Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern explores how and why heritage has emerged as a prevalent force in building the modern nation state of Oman. Amal Sachedina analyses the relations with the past ...that undergird the shift in Oman from an Ibadi shari'a Imamate (1913–1958) to a modern nation state from 1970 onwards. Since its inception as a nation state, material forms in the Sultanate of Oman—such as old mosques and shari'a manuscripts, restored forts, national symbols such as the coffee pot or the dagger ( khanjar ), and archaeological sites—have saturated the landscape, becoming increasingly ubiquitous as part of a standardized public and visual memorialization of the past. Oman's expanding heritage industry, exemplified by the boom in museums, exhibitions, street montages, and cultural festivals, shapes a distinctly national geography and territorialized narrative. But Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern demonstrates there are consequences to this celebration of heritage. As the national narrative conditions the way people ethically work on themselves through evoking forms of heritage, it also generates anxieties and emotional sensibilities that seek to address the erasures and occlusions of the past.
An examination of the historical environment of Muscat, the capital of Oman, and the damage sustained by the city's historical legacy since 1970. It includes a historical gazetteer of Muscat and its ...environs and numerous maps and photographs.
Looking at the social, political and legal changes in Oman since 1970, this book challenges the Islamic and tribal traditional cultural norms relating to marriage, divorce and women's rights which ...guide social and legal practice in the modern Omani state. The book argues that despite the establishment of legal instruments guaranteeing equality for all citizens, the fact that the state depends upon Islamic and tribal elites for its legitimacy invalidates these guarantees in practice. Two particular features of the legal and cultural regulation of marriage and marital rights are focused on - the perceived requirement for kafa'a or equality in marriage between so called high and low socio-economic status peoples is examined, and the institution of talaq, which grants greater rights to men than to women in appeals for divorce. This book addresses highly complex subjects with great rigor, in terms of empirical research and engagement with theory, sociological and political as well as theological and legal. It is an interesting investigation of the divisions of authority between the state, Islam and tribal norms, highlighting barriers to reform in both Oman and wider Islamic society, and advocating the removal of such obstacles.
Before the discovery of oil in the late 1960s, Oman was one of the poorest countries in the world, with only six kilometers of paved roads and one hospital. By the late 1970s, all that had changed as ...Oman used its new oil wealth to build a modern infrastructure. In the Time of Oil describes how people in Bahla, an oasis town in the interior of Oman, experienced this dramatic transformation following the discovery of oil, and how they now grapple with the prospect of this resource's future depletion. Focusing on shifting structures of governance and new forms of sociality as well as on the changes brought by mass schooling, piped water, and the fracturing of close ties with East Africa, Mandana Limbert shows how personal memories and local histories produce divergent notions about proper social conduct, piety, and gendered religiosity. With close attention to the subtleties of everyday life and the details of archival documents, poetry, and local histories, Limbert provides a rich historical ethnography of oil development, piety, and social life on the Arabian Peninsula.
This is the first monograph to present research at the Adam oasis, located at the margins of the Rub Al-Khali desert, Oman. Major periods are described, with evidence of Palaeolithic occupation, ...Neolithic settlements, Early and Middle Bronze Age necropolises, and Iron Age ritual sites. An ethnographic study of traditional water sharing is included.
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•Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide deposits of Oman are mapped using remote sensing technique.•Occurrence and spatial distribution of alteration zones are discriminated by image ...processing methods.•Spectroscopy data to characterize alteration zones are documented.•Application of remote sensing is confirmed by filed and mineralogical studies.
In this study, the oxidized and hydrothermally altered zones, including propylitic, argillic and phyllic zones associated with volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits in the Sohar-Shinas region of the Sultanate of Oman are studied based on absorption characters of spectral bands of Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER). In this work, we have used selected imaging processing methods, including decorrelation stretching, band ratios, linear spectral unmixing (LSU) and Mixture Tuned Matched Filtering (MTMF), as well as petrological and geochemical characteristics of the alteration zones to map and understand the distribution of these alteration zones.
Results indicate that 1) the decorrelation of ASTER spectral bands 3, 6, and 8 discriminate extrusive basalts, and the host lithology of altered zones; 2) the application of ASTER band ratios (5/3+1/2) (oxidized zone), (4+6)/5 (argillic zone) and (5+7)/6 (phyllic zone) delineate alteration zones spatially associated with mineralized zones, 3) the utilization of ASTER indices for OH bearing altered minerals (e.g. kaolin and alunite indices) confirmed the presence of alteration minerals in the mineralized zone, 4) alteration end members derived using the spectral angle mapper (SAM) method in combination with linear spectral unmixing (LSU) can be used to map the distribution of the weathering and alteration zones, 5) short wavelength infrared (SWIR) measurements on field samples were used to confirm spectral measurements from ASTER data, and 6) microscopic study and XRD analysis of field samples confirmed the presence of hematite and goethite in the oxidized zone; chlorite, epidote and calcite in the propylitic zone; kaolin and chlorite in the argillic zone; sericite and illite in the phyllic zone, the major minerals responsible to absorptions of ASTER bands 3, 8, 5 and 6 respectively. This study demonstrated the sensor capability of ASTER and the potential use of the image processing methods, and documented the spectral absorptions values of the altered minerals and the field and mineralogical characters of alteration zones of the volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits to map similar deposits elsewhere.
M. Reda Bhacker looks at the role of Oman in the Indian Ocean prior to British domination of the region. Omani merchant communities played a crucial part in the development of commercial activity ...throughout the territories they held in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, especially between Muscat and Zanzibar, using long established trade networks. They were also largely responsible for the integration of the commerce of the Indian Ocean into the nascent global capitalist system.
The author, himself a member of an important Omani merchant family, looks in detail at the complex relationship between the merchant community and Oman's rulers, first the Ya'ariba and then the Albusaidis. He analyses the tribal and religious dynamics of Omani politics both in Arabia, where he looks especially at the Wahhabi/Saudi threat, and in Oman's sprawling `empire', with particular reference to Zanzibar where the Omani ruler Sa'id b Sultan had his court from 1840. His aim is to consider all Oman's overseas territories as a single entity, without the usual misleading compartmentalisation of African and Arab history.
Dr Bhacker finds that despite their prestige and influence in the region neither the merchant communities nor the government were able to respond to Britain's determined onslaught. Bhacker traces the local and regional factors that allowed Britain to destroy Oman's largely commercial challenge and to emerge by the end of the nineteenth century as the commercially and politically dominant power in the region.
The field of regenerative medicine including cellular immunotherapies is witnessing a remarkable growth trajectory worldwide. However, most of these advanced therapies remain in the experimental ...phase owing, among other reasons, to insufficient evidence of their safety profile and clinical efficacy. Moreover, there is the global proliferation of unproven cell and tissue based industry that prematurely commercialize unapproved cell and tissue based therapies with unknown safety and efficacy profiles. Such businesses target and nurture in areas that lack regulatory policies to control their activities. Sultanate of Oman, like other countries in the middle east region are becoming an attractive hub for such businesses due to the lack of regulatory policies and practices to control unproven interventions. The aim of this project was to establish a national regulatory policy and framework for the clinical use of cell and tissue therapies in Sultanate of Oman.
The regulatory policy is focused in creating a clear pathway for, interventions and marketing of human cellular and tissue based therapies (HCT/Ps) based on internationally benched marked regulations and regulatory authorities recommendations such as FDA, EMA and WHO.
The regulatory policy consisted of 100 articles distributed in ten chapters and is supplemented by nine annexes. The policy was tailored to address the following aspects: Regulatory classification of HCT/Ps, Establishing a committee of advanced therapies, Defining: Permissible human cells and tissue therapies, Therapeutic use of stem cells, progenitor cells and their derivatives, Introducing compassionate use access scheme for advanced therapies, Regulation of advertising and promotion , General obligations of health sector authorities, General obligations of cellular and tissue therapy establishments and penalties and sanctions section.
This project represent an essential step to develop and harmonize the regulatory system in Oman to meet internationally bench marked regulatory systems. Implementation of this regulatory policy will guide more appropriate oversight for the wide spectrum of cellular and tissue-based products that are now used/marketed or envisioned for the future. Moreover it will ensure protection of the public and will increase public confidence in these new technologies while, promoting evidenced-based innovation to go forward.
Precipitation chemistry data provide important information for environmental studies on large-scale element cycling and anthropogenic impacts on our atmosphere, but also for hydrochemical models and ...groundwater recharge estimations via the Chloride Mass Balance method. Such recharge data play a crucial role in groundwater management, particularly in (semi-)arid areas. Unfortunately, precipitation analyses are often scarce in such regions. This also applies to the Arabian Peninsula, including southern Oman. To overcome this lack of rain chemistry data, we developed a strategy for automatic weekly bulk precipitation sampling, using recently designed automatic rainwater samplers. The integral samples were gathered along an elevation gradient from the Salalah coast to the Dhofar mountains during the Indian Ocean Monsoon seasons 2017 and 2018.
Our major ion analyses of the rainwater samples revealed considerable temporal and spatial heterogeneity, in terms of ion proportions and absolute concentrations. Samples from the coast were relatively salty (EC mostly >3000 μS cm−1) and rich in Na+ and Cl−, reflecting small rain amounts and a sea spray effect. Further inland, solute concentrations were lower, partly due to more precipitation, and ions such as Ca2+ and SO42− gained importance, probably due to calcite and gypsum dust. This pattern reflects the interplay between solute availability (influenced by regional geology, wind direction at different altitudes, and wind speed) and precipitation amounts. Cl−/Br− ratios were fairly uniform and scattered around the seawater value. Combining ion concentrations and rain amounts yielded bulk depositions that showed an erratic pattern along the elevation gradient, i.e., depositions did not decrease steadily in inland direction, as one may assume. This suggests that the occasionally reported approach of collecting a few opportunistic grab samples at a single site is unlikely to yield data that are representative for a larger coastal study area.
Five thousand years ago, in the Early Bronze Age, monumental
stone and mud-brick structures known as towers appeared on the
landscape of the Oman Peninsula. Since then, they have served as
...distinctive landmarks of identity for the people of the region.
Despite many years of archaeological research and intensive
excavations of some of them, much remains unknown about these
impressive structures. This book aims to update the long-standing
discussions on these towers and to assess their chronological depth
of more than a millennium, with the first of them constructed as
early as the end of the 4th millennium BCE and the last substantial
building activities at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE. The
book also reassesses their possible functions, such as defence,
refuge, demarcation of property, residence of elites, involvement
in complex irrigation systems, arenas for cultic practices, in the
light of recent archaeological research. The book will also provide
a richly illustrated catalogue with extensive bibliography,
research history and coordinates of all the nearly hundred towers
known to date in the Sultanate of Oman and the United Arab
Emirates, creating a record for researchers and visitors alike.
