Ibra

Ibra's oasis has been farmed for centuries, watered by falaj channels that draw on the wadis coming down from the eastern Hajar, and the town became the gathering place of the tribes of the northern Sharqiyah — the Harthy, the Maskari, the Riyami and the Ismaili among them, several of them among the largest tribes in Oman. Its position where the mountain route from Muscat meets the edge of the sand desert made it a natural market for oasis farmers, herders and the Bedouin of the Wahiba.

The wealth still visible in its ruins came largely from the sea. When Oman ruled Zanzibar and the Swahili coast in the 19th century, Sharqiyah families settled there in numbers and made money from cloves, ivory and trade; the money went home into large houses of mud brick with carved teak doors, stucco arches, painted plaster and decorated ceilings. The separation of Zanzibar from Oman in 1856, and the revolution there in 1964 that sent Omani families back, closed that chapter, and many returned to Ibra with Swahili as a household language.

Ibra was also at the centre of the interior's politics, close to the imamate's world and to the tribal confederations that negotiated with, and fought, the sultans on the coast. After 1970 the highway, schools, a hospital and a university college arrived, the town became the administrative seat of North Ash Sharqiyah, and families moved into concrete housing along the road. The old quarters were left to the weather, and are now the town's best known sight.

Ibra's social world is tribal, Ibadi and conservative, and formal manners carry weight: long greetings before any business, kahwa served from a dallah with dates and halwa, the right hand used for eating, and hospitality that is difficult to refuse. Men wear the white dishdasha with kummah or massar, women long dresses with a headscarf, and in the market it is normal to see the traditional face coverings worn by some women of the region.

The best-known local institution is the day the souq gives over to women, who run the stalls and do the buying — textiles, perfume, handicrafts, food and household goods — while men stay away. It is unusual in the Gulf and is treated with a certain pride locally; visitors are expected to be discreet, and men do not enter it.

The Zanzibar connection remains audible. Swahili is still spoken in some families, and East African rhythms have shaped local drumming and dance. Around the town, the Bedouin of the Wahiba keep camels, and camel racing draws crowds in the cooler months. Weddings involve drumming, sung poetry and the razha sword-and-chant dance, and the calendar's high points are Ramadan, the two Eids, the markets held in the days before them and National Day in November.

Some tens of thousands of people live in the wilayat, spread between the town along the highway and a string of villages in the oasis and on the plain. Almost nobody lives in the mud-brick quarters now: households moved into concrete villas with air conditioning from the 1970s onwards, and the old houses have been left to erode, with a handful restored.

Work is government employment, teaching, the hospital, farming, livestock, small trade and transport along the Muscat–Sur road, with tourism a growing sideline based on the desert camps in the Sands and guiding into the dunes. The university college brings students into the town. Many families also have members working in Muscat who return at weekends, and the Bedouin households of the Wahiba now mostly live in settled homes while keeping camels and goats.

Daily rhythm follows the heat and prayer. The souq is busiest early, when livestock changes hands and the fresh produce arrives; shops close through the afternoon and reopen after the late afternoon prayer, and the evening is for visiting, coffee and children playing outdoors. What people discuss is much the same as elsewhere in the interior: jobs for young Omanis, water for the gardens, and what to do with the old quarters as they fall down.

Ibra eats the food of the interior, built on dates, rice and goat. The gardens below the town supply dates in several varieties, served with kahwa — coffee brewed pale and scented with cardamom — to every visitor, and halwa, the dense sweet of sugar, starch, ghee, rosewater and nuts, is brought out alongside it and bought in quantity for weddings and Eid.

Shuwa is the dish of celebration: goat, lamb or camel rubbed with a paste of dates, chilli, cumin and other spices, wrapped in palm leaves or sacking and buried in a pit oven for a day or more before families gather to open it. Machboos, spiced rice cooked with meat, and harees, wheat pounded with meat into a thick paste, fill out the same table. Everyday eating is simpler — grilled chicken with rice, curries and roti from the town's restaurants, shawarma, and laban, a salty buttermilk, drunk with meals.

The desert adds its own habits: camel's and goat's milk, dates and flatbread baked on a metal plate over a fire, coffee poured continually for guests in a camp. Dried limes, known as loomi, give rice and soups a sour edge; local honey, limes and bananas from the oasis are sold in the souq, and fish brought up from the coast at Sur appears on menus a day's round trip inland.