Travelling Around Britain and the World

Sunday 18 November 2018

Oman (5): Nizwa

The Former Stronghold of the Imam of Nizwa, now a Date Trading Centre

The Descent to Nizwa and a Little History

Oman

The morning was still chilly as we left Saiq, high in the Jebel Akhdar, heading down to the inland plain and the city of Nizwa where the average overnight low is warmer than Saiq’s midday high.

Until 1970 Oman was known as the Sultanate of Muscat and Oman emphasising the difference between ‘Muscat’, the cosmopolitan city and its coastal strip, and ‘Oman’ the isolated and conservative interior. Although Sultan Said (the present Sultan’s father) was the ultimate ruler, the Imamate of Oman had considerable autonomy. In the 1950s a dispute over the allocation of oil exploration rights led to an insurrection by the Imam. Much of the fighting took place in these mountains.

Descending the Jebel Akhdar

Muscat and Oman was a British Protectorate, so in 1957 with the Imam gaining the upper hand, the British felt the need to intervene. Ground troops supported by the RAF stabilized the situation and the Imam left his capital at Nizwa to seek asylum in Saudi Arabia.

Today's journey - the short green line from the Jebel Akhdar to Nizwa

We returned to Birkat Al-Mawz (see yesterday) at the foot of the mountains and continued 25km east to Nizwa.

Nizwa

Nizwa is a long thin municipality stretched out along the banks of a watercourse that looks wide and blue on Google maps, but is harder to find in reality being generally dry, at least above ground. But it was this elusive water that caused a city to be built here, and there is enough moisture for the buildings to be embowered in date palms. Europeans are used to their countryside being green and their cities less so; in Oman the countryside is arid - rocky, stony or sandy – and wherever there is sufficient water for vegetation, there is sufficient water for people, so greenery is concentrated in urban areas.

We entered the modern, prosperous city through a long commercial strip. Beyond we found an identifiable centre, not always the case in Oman, and parked outside the souk beside a well-maintained mud wall.

Central Nizwa

Nizwa Souk

The dates of Birkat Al-Mawz, Nizwa and the surrounding town and villages come to market in Nizwa. We visited the premier date shop where a dozen or so varieties are laid out for tasting and purchase. We tried most of them, some are a little sweeter, some have a denser texture - almost toffee-like – but the differences are minor and all are the same price.

Date tasting in Nizwa

We had coffee with the shop's owner and made some purchases, dates (fardh was our chosen variety), small pots of ‘date honey’, the intensely sweet and date-y liquor that oozes from piles of stored dates under their own weight, and other goodies.

Having a coffee and some dates with the shop's owner. Nizwa

We moved on to fresh produce. Perhaps because of the National Day holiday the vegetable market had few sellers or buyers. There were no women in the market - ‘Omani men do all the shopping,’ Y said as though this was some feminist triumph – in fact there were very few women out and about at all, here or elsewhere.

Vegetable market, Nizwa

We spent more time in the spice market, and indeed more money, replenishing our stock of spices and buying sundry presents including soaps scented with frankincense and myrrh (and if gold had a scent?) We also bought some frankincense to burn, a strange decision as we would be in the heart of frankincense country in a few days’ time.

Nuts, spices and other goodies, Nizwa

The craft market did not detain us long. Again, it was not busy, but it was clean, tidy and well organised, words rarely used about middle eastern souks but that is the Omani way.

Craft souk, Nizwa

Though the street decked in flags and bunting for National Day was more lively.

National Day flags and bunting, Craft Souk, Nizwa

Outside the immediate souk area there were examples of the customary abandoned and decaying mud brick buildings….

Crumbling mud brick buildings, Nizwa

….but there were many more that had been meticulously maintained…

Well maintained mud brick buildings, Nizwa

….none more so than the biggest of them all…

Nizwa Fort


The tower, Nizwa Fort

There has been a fort at Nizwa since the 12th century, but the current building largely dates from the 1650s. It was the stronghold of the Imam of Oman, the political and spiritual leader of ‘Oman Proper’ (i.e. Oman excluding Muscat and the coastal strip) from the 8th century until the failed insurrection of the 1950s.

