The bewitched oasis — Oman's UNESCO mud-brick fortress town where the Bani Nabhan built the longest clay wall in the Arabian Peninsula
Bahla is an oasis town of 110,000 in the Ad Dakhiliyah Governorate of inland Oman, at the foot of the Hajar Mountains — home to Bahla Fort, a UNESCO World Heritage Site of enormous mud-brick walls and towers that was the seat of the Banu Nabhan dynasty from the 12th to 15th century, and is one of the oldest and largest fortified settlements in Oman. The town is surrounded by an ancient mud-brick defensive wall (over 12km long) that protected its date palm gardens. Bahla has a long tradition of pottery and is famous across Oman for its artisanal earthenware.
Bahla was the capital of the Banu Nabhan dynasty — rulers of much of interior Oman from approximately the 12th to the early 15th century — and its fort complex was built and expanded over this period to become the largest mud-brick fortification in the Arabian Peninsula. The town developed around its famous falaj (traditional irrigation channel) system that has kept the date palms of the Bahla oasis alive since pre-Islamic times. Bahla's reputation for sorcery and supernatural stories (echoing the area's pre-Islamic religious traditions) is widespread across Oman and has been reinforced by th…