Oman in the museums of the world

The Historical Association of Oman

BLURB: From khanjars and silverwork to textiles and everyday tools, Omani objects held in international museums reveal stories of craftsmanship, trade, diplomacy and daily life. The feature follows the journeys that carried them overseas, examining official gifts, private collecting, colonial-era networks and modern cultural exchanges. It also asks what was lost when objects left their communities and why provenance, documentation and renewed cooperation matter today to Oman and museums preserving them.

Inside the British Museum is a small vessel woven from desert-palm fibre. Decorated with strips of goatskin, it was made in Dhofar sometime during the 1970s or 1980s and used by Bedouin communities for milking camels. Traces of dried milk remained inside when it entered the museum’s collection.

The object is modest, particularly when compared with the monumental sculptures and precious metals usually associated with the world’s great museums. Yet it carries a story extending far beyond its practical purpose. Its materials speak of the Omani landscape. Its construction preserves the knowledge of its maker. Its remaining residue records an everyday activity that might otherwise have disappeared without documentation.

It also raises another question: how did an object made and used in Oman come to be housed thousands of kilometres away in London?

Every Omani object held overseas has at least two histories. The first belongs to the culture that created and used it. The second begins when it left its original setting and entered the hands of a traveller, collector, political official, archaeologist, donor or museum.

Together, these objects offer valuable, although necessarily partial, perspectives on Oman’s material culture and international connections. They include khanjars, swords, rifles, jewellery, textiles, baskets, manuscripts, coins, agricultural implements and objects associated with hospitality and domestic life.

They cannot, however, present a complete picture of Oman’s national identity. Museum collections are shaped by the interests of those who assembled them, the historical circumstances in which they were acquired and the decisions of curators about what should be preserved and displayed.

Understanding Oman’s presence in the museums of the world therefore requires more than admiring what sits inside a glass case. It requires following the journey of each object.

THE KHANJAR AS CULTURAL AMBASSADOR

Few objects communicate Omani identity as immediately as the khanjar.

Worn around the waist as part of men’s ceremonial dress, particularly during national and religious celebrations, weddings and formal occasions, the khanjar combines specialised metalwork, leatherwork and decorative craftsmanship. It consists of a curved blade, hilt, scabbard, cover and belt, with designs that may indicate regional styles and artistic traditions.

Its significance extends well beyond its ceremonial function. The khanjar forms part of Oman’s state emblem and appears on official insignia, documents and currency. In 2022, UNESCO inscribed the knowledge and skills associated with its manufacture on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Examples preserved in international collections vary considerably. Some are relatively restrained, while others have silver-threaded scabbards, finely worked filigree, embossed decoration and elaborate belts. Historic hilts may include different kinds of horn and other valuable materials, making precise museum documentation particularly important.

These objects reveal the skill of Omani craftspeople, but they also show how easily meaning can change when an object enters a museum. In Oman, the khanjar forms part of a living ceremonial tradition. Overseas, it may be classified as a weapon, an ethnographic object, an example of metalwork or a symbol of national identity.

That difference matters. A khanjar is not understood fully by examining its blade or silver decoration alone. Its meaning also resides in how it is worn, inherited, commissioned and used during important moments in Omani social life.

SILVER THAT TRAVELLED

Omani silver jewellery forms another significant part of overseas museum collections. Necklaces, anklets, bracelets, earrings, nose rings, head ornaments and amulets document the diversity of jewellery once worn across the country.

The British Museum, for example, holds a girl’s amuletic necklace donated by Marcia S. Dorr in 2011. Its components include crescent-shaped pendants and other protective forms. It entered the collection in connection with the exhibition Adornment and Identity: Jewellery and Costume from Oman.

Other pieces contain or carry Qur’anic inscriptions, while some hollow bracelets and anklets held small copper pellets that produced a rattling sound as the wearer moved. Such details remind us that jewellery was not created only to be seen. It could be heard, handled and experienced through movement.

Omani silver also carried economic significance. Jewellery represented portable wealth that women could own, wear, exchange or pass between generations. Its size, weight and decoration could reflect regional identity, family circumstances and personal status.

Yet the overseas movement of Omani silver requires careful examination. During the second half of the twentieth century, economic and social change encouraged many families to sell older jewellery. Pieces entered souqs, private collections and the international antiques market. Collectors living or working in Oman acquired objects that were later donated or sold to museums.

Those acquisitions helped preserve examples of forms that were becoming less common. At the same time, separating jewellery from the people who wore it could result in the loss of names, family histories and local meanings. An anklet may survive physically while the identity of its maker and owner disappears.

For researchers today, the challenge is therefore not simply to catalogue an object’s materials and measurements, but to recover as much of its human story as possible.

