I love the Dhfoari tradition of “killing the snake” (hunger) by inviting close friends to a pre-Ramadan gathering with a beautiful and delicious array of food.
Common Food Terms in Dhofar, Oman (updated)
Food Essays – Grocery Stores, Recipes, Expat Food and Littering
Practicalities of Moving to the Arabian Peninsula: Cultural Understandings of Water and Food
I was looking through posts and found this one from Aug. 2022 – in relation to my forthcoming book on marriages, it’s a good example of how I do research in terms of what I ask and what I am told
“What is your favorite fruit?”
I stared in surprise at the younger relative who had just asked me that. There are a group of us eating breakfast and chatting; the question seemed odd to me, but I answered. Then I realized that I should ask “back.” So I asked her what her favorite fruit is.
Thinking about that exchange, I decided that I am out of practice for being asked questions. With my friends in Dhofar, I usually follow their pattern which is “if you want someone to know something, tell them.” Direct questions are rare, especially questions about expressing a preference.
At a friend’s house a few weeks later, I was talking to her son about of interest of his and ran into the opposite problem. I recognized afterwards that I should have asked what “his favorite” was – I had missed a good chance to hear his opinions.
Remembering those two moments in which I felt out of tune with American conversational tactics made me consider how I use and don’t use questions while doing research. Part of my hesitation about asking Dhofaris about their ideas and lives comes from trying to find a balance between a good friend and a good researcher. It’s not necessarily a tension, but it means (as Dhofaris say) “holding myself,” trying to think before speaking and choosing the right time and reason for asking for information.
As one example, a few years ago I asked one of the research guys (X) if he was free to have a picnic with the group on a Thursday night. He told me that his sister was getting married. I read that statement as a way of shutting down, not opening up, further conversation. If he had simply said, “I am busy” I probably would have asked if he wanted to meet with the group on Friday. I interpreted him telling me about the wedding, as if he was saying, “I and the people who you know in my family and extended family will all be busy all weekend” given that weddings are usually held on Friday or Saturday nights and in the days before, all members of the household are getting ready.
Dhofaris usually only talk about relatives when there is a specific need and usually only ask if there is a specific reason, such as asking after someone who you were told was sick or going to travel. Hearing that his sister was getting married made me want to ask a lot of questions; with Americans, asking about a sibling’s wedding is a positive sign of interest in your friend. But I couldn’t justify asking him. In my opinion, there was no need for me to know details. Even though I wanted to know, I felt that I had to accept Dhofari standards so I replied with the conventional statements about how I wished the couple well and hoped everything would be well. The next time I saw him I asked about “the wedding” in general terms. He affirmed that everything went well and that was the end of the topic.
Later, the situation changed. I was writing the section of my Houseways book about how Dhofaris move rooms (or don’t) when they get married or divorced. One facet that came out in interviews was whether a married woman would spend the night in her family’s home with her husband. I had information from a few women, but I wanted to get a man’s perspective.
So during a picnic, I told X that, if it was ok, I wanted to ask a few questions about where couples stayed after they were married. He agreed.
The next time I saw him, I pulled out my notebook and, even though I had done other interviews with him about topics related to houses, I started again at the beginning by explaining the Houseways project, then about my current focus about how people moved between houses. I said I wanted to ask some questions on that topic and that I would not write his name, tribe or any details that would allow readers to identify him or any family members.
When he agreed, I picked up my pen, opened my book and started in. I asked him about which houses he had spent the night in as a child and after he was married. Then I said, “Is it ok if I ask about your sister?” When he agreed, I asked a whole series of questions: How often does your sister come to visit your family house (where she was raised)? When your sister comes to visit, does she spend the night? How often? Does her husband stay the night with her? etc.
Then I moved on to general questions (do you know of any examples of married women who spend the night in their family’s house with their husband?) and hypotheticals. Then I paged back to a previous interview. I told him that I had asked a woman (Y) from Z group of tribes about this issue, I was going to read what she said and could he please give his opinion on her attitude.