The Imam was a leader of the Ibadi Muslims, a denomination founded in 650 only 20 year after the death of the Prophet and predating both Sunni and Shia denominations. Once widespread, the emergence of the Sunni Caliphate pushed the Ibadis into Arabia's south east corner. Today most Omanis are Ibadis - and most Ibadis are Omanis.

Ibadis are noted for their tolerance and preference for resolving disputes by reason and discussion rather than aggression - pity about the 1955-9 insurrection, then. Venom Jets of the British Royal Air Force attacked Nizwa Fort in 1957. According to Wikipedia ‘the walls are rounded and robust, designed to withstand fierce barrages of mortar fire’ but an attack by military aircraft is another matter. Fortunately mud brick buildings are relatively easily restored and the fort, now looking as it did in its prime, has become one of Oman’s most visited national monuments.

The site is large and rambling, but visitors see the courtyard, a series of rooms and the large round tower (above).

Courtyard, Nizwa Fort

The rooms are not furnished – traditionally there was no furniture, only carpets and cushions….

Standard room in Nizwa Fort
Plenty of shelves, but no furniture. The hatches on the right give access to a murder hole above the door below.

…but they do have a collection of magnificent chests.

Just one of the many chests, Nizwa Fort

….and there is a small display area.

Exhibition area, Nizwa Fort

There is little inside the tower apart from some cannons.

Cannons in the tower, Nizwa Fort

You can climb to the battlements but not along them, 17th century safety standards leave something to be desired…

On the tower battlements, Nizwa Fort

…but there is a good view over the town and its many date palms.

Nizwa from the tower of Nizwa Fort

A Turkish Lunch in Nizwa

We had already seen how Oman borrows much of its cuisine from its neighbours, and today Y selected a Turkish restaurant for our lunch. We enjoyed the kebabs - chicken, beef and kofta – rice, vegetables and flatbread, plus the inevitable salad. Lunch for three came to 5 Rials (£10), including drinks. Tired of water, I studied the long list of fresh fruit juices before choosing lemon and mint, which was clean, sharp and refreshing.

Turkish lunch (and Vimto) Nizwa

Lynne went for Vimto which was invented as a cordial in Manchester in 1908, the carbonated version came later. On its home turf Vimto limps on as a brand with, perhaps, a rather dated image, but not so in the Arabian Peninsula where Vimto cordial is the drink of choice for iftar, the sunset breaking of the Ramadan fast. Made under licence in Saudi Arabia, it has a 90% share of the local cordial concentrated drinks market. Lynne said it made a pleasant change, but it was a bit sweet for me.

Golden Tulip Hotel, Nizwa

After lunch we checked in to the Golden Tulip, a luxurious hotel so far out on the Nizwa strip it was almost in the desert. Taking advantage of a rare free afternoon we lazed around (and in) the pool.

Relaxing in the pool, Golden Tulip, Nizwa

The evening meal was a buffet, the tables set out in the garden around the pool. It was attractive, but we wanted a lighter meal and the bar was attractive too.

The hotel’s main function room was holding a National Day dinner attended by many elderly distinguished looking men each in his best white dishdash with traditional khanjar dagger. Seeing as everyone turned up for the dinner armed it is probably a good thing they are ‘noted for their tolerance and preference for resolving disputes by reason and discussion rather than aggression’.

Being good Muslims, we saw few (none?) of them in the bar, which claims to be the hottest spot in Nizwa but never had more than seven customers while we were there. Following the earlier Turkish theme we each had a glass of rakı at a very reasonable price, at least by local standards, with some Indian nibbles. Then we had feta cheese and olives and a bowl of chips washed down with £4 cans Carlsberg – a more typical Omani price for alcohol. We did not know it, but it was the last bar we would see in Oman.

