Discover Oman

Oman sits at the eastern corner of Arabia, where the Hajar mountains fall towards the Gulf of Oman and, further south, the monsoon reaches the hills of Dhofar. It is a country of forts — more than five hundred of them — built to control the passes, the oases and the ports.

The aflaj, the irrigation channels that carry mountain water for kilometres by gravity alone, are the country's other great engineering tradition. Some have run continuously for well over a thousand years, and the water is still allocated by a timed share system managed within the village.

Oman's history is above all maritime. Its sailors reached India, Persia, Sumatra and China, and for a period in the nineteenth century the Omani sultanate governed Zanzibar and much of the East African coast. Frankincense from Dhofar had carried these routes long before, and the ruins at Al Baleed and Sumhuram record that trade.

Today Bahla Fort, Bat's Bronze Age tombs, the Land of Frankincense and the aflaj systems are all inscribed as World Heritage. Muscat, low and white against the mountains, remains a capital that has refused to build upward.