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This article examines the narrative and literary techniques employed in Hudā Ḥamad’s Sindrīllāt Masqaṭ to draw on Omani women’s experiences of writing and speaking as sources of empowerment and narrative identity. Marking a shift from the dominant realistic and historical fiction often associated with male writers, Ḥamad experiments with magical realism, the carnivalesque, intertextuality, and metafiction to reconfigure the novelistic genre beyond the national prescriptions of literary production. Through the voice of the narrator, alongside the voices of other ordinary women, the novel underscores the significance of women’s symbolic practices within the societal and cultural boundaries of Oman. In an allegory of writing—a major thread running throughout the novel—the narrator/writer seeks to combine the composite, multiple, and fictional fragments of various women’s stories into a single readable text that preserves oral and cultural memory. Thus, on the one hand, this article explores the writer’s experimentation with narrative and storytelling within the context of the Omani literary tradition. On the other hand, it examines modes of women’s empowerment that work through articulative and enunciative practices in the face of linguistic frustration.

Abdulaziz Al-Busaidi was the younger son of the Omani ruler Said bin Sultan. He devoted all his life to gain power and secure a source of income for himself. To achieve this, he formed alliances and sought powerful protectors. Among them were the British who supported him for almost fifty years, both as a potential heir to the thrones of Oman and Zanzibar and as a tool in their imperial policy. Although Abdulaziz’ political projects failed because of the British and his inability to cooperate with prospective allies, his actions greatly affected the history of Oman and Zanzibar in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Acts of political violence carried out by Muslim individuals have generated international support for governments that espouse so-called “moderate Islam” as a means of preventing terrorism. Governments also face domestic skepticism about moderate Islam, especially if the alteration of official Islam is seen as resulting from external pressure. By evaluating the views of individuals that disseminate the state’s preferred interpretation of Islam—members of the religious and educational bureaucracy—this research assesses the variation in the resonance of official Islam in three different Arab monarchies: Oman, Jordan, and Morocco. The evidence suggests that if official Islam is consistent with earlier content and directed internally as well as externally, it is likely to resonate. Resonance was highest in Oman, as religious messaging about toleration was both consistent over time and directed internally, and lowest in Jordan, where the content shifted and foreign content differed from domestic. In Morocco, messages about toleration were relatively consistent, although the state’s emphasis on building a reputation for toleration somewhat undermined its domestic credibility. The findings have implications for understanding states’ ability to shift their populations’ views on religion, as well as providing greater nuance for interpreting the capacity of state-sponsored rhetoric to prevent violence.

Once abandoned for more than three decades, vernacular settlements in Oman are now being progressively reinvested in to foster the country’s heritage tourism sector. The present research focuses on the emerging phenomenon of community-led initiatives for vernacular heritage rehabilitation and adaptive reuse in Oman. Through an examination of three case studies, its aim is to describe this process and its modes of action and discuss its effects on vernacular settlement transformations. A mixed research methodology was designed to include (A) analyses of relevant primary and secondary data, (B) documented onsite observations, (C) interviews with local community representatives and key players in the operations of rehabilitation, and (D) extractions and analyses of quantitative data from a hotel booking website. The research sheds light on unsuspected interrelations within and between the projects being implemented in these settlements and their operating modes. It reveals the focal role of a local community in a kind of ‘bottom-up’ management of its built heritage, coupled with a ‘horizontal cooperation’ between the three initiatives studied in this research. Moreover, it shows that a heavily centralised and top-down policy for the field of heritage conservation and management is among the main obstacles that hinder such initiatives. Furthermore, community-led operations of vernacular heritage rehabilitation are being undertaken under insufficient regulations in terms of land use, building restoration and adaptive reuse. In this context, the paper discusses some of the serious threats and concerns faced by such initiatives and proposes actionable solutions to mitigate these hindrances.

This article investigates the use and functions of the active and passive participial forms in the Omani vernacular spoken in al-'Awābī district, in al-Bāṭina region of northern Oman. This dialect was first described by Carl Reinhardt in 1894. No sections of his work, however, deal with the analysis of functions of participial forms in the dialect, although they are common in his texts. The data presented in this article aim to show the uses of the active participle in the everyday speech of my participants living in al-'Awābī district and the different syntactic and semantic functions it conveys. The syntactic functions of the participle in Arabic linguistics has long been debated since it is neither completely a verbal form nor a nominal. This article fits into this discussion as it brings new data and analysis of active and passive participles in Arabic dialectology with regard to the Omani vernacular spoken in al-'Awābī district.

Les réinterprétations critiques des travaux en anthropologie de la parenté ont remis en question les idées antérieures selon lesquelles les relations de parenté reflètent et reproduisent un ordre social dominant. Pourtant, les études consacrées aux nouvelles formes de parenté tendent à montrer que celles‐ci peuvent reproduire des idées traditionnelles concernant la famille, les valeurs et les hiérarchies sociales. Pour résister aux tendances actuelles liant la parenté à une reproduction sociale conservatrice, une piste prometteuse est la meilleure compréhension des circonstances dans lesquelles les relations de parenté reproduisent un ordre social anti‐hégémonique. Parmi les anciens militants du mouvement de libération révolutionnaire, aujourd'hui vaincu, de Dufar, dans le sultanat d'Oman, les pratiques de parenté visualisent des réseaux et relations entre anciens combattants qui transgressent les hiérarchies tribales, ethniques, raciales et genrées dominantes. Ces pratiques montrent comment, même dans les circonstances peu propices de la défaite politique et de la marginalisation, les relations de parenté peuvent reproduire un ordre social anti‐hégémonique, tout en offrant une rémanence sociale à la révolution vaincue.

