Cultivating the Past, Living the Modern

This book explores how and why heritage has emerged as a prevalent force in building the modern nation-state of Oman. The book analyses the relations with the past that undergird the shift in Oman from an Ibadi shari'a Imamate (1913–1958) to a modern nation-state from 1970 onwards. Since its inception as a nation-state, material forms in the Sultanate of Oman — such as old mosques and shari'a manuscripts, restored forts, national symbols such as the coffee pot or the dagger (khanjar), and archaeological sites — have saturated the landscape, becoming increasingly ubiquitous as part of a standardized public and visual memorialization of the past. Oman's expanding heritage industry, exemplified by the boom in museums, exhibitions, street montages, and cultural festivals, shapes a distinctly national geography and territorialized narrative. But the book demonstrates there are consequences to this celebration of heritage. As the national narrative conditions the way people ethically work on themselves through evoking forms of heritage, it also generates anxieties and emotional sensibilities that seek to address the erasures and occlusions of the past.

Archaeology · Art · Boom · Cultural heritage · Ethnology · Exhibition · Geography · Literature · Memorialization · Narrative · National heritage · Political science · State (computer science) · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Engineering · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts · Anthropology

• Oman’s Transregional Connections to Sindh and Gujarat

  Open Access•Zahir Bhalloo•Arabian Humanities•2023

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