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Women and Community in Oman
Copyright 1984 by New York University
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Eickelman, Christine, 1944
Women and community in Oman.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. WomenOmanSocial conditions. 2. OmanSocial
life and customs. I. Title.
HQ1731.E35 1984 305.42905353 84-974
ISBN 0-8147-2165-6 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8147-2166-4 (pbk.)
Clothbound editions of New York University Press books are Smyth-sewn
and printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
PREFACE
I arrived in Oman in early September 1979 with my husband and nineteenth-month old daughter. My husband, an anthropologist, had received a National Science Foundation grant to do research in inner Oman on ideas of leadership and political authority.
After a brief stay in the capital area, we moved to Hamra, an oasis located on the western edge of the Jabal al-Akhdar region of inner Oman, with a population of about 2,500 in 1980. Hamra is the tribal capital of the Abriyin where the leader of the tribe and many other notables reside. I remained in Hamra through March 1980 and returned subsequently in September-October 1980.
As in many parts of the Muslim world, men and women in inner Oman are separated for large parts of the day. I knew before we left for Oman that my husband could not interview women nor participate in any of their social activities. I came to the oasis, therefore, with the intention of leaning about the daily life, concerns and aspirations of women in the Omani interior and the roles they play in the community. I was also interested in how they interpret and accommodate to the rapid changes taking place in Arabian society today.
This was my first trip to the Arab Gulf but not to the Middle East. In 196870 I had lived with my husband in Egypt and in Iraq and I had engaged with him in field work in Morocco. I had a background in anthropology and Middle East studies and could read modern literary Arabic. During my two years in the Arab world I had learned colloquial Moroccan Arabic and some Egyptian Arabic. I was thus able to understand Omani Arabic very quickly after my arrival.
Fieldwork experience in Morocco had taught me the extreme importance of keeping fieldnotes, the daily recording of ones conversations, actions, observations and impressions. The greater part of this book is based on daily notes I kept while in Oman. In many chapters I include quotations from these notes in order to retain a sense of detail, dialogue and immediacy that is often lost in anthropological analysis. I date these fieldnote quotations to show the importance of time in reconstructing the past and my record of understanding. These quotations also attest to the immense importance of detailsmall phrases perhaps made in passing, facial expressions, persons and social relations at first not well knownwhose significance grows clear over time.
After living for several months in the oasis, I began to discern the meaning and context of such basic concepts as family, privacy, work, propriety, status and sociability. These were the notions by which people made sense of their lives and understood the actions of others. Although I came to understand these concepts mostly through my shared daily life with Omani women, I explain how they are held in large part by Omani men as well.
In recent years the relation of anthropologists with the people with whom they live and work and the mutual perceptions of anthropologists and those whose lives they seek to interpret have been topics of concern. For this reason, the first chapter describes my initial reaction to Oman, how I became aware of Hamras main social divisions, the principal events that led to the growth of close ties with certain households and how women of the oasis perceived me and my daughter. Later chapters introduce the social world of women. I begin with the small, intimate circle of the household, then the wider family network, neighbors, and finally, formal visiting in the community at large and the significance of womens visiting networks for maintaining oasis unity. Chapter 7 discusses children, motherhood and childrearing because these are such important aspects of womens lives and of their identity.
Once, when I was discussing marriages with a woman in Hamra, someone interrupted us to ask, Why does she want to know this? The woman with whom I had been conversing answered briefly, She is trying to understand. I wrote this book with a sense of obligation to the women of Hamra, empathy for them as persons, and respect for their trust in me. I am therefore interpreting their society as much as possible from what I perceive to be their perspective and not one abstractly derived from the concerns of my own society.
Despite its contemporary strategic significance, Oman remains less well known to Westerners than neighboring states, such as Saudi Arabia. Hence a brