Nizwa

Nizwa grew where several wadis draining the Hajar mountains meet, giving enough water to support one of the largest date oases in Oman. Falaj channels, some of them very old, spread that water through the gardens, and the town that grew around them became the natural centre of the interior. The tribes of the interior adopted Ibadi Islam in the early Islamic centuries, and Nizwa became the seat of imams elected by scholars and tribal leaders — the religious and political capital of inland Oman, known for its jurists and libraries.

Power shifted repeatedly between the coast and the interior. The Nabhani dynasty ruled from Bahla, a short distance west, from the 12th to the 15th century. After the Ya'ariba imams expelled the Portuguese from the coast in 1650 they built on a grand scale inland, and the round drum tower of Nizwa Fort — wide enough to mount cannon in every direction, with a warren of defences at its entrance — dates from that period, raised on an older base.

The interior kept electing imams of its own after the Al Bu Said sultans moved their capital to Muscat. The Treaty of Seeb in 1920 recognised autonomy for the imamate while acknowledging the sultan's sovereignty, an arrangement that broke down in the 1950s, when the sultan's forces, backed by Britain, took Nizwa and the imam's supporters held out on Jebel Akhdar until 1959. After 1970 roads, schools and hospitals reached the interior, the fort, mosque and souq were restored in the 1990s, and Nizwa became one of the country's main destinations for visitors.

Nizwa is the heartland of Ibadi Islam, a tradition older than the Sunni-Shia division and known for its emphasis on consultation, sober worship and the election of leaders. That history shows in the town's plain mosques, its reputation for learning, and a social manner that is formal, courteous and reserved. Dress is traditional and expected: the dishdasha with kuma or massar for men, the khanjar at celebrations and on national days, and covered dress for women.

Craft is the other half of the town's identity. Nizwa silver is famous across the Gulf — khanjar daggers, rosewater sprinklers, coffee pots and heavy jewellery — and the souq keeps quarters for silversmiths, potters, weavers and makers of copper coffee pots. Pottery from the nearby village of Bahla and woven goat-hair goods from the mountains are sold in the same halls.

Community life is organised around water and kinship. Falaj shares are allocated by time and managed by village agreement, a system inscribed by UNESCO in its World Heritage list, and disputes and maintenance are still settled collectively. Weddings and Eid bring drumming, lines of dancers, rifle displays and communal shuwa pits. The Friday market is as much a social occasion as a trade: men in their best dishdashas walk goats around a ring while buyers call out bids.

About 84,000 people live in Nizwa and its surrounding villages, making it the largest town of the interior and the administrative centre for the Ad Dakhiliyah region. Government work, education — the town has a university and a hospital — farming, crafts and tourism support most households, and many families also have members working in Muscat or on the coast.

The day begins before sunrise and stops through the middle of the afternoon. Shops reopen in the evening, when the souq, the cafés and the gardens fill. Friday is the pivot of the week: the livestock market at dawn, congregational prayers at midday, and family meals afterwards. Outside the old centre, life is suburban — walled villas, several cars per household, and shopping done at supermarkets on the highway.

Agriculture still shapes the town. Dates dominate, with limes, mangoes and fodder grown under the palms and fields of alfalfa watered by the aflaj, while the terraces above on Jebel Akhdar produce pomegranates, apricots, walnuts and roses. Falling groundwater, the cost of maintaining the channels and the pull of the capital on young people are the long-running concerns, and tourism has brought guesthouses into restored mud-brick houses in the villages nearby.

The interior's cooking is slow and communal. Shuwa is its emblem: goat, lamb or camel meat rubbed with a paste of spices, wrapped in palm leaves and buried for many hours in an earth oven lined with embers, then unearthed for the Eid meal and eaten with rice by the extended family. Majboos, rice cooked with meat and spices including dried lime, is the everyday equivalent, and harees, wheat and meat cooked to a thick paste and served with ghee, is eaten at Ramadan meals.

Bread is spread paper-thin over a hot dome and torn up to eat with honey, eggs or curry. Mountain honey from the wadis, thick date syrup and dried limes, loomi, sharpen much of what is cooked here. The date harvest sets the year: dozens of varieties are eaten fresh in late summer, dried for the rest of the year and always offered with kahwa, coffee poured light and scented with cardamom, often with rosewater from the Jebel Akhdar stills.

Omani halwa, a sticky preserve of sugar, rosewater, saffron and nuts stirred for hours in a copper pan, is served warm from a shared dish with coffee, and the souq sells it by the tub. Pomegranates, apricots, walnuts and figs come down from the mountain terraces in season. As across Oman, the town's South Asian cafés add biryani, curries, paratha and karak tea to the daily range.