiger’s account of tahr on Jebel Hafeet is set out in Arabian Sands:

 “While I had been at Muwaiqih I had hunted tahr on Jabal Hafit, camping for a week under the mountain with bin Kabina and bin Ghabaisha and two of Zayid’s Arabs. ... They resembled goats and had very thick short horns.  It was exhausting work hunting them, for the mountains rose four thousand feet above our camp, and the slopes were everywhere steep and usually sheer, without water or vegetation.  The tahr fed at night round the foot of themountain, but the only ones we saw were near the top.  The Arabs shot two females and we picked up the skull of a male.  We had made ourselves sandals from green hide, without which we could never have climbed these cruel limestone rocks.” (3, p. 274)

Today Thesiger and his mates could have dropped into the Mercure Hotel near the top of the mountain and enjoyed a cool drink and a steak sandwich while watching the sunset over the desert.

Hunting of big mammals is now officially banned in the UAE.  In October 2007 accounts of Arabian leopard in the Musandam, and mountain gazelle and Arabian tahr in the area around Dibba were published.

Al Ain Zoo was established by the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan in 1968 at the foot of Jebel Hafeet.  It is a research centre for animals from the hyper arid deserts of the Peninsula.  The zoo also has an active ongoing breeding program for endangered native animals. 

From Al Ain and Buraimi the traveller to Sohar once again journeys through the Hajar Mountains.  This pass opens onto the Al Batinah region, the coastal plain between the Western Hajar Mountains and the Gulf of Oman.  If the trip is from Dubai then the Hajar Mountains are crossed further to the north.  

For the sports minded Al Batinah is well-known for horse and camel racing, and bull butting – a more humane version of the Spanish activity.  In the Oman version two bulls are pitted against each other.  The first one to retreat is declared the loser. 

 Sohar is yet another site of an early capital of Oman.  It has a fort to emphasize the fact, fish markets in the modern style, a souq, a memorable mosque.

Sohar’s links to Oman’s seafaring heritage are very strong although the city’s claim to be the birthplace of Sindbad the Sailor is based on very shaky ground.  These stories within stories place Baghdad, the City of Peace according to the narrator, as Sindbad’s home. 

The claim that the city was the home of Ahmad ibn Majid, the Lion of the Sea, a renowned Arab navigator and cartographer is more believable.  Majid was purportedly born in Ras Al Khaimah.  Sohar would have been a natural base for the author of the first navigation encyclopedia.  Vasco da Gama used Ahmed ibn Majid’s maps as an aid when he navigated the first shipping route between Europe and India. 

Sohar’s prosperity comes from the old real estate adage, position, position, position.  Reputedly the oldest city in Oman it possesses an accessible port and is built close to ancient copper mines.  Copper was mined in the region from the early Bronze Age and shipped to Mesopotamia and what is today known as Bahrain


The huge recently developed industrial area of Sohar is the base of the Omani Governments attempt to diversify away from total reliance on oil revenues. As well as a state of the art aluminium smelter and plans to become the Gulf Cooperative Council’s (GCC’s) leading producer of steel the city boasts one of the world’s largest port development projects.  
In spite of its industrial base, good planning has preserved Sohar’s picturesque qualities and the visitor need never view an aluminium smelter.

In keeping with its aim to seamlessly meld ancient and modern Sohar boasts some stylish, though expensive, hotels.  The city is half way between Dubai and Muscat (200 kilometres in either direction) and is a good place to relax and break the journey.

The trip from Sohar to Muscat continues along one of the least inspiring coastal roads in the world.  A detour to Ras Al Suwaidi is a good way to introduce a bit of variety into the trip, have a meal, a swim, ride a horse or a camel, see an old fort, or just stroll along its wide, wide beach.

From Ras al Suwaidi to Muscat is a short drive.  Past the horse race track, the camel race track, the bull butting arena and you have arrived, alive, in spite of the insane behaviour of other drivers on the road.  Your hire car is covered in dust which must be washed, because after all, it is illegal to drive a dirty car in Oman.

Observer

http://longline8.blogspot.com/

Email:  longline8@gmail.com

Reference : 
Thesiger, Wilfred, 'Arabian Sands' Penguin Classics, 2007



“The Voyages of Sindbad”, Penguin Books, London, 2006

Bagnold, Ralph, “The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes”, London, 1941

Heard-Bey, Frauke, “From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates: A Society in Transition”, Motivate Publishing, London, 2007.

Silver, history, pottery, mountains, wadis, desert: An Oman Journey

Imagine a curve, an irregular curve with the deep part of the concavity one third of the way from the right hand edge.  Wriggle it around a bit.  Now imagine the mirror image of the curve inverted above it.  Wriggle it around a bit also.  Join the curves at each end and you have a loop. 

