You take a step back in time when you travel to Oman – tradition is deeply engrained in its culture. Walking through the old souks in the capital city of Muscat, frankincense smoke veils each stall selling traditional goods and spices. Nearly all Omani men still wear the traditional dishdasha, a full length white robe identifiable by the tassel on the collar, and the kuma, a patterned cylindrical cap. Food is still eaten strictly with your right hand. Yet, despite all of this, the tradition I was hunting for is rapidly disappearing.

For centuries, Omanis have taken to the sea in dhows, wooden boats once ubiquitous around the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Omanis were traders, fisherman, pearlers, and explorers thanks to their proficient dhow building skills. These boats were also integral in the expansion of the Omani Empire, which at its peak extended down the eastern coast of Africa and up to the coast of Pakistan. Now, like so many cultural elements around the world, the wooden dhow is rapidly being replaced by modern technology. Fishermen prefer the ease of gas powered motors and sturdy fibreglass hulls, and the demand for dhows has plummeted. Just one hundred years ago, there were over ten dhow building factories spread across the coastline of Oman. Now, just one remains in the small city of Sur, and its existence is increasingly under threat.

I began the two and a half hour drive from Muscat and headed southwest along the coastal highway toward the city of Sur. Out of my passenger side window, squeezing me against the coastline, sit the Hajar Mountains, the tallest mountain range in the Gulf region. These mountains have shaped Oman’s seafaring history, separating the country into two distinct regions of coastal and desert existences. For years, Omanis prospered along the coast, establishing small villages in the nooks of the jagged coastline. You see this still in the layout of the city of Muscat today – many small, separate villages and neighbourhoods connected only by the modern mega highway built in the 1980’s. Out my driver side window, docked at Muttrah Port, sat the Sultan of Oman’s two personal mega yachts, Fulk al Salamah and Al Said. At one hundred sixty four and one hundred fifty five meters, respectively, these modern yachts are a blatant reminder of the battle between modernity and tradition that Oman is forced to balance.

I arrived at the workshop in Sur and nearly missed it. Its unassuming exterior with high walls and tiny sign keep it a secret amongst a chaotic intersection as you enter the city. The sign above the intricately carved door read ‘Boat Factor, Sur, Working All Days 7:00 AM to 5:30 PM’. In fact, they have been working all days, without pause, since 1730.

I paid someone at the door one Omani riyal to look around. I shuffled through the wood shavings and glue stained pavement toward the back of the workshop and was greeted immediately by the shops main project of the past two years, a massive ghanjah style dhow being built for a wealthy family in Kuwait. Despite being in the shop for two years, its progress had stalled due to lack of funding. It’s ornately designed trim was covered in makeshift scaffolding and wooden ladders, some of which seemed to have not moved in quite a while. Steps at the stern of the boat invited me to view the progress on the inside of the hull. The boats ribs were clearly hand hewn with rough edges and crude joints – the workshop tries whenever possible to keep traditional woodworking and joining methods to ensure that these practices continue on.  

In 1970, Oman had ten total kilometres of paved road, no secondary schools, and just one hospital in the whole country. The average life expectancy hovered around 42 years. Since 1932, the country had been ruled by Sultan Said bin Taimur, an oppressive and isolationist ruler who spent nearly all of Oman’s petrodollars on his lavish lifestyle and fighting Marxist insurgents in the region of Dhofar. Resentment toward the Sultan grew during the mid and late sixties, so much so that Sultan Said bin Taimur’s son, Qaboos bin Said, devised a plan to overthrow his father with some significant help from British intelligence. On the 23^rd of July, 1970, British-led forces stormed the al-Husn Palace in Salalah and arrested the Sultan. The only blood spilled was that of the now former Sultan after he accidentally shot himself in the foot.

The young Qaboos bin Said overtook a country in shambles, but was committed to changing the trajectory of his country’s development. After finally suppressing the insurgency in Dhofar that had plagued Oman’s growth for years, Qaboos focused on using Oman’s income from its rich natural resources toward unifying the country. Like in many Gulf countries during the 1970’s, economic growth in Oman exploded. Highways were paved across the entire country, schools and hospitals were built in the most inaccessible of towns, and its GDP per capital grew by over 1400% in ten years. But, unlike its Saudi and Emirati neighbours, Oman and Sultan Qaboos took special care to ensure that the boom in growth did not trump traditional Omani practices.

Men were encouraged to continue to wear their traditional clothing, and jobs in the government and public sector were reserved for only Omanis. One of the most notable of these policies can be seen in Oman’s architecture which was required to match traditional styles – a visit to the Royal Opera House in Muscat, built only in 2001, shows quite clearly the value of tradition that Omanis strive to keep. Even with this intense effort for cultural preservation, unavoidable elements of globalisation still creep into Omani society. Luxury hotel brands have popped up around the country and western fast food restaurants dominate new building developments. Rapid urbanisation has also strained rural economies reliant on agriculture. Seen as economic progress in the eyes of some, these changed inevitably threaten the very values that Oman had fought to protect. The disappearance of the dhow in favour of foreign made motors and hulls is no exception.

Next to the ghanjah lay the workshop’s smaller projects, the only boats that day that were being worked on. Three of the builders were tasked with attaching the boats siding to the inner ribs. One sat on the ground, using a hand chisel to shave down wooden dowels into rough nails. He passed them to his partner who dipped them in some sort of epoxy. Next, the final builder jammed the peg into the side of the boat using a wooden mallet. They would leave them overnight to dry, then come back in the morning and saw off the exposed part of the nail, repeating this process over for hundreds of holes along each side of the hull. In incredibly crude Arabic, I asked the man shaping the nails about the boat next to him, a baghlah style dhow used typically for cross sea travel. The boat looked to be nearly finished and had a beautiful and intricate trim below its gunwales. “No money,” he said to me in English, without looking up from his workspace.

As if to remind the workshop of its vulnerability, the harbour entrance in Sur was lined with modern style skiff style boats, covering the beaches except for where ribs of old dhows remained. It was no secret that the workshop was struggling. Regardless of the top level craftsmanship, demand for these boats was steadily declining. Boats at the workshop have always been made to order, and while at one point orders flooded in, now they come mostly from the tourism industry across the region; occasionally, the Sultan himself will place an order to keep the workshop afloat. The factory can produce around two boats per year if projects don’t run out of money. To supplement their income, the factory has been producing ornate wooden doors and chests.

From the clash between tradition and development comes an important question that Oman has to continue to address: how do you honour the past while embracing the future? There was only two other visitors the day I was at the shop, an Omani man from Muscat and his friend who was visiting from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. As I was wrapping up my visit, I spoke to the Omani man – he had driven his friend all the way to Sur just to show him the workshop. While limited in practicality, it’s obvious that Omanis still value seeing dhows moored in harbors along the coast. The dhow represents thousands of years of seafaring history, a history that they cannot afford to forget. I left the workshop feeling hopeful that they would be building boats for the years to come. Each dhow along the coast of Oman serves as a reminder that although progress and change is inevitable, the essence of Oman’s maritime heritage remain deeply intertwined with its cultural identity that is imperative to preserve.