A recent article in a major English-language newspaper about the Dhofar region of Oman included the sentence:
They [Omanis] are immensely private, with women rarely leaving the home and men going about their work in tribal clothes with elaborate head wraps, rifles and decorative daggers known as khanjars.
I taught at a university in the Dhofar region for 19 years, returning to the States 3 months ago. This text is not only similar to many travel articles, it is similar to books written in the early 1900s in which Omanis were portrayed as primitive and exotic.
There are a couple of layers to the above quote. One is that Dhofari women do leave the home. They might be a pharmacist, a teacher, a small-business owner or a director within a large organization. They might work in a law office, a restaurant, an airline or a company that leads tours for foreigners. Their work might also be taking care of goats, cultivating plants, gathering shellfish, designing clothes, taking photographs at events or making perfumes. These are some of the jobs that my female Dhofari friends have; I also have female friends who are studying for graduate degrees.
And they leave the house for the social work of connecting with and supporting family members by visiting new mothers and the newly wed, relatives who are not feeling well, elderly family members, those who are mourning and those who are celebrating.
Lastly, “rarely leaving the home” when writing about Muslim, tribal women usually carries the implied meaning of “not allowed to leave.” Thus, a woman who stays home might be viewed as inactive, isolated, not earning money and/or unhappy. However, homes in Oman are frequently multi-generational with over 30 family members living together. In addition, homes of relatives are often located close to each other so that people can walk short distances to see parents, siblings, cousins, etc.
The Dhofari women I know who don’t study or have conventional employment have options. They might be the social lynch pin for their family by acting as primary care-giver for a disabled relative, running a day-care for their nieces, nephews and neighbors’ children or being responsible for not only all the meals in the house, but also for feeding impoverished neighbors and/ or relatives. Or they might learn foreign languages, do the floor-plan for the new family house, run a web-site devoted to reading and culture, or create an Instagram business that centers on food, beauty, fashion or perfume.
I know that a travel writer, excited about a culture that is new to them, might not want to go into all these kinds of details. But when the writer was in Dhofar, they saw dozens, if not hundreds, of women outside the house. Women drive (there are women taxi drivers) and work in hotels, stores and the airport. And the writer saw dozens, if not hundreds, of men who were not carrying guns or knives. Men who herd animals carry a gun for protection from wolves and hyenas; men going to a formal event such as a wedding, wear a khanjar (dagger), belt and shawl as part of standard ceremonial attire.
Why write something that was constantly disproved by observation? And if the writer was told this information, I think that journalists should ask themselves when interviewing a person: What is this person getting in return?
A journalist/ writer is getting good copy when they conduct an interview. They are gathering quotes to weave into their story which they plan to publish, hoping their words will be read, discussed, cited and passed on. But the interviewee is also thinking of the future – they want their words to be read and they may be speaking to create or counteract opinions.
Several times when I was doing research an Omani interviewee would make a statement and then remark how they were speaking through me to an intended audience. For example, when talking to Dhofari men about driving their female kin to visit relatives, one said, “I know you [Americans] think we are not good with our women.”
An Omani saying “women [are] rarely leaving the home” might be talking through the journalist to represent the area in a certain way. Again, a casual visitor might not know all these kinds of details but the solution is simple: avoid blanket statements by adding modifiers: “some women” and “some men.” Another way to avoid this kind of overgeneralization is to ask Omanis and/ or people familiar with the area to double-check the article before publication
To me, the above quote sounds like “zoo mode,” i.e., let’s talk about these perfectly normal people as though they were exotic animals. When a person in Cambridge, MA wears a scarf because it is cold, am I going to talk about “elaborate head wraps”? No. Dhofari men wear scarves that are as exotic and take as much time to put on as my L.L. Bean scarf.
Why write that Dhofaris have “tribal clothes”? Why not simply explain what they are wearing? Every culture has tribal clothes. I work in Cambridge where the tribal clothes are khakis with button-down shirts and everyone is carrying their SPECIAL, SACRED, TRIBAL OBJECT: a waterbottle.