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Location: Nizwa, Oman

Saturday 17 November 2018

Oman (4): Ibra, Birkat Al-Mawz and the Jebel Akhdar

A Sandy Desert, an Old Town Rebuilt, Date Palms and High 'Green' Hills

Leaving the Wahiba Sands


Oman
We awoke to a warm desert morning, the dunes hiding coyly in a light mist.

Finding ful beans on the breakfast buffet was a pleasant surprise. We first encountered ful, dried broad beans soaked and boiled until they start to disintegrate, in Sudan where they are eaten by all (and if you are very poor they are all you eat). In Egypt they are everyone’s breakfast. I like them best mixed with a chopped boiled egg, some fragments of feta-style cheese and chilli powder.

Morning at the 1000 Night's Camp, Wahiba Sands

We arrived in Oman with modest expectations, but had eaten well, enjoying the ubiquitous dates and their distinctive halva. We were also discovering that Omanis borrow judiciously from their neighbours; biryani, chicken curries and gulab jamun from India; ful and last night’s Umm Ali from Egypt.

We left the camp heading back towards Bidiyah, as did many others. On the way in we had climbed a dune via a zig-zag of packed sand, but leaving we made a direct descent. Y parked at the top so we could enjoy the view….

Descent in the Wahiba Sands

…and insisted in taking a photograph of us. The backdrop is a sandy waste but it is not empty, three other moving vehicles can be spotted and there is an encampment, top right. Wild camping is popular, Y told us, but some campers pack their rubbish into black plastic bags and leave them in the desert. He found it incredible that anyone who appreciated this landscape would do such a thing - and so did we - but they do, as we saw later.

In the Wahiba Sands

In days gone by, Bedouin nomads led their camels and goats across these sands as they did across the Empty Quarter. Modern borders dividing Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and the UAE cramped their style and then they discovered the settled life was much easier. Today many live round the desert fringes, still keeping their camels….

A camel waits patiently in the Wahiba Sands

….and their goats, but driving out to provide such feed as these resourceful animals cannot forage for themselves in this barren land.

Goats on the outskirts of Bidiyah

Back in Badiyah Y had the tyres re-inflated for our return to tarmac. We would first drive to Ibra near the sands’ north-west corner and then continue in roughly the same direction, along the yellow line below.

Today's journey roughly follows the yellow line from the Wahiba Sands to Ibra and continuing to Birkat Al-Mouz and the Jebel Akhdar

Ibra

Ibra is 40km along the main highway from Badiyah. It is an old town, pre-dating Islam, but on aerial photographs it looks like any other Omani town, low-density buildings strung out along a series of branching roads with no apparent pattern. On the ground it made a bit more sense and could be split into three.

New Ibra, is very modern and largely under construction along the highway; it detained us little.

The Souk

Off the main road we visited the souk area, not quite so new, but hardly ancient. There was little activity, though we would have expected Saturday, the second day of the Omani weekend, to be busy. The pavements were arcaded to protect shoppers against the sun. In summer the average daily high exceeds 40º, in mid-November, a time the locals call ‘winter’, the temperature was barely 30.

Souk area, Ibra

The fish market was behind the main market. Perhaps most activity here was earlier in the morning.

Ibra Fish Market

Shark is popular in Oman, and although we have seen and eaten shark in various places (shark steaks occasionally feature on English menus) I had never before seen hammerhead sharks. Perhaps these relative tiddlers would have been better left in the sea.

Hammerhead shark and other fish, Ibra fish market

Outside the fish market an elderly man had laid his meagre wares on the ground. Y decided to purchase a small knife; maybe he needed one or perhaps it was a small act of charity.

Y buys a knife, Ibra

Old Ibra

Ibra’s old town is not far away, and it is falling down. The old Souk is empty…


The Souk, Ibra old Town

…the streets are deserted…

The deserted streets of Ibra old town

….and the buildings crumbling.

