Oman

Oman is a country in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula, facing the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman. Its 315,331 km² (121,750 sq mi) include the exclaves of Musandam, on the Strait of Hormuz, and Madha, both enclosed by the United Arab Emirates. Muscat is the capital and Arabic the official language, and most Omanis follow the Ibadi school of Islam.

Sumerian tablets called the region Magan and linked it to copper, and monumental Bronze Age buildings survive at Bat, al-Janah and al-Ayn. Portugal held Muscat and the coast from 1507 to 1650 until Omani forces drove it out. The Al Bu Said dynasty has ruled since 1744, and its empire reached East Africa: its capital moved to Zanzibar in 1837, and under British arbitration the two sultanates split in 1856. The Treaty of Seeb of 1920 made peace between the coastal sultanate and the imamate of the interior, which the sultan's forces occupied in the 1950s. Qaboos bin Said came to power in 1970 and began a fast modernization.

The sultan rules as an absolute monarch, serving as head of both state and government and issuing all laws by decree, including the 1996 Basic Law. A Council of Oman pairs an appointed Council of State with an elected Consultative Assembly. Mineral fuels made up more than four fifths of goods exports in 2018. Petroleum Development Oman extracts and processes the oil, and the economy also trades fish, dates and other farm produce, alongside tourism.

Frankincense from the south was traded along a desert route through Sohar to Baghdad and Damascus, and Bahla served as the capital of the Nabhani dynasty. Men wear the curved khanjar dagger on formal occasions, and halwa, raw sugar cooked with nuts, is a common sweet. Green, loggerhead and olive ridley turtles live along the coast, and the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary became the first site ever removed from the UNESCO World Heritage List after the government cut its area by 90% in 2007.