(Minor point – the article includes a photo with the caption “The beaches can get busy in the khareef [monsoon] season.” The photo was not taken during the khareef season because the ocean is quiet; there are no waves. In the khareef season, there are high waves for over two months.)
my essay about “zoo mode” – Reflections on Ethnographic Research: Changes within Cultures
a discussion of “zoo mode” in travel books from the 1890s-1950s (from Annotated Bibliography of Texts Pertaining to the Dhofar Region of Oman)
Theodore and Mabel had already explored in Italy, Greece, Bahrain, South Africa, Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen when they arrived in Oman. Their trip to Dhofar began when they left “Maskat” (Muscat) December 17th, 1894 and traveled by ship south along the coast, arriving in Mirbat on January 20. They left the Dhofar region from Al Hafa (part of modern day Salalah) on January 23, 1894. They traveled along the coast and a short distance in the mountains in the late 1800s; I believe they are the first Westerners to visit the Dhofar mountains to write a description of it.
Although James and Mabel Bent were not in the employ of the British government, they were quintessential Victorian age travelers who, in their writing, specifically support British imperialism in their Southern Arabia (1900/ 2005).[5] The book, written by Mabel after Theodore died soon after they returned to England from Oman, viewed all landscapes through the perspective of how the land might be useful to the Empire:
If this tract of country comes into the hands of a civilizing nation, it will be capable of great and useful development…and a health resort for the inhabitants [i.e. British inhabitants] of the burnt-up centers of Arabian commerce, Aden and Maskat (274).
The Gibalis, here referred to as Qara, traveling with the Bents, however, saw the Bents as equals. The Qara men she traveled with always addressed her, to her anger, only as “Mabel” (with the prefix when calling a person “ya,” i.e., Ya Mabel!) and informed the Bents that “they did not wish us to give them orders of any kind as they were sheikhs” and “We are gentleman” (258, 266). The mountain people of Dhofar, Mabel Bent writes, are “endowed with a spirit of independence which makes him resent the slightest approach to legal supervision…They would not march longer than they liked; they would only take us where they wished… and if we asked them not to sing at night and disturb our rest, they always set to work with greater vigor” (248).
But she does include a fair amount of real information, taking the time for example to explain how indigo is used to dye clothes (145). She describes the scenery with careful attention to plants, rock formations, distances, etc. (e.g., Wadi Ghersid, 256; Wadi Nahast, 265) and, noticing that the language spoken in the “Gara” [Qara] mountains was not a dialect, she includes a few words (275). Some of her information is still current. She mentions, for example, that oaths “to divorce a favorite wife, are really good” (180) and the technique of cooking on stones (250) which I have seen practiced several times.
The Bents eventually stop struggling to control and “we gave up any attempt to guide our own footsteps, but left ourselves entirely in his [Sheik Sehel] hands, to take us whether he would and spend as long about it as he liked” (257) but her summation is typical of British Victorian-era travelers: “we had discovered a real Paradise in the wilderness, which will be a rich prize for the civilized nation which is enterprising enough to appropriate it” (276).
A geologist who traveled with Bertram Thomas on a short visit to Dhofar in the 19020s writes
Regarding the interesting non-Arab tribes, the Mahri and the Gara…They are entirely nomad, and live under the shelter of trees or caves. They have no cultivation, but live on the produce of large herds of cattle and some camels. I found them always very friendly, and on several occasions I was persuaded to partake of a meal with them…Their diet consists exclusively of meat and milk products. Firearms are very scare among these tribes, instead they are armed with very poor quality swords and small shields of wood or shark-skin. They are also very adept at throwing a short pointed stick. (Lees 1928 456, 457).
As the title suggests, Bertram Thomas’s Arabia Felix Across the Empty Quarter of Arabia (1932) is happy book which details his famous first crossing of the Empty Quarter starting from Salalah. He begins the book with a general history told with imperialistic British moralizing judgment, i.e., “for where treachery is a habit of mind, men are actuated by the stern necessities of the moment, not by any principles of morality.” As the Bents discovered, Thomas asserts that “A European who would travel happily must be prepared to adapt himself to their standards” but “[o]ften I found myself the only member of my party in the saddle, while the others walked for long hours to spare their mounts” (192, 176). The main differences between Thomas and the Bents is that he traveled later, (he arrived in Salalah October 8th, 1930), did longer and more difficult journeys and was more interested in recording the Omanis’ speech and habits.
