Sohar
— a harbour the dhows have used for two thousand years.
Not only on a wall.
“A working port on the Gulf of Oman, where the Batinah plain runs flat from the Hajar Mountains down to the sea. Sohar Fort sits white above the corniche, its eight towers facing the harbour the city has used since the first century. Local tradition names this the home port of Sinbad the Sailor. Date palms thicken inland; the air carries salt and frankincense.
Sohar, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Sohar is the capital of Oman's Al Batinah North Governorate, on the Gulf of Oman about 230 kilometres northwest of Muscat. Population is roughly 200,000. The city sits on a coastal plain between the Hajar Mountains and the sea, with a working commercial port, Sohar Port and Freezone, that handles container, bulk, and petroleum traffic. Medieval Arab and Persian geographers, including al-Muqaddasi, described Sohar as one of the wealthiest cities of the tenth-century Islamic world, when it traded with India, East Africa, and Tang China.
Sohar Fort dominates the corniche, a whitewashed garrison with eight towers around a square keep, reconstructed many times across the city's long history. The current structure dates substantially to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with later Portuguese-era modifications when the fort changed hands during the sixteenth-century contest for the Indian Ocean trade. It houses a small museum that traces Sohar's role in the early Islamic copper trade and in long-distance shipping to Guangzhou. The fort opens to visitors most mornings except Friday.
The harbour Sohar grew around still works. The modern Sohar Port, opened in 2002 about forty kilometres south of the old town, is one of the fastest-growing ports in the Gulf and handles roughly one million TEU of container traffic annually. The older fishing harbour beside the fort fills each dawn with returning dhows landing tuna, kingfish, and shrimp from the Gulf of Oman. The sea here stays warm through most of the year, with summer water temperatures above thirty degrees Celsius.