Oman

This coast was ancient Magan, a source of copper for Mesopotamia, and the mountains of Dhofar produced frankincense for the temples and courts of the ancient world, carried out by sea and by camel caravan. Oman took to Islam early and developed its own Ibadi school and an elected imamate. The Portuguese held Muscat and the coastal forts from 1507 until Omani forces drove them out in 1650.

The Al Bu Said dynasty, ruling since 1744, then built a maritime empire that at its height controlled Zanzibar and the East African coast, the port of Gwadar on the Makran coast, and a web of Indian Ocean trade deeply entangled with the slave and clove economies of the region. British influence grew into a "veiled protectorate", the empire split as Zanzibar went its own way in 1856, and the old tension between the coastal Sultanate and the interior Imamate erupted into the Jebel Akhdar War of the 1950s.

Sultan Said bin Taimur kept Oman deliberately isolated and impoverished even after oil was found in the 1960s. In 1970 his British-educated son Qaboos deposed him in a bloodless palace coup, opened the country, ended a Marxist-led rebellion in Dhofar, and spent the next half-century using oil revenue to build roads, schools, and hospitals and to knit coast and interior together. The succession to Sultan Haitham in 2020 was smooth; he has kept Oman's careful neutrality and quiet-mediator role while pushing to diversify the economy for a post-oil future.

Oman is quietly distinctive. Its Ibadi Islam, followed by about half the population and found almost nowhere else, is associated with moderation and tolerance — churches and Hindu temples operate openly. National dress is worn with pride: the ankle-length dishdasha, its collar tassel dipped in perfume; the embroidered kummah cap or the wrapped massar; and the silver khanjar dagger that appears on the flag.

Society is conservative but famously courteous. Cardamom coffee and dates are offered to any visitor, the pace is unhurried, and hospitality and modesty are points of honour. The imperial past lives on in communities with East African, Baloch, and South Asian roots — some Omani families still speak Swahili at home — and Dhofar keeps ancient South Arabian languages found nowhere else.

Camel racing, bloodless bull-butting contests on the Batinah coast, dhow-building, silversmithing, and drumming and dance are living traditions, while the Royal Opera House in Muscat marks a cultivated, outward-looking side.

Oman's roughly 4.6 million people include some two million foreign workers, mostly from South Asia. Most citizens live along the northern coast — Muscat's low, white sprawl between the mountains and the sea, and the Batinah towns — with the rest in the oasis towns of the Hajar range, the deserts, the fishing coast, and the Dhofar hills.

Life is comfortable by regional standards but less lavish than in Dubai or Doha, and the state has been trimming subsidies, pressing companies to hire Omanis, and preparing for life after oil through logistics ports at Duqm, Sohar, and Salalah, tourism, gas, and large green-hydrogen projects in the southern desert.

Everyday rhythms follow the prayer times and the heat: an early start, a long midday pause in summer, and social life in the cooler evening, in majlis sitting rooms, coffee shops, and the souqs.

Omani cooking is mild, fragrant, and shaped by Indian Ocean trade — rice, meat, and spice, with less chilli than the rest of the Gulf. The celebratory dish is shuwa: marinated lamb or goat wrapped in leaves and slow-cooked for a day or two in an underground pit, prepared for Eid and big occasions.

Everyday meals centre on majboos, spiced rice with meat close to biryani; grilled and stewed fish along the coast; harees, a wheat-and-meat porridge; and mashuai, a whole spit-roasted kingfish with lemon rice. Dates are eaten with everything, served alongside kahwa, the cardamom coffee.

Halwa — a dense, sticky sweet of rosewater, saffron, nuts, and ghee, stirred for hours in a copper pot — is the national confection and the standard gift, and fresh lime juice and karak tea are the everyday drinks.

Muscat has the grand Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, the Royal Opera House, the Mutrah corniche and its covered souq, and the two Portuguese forts guarding the old harbour. Inland, the Hajar mountains hold the "Grand Canyon of Arabia" at Jebel Shams, the terraced rose-water villages of Jebel Akhdar, and a chain of restored mud-brick forts — Nizwa with its huge round tower and Friday cattle market, the UNESCO-listed oasis fort of Bahla, and the painted ceilings of Jabrin.

The wadis — Shab, Bani Khalid, Tiwi, Dayqah — are palm-shaded gorges with turquoise pools for swimming, the Wahiba Sands offer dune camps and camel rides, and green turtles nest at Ras al-Jinz on the east coast. The Musandam peninsula in the far north, jutting into the Strait of Hormuz, has fjord-like inlets explored by dhow from Khasab.

In the far south, Salalah and the Dhofar hills turn misty and green in the summer khareef, with frankincense trees, the blowholes at Mughsayl, and the Land of Frankincense sites of Sumhuram and Al Baleed.