I wrote up the interviews, tried to figure out the variables of the decision tree of who stays where in which house, then discussed what I had written with X, Y and other informants. At the end, I had a few paragraphs which I think accurately sum up the issue.
In the general context of talking between friends, asking X about his sister was not OK. But in the specific context of me trying to figure out how married Dhofari women maneuver through various houses, asking X questions directly related to my research was acceptable. He was helping me understand a world-view, i.e. what choices people perceived they had and how those choices were decided.
Selected Books on Dhofar in Arabic
Ethnographic Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman
(book cover photo and post photo by Onazia Shaikh)
https://anthempress.com/books/ethnographic-reflections-on-marriage-in-dhofar-oman-hb
Examines how middle-class Muslim men and women in Dhofar, Oman, make and negotiate marital choices, tracing every stage of marriage through their own personal accounts.
Studying Marriage in Dhofar, Oman explains the choices middle-class, Muslim, tribal Dhofari men and women make when creating a life together. Based on 19 years observations of and discussions about Omani marriages, the book shows all the steps of marriage, including how people decide to get married, the wedding invitations and parties are arranged, the newlyweds’ home is organised, the work within a marriage is delineated, and a marriage succeeds or falls apart. Unlike many texts about family life on the Arabian Peninsula, the author spoke extensively to both men and women, so that the book is rich with examples of Omanis explaining their personal decisions.
There are no comparable texts which look at the complete scope of a marriage from deciding to marry, to asking to marry, arranging the wedding parties, creating a successful marriage, and coping with stresses such as children, divorce, polygamy and widowhood.
The book starts with a discussion of how a man might find a bride and how a young woman might create or avoid situations in which she would be asked to marry. There is a discussion of how people might fight to (or not to) marry and all the steps taken after the engagement, including sending out announcements and preparing where the new couple will live. All types of marriage parties are described, including taking photos and displaying the gifts. Next, there is an overview of how the couple can create a marital relationship, followed by an examination of what might go wrong in a marriage, which looks at topics such as incompatibility, gross misconduct and divorce. There is a chapter on pregnancy, which includes a discussion on how children are named. The books ends with a short overview of specific aspects of marriage such as who has free time and what ‘family time’ means.
Recreating Culture – Lessons from Bakeries and Cafeterias
Reflections – Dhofari Conversations
Photographs of Dhofar by Onazia Shaikh
Onaiza Shaikh, whose photographs I have used for several projects, sent me several gorgeous photos so I thought I would do a short post on frankincense in Dhofar.
two reputable stores which sell Dhofari frankincense:
We Remember What Frankincense Was Meant to Be. For thousands of years, frankincense was an offering. Carried by hand. Burned with intention. Passed down through memory. Sacrasoul exists to remember. To keep ancient materials whole. The resins. The oils. The traditions. And the people who have guarded them, quietly, for generations. We are not here to improve what already knows how to endure. We are here to pass it on — unchanged.
Pure Aromatics Since 1997 – Established in 1997, stands as New York’s quintessential shop for natural aromatics, including essential oils, absolutes, and enfleurages. Our steadfast commitment to natural essence means we strictly avoid synthetics in all our offerings. Alongside aromatic oils, we’re proud to present an exquisite selection of hydrosols, bespoke botanical perfumes, skincare, haircare, and specialty items like roll-ons, raw incense, and handcrafted frankincense candles.
essay about the use of frankincense in Dhfoari homes
Crafting a Home: Interior Home Design in Southern Oman
a few texts about frankincense/ the ecology of Dhofar
Al-Hikmani, Hadi and Andrew Spalton. 2021. Dhofar: Monsoon Mountains to Sand Seas – Sultanate of Oman. Chicago: Gilgamesh Publishing.