Many of the details he sets out are still prevalent as with the cushions hard as “medicine balls” in “bright scarlet or emerald-colored trappings” (17), the description of a dance (34), food preparation (e.g., making bread 166) and the list of shrines (85). He notices that men in the mountains do not eat chicken, a habit that is still followed by older men from the mountain tribes (59). Thomas tells the story of killing a chameleon brought in by an old man who then exclaims “it is treachery. I found it [the animal] innocent in a bush and it came along with me trusting and this is what I consent to happen to it” (63). I see exactly the same framework of not killing an animal being used by the Gibali men I know, to the point of a man not killing a scorpion which has stung him.
Thomas and Thesiger are divided by the Second World War. Thesiger traveled through present day Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates between 1946 and 1950. In addition to Arabian Sands (1959), he published many articles on his travels (1946, 1948, 1949, 1950). Thesiger marks a break with the previous writers as he is neither an accidental traveler (like the shipwreck narratives) nor is he traveling for imperial benefits (anchorage/ supply depots) or even to collect knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but for personal interest and personal challenge.
Thesiger, like Thomas, crossed the Rub al Khali but he spent more time with his guides and was far more interested in their lives than Thomas. In talking about Dhofar, he mentions the traditional dark blue cloth (45), mountain honey for costal sardine trade (49), and throwing sticks (49) that are evident in the Bents’ and Thomas’ description, but he goes farther than any of them in explaining both his point of view and the point of view of his companions.
Thomas reports that “each of my companions not only knew at a glance the footmarks of every camel and man of my caravan, but claimed to know those of his absent tribe, and not a few of his enemies” (178). Thesiger gives the same information but includes specific examples (e.g., 122). Thomas notes that “where food or water were short, no one of them would think of not sharing it equally with his companions, and if anyone was away, perhaps tending his camels, all would wait his return to eat together” (157); this is an accurate description (still in practice today) but he did not ‘live’ this as Thesiger did, sitting thirsty and impatient for the others to come (65).
After Thesiger, the next travel writer is Jan (then James) Morris’ journey with Sultan Said bin Taymur from Salalah to the north of Oman in 1956 as described in Sultan in Oman (1957/ 2008). Whereas Dhofaris are discussed with accuracy and respect by Thesiger, Morris lets loose with insults as demeaning as the Bents. It is rather a surprise, after the gradually lowering racist/ condescending tone seen in the arc from the Bents through Thomas to Thesiger, to read her smug, complacent, and judgmental book.
She begins by widely overstating her achievement, declaring that she undertook “The last classic journeys of the Arabian Peninsula,” as if being driven in a jeep from Salalah to Muscat in 1956 was on par with Dougherty or Philby (1). To drive home the (moribund) English tradition, she notes that “Curzon and Gertrude Bell rose with us approvingly” (2).
She describes Gibalis as
tribes of strange non-Arab people…with their poor clothes, their indigo-stained faces, their immemorial prejudices. [In the monsoon season] the plain was full of these queer Stone Age figures, lean and handsome, and they wandered like fauns through the little marketplaces of Salala. (22)
They have “shaggy,” “strange” and “fuzzy” hair and practice “obscure rituals, taboos, and prejudices” (30, 39, 31). In keeping with the general tone of relegating the inhabitants to prehistoric times, there is no mention of guns. The people “hurl in the general direction of their neighbors the heavy throwing sticks (less scientific than boomerangs) with which they were sometimes quaintly armed” (40). It is clear than even in Thomas’ accounts, much less Thesiger, that the men of this region had access to and knowledge of guns. In fact, the cover of one edition is one of Thesiger’s photos showing Bin Ghabaisha holding a rifle.
The descriptions illuminate more about Morris’ travels than Oman, i.e., Risut is “Like a bay in Cornwall or northern California” (20). “The deeper we penetrated into these Qara foothills, the more lifeless and unearthly the country seemed… It was like an empty Lebanon;” the “abyss of Dahaq” is compared to “Boulder or Grand Coulee” and the Qara mountains “felt like England without the churches, or Kentucky without the white palings” (27, 27, 38). A small lake is “‘Better than the Backs,’ said my companion, ‘not so many undergraduates’” which only makes sense if the reader knows this is a term referring to the place where several Cambridge colleges back onto the River Cam (30).