It is this loop you will follow.  Like Ariadne’s thread it will lead you on a journey and safely back to the beginning. 

In Oman car hire is easy and the roads are reasonable.  From Muscat the loop through Nizwa, Bahla, Ibri, Buraimi, Sohar back to Muscat, for the traveller willing to risk the insane driving endemic to the Arabian Peninsula, this route is rewarding.

November to February is cool and often clear and the best time to travel.  Summer travel through the Hajar mountains is more than unpleasant – it is dangerous with temperatures usually well above 45 degrees Celsius. 

Highway 15 from Muscat crosses the Tropic of Cancer before rising abruptly from the narrow coastal plain.  It runs through a mountain pass along the base of Jebel Nakhal.  Samail, at the foot of Jebel Nakhal was the home of Mazin bin Ghaduba, the first Omani to embrace Islam.  Samail is the site of Oman’s first mosque. 

Nizwa, an hour and a half from Muscat is worth an extended stop.

In 1949 Wilfred Thesiger, with a warrant out for his arrest by the Imam of Oman, camped with his party “within ten miles of Nazwa(sic). The town itself was out of sight, hidden behind a rocky ridge, one of many in the broken country that lay between our camp at the foot of the Jabal al Akhadar [Green Mountain]...”¹ 

Sixty one years later the party could have backtracked along the superhighway for a few kilometres, taken the turn off to Birkat Al Mauz, and shortly thereafter turned into the empty car park of the echoing hulk of the Golden Tulip hotel and there enjoyed a fine lunch and a restful night. 

While Thesiger was hiding out in the back country, Sulaiman bin Hamyar, Sheikh of the Bani Riyam and head of all the Ghafaris lived in Birkat al Mauz.  He was reputed to be a tolerant man, at odds with the fanatical Imam, and owner of Jebel al Akhdar.  Today, appropriately, Birkat al Mauz is the site of the University of Nizwa.

Thesiger was not, on this occasion, to have the privilege of entering Nizwa, one of the cities that enjoys the privilege of being an ancient capital of Oman, nor of meeting with the Sheikh.  The infidel was sent packing, back to Murwaiqih and the protection of Sheik Zayid, another great leader and a tolerant far sighted man.

Nizwa is enclosed by the mountains that Thesiger described in Arabian Sands as:

[‘The Green Mountain’], “a name which seemed singularly inappropriate, since its slopes and precipices looked as bare as the hills that surrounded us.  The atmosphere was unusually clear and I could see its entire length. For fifty miles it stretched across our front, its face scored by great gorges – streaks of purple on a background of pale yellow and misty blue.  The Jabal al Akhadar is a single continuous ridge ... Ten thousand feet high, it forms the highest part of a range which extends unbroken for four hundred miles from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean.”²

Thesiger was looking at the slopes of Jebel al Akhdar which flattens to an extensive plateau 2000 metres above sea level and which can be freezing in winter.  The Saiq plateau is famous for its roses and for the rosewater which is produced there.
 

The run-off from the mountains ensures a perennial water supply for Nizwa. In the desert water is everything and the main falaj in Nizwa, the ancient Falaj Daris, has been declared a World Heritage Site. 

Nizwa is an oasis in arid stony country and today it welcomes travellers.
 
Its fort symbolises the power and importance of this city which was a crossroad on the caravan route, linking the interior of the peninsula with the port of Muscat to the east and with Dhofar in the South.
 
But it is for silver that Nizwa is best known today.  Anyone who has been to Mutrah souk, the Omani Heritage Gallery in Muscat or indeed any one of the souqs and malls on the Arabian peninsula will have come across Omani silver. Nizwa silver is purported to be the best in the country and the curved dagger (the Khanjar) for which Oman is famous is a specialty of Nizwa silversmiths. 

The walled city of Bahla, forty kilometres from Nizwa in the foothills of Jebel Hallat, claims to be one of the oldest continually inhabited places in Oman.  Bahla Fort, 50 metres above the town, is included in UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites.  Over the past few years the fort has undergone extensive restoration under the guidance of UNESCO.  Bahla produces the pottery that was once a major export industry for Oman.  Funded by the Bahla Project, it is one of the attempts by the Omani government to preserve the traditional art and craft of the country.

The road from Bahla descends the foothills of the Western Hajar Mountains to Ibri, once a major camel market on the caravan route.  Thesinger camped briefly at Ibri on his trip to Murwaiqih, then: 

“[f]rom Ibri we rode northward along the foot of the mountains towards Jabal Hafit...”

The highway from Ibri runs north following the base of the mountains, across a stony plain.  To the west are the sands and dunes that straddle the border with the UAE.  

About half way between Ibri and Buraimi the highway again crosses the Tropic of Cancer near Wadi Dank.  

The border crossing into the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is conducted at the Hafit Border Crossing 50 kms from Buraimi.  The road then passes through UAE territory before once again entering Oman in Buraimi.  Because of the complexity of the border in that area no foreigner can enter Buraimi from either country without a passport and the visitor should check beforehand what visa requirements are imposed.

While Thesiger was riding through this country, the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO) was surveying the coast of Abu Dhabi in the search for oil. At the same time Dick Bird, who represented the Iraq Petroleum Company, was trying to persuade the tribes in the Buraimi area to let the company look for oil.  Dick Bird also at that time possessed, apart from a memorable name, the only other car in Buraimi apart from Sheikh Zayid's.

These events (the oil search, not the car possession) re-inflamed old hostilities and triggered a series of incidents during which the Saudis laid claim to the Buraimi oasis. The dispute, which was the culmination of centuries of disagreement, was laid to rest on October 26, 1955. The Sultan of Muscat and Oman and the Ruler of Abu Dhabi, supported by the British, moved into the Buraimi oasis and forced the surrender of the occupying Saudis.

Buraimi is a border town flung up against the barbed wire topped border fence with the UAE. The town continues as Al Ain on the UAE side of the border. Jebel Hafit does not so much tower as crouch over the twin cities.

The town has a long and complex history. Archeological sites in the area trace man’s presence here back for 4,000 years and Buraimi was the site of a decisive battle in the Muslim religious wars of the 8th century AD. It became a major caravan terminal for traders from the Arabian Gulf ports of Sharjah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi en route for Sohar and other ports on the Gulf of Oman, and is today known for the 'Buraimi dispute' which festered for more than a decade. 

Buraimi’s main purpose today seems to be the provision of border controls between the two countries.  From here the traveller can continue in Oman towards Sohar or into the United Arab Emirates via Al Ain.

Observer

January 21 2010

longline8.blogspot.com

Ref: Thesiger, Wilfred, “Arabian Sands” Penguin Classics, London, 2007 p. 316

Please be aware that the sketch of the route is a 'mud map' and not to be relied on.  If you do this journey, buy a decent map.

Note: Arabic words are spelt in various ways in English e.g. the word ‘jebel’ which means ‘mountain’ is seen as ‘jebal’, ‘jabal’, ‘jabel’.

‘wadi’ is a (usually) dry creek bed in the bottom of which travellers could often dig for water during the dry season.

'falaj' (singluar), 'aflaj' (plural) : irrigation channels

Lazy Days - Muscat in Winter

There is something irredeemably laid-back about Muscat.  Perhaps this is why no great books or memorable stories have been set there.  It does not have the dark side associated with the North African trading ports.  Think Hedy Lamar and Charles Boyer brooding around the casbah in Algiers, or Bogie and Bergman steaming up the screen in Casablanca.  No, Muscat is more Cliff Richard and Lauri Peters in Summer Holiday with a little more style and a lot less singing.  Muscat lacks the brashness of Dubai, the superior airs of Abu Dhabi, but it is fast becoming a favoured tourist destination.  Albeit only for those post global economic crisis tourists who can still afford a pricey place to sip their low fat soy lattes.

The origin of the name Muscat is unclear, but generally it is accepted that it means anchorage. People fished along those rocky shores for 6,000 years before Muscat was given positive press in the first century AD by Pliny the Elder.  He was followed in the second century AD by Ptolemy, in his Geographia.  Or at least so some historians claim.  For the next 1800 years or so Muscat underwent the invasions, occupations and evictions that are to be expected of a site with two natural deep water harbours and protected from invasion from land by steep rock mountains – the highest in the Arabian peninsula.  Muscat also colonised parts of the east African coast (more of that in a later edition) and like all colonisers was eventually forced back to its base.

On July 23, 1970 peace descended on Muscat and Oman.  On that day Qaboos bin Said, son of the Sultan, staged a bloodless coup in the Salalah palace and, funded largely by oil revenues, set the scene for a stable and prosperous future for his people.
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Today visitors can join the locals on the weekend at upmarket coffee shops overlooking the Gulf of Oman.  They can browse the Omani Heritage Gallery for traditional handcrafts, explore the old city and the numerous forts that sit atop almost every hill around the city.  Or they can just loll on the private beach offered to its guests by the Crown Plaza Muscat.  


However the greatest attraction within the city of Muscat is Mutrah Souk.   A beautifully designed covered market on the Mutrah Corniche, Mutrah souk is where one goes to buy aromatic frankincense from Salalah, silver from Nizwa, and gold from any or all of the countries on and around the Peninsula. 


So if you are stopping over in any of the Arab cities on your way to somewhere else consider a side trip to Muscat.  It is a safe and friendly place with the usual Middle East traffic snarls.  But here, unlike in many of the other Gulf states, you will encounter local people living normal lives.  Your taxi driver, tour guide, hotel clerk, shop assistant will very likely be Omani and proud of their heritage and be happy to share information about their country and its culture with you.  