Ball, Lawrence, Douglas MacMillan, Joseph Tzanopoulos, Andrew Spalton, Hadi Al Hikmani and Mark Moritz. 2020. “Contemporary Pastoralism in the Dhofar Mountains of Oman.” Human Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-020-00153-5
Boom, Andrea. 2024. “Small, Green, and Prickly: Local Botanical Knowledge in Modern South Arabian Languages.” Proceedings of the Semitic Studies Section at the 34th DOT at Freie Universität Berlin. Simona Olivieri and Shabo Talay, eds. 85-99.
Janzen, Jorg. 2000. “The Destruction of Resources among the Mountain Nomads of Dhofar,” in The Transformation of Nomadic Society in the Arab East, University of Cambridge Oriental Publications 58. Martha Mundy and Basim Musallam, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 160-75.
—. 1986. Nomads in the Sultanate of Oman: Tradition and Development in Dhofar. London: Westview Press.
“Frankincense Research and Conservation.” n.d. Environmental Society of Oman. https://eso.org.om/frankincense/
Johnson, Stephen, Ali Bait Said, Petr Vahalík, Lukáš Karas, Maïa Sarrouf Willson, Frans Bongers. 2025. Rapid Conservation Assessment of Boswellia Sacra in Oman Reveals Complex Threat and Population Patterns.” Journal of Arid Environments 229.
Lewis, Krista. 2022. “The Land of Frankincense: Dhofari Sites as National and World Heritage,” in Sultan Qaboos and Modern Oman, 1970–2020. Allen James Fromherz and Abdulrahman al-Salimi, eds. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.67-88.
Miller, Anthony, Miranda Morris, and Susanna Stuart-Smith, Plants of Dhofar, the Southern Region of Oman: Traditional, Economic, and Medicinal Uses, (Muscat: Office of the Adviser for Conservation of the Environment, Diwan of Royal Court, 1988).
Morris, Miranda. “The Aloe and the Frankincense Tree in Southern Arabia: Different Approaches to Their Use.” Herbal Medicines in Yemen: Traditional Knowledge and Practice, and Their Value for Today’s World. Ingrid Hehmeyer and Hanne Schönig, eds. Brill: Boston, 2012. 103-126.
—. “The Harvesting of Frankincense in Dhofar.” In Alessandra Avanzini, ed. Profumi d’Arabia. Rome: L’Erma Bretschneider, 1997. 231-250.
Sale, J. 1980. “The Ecology of the Mountain Region of Dhofar.” The Journal of Oman Studies: Special Report 2: The Oman Flora and Fauna Survey 1975. Muscat: Diwan of H. M. for Protocol. 25-54.
Tabook, Salim Bakhit. 1997. Tribal Practices and Folklore of Dhofar, Sultanate of Oman. Unpublished PhD thesis, Faculty of Arts, Exeter University.
Watson, Janet, Jon Lovett and Roberta Morano, eds. 2023. Language and Ecology in Southern and Eastern Arabia. London: Bloomsbury.
Wilson, Jack, Janet C.E. Watson, Andrea Boom and Saeed al-Qumairi. 2022. “Language, Gesture and Ecology in Modern South Arabian Languages,” in Language and Ecology in Southern and Eastern Arabia. Janet Watson, Jon Lovett and Roberta Morano, eds. 15-44.
Zimmerle, William. 2017. Crafting Cuboid Incense Burners in the Land of Frankincense: The Dhofar Ethnoarchaeology Preservation Project. Washington: Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center/Liberty House Press.
‘Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman’ is accepted for publication
Photographs of Dhofar by Onazia Shaikh
I am very grateful to Onazia Shaikh for allowing me to use her photos for the cover of my forth-coming book, Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman, and this website. She takes gorgeous photos which reflect the beauty of Dhofar.
I am happy to announce that my 5th book, Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman, has been accepted for publication. I would like to thank Onaiza Shaikh for letting me use her beautiful photos for this book and my webpage. Onaiza writes: “I was born and raised in the beautiful city of Salalah, Oman. Though I’m an Indian citizen, my roots in Salalah run deep, the city holds a special place in my heart and continues to shape who I am.”
