Why Oman comes in pieces

A mainland and two islands of land

Most of Oman is one block on the south-east corner of Arabia. But a small exclave occupies the northern tip of the Musandam Peninsula at the Strait of Hormuz, cut off from the rest by the United Arab Emirates, and gives Oman its only coast on the Persian Gulf.^[1] Further south, the village of Madha is an Omani island surrounded by the emirates of Sharjah, Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah, and inside Madha is Nahwa, a village that belongs to Sharjah.^[2]

Lines that followed loyalty

Until 1949 there were no lines in this part of Arabia, only allegiances, which ebbed and flowed: a village’s loyalty showed in whom it asked to settle disputes and to whom it gave zakat, the alms for the poor.^[2] The people of Madha were asked by the leaders of four rival clans whom they would side with; while the villages around them chose the ruling families of what are now Sharjah, Fujairah and Ras Al Khaimah, Madha chose the sultan of Oman.^[2]

Oil turned that into a map. With great wealth under the sand, land became as important as loyalty.^[3] In the 1950s Britain sent a junior diplomat, Julian Walker, to record the borders of the seven emirates, then the Trucial States, and with Oman. He spent three winters crossing the country in a Land Rover; no maps existed, so he had to explore and ask tribesmen whom they followed before the boundaries were settled.^[3] The result was more than a dozen enclaves: Sharjah alone has five.^[3] Oman and the UAE agreed on the parts still unsettled in 1999.^[4]

“We had to map the whole place as no maps existed.”^[3]

An empire in pieces

Oman was once far more scattered. In the first half of the 19th century its Al Bu Said dynasty, based in Muscat, controlled both shores of the Strait of Hormuz.^[1] Sa’id ibn Sultan took back Zanzibar, but when he died in 1856 the empire was split between two sons: one got Zanzibar, which his family ruled until 1964, and the other Oman.^[4] Gwadar, on the coast of what is now Pakistan, belonged to Muscat and Oman from 1797 until 1958, when Oman gave it up to Pakistan.^[5] Musandam is what remains of Oman’s hold on the strait.^[1]