Rustaq

Rustaq sits where mountain water reaches the plain, and that water made it. Falaj channels cut from the wadis above the town have irrigated date gardens here for many centuries, and a settlement around the spring is older than any written record of it. The castle is said to have been raised on Persian ruins, and later rulers enlarged it into the fort that still dominates the town, whose tallest tower stands over 18 metres high.

Its moment came in the 17th century. In 1624 Nasir bin Murshid was elected imam at Rustaq, founding the Ya'ariba dynasty that unified much of Oman and drove the Portuguese from Muscat in 1650. Rustaq served as the capital, and the wealth of the new maritime state was spent on forts, aflaj and mosques across the interior. Al Hazm, a short distance away, was built as a fortified palace by Imam Sultan bin Saif II in 1708, shortly before the dynasty fell into civil war.

In the 1740s Ahmad bin Said, governor of Sohar, expelled Persian forces and founded the Al Bu Said dynasty; he ruled from Rustaq, and his successors later moved the capital to Muscat, leaving the town as a provincial centre of farming, trade and religious learning. Modern roads reached it after 1970, the fort was restored in the following decades, and Rustaq became a stop on the route between the coast and the mountains rather than a place people passed through only on foot or by donkey.

Rustaq belongs to the conservative, tribal world of the Omani interior, where Ibadi Islam, a tradition distinct from both Sunni and Shia Islam, has shaped religious and civic life for more than a thousand years. The town was a seat of imams and of religious scholarship, and its mosques and libraries mattered in the history of Omani law. Dress is traditional: the white dishdasha with kuma or massar for men, the khanjar dagger at celebrations, and covered, often colourful dress for women in the villages.

Water is a communal institution as much as a resource. The aflaj are managed by agreements that allocate shares of flow by time, administered by village elders, and a family's standing can be tied to its water rights. Several Omani aflaj are inscribed by UNESCO as World Heritage, and the same system waters the gardens here.

Craft traditions survive in the wadis: beekeeping in the mountains above the town, silverwork, and the weaving and leatherwork associated with the interior. Weddings and national holidays bring drumming, lines of dancers and displays of swords and rifles, and the pit-cooked shuwa is prepared communally at Eid. Visitors are treated with courtesy and some reserve; an invitation to coffee is routine, and refusing it outright is impolite.

Tens of thousands of people live in the wilayat of Rustaq, most of them in villages spread through the date gardens and up the wadis rather than in a single dense town. Government employment, farming, small business and work on the coast provide most incomes, and many families have members commuting to Muscat, Barka or Sohar, or working abroad in the Gulf.

The day starts before sunrise, pauses through the worst of the heat and resumes in the late afternoon, when the souq and the cafés fill and children play in the lanes. Friday is the quiet day, given to prayers and to family meals. Weddings, funerals and Eid gather extended families from across the region, and the mountain villages empty towards the town for school and shopping.

Agriculture still shapes the landscape: dates above all, with limes, mangoes, bananas and fodder crops under the palms, all fed by falaj water whose maintenance is a constant, shared task. Groundwater levels and the cost of keeping the channels running are live concerns, as is the drift of young people towards the capital. Tourism has grown modestly, bringing four-wheel-drive traffic through the wadis and a handful of guesthouses to the villages.

Rustaq's name is attached above all to honey. Hives in the mountain wadis produce dark, strong honey from sidr and acacia flowers, sold in the souq at prices that surprise visitors and given as a gift of respect. It is eaten with bread, stirred into drinks, and poured over thin bread baked over a hot dome.

The staples are those of the Omani interior. Majboos, rice cooked with meat and spices including dried lime, appears at most meals of substance; harees, wheat and meat cooked to a thick paste and served with ghee, is eaten at Ramadan meals; and shuwa, meat rubbed with spice paste, wrapped and cooked for many hours in an earth oven, is the dish of Eid, prepared by families together. Grilled meat, salads and flatbread fill the everyday menus.

Dates are everywhere: dozens of varieties, eaten fresh in late summer and dried the rest of the year, always served with kahwa, the light cardamom-scented coffee poured in small cups. Omani halwa, a dense sticky preserve of sugar, rosewater, saffron and nuts, is shared from a common dish. The gardens also supply limes, dried into loomi for cooking, bananas and mangoes, and the town's South Asian cafés add biryani, curries and karak tea to the range.