Where Oman's dhows are still built — the last working dhow shipyard on the Arabian Sea, green turtle nesting at Ras al-Jinz, and a medieval port city frozen in coral
Sur is a port city on Oman's eastern coast — 280km southeast of Muscat, at the far tip of the Sharqiyah governorate where the Gulf of Oman meets the open Indian Ocean. The city was one of the most important ports in the medieval Indian Ocean trade network — its dhow captains navigated to India, East Africa, and the Persian Gulf, and the city grew to extraordinary wealth trading dates, fish, and slaves before Zanzibar (which was an Omani possession until 1856) eclipsed it. The Sohar dhow (a large ocean-going wooden sailing vessel, the type that plied the Indian Ocean for 2,000 years) is still…
Sur was a major Indian Ocean trade port from the pre-Islamic period; its location at the junction of the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea made it a natural collection point for goods moving between the Persian Gulf, India, and East Africa. The Omani maritime empire of the 17th–19th centuries was centred on Muscat but Sur was its primary shipbuilding city — the teak (imported from India) and coconut wood dhows built here transported Omani dates to India and Indian cotton to East Africa. The abolition of the slave trade and the transition to steamships in the late 19th century devastated Sur's…