Travel books about Dhofar from the 1980s onwards
Rory Allen’s Oman: Under Arabian Skies (2010) focus almost exclusively on the authors’ feelings, and when describing Omanis, the prose turns a distinct shade of orientalist purple, as in:
There is a sense of lawlessness [with the Bedu of Sharqiyah]…this anarchy gives one a sense of freedom and of a being without constraint. Rousseau’s “Noble Savage” comes to mind when looking at these Bedu, and they are noble and have not lost that primitive force inside. In Jungian terms their primitive psyche remains intact, that primeval power and urge that makes the Bedu so strong, so essential, individual, intuitive and spontaneous and above all it makes him so vital and impossible to control or rein in. This makes him the free spirit that down deep we all want to be. (Allen 2010 61)
There are several books by travelers or ex-pats about Oman which include a chapter or two about a weekend or short vacation in Dhofar. One of the first, and worst, examples is Suzanne St Albans, who visited in the late 1970s and wrote Where Time Stood Still: A Portrait of Oman (1980). Reminiscent of Jan Morris, she says of Gibalis that “certain freakish customs still linger on among the more primitive tribes” and gives “witchcraft murders” as an example (25). The Jibalis are “wild savages” who “refuse to be absorbed, disciplined or even understood” (153). She refers to them as “primitive aborigines in the Qara [Mountains]” and “grand, pastoral, cave-dwelling noblemen have never worked with their hands” (152).[10] How would “primitive” people living in caves and herding flocks have survived if they had “never worked with their hands”?
Her writing creates a vision of an ancient, primitive people which erases the reality of the Dhofar region in the late 1970s. St Albans only carefully describes the life of a small percentage of the inhabitants, living in caves and rough dwellings in the mountains. She discusses “witch doctors” but not the many mosques or daily religious practices of Dhofaris (154). In Salalah at this time there was an airport, Holiday Inn, “shops and offices and ultra-modern television centre” and hospital (180) but she never shows Omanis interacting in/ working in these modern surroundings. The “comfortable seaside bungalow” she stays in is owned by British ex-pats who are described but when visiting the “model farm” she discusses the cows; there is no reference to Omanis who work there (163, 164).
Her account of the Dhofar War (1965-1975) shows sympathy only for the British soldiers who fought on the side of the government, which makes sense given that the first ‘thank you’ in her Acknowledgements section is to Brigadier Peter Thwaites. The second is “The Sultan’s Armed Forces provided transport where I wanted to go” (ix). Most of the other people mentioned are also British and military.
Musallim bin Nafl, the first leader of this revolution, is dismissed by the Duchess as “a useless loafer” and a “shiftless, bitter, dissatisfied layabout” but when she visits mountain villages she is appalled at the conditions (155, 156). She never connects the revolution encouraged by Musallim and the desperate poverty endured by his people. The difficulties of daily life she herself witnessed encouraged the mountain people to fight against their government which denied them the basic amenities of modern life such as schools and electricity.
Maria Dekeersmaeker’s The DNA of Salalah, Dhofar: A Tourist Guide (2011) is a guide just for the Dhofar region but it is unfortunately confusing with sentences such as “Horizontalism and parrellism are the trends in urban development of Salalah city. Off roads are the guidelines to the Rub al Khali Desert, the Dhofar Mountain Range and the coastal plains” (153).
The non sequiturs make the book difficult to read. The first section is called “In the Footsteps of the Sultan.” One sub-section entitled “Beloved Mother” about the Sultan’s mother starts with a discussion of falaj, water channels (32). The sub-section “Renaissance Landmarks Education” includes several paragraphs about football (soccer) stadiums and clubs in Salalah (34). The sub-section “Landscape Architecture” is about the Salalah Port and the next sub-section, “The European Connection,” is about the cement factory.
Her discussion of modern Dhofaris makes misleading mistakes to highlight the exoticness, i.e. “real Dhofar men wear a skirt and a t-shirt” (163) with a focus on the rural/ pre-modern. She divides Dhofaris into three groups (Bedu, Jebali and Hadr) and then describes their lives in terms of what animals they take care, as if in 2010 all three groups only herded animals and fished (55-56).
Come From Away 
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