EVERYDAY OMAN IN FOREIGN COLLECTIONS

Some of the most revealing objects held overseas are not prestigious gifts or elaborate pieces of silver. They are tools and containers made for daily use.

Major C. R. Butt, who served with a British military security unit in Oman, donated a small group of objects to the British Museum in 1999. Among them was a bamboo camel stick acquired in Oman. The collection also includes an axe and a khanjar sheath.

Carl Phillips donated a wider group of objects from Oman and other parts of the Arabian Peninsula. His contributions included the desert-palm-fibre basket from Dhofar used for milking camels. Constructed by Bedouin makers, the vessel incorporated palm fibre, goatskin and leather suspension cords.

Other international collections contain tobacco pouches, smoking equipment, coffee pots, roasting implements, fruit baskets, incense burners, ploughs, axes and sandals used for climbing date palms. Individually, such objects may appear ordinary. Collectively, they document systems of agriculture, pastoralism, food preparation, hospitality and household work.

Their value lies precisely in their familiarity. Palaces, weapons and royal correspondence reveal the lives of rulers and political elites. A milk basket or climbing sandal brings us closer to the daily knowledge that sustained communities.

DRESS, IDENTITY AND REGIONAL DIFFERENCE

Traditional clothing preserved overseas provides another window into Oman’s cultural diversity.

Omani dress varies considerably between regions and communities. Colours, cuts, embroidery, head coverings and decorative details can indicate local traditions, individual taste and changing fashions. Dhofari garments differ from clothing worn in Nizwa, Muscat, Sur or Al Batinah, while the dress of Oman’s Baluchi communities forms part of the country’s wider cultural landscape.

In January 2011, Mohammed al Tobi, then Under-secretary at the Ministry of Tourism, presented a group of textiles and silver artefacts to the British Museum during the opening reception of Adornment and Identity: Jewellery and Costume from Oman.

The donation included regional garments, head coverings, trousers and related accessories. British Museum records connect individual pieces to specific locations, including Nizwa and Dhofar. These details are important because no single costume can represent all Omani women or the country’s full textile heritage.

When displayed carefully, clothing can communicate more than decorative beauty. It can reveal how people adapted garments to climate, social convention and occasion. It can also show how Indian Ocean trade introduced new fabrics, threads, techniques and design influences into Oman.

Museum interpretation must nevertheless avoid presenting traditional dress as something frozen in the past. Omani clothing continues to change as contemporary designers, embroiderers and wearers adapt inherited forms to modern life.

COINS AND THE CHANGING IDEA OF NATIONAL CURRENCY

Coins and banknotes provide evidence of political authority, trade and economic transformation, but Oman’s monetary history is more complicated than a succession of national currencies issued by individual rulers.

For centuries, coins from different parts of the world circulated in Omani markets. These included the Maria Theresa thaler, Indian rupees and other regional currencies carried through trade. The development of a more formally organised Omani monetary system began in the 1940s during the reign of Sultan Said bin Taimur.

Later issues chart the transition towards the rial Saidi and, from 1972, the Omani rial. Designs incorporating forts, architectural landmarks, national emblems and royal portraits provide a visual record of the modern state’s development.

International numismatic collections can therefore illuminate more than the appearance of coins and banknotes. They demonstrate how Oman’s economy was connected to India, East Africa, the Gulf and wider global markets long before the establishment of its modern national currency.

To tell that history accurately, however, museums must distinguish between currencies produced in Oman, money issued within territories connected to Omani rule and foreign coins that circulated locally.

DIPLOMACY, ROYALTY AND THE MEANING OF A GIFT

Not every Omani object overseas was purchased or collected. Some travelled as diplomatic gifts.

The exchange of gifts has long formed part of relations between rulers and states. A khanjar, piece of silverwork, manuscript or ceremonial object might communicate respect while introducing the recipient to the craftsmanship and traditions of the country that produced it.

During Queen Elizabeth II’s state visit to Oman in November 2010, Sultan Qaboos bin Said presented her with a vase engraved in 21-carat gold and a gold Fabergé-style musical egg containing a miniature horse.

Such objects entered the Royal Collection, but that does not necessarily mean they became conventional museum exhibits or remained continuously accessible to the public. Diplomatic gifts have particular legal, institutional and symbolic histories that differ from those of archaeological or ethnographic collections.

Their significance lies not only in their materials or monetary value, but in the political relationships they were intended to represent. A gift presented during a state visit is both an object and a diplomatic gesture.

COLLECTING UNDER UNEQUAL CONDITIONS

Many Omani artefacts entered British collections through political agents, naval officers, military personnel, travellers and officials who served in or passed through the region.

Oman was never formally a British colony, but Britain exercised substantial political and military influence at different moments in the country’s modern history. Objects collected within that relationship must therefore be examined with care.