In the Dhofar Mountains of Oman stakeholders are concerned about the social and ecological sustainability of pastoralism. In this study we used interviews with pastoralists to examine the prevailing drivers of pastoralism and how they are changing. We find that people are committed to pastoralism for sociocultural reasons but also that this commitment is under pressure because of husbandry costs and changing values. We find that capital investment in feedstuff enables pastoralists to overcome the density-dependent regulation of livestock populations. However, high production costs deter investment in marketing and commercialization, and there is little off take of local livestock. Our study reveals how pastoral values, passed down within households, motivate pastoralists in the face of high husbandry costs, modernization and social change.

En 1970, Qābūs devient sultan d’Oman par un coup d’Etat qui renverse son père avec l’appui des Britanniques, principalement en vue de moderniser le pays : cette politique est qualifiée de « renaissance bienheureuse » ou « Nahḍa ». La politique du logement est le levier majeur de cette action, et prend la forme principale de la promotion de la maison individuelle sur parcelle de terrain octroyée par le souverain. Ce choix est au cœur de la redistribution de la manne pétrolière et de l’objectif de justice sociale qui légitime le pouvoir royal. S’il a des points communs avec ceux des pays voisins, le dispositif omanais se distingue en ciblant l’ensemble de la population de nationalité omanaise. Cette politique du logement a permis de faire accéder la population à une vie urbaine moderne, mais elle n’est pas sans poser de nombreuses questions aujourd’hui, en particulier sur le plan de la cohésion sociale ou d’un étalement urbain problématique face à l’objectif de développement durable.

During his five-decade reign, Sultan Qaboos bin Said relied on heritage as a key tool for nation-building. Old forts and objects central to Omani traditional culture like the coffee urn and the ceremonial dagger became symbols of a unifying national ethos. At the same time, their former political significance was downplayed. But some Omanis have held onto memories of a different conception of the past. And now, after the sultan’s death in 2020, heritage is becoming more of a privatized business sector.

In contrast to other states in the Gulf Cooperation Council, Oman has declined to participate in the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen and has opted to facilitate dialogue between the conflict's warring parties. Oman has embraced a strategy of diplomatic deterrence in Yemen, facilitating dialogue to counter the perceived threats that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pose to its foreign policy independence. The article explores how the Sultanate's diplomatic deterrence strategy manifests at the local, regional, and international levels, building on English- and Arabic-language source material and interviews.

, ABSTRACT:, This article investigates the social and political effects of the introduction of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Oman. With oil reserves dwindling, Oman faces the challenge of transforming a society and economy long dependent on distributive state spending into a diversified economy capable of continuing the nation’s prosperity after oil. As a seemingly market-based solution to the problem of “too much” government, CSR has been championed by officials and practitioners as a tool to empower private sector businesses to replace the state as a provider of welfare and services. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with members of Oman’s business community, state officials, and others, this article challenges these presumptions, demonstrating that CSR has been implemented in Oman in ways that perpetuate the nation’s dependence on oil revenues and distributive state subsidies. Pointing out that the Omani state’s subsidy-driven development has long relied on the incentivized collaboration of private sector businesses, this article argues that the introduction of CSR in Oman has occurred in ways that resonate with older practices of corporate generosity. Instead of introducing market-based alternatives to state-guided subsidies, CSR has been instituted in Oman in ways that allow the state to leverage private sector organizations to extend its distributive reach. In conversation with scholarship on the role of neoliberal discourses and practices in the diversification efforts of states of the Arab Gulf, this article highlights the discrepancy between development plans and their outcomes to demonstrate how seemingly neoliberal interventions may be co-opted to achieve alternative ends.

This article looks at a specific southern Arabian sailing vessel named the Wolf (al-Dhi’b), in order to better understand the life of a coastal trader on the southern Arabian coast that lived in the last days of commercial sail. Vessels such as the Wolf carried local products such as sardines, abalone and frankincense to northern Oman and Yemen, returning with dates and necessary foodstuffs shipped to Aden from India and East Africa. The article examines the remains of the Wolf, based on data from multiple documentation surveys, in conjunction with information gained from oral history interviews in order to highlight the central role that vessels such as the Wolf played in the maritime economic and social networks of the region.

تتناول هذه الدراسة العلاقات العثمانية-العُمانية أثناء حصار حاكم إيران كريم خان الزند للبصرة العثمانية، بناءً على الرسالة الهمايونية من السلطان العثماني عبد الحميد الأول إلى حاكم عُمان الإمام أحمد بن سعيد البوسعيدي.وقد جاءت الرسالة ضمن جُمْلة من المراسلات المتبادلة بين حاكمي الدولتين،وهي تُعَدُّ دليلًا على العلاقات التليدة بين الدولة العثمانية والدولة العُمانية، التي كانت تقوم على التنسيق والتعاون المشترك لخدمة المصالح العُليا في كلا البلدين، على أساسمن الاحترام المتبادل، وإقرار كل طرف وتقديرهلِما يؤدّيه الطرف الآخر من دور في حفظ الأمن، والتصدّي للمخاطر المُحدِقة بهما. وممّا يزيد من أهمية الدراسة هو اشتمالها على العديد من الوثائق الأرشيفية التي تُؤرِّخ للعلاقات السياسية والعسكرية بين الدولة العثمانية والدولة العُمانية وَفق رؤية جديدة ونظرة استشرافية.