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