Reflections on Marriage in Dhofar, Oman explains the choices middle-class Dhofari men and women make when creating a life together. Based on 19 years observations of and discussions about Omani marriages, the book shows all the steps of marriage including how people decide to get married, the wedding invitations and parties are arranged, the newlyweds’ home is organized, the work within a marriage is delineated and a marriage succeeds or falls apart. Unlike many texts about family life on the Arabian Peninsula, the author spoke extensively to both men and women.
Ethnography – Finding the Middle Ground, part 1 of Discussing Photographs
Ethnography: Conversations about Men/ Masculinity, part 1
The patience and tolerance to live harmoniously in an unfamiliar culture; the fortitude to be content with less than comfortable circumstances for prolonged periods; an understanding of and sympathy with a foreign history and religion; a willingness to learn a new language; the flexibility, imagination and humility necessary to climb into the head of people who live by a very different set of assumptions; none of these are found automatically in our modern developed Euro-Atlantic culture. (Gardiner, In the Service of the Sultan, 174)
Me Talk Pretty Never: Learning Arabic, part 1
Recreating Culture – Lessons from Bakeries and Cafeterias
Research: Article on Theodore and Mabel Bent Has Been Published
Back from Ubar or What to Read if You Insist on Staying Home
I am re-reading Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World (1922), one of my favorite travel books as it is an excellent description of people clinging to ‘civilization’ in difficult circumstances. This is an essay I wrote in 2004 about travel books.
[O]ur passions are never accidental. We do not by chance…decide to specialize in epaulets (Evan Connell, A Long Desire)
Friends of mine have a little house on a two-acre island in a small lake in quiet Ontario. I woke up one morning there and realized that from that point on, I would be going back – back in the boat to shore, back in my friend’s van across the border to the bus station, back on a bus to the train station, back in a train to the city where I lived, back on the metro to the station near my house, back in a taxi to my house. It amused me, that from that point I was merely retracing steps. As I was about to walk down to the dock, I realized I was on the very outer limit of the web.
In Women’s Ways of Knowing, the authors posit that women feel more comfortable being in the middle of connections (webs) while men prefer the edge. Perhaps one of the reasons I like traveling and reading about traveling, is that I get to go all the way out to edge and peer over. I rather enjoy edges, that moment you realize the limitations. I like ‘you can’t get there from here’ and all those Italian strikes that keep you stranded for days. I love the moment when the subway car goes underground and the annoying guy yelling into his cell phone suddenly pulls it away from his ear with disgust and shoves it into his bag. You get to the farthest point and there you are, stuck; you now have to wait, turn around, finagle, throw a hissy fit.
If I was going to be perfectly honest about it – I’d say close your computer and go buy Road to Oxiana, West with the Night, Three Men in a Boat, Caesar’s Vast Ghost and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but I am so seldom able to make people do what they ought to, even when, perhaps especially when, I know what is best. Those are all real travel books, this is a semi-travel essay. But although I’m not promising enjoyment (go read Mark Salzman), you will get a little edification, like it or don’t.
The question is not now, not ever, “why travel?” The solar system travels, Earth travels, you travel. The question is why travel outside of those tiny, minuscule patches of territory you know. “Ahem,” says a voice in the back, “I have lived in Boston all my life, hardly minuscule.”
But do you know where the Tufts college students party, the best Bollywood theater, the real Italian place in Little Italy, where to get your eyebrows threaded, where the cops drink? Do you know Jamaica Plain and Watertown? A person could live in Back Bay their whole life and never know Quincy. Face it, you don’t really know your hometown. You probably don’t even know your neighbors and, if you haven’t been paying attention, you might not even know yourself.