Sir Harold Ingrams, whose career included colonial service in southern Arabia and East Africa, assembled material from Oman and the wider region that later entered museum collections. Major C. R. Butt’s smaller donation came from his military service in Oman.

These collections can provide valuable records of objects that might otherwise have been lost. But describing collectors simply as people who “preserved” Omani heritage ignores the unequal conditions under which some collecting occurred.

The essential questions are straightforward. Was the object purchased, received as a gift or removed during an excavation? Was its owner identified? Was permission granted for it to leave the country? How did the collector describe its origin and purpose? What information disappeared during its journey?

These questions do not predetermine that an acquisition was improper. They allow museums and countries of origin to understand their shared history more honestly.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE IMPORTANCE OF PROVENANCE

Archaeological material requires an even higher level of documentation.

Objects from sites such as Qalhat and Lizq can help researchers reconstruct Oman’s long history, from the Iron Age to the Islamic period. But archaeological objects gain much of their meaning from context: where they were found, their relationship to surrounding structures and the layer of earth in which they appeared.

Once removed from that context, an object can lose part of its historical value. Museum catalogues should therefore identify the excavation, date, location, legal basis for export and circumstances of acquisition whenever this information is available.

International cooperation has an important role here. Digitising records and connecting overseas objects with excavation archives in Oman could help restore relationships that became fragmented when collections were divided or dispersed.

A PRINCESS BETWEEN OMAN, ZANZIBAR AND EUROPE

Not all significant Omani material abroad consists of physical artefacts. Manuscripts, letters, photographs and published memoirs can be equally important.

Sayyidah Salma bint Said, later known as Emily Ruete, was born in Zanzibar in 1844, the daughter of Sultan Said bin Sultan. After leaving Zanzibar and settling in Europe, she published Memoirs of an Arabian Princess in German in 1886.

Widely regarded as the first known autobiography by an Arab woman, the book provides an intimate account of nineteenth-century life within the ruling family of Oman and Zanzibar. Her writings, correspondence and the various editions of her memoir have become important sources for scholars examining gender, empire, identity and cultural encounters between Arabia, East Africa and Europe.

Ruete’s story demonstrates how personal archives can complicate official histories. Her life cannot be contained neatly within one national narrative. It connects Oman, Zanzibar and Germany while revealing the tensions of belonging to several worlds.

FROM INHERITED COLLECTIONS TO CULTURAL EXCHANGE

In recent years, Oman has moved beyond being merely the source of objects in foreign museums. The National Museum has developed international exhibitions and institutional partnerships that allow Oman to take a more active role in presenting its own history.

In 2023, Journey to the Land of Frankincense: Collections from the Oman National Museum was presented at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon. The exhibition brought together incense burners, architectural fragments, metalwork, manuscripts and jewellery spanning different periods of Omani history.

The collaboration was reciprocal. The Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon also lent objects to the National Museum for Fragrant Journeys, an exhibition in Muscat exploring perfume and incense.

In July 2024, The Splendour of Silver: Treasures from the Omani Court opened at the Moscow Kremlin Museums. The exhibition presented court objects associated with the Sultans of Oman in Muscat and Zanzibar, placing Omani craftsmanship within a wider history of royal exchange and diplomacy.

These projects represent a significant change. Earlier collections were often shaped by foreign travellers and institutions. Contemporary exhibitions allow Omani museums, researchers and curators to participate directly in deciding which stories are told and how they are interpreted.

RECONNECTING OBJECTS WITH THEIR STORIES

Omani artefacts in museums around the world should neither be treated merely as attractive displays nor celebrated uncritically as cultural ambassadors.

They are evidence of craftsmanship, trade, diplomacy, migration and everyday life. They also reveal histories of private collecting, political influence, archaeological division and an antiques market that did not always preserve complete provenance.

This complexity creates an opportunity.

Omani institutions and international museums can work together to identify and digitise overseas collections, correct outdated catalogue descriptions and reconnect objects with the communities and places from which they came. Joint research could recover the names of makers, owners and donors that have disappeared from institutional records.

Where acquisition histories are uncertain, museums should make that uncertainty visible. Where objects were officially donated, the circumstances should be documented. Where claims for return or long-term loans arise, they should be approached through evidence, transparency and sustained institutional dialogue.

The palm-fibre milking vessel in London may appear to be a simple object. Yet it holds within it the landscape of Dhofar, the knowledge of an unnamed maker, the daily work of a pastoral community and the decisions of the collector and museum that carried it abroad.

That is the real significance of Oman in the museums of the world. Every object preserves part of the country’s history, but none tells the whole story by itself.

To understand these collections properly, we must look beyond what rests inside the display case. We must also follow the journeys that brought the objects there and recover the people whose lives gave them meaning.