Oman historical timeline

Origins

Copper from this coast was shipped to Sumer five thousand years ago, when the region was known as Magan. Later the mountains of Dhofar produced frankincense, the most valuable commodity of the ancient world, carried by sea and by camel to Egypt, Greece and Rome. The falaj, a system of gravity-fed channels that brings mountain water tens of kilometres to the oases, has been running for two thousand years and is UNESCO-listed. Oman accepted Islam early and adopted Ibadism, a school that is neither Sunni nor Shia and exists almost nowhere else.

Turning points

The Portuguese seized Muscat in 1507; Omanis drove them out in 1650 and then built a maritime empire of their own down the East African coast, taking Mombasa and ruling Zanzibar — for a period in the nineteenth century the sultan governed from Zanzibar rather than from Oman. The empire split in 1856 and the country turned inward. By the 1960s Said bin Taimur had closed it almost completely: three schools in the whole sultanate, no radios, no spectacles without permission. In 1970 his son Qaboos deposed him and opened everything at once, spending oil revenue on roads, schools and hospitals in a country that had almost none. The Dhofar rebellion was ended by 1976. Qaboos then spent fifty years as the region’s quiet intermediary, and died in 2020; Haitham bin Tariq succeeded him.

Influential people

Ahmad bin Said, who founded the ruling dynasty in 1744. Said bin Sultan, who moved his capital to Zanzibar and planted the clove industry there. Sultan Qaboos, whose fifty-year reign is the dividing line between two entirely different countries. And Sultan Haitham, who has continued the neutrality.

Cultural evolution

Ibadi Islam carries a tradition of consultation and religious restraint that Omanis cite as the reason for the country’s tolerance. The khanjar, a curved dagger worn with formal dress, is on the flag and on the currency. Dhow builders still work by eye at Sur. Swahili is spoken by families who returned from Zanzibar after 1964, which gives Muscat an East African thread nothing else in the Gulf has. And the built environment is protected by law: buildings are low, white and in a mandated regional style, so Muscat looks nothing like its neighbours.

Present-day significance

Oil and gas still carry the budget, and Vision 2040 is the plan to change that, with logistics at the deepwater port of Duqm and tourism opened deliberately slowly. Oman’s diplomatic value is its neutrality: the secret American–Iranian talks that led to the 2015 nuclear agreement were held in Muscat, and it has mediated in Yemen repeatedly. Youth employment is the main domestic pressure.