Yet, traveling is not the way to find yourself in any grand scheme: you go along with yourself and your main insights are ‘I hate grey carpeting’ and ‘McDonald’s has better pancakes than Burger King.’ People are always squawking “Paul Theroux” at me, well read his books – what are his insights? He hates it here. It is dirty and the people aren’t nice. And he also hates it over here. It’s dirty. And, quelle surprise, he hates this other place as well. In addition, he hates it over there, too depressing. And, by coincidence, he is unhappy here as well. The people who are impressed with this are mistaking indigestion for insight.
You will get those (very infrequent) moments of revelation, almost all of which will be exasperatingly saccharine. Like me waking up my first morning in Italy and seeing, through a thick fog, a stone wall which enclosed a grove of olive trees (olive trees!) with sheep grazing underneath.
I went to Corfu, Rhodes, Cyprus, and Provence because I was going to write my dissertation on Gerald Durrell and Lawrence Durrell. Then, I spent the night in a sort of bed and breakfast place in Pathos and realized that after six months, I knew pretty much nothing about the Durrells and I would have to expand my focus to all travel writers. If you can’t fail little – fail big.
Most scholarly books on travel writing take some small selection and examine it closely, such as Janice Bailey-Goldschmidt’s and Martin Kalfatovic’s article, “Sex, Lies and European Hegemony: Travel Literature and Ideology,” which sounds like it covers everything a person would need to know. But is it only about European descriptions of travel in India until 1761.
When I was doing my dissertation on travel writing, I read all over the place: Pausanias’ Description of Greece, 2nd century B.C.; Egeria’s Travels, a European abbess’ account of her travels to the Holy Land c. 385 A.D.; Gustave Flaubert, Isabella Bird, James Fenton, Anthony Smith.
I ran through ’Abdallah ibn Battuta’s Travels in Asia and Africa: 1325-1354; Bernal Diaz’s The Conquest of New Spain, a Spanish soldiers’ account of his part in the defeat of the Aztec empire under Hernán Cortés in 1521; Matsuo Basho’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and Other Travel Sketches and Back Roads to Far Towns, a Japanese Buddhist monk’s walking tours from the mid to late 1680s.
I adore the English canonicals: Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa, 1897; Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World, 1922; Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, 1969; Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, 1958.
I read the ones you have to: John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, 1962; Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia, 1977; Jonathan Raban, Mary Morris, Redmond O’Hanlon, Bill Bryson, and Pico Iyer. And the ones I wanted to: Mark Twain, Mark Salzman, Eric Hansen, Tim Cahill, Calvin Trillin, and Robin Magowan.
It’s a measure of my temperament that I deliberately avoided Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s History of the Expedition under the Command of Lewis and Clark, 1814 and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, 1841. But I devoured J. R. Ackerley’s Hindoo Holiday: An Indian Journal, 1932; Vikram Seth’s From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet, 1987; and Anthony Smith’s Blind White Fish in Persia, 1953. What heaven to find No News From Throat Lake by Lawrence Donegan, 2001, Getting Stoned with Savages by J. Maarten Troost, 2006 and Driving Over Lemons by Chris Stewart, 1999.
And then there are the immortals: Gerald Durrell and Lawrence Durrell, Wilfred Thesiger, Dervla Murphy (would someone please knight her? She would probably turn it down but, honestly, the gesture ought to be made); and dear, cranky Amelia Edwards, A Thousand Miles up the Nile, 1877.
I got my Ph.D. and moved to the Middle East to teach. While there, one of the places I wanted to visit was Ubar, a stop on an ancient Arabian trading route whose “refinding” is recounted in breathless, “Entertainment Tonight!” prose in Nicholas Clapp’s The Road to Ubar, 1998. I had thought at one point I was close enough to get to it, but it turned out to be much farther away (slavish attention to maps is the hobgoblin of little minds), but I promised myself that I would figure out how to get to Ubar before I moved back to the States.
