Muscat

Muscat's cove, ringed by cliffs and easy to defend, has been a harbour for at least two thousand years; Greek and Arab geographers knew it as a watering place on the route between the Gulf and India. The Portuguese seized the town in 1507 under Afonso de Albuquerque and held it for most of the following century and a half, fortifying the entrance with the forts of Jalali and Mirani and leaving the cove's defensive shape unchanged to this day.

In 1650 the Ya'ariba imams, ruling from Rustaq in the interior, drove the Portuguese out. Under the Al Bu Said dynasty, founded in the 1740s by Ahmad bin Said of Sohar, the capital moved to Muscat, and from this harbour the sultans built a maritime power that traded across the western Indian Ocean and ruled Zanzibar and part of the East African coast for much of the 19th century. After the empire was divided in 1856, and as steamships and European power reshaped the Indian Ocean, the town declined into a quiet walled port with a few thousand inhabitants.

Oil revenue and the accession of Sultan Qaboos in 1970 transformed it. Roads, a port at Mutrah, an airport at Seeb, ministries at Al Khuwair and housing along the coast turned a walled town and its neighbouring harbour into a city stretching tens of kilometres westward. A building code has kept it low and white throughout, and the Grand Mosque in 2001 and the Royal Opera House in 2011 gave the modern capital its landmarks. Cyclone Gonu flooded parts of the city in 2007.

Muscat is a capital that has deliberately avoided the skyline of its Gulf neighbours. Buildings are kept low, faced in white or sand-coloured render and finished with Omani arches, carved doors and crenellations, and the result is a city that reads as a series of villages along a coast rather than a single downtown. The national dress is worn widely: men in the ankle-length dishdasha with an embroidered kuma cap or a wrapped massar, and on formal occasions the curved khanjar dagger that appears on the national emblem.

The population is strongly mixed. Omani families with roots in Zanzibar and East Africa brought Swahili into daily speech, Baluchi communities have long been part of the coast, and Indian merchant families, some settled for generations, run businesses in Mutrah and Ruwi alongside a large migrant workforce from South Asia and the Philippines. Ibadi Islam, distinct from both Sunni and Shia traditions, shapes the country's religious life and its reputation for moderation, and Sunni and Shia Omanis, Hindus and Christians worship in the city as well.

Manners matter. Greetings are long, voices are kept low, and public displays of anger are considered shameful. Frankincense burns in homes and shops, and guests are offered kahwa, cardamom-scented coffee, with dates and halwa. The Royal Opera House, the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra and the city's galleries sit alongside traditional music and the sea shanties of the old sailing trade.

About 1.7 million people live in the Muscat governorate, roughly a quarter of them in the outer province of Seeb, and a large share of the population are foreign residents working in construction, retail, domestic work and the professions. Government employment, the port and free zone, banking, and an expanding tourism industry provide most of the local work, and the state has pushed for years to move Omanis into private-sector jobs.

The day starts early and pauses in the middle. Offices and shops open soon after dawn, empty in the heat of the afternoon, and reopen in the evening, when families come out to the corniche, the beaches and the parks. Friday morning is quiet before congregational prayers, and weekends fall on Friday and Saturday. Most households drive; traffic on the single expressway spine is the standing complaint of the capital.

Districts are distinct: Mutrah and Ruwi are dense, older and largely South Asian in daily feel; Qurum and Shatti Al-Qurum hold the beach, the malls and the embassies; and newer suburbs spread inland around Bausher, Al Amerat and towards Seeb, where most of the city's housing has been built. Water comes from desalination, summer power demand is enormous, and the cost of housing in the capital is a common concern for young Omanis.

Omani cooking is mild, fragrant and rice-based, closer to the Indian Ocean than to the rest of Arabia. The celebratory dish is shuwa, meat rubbed with a spice paste, wrapped and cooked for many hours in a covered pit and eaten at Eid and other festive occasions. Everyday meals lean on majboos, spiced rice with chicken, mutton or fish; mashuai, a whole spit-roasted kingfish served with lemon rice, is a coastal favourite, and harees, wheat and meat cooked to a thick paste, is served with ghee.

Fish is the city's strength: kingfish, tuna, hammour, prawns and lobster landed at Mutrah and Seeb and grilled simply. Bread comes as paper-thin rounds baked over a hot dome and often eaten with honey or with Omani curry. Sweets end everything: Omani halwa, a dense, sticky preserve of sugar, rosewater, saffron and nuts, is served warm in a shared dish with kahwa, coffee scented with cardamom and sometimes rosewater.

Muscat also eats the food of its communities. Ruwi's cafés serve biryani, thali and paratha with karak tea; Lebanese grills and Zanzibari-influenced dishes appear across the city; and dates, limes dried into loomi, and frankincense are sold by the sack in the souq. Alcohol is confined to licensed hotels and restaurants, so evenings out are built around coffee, juice and shisha.