 But beware, those impressive Hajar mountains turn the city into a humid sink hole in summer.  Visit in winter. 




Observer
longline8.blogspot.com

Camel jam on a winter's day in Al Saad

It was a camel jam at Al Saad that precipitated this blog. Al Saad is a featureless town off the highway that connects Abu Dhabi and Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates. Drivers of vehicles at the waiting place near the roundabout the other day were treated to the sight of a small herd of camels being driven across the overpass, creating a back log of traffic onto the highway.
The animals plodded slowly down towards the roundabout and then streamed across a paddock on the outskirts of town with all the indifference of creatures who have served mankind well for more than 3,000 years*.
Camels, as everyone probably knows are divided into two main groups – dromedaries (one humped)and bactrian (two humped)camels. There is no space here to discuss their cousins - the lamas, alpacas, guanacos and vicunas. These migrated to South America millennia ago when the larger camelidae family abandoned North America for Asia and Africa via that famous long gone land bridge between the continents. Dromedaries are spotlighted here today. Of bactrian camels more will be revealed another day.

There are no wild dromedaries (camels as they will be referred to from now on) anywhere in the world except Australia. The 3.3 million square kilometres of semi-arid desert of this country are home to almost a million wild camels. Even in Somalia which claims one quarter (2 million) of the world’s camels, all are domesticated.

Camels still provide wool for clothing and shelter, bones for carved utensils, leather, milk, meat and transport for a large number of people.

Any visitor to India will still see camels pulling carts through the narrow streets of towns throughout the country.

It was this species that carted equipment to build Australia’s overland Telegraph line; to develop bores and wells and lay tracks for ‘The Ghan’ rail line.

Camels still provide an income for many Australians.
Central Australia was settled and developed on the back of the camel. For over half a century in the late 1800s and early 1900s Australia imported a range of breeds of camel from India, Pakistan, Oman, and various parts of Africa and Arabia. The Bishari riding camel, the Bikaneri war camel from Rajasthan, the Khandarhari freight camel are a few examples of the variety imported.

With them came cameleers from the same range of places. These men were the “Afghans” of Central Australia. They had little in common but their trade and their religion. They were Australia’s first Muslim settlers. Australia’s first permanent mosque was built at Heggot Springs on a crossroads for camel trains in the desert in northern South Australia in the 1860s.
Many cameleers stayed on in Australia, established families and businesses, grew rich (or poor) and became part of the the melting pot of Australian history. Others returned to their country of origin.

But it is the Middle East where camel breeding has reached dizzy heights. In April, 2009 the Camel Reproduction Centre in Dubai announced the birth of a cloned camel, as part of an ongoing programme to preserve the genetics of its racing and milk producing camels.

A visit to the Al Ain camel market is a worthwhile trip for any visitor to the UAE. Here camels from all parts of the Middle East, Africa and the sub continent (mostly Pakistan) are traded every day. There are the dark coated Saudi camels, camels for meat, milk and breeding. The ‘camel boys’ who also come from the same countries as their charges could well be descendants of those cameleers who returned to their home country after establishing the industry a world away over a hundred years ago.

Anyone who has seen four young camels being loaded into the back of a ute can testify to their extraordinary vocal range. Roaring, bellowing, grumbling, grunting and bleating they are hobbled then secured by a complicated series of rope knots. The ute pulls away from the markets and the animals then settle into passively regarding the passing landcape and chewing their cud.

Most of the camels that pass through the markets are destined for the abattoirs, but some are dairy camels and a privileged few are sold as breeding stock for the lucrative and once controversial camel racing industry. Today in the UAE children are no longer used as camel jockeys. Electronic whips with built in sensors are mounted on the backs of racing camels and operated remotely by the camel’s owner or trainer during the race.

Today camels play a large part in the tourism industry in the dry places of the earth. The writer has ridden camels in Australia, the Middle East and India.

The camel has a rolling gait that many people find more comfortable than the gait of a horse. The camel is a calmer animal than a horse, less likely to shy, as its only natural predator, other than man, is the tiger.
However the camel is also more likely to buck for no good reason. A camel can carry a greater weight in hot, dry conditions than a horse, but is less predictable and can be downright contrary if not trained by a very experienced cameleer.

A tip for those readers contemplating an extended camel trip. The Australians make the best and most comfortable camel saddles.

As the camels and cameleers made their way past Al Saad, they provided a snapshot from the past – men and beasts have changed little over the centuries. Except now the herd was followed by utes carrying fodder and water troughs.

Observer
longline8.blogspot.com
Ref: * Mansfield, Peter, "A History of the Middle East", Penguin, London, 2003, 2nd Edition.