Crumbling buildings, Ibra old town

The government has built nice new homes for all Ibra’s residents, spacious, air-conditioned and with drinkable running water, so no one wants the old buildings anymore - though there are signs that many of them had some modern facilities.

Crumbling buidlings with satellite dish

These buildings have only been abandoned in the last five to ten years, but without constant maintenance mud-brick houses fall apart quickly – and this is happening in towns all over Oman. Public buildings are maintained, like this mosque….

Well maintained mosque, Ibra old town

…and gardens are looked after…

Garden, Ibra old town

…but the only living soul we saw was a young man transporting a lawns-worth of grass on his pushbike.

A load of grass, Ibra old town

The locals are missing a trick. Later, in other places, we would see mud-brick houses restored for use as tourist attractions and boutique hotels. They may no longer be good enough for locals, but foreigners lap them up.

Picturesque enough for tourists? I think so. Ibra old town

Birkat Al-Mawz

Camel for Lunch

We left Ibra, heading for Birkat Al-Mawz (spellings vary) 120km north-west along a good road through country that was largely flat and always arid.

On the road from Ibra to Birkat Al-Mawz

On the way we talked about food and the subject of camel meat came up. We told Y we had never eaten camel. ‘Do you want to?’ he asked. ‘We’re always happy to try something new.’ ‘There’s a Yemeni restaurant, near here,’ he said ‘it usually has camel.’

A little later we parked in front of a restaurant, one of a line of businesses apparently sitting alone in the desert, though they were much closer to Birkat Al-Mawz than we realised.

Restaurant near Birkat Al-Mawz

This day’s fare was laid out cafeteria-style. There were two camel options, a stew and cubes of spicy camel meat. We tasted one of the cubes expecting it to be tough and strong, maybe even gamey but it was tender, gently spiced and delicately flavoured.

We lunched on spicy camel, a couple of slabs of chicken, biryani rice and salad with a mildly-spiced tomato-based sauce to help the rice down. And would we eat camel again? Definitely, though it was the texture and spicing that made it so moreish, a distinctive ‘camel flavour’ was harder to detect.

Spicy camel, near Birkat Al-Mawz

The Date Palms of Birkat Al-Mawz

A short distance down the road Y suddenly swung into what appeared to be the yard of a roadside business and then up a steep stony hill with a telephone mast on top.

Uo to the viewpoint, Birkat Al-Mawz

There had been no signs, but several cars were parked by the mast, and the reason was obvious. The valley below was filled with date palms, by far the largest, expanse of green we had seen in Oman. The modern town was out of sight to our left but, as at Ibra, the two mud-brick settlements on the far side of the valley are deserted and crumbling.

The date palms of Birkat Al-Mawz

Another car arrived, a four-wheel drive containing two European tourists with no local driver. Y looked at them open mouthed. ‘How did you get here?’ he asked as they got out of the car. ‘We have an ap,’ was the swift (and slightly smug) response. ‘Well done, you,’ I thought; Y looked impressed too, but maybe he was also seeing a threat to his livelihood.

Y drove us down into the valley and through the palms. They are all irrigated from one stream, and the owner of each plot has a designated time each week when the water is directed to his trees. In November the date season is drawing to its close, but well over 30 different varieties are grown in Oman, all fruiting at different times in the season, so fresh dates are available for six months of the year. Each tree produces 60-70 Kg a year, so the produce of this one valley is mountainous.

Down among the dates, Birkat Al-Mawz

Falaj Al-Katmeen

The irrigation system is known as a falaj (literally: 'split into parts') and this falaj, the Falaj Al-Katmeen, is one of five Omani aflaj (plural of ‘falaj’) which together make up a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We drove into Birkat to look at the origin of the water which gushes along a channel in the village centre.

The Falaj water gushes through central Birkat

It is not just the sharing of the water that makes the system special. From a water source far inside the mountain a gently sloping underground channel was dug almost sideways until it emerged into the light. To build a 2.5km channel under a mountain, vertical shafts had to excavated every 20-30m along the course.

