أﻫﻼ from Muscat

I figured it was finally time to use a little Arabic in the blog headlines since I have spent close to a week in the Middle East. The first word in the headline for this blog is the word "hello" in Arabic. The third word, Muscat, is the capital and largest city in the Sultanate of Oman, in the southeast corner of the Arabian Peninsula. After a couple exhausting days in megacity Dubai we boarded a plane and an hour later landed in Muscat, what I would call "traditional" Middle East with its lack of skyscrapers, laid back attitude, and skyline dominated by forts, castles, mosques, and towers giving it some old world character.



It is humid and hot in Muscat, very different from the dry heat in the rest of the Middle East. The city lies on the Arabian Sea coastline and the views of the sea and beaches were beautiful:


This was the first time I had walked in the Arabian Sea/Indian Ocean's warm ocean waters (yes, I have been along the seashore in India but one has no desire to touch water over there). Later that afternoon we had the chance to take a tour of the city and the first stop was the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque:



If you take into account the interior courtyard and passageways this mosque can handle 20,000 worshippers at one time. It was just finished in 2001. After the mosque we headed to the Muttrah Souk, the oldest market in Muscat where we walked down little passageways full of aggressive sellers (nothing like Pearl Market in Beijing though) selling silver, clothing, Bedouin jewlery, and traditional Omanian curved knives called khanjars. The whole scene was complete with the aroma of incense hanging in the air. We only had 45 minutes and I was so busy purchasing some traditional male Omanian wears (more on that later) I forgot to take pictures in the souk - so you'll have to do a Google Image search of "Muttrah Souk" to get an actual visual.

Following our market excursion we headed down to the marina and boarded what appeared to be a pirate ship wanna-be for a dinner cruise. Middle East and marina are not two words I usually place in the same sentence or thought, so I took a few pictures to capture the image, including a livesaver with Arabic writing on it (another rarity):



As I mentioned before we all really liked the character and charm of Muscat, it is a scenic city and from the sea cruise we could see a number of the still-perfectly-intact forts and guard towers built by the Portuguese when they controlled the region back in the 1500s and 1600s:


Muscat may have old world character, sandy beaches, and great vistas, but today on our way to a school visit we passed through numerous suburban areas with shopping centers sporting familiar names like Borders, Dunkin' Donuts, and Toys R Us - with all their names written in Arabic, which is an image worth capturing:


Oh, and I almost forgot, at the Muttrah Souk I purchased traditional Oman clothing worn by most men in the country (it is actually mandatory for all sultanate government employees). Traditional dress worn by men today in Oman includes a simple, ankle-length, collarless gown with long sleeves called the dishdasha. The color most frequently worn is white. The kummar, an intricately embroidered cap, is also worn. The placement of the kummar differs as much as how many ways people wear hats in the U.S., but I have to admit the designs are cool, and it is much more difficult to pick one out than you would think.


Oman was a great stop, I definitely felt like I was in the Middle East more than in Dubai, but with the white-washed buildings, rocky mountains, and seaside Muscat was a different aspect of Arabia that what usually comes to mind: sand.