This involved finding someone to watch the cat, deciphering out airline schedules, securing hotel reservations, faxing the tour company, getting the right visa: pedestrian, unromantic toils. I woke up on the momentous day and hit the first disappointment, I did not have a “real” tour guide; he was a perfectly pleasant guy, but he wasn’t local and had no good stories. Second disappointment – we weren’t going in a Land Rover. As far as I’m concerned, for land travel it is Land Rover or Land Cruiser pick-up or just stay home.
We drove for hours up through the mountains (I think Eden must have looked like this) and then along through the flat, desiccated landscape until the desert started.
The museum at Ubar was closed, so my guide decided to “show me” the Empty Quarter, the Rub al-Khali, an area of 250,000 squares miles of sand dunes. It is the size of France, Belgium and Holland with sand dunes as high as 925 feet. We continued on the road for a few miles, passed a small collection of derelict buildings, then onto drifting sand where the road disappeared. For about 50 yards. Then the car (did I mention it was NOT a Land Rover?) got stuck. It took us about twenty minutes to get unstuck, then the driver turned right around and we were back on the road, headed back to the hotel.
Perhaps aware that the day was not quite the happy culmination of a year’s hope and expectation, after an hour or so, he pulled off the road, navigating between rock outcroppings until he stopped in front of a small group of stubby, scraggily trees with peeling bark.
“Frankincense!” he exclaimed proudly.
Now this indeed was something. Unexpected and marvelous – to actually see the trees close up, especially since the lore is that they are rigorously guarded. Perhaps the driver took every single tourist to this stand of trees. But it was hidden from the road, without other tire tracks, desolate. A quest fulfilled and an extra, unexpected adventure: it was time to go home. Then I was home and what is there to do at home, except plan the next travel?
Verstehen/ Einfühlen in Arabian Sands (1959): Wilfred Thesiger as Traveler and Anthropologist – 2013
MIT – “the nicest of geniuses” – being pleasant and helpful
MIT – “the nicest of geniuses” – explaining
In my book, Researching and Working on the Arabian Peninsula: Creating Effective Interactions (Palgrave Macmillan 2025), I have a section about being “close-to-local” on the Arabian Peninsula if you have managed to do one of several actions, the last of which is: mastered the art of listening politely to people who are making statements that you don’t think are true.
When I wrote that I thought, I need to explain that point further as it could be misinterpreted. I don’t mean: have the ability to listen to liars without reacting. I mean: have the ability to understand that people don’t believe what you believe, and it is not your purpose in life to change their mind. This is a skill I call expat veneer.
If you spend a lot of time living overseas and gaining an understanding of how people see the world differently than you and make different choices that you, you often give up the need to make everyone conform to your expectations. You don’t need to talk (much less argue) about everything; you stay in the safe havens of discussing recipes, interesting places to visit, nice hotels and where to buy mouse traps.
When I left Oman and moved back to the States, I decided to live in Cambridge and try to get a job again at MIT. This seemed like merely prudence, go back to a place I knew and job I had experience in, but when I stated at MIT I felt instantly at home.
It wasn’t just that I was reliving my history – it was that my co-workers had the same kind of expat veneer as my friends in Oman. In thinking this through, I realized that many expats and MIT employees come to the same realization along different paths.
For people who have lived in several different countries, there is no reason to get upset if someone eats X for breakfast or has Y religious creed or wears Z type of clothing. Long-term expats have seen people make all sorts of choices that are antithetical to their beliefs, and they are not interested in fighting over every detail of daily life.
MIT employees, especially academics and administrators who are leaders in their field, know how much time and effort it took them to become an expert and don’t expect others to know the same amount. Further, they are aware that their great knowledge about X is predicated on a great lack of knowledge about Y. You can’t be a leading authority on everything.
Both expats and people who work at MIT have a sense of how large the world is and how many multiples it contains.
Practicalities of Moving to the Arabian Peninsula: How to Sit, Not Wear Shoes and Use Your Hands
Practicalities of Moving to the Arabian Peninsula: Cultural Understandings of Water and Food
Ethnography – Finding the Middle Ground, part 1 of Discussing Photographs
Come From Away 
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