Yep, it's a World Heritage Site

This system of transporting water by gravity - generally known as ‘qanat’ - is very ancient and tunnels can exceed 50km in length. The system was developed some 2,700 years ago and gradually spread across the world’s arid regions.

In 2008 we visited such a system in Turpan in the Taklamakan desert, western China. They called it ‘karez,’a Uigher word, rather than Chinese but they claimed it as a Chinese invention; the Chinese invented much, but not everything. It was generally accepted as a Persian idea, but evidence now suggests some qanats in the south-east of the Arabian Peninsula are just as ancient. Possibly (or probably?) qanats were developed independently in two centres; the idea travelling east along the Silk Road from Persia to Pakistan, Afghanistan and China, and west with the Arab invasion of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish subsequently introduced the technology into South America.

The emerging water is clean enough to drink and close to the exit washing and paddling are strictly forbidden (the English version of the notice actually forbids swimming, which would be an interesting challenge). Omani tap water is safe to drink, but desalinated seawater never quite tastes right. Bottled water is widely available, but people come here to fill their bottles for free. ‘It tastes sweet,’ Y said, slurping it up. We checked, it does (and we came to no harm).

Lynne conducts an organoleptic examination of the falaj water

Jebel Akhdar

The Al-Hajar mountains form a high rocky crescent following the shape of the coast but 50-100km inland. Our journey from Muscat via Sur had brought us round their southern tip and we had spent today on the elevated inland plain behind the mountains.

Birkat Al-Mawz is the gateway to the central Jebel Akhdar section of the Jebel Al-Hajar and it was time to head for the hills.

A police check point sits at the bottom of the mountain road. The police are less of a presence in Oman than in some middle eastern countries and, according to Y, are reliable and honest. Keeping to that approach, the check was for safety, not security. They were only permitting four-wheel drive vehicles up the road and offering advice on mountain driving.

They were being over-cautious. The Jebel Akhdar road is new, wide, well-maintained and relatively gently graded.

The road up to Jebel Akhdar

The mountains do not have towering peaks but form a high rocky plateau riven with deep valleys. Our hotel on the edge of the village of Saiq, stood high on the plateau overlooking one such valley and we had time to contemplate the view and visually plot the three villages walk we had neither the time nor the energy to complete.

Our hotel in the Jebel Akhdar

Jebel Akhdar means ‘Green Mountain.’ It may not look very green to a British eye, but at this height there is sufficient rainfall to support shrubs and trees and for the locals to grow crops on the terraces visibly in the picturesm though many are no longer worked as people seek an easier life in the lowlands.

Villages in the Jebel Akhdar

Darkness fell, and with it the temperature. We sought out the warmer clothes we had put away at Manchester airport, unsure of exactly how high we were, but suspecting it was above 2,000m, (6,500ft).

Looking into the valley from our hotel in the Jebel Akhdar

During a shivery sundowner on our balcony we recalled how cold we had been at this height last November at San Cristóbal de las Casas in southern Mexico. On descending for dinner (we were on half board as there was nowhere else to eat) we found the restaurant was heated – that never happened in San Cristóbal! After a large camel-y lunch we did not do the buffet justice but we enjoyed the first lamb we had encountered on this trip.

Village in the Jebel Akhdar

Later we wrapped up and went out to look at the stars, but knew it was a fool’s errand even before we saw the clarity of the moon shadows following us round. The moon was not yet full, but it was far too bright for stargazing.

18-Nov-2018

Only in the morning did we spot the hotel’s viewing platform on the edge of the valley. The photos above were all taken in the early morning from that platform.

Viewing platform at our hotel in the Jebel Akhdar

We had breakfast - I was delighted to find ful again, Lynne seemed more excited by the Rice Krispies – and then headed back down the mountain to the welcome warmth of the plain.

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Location: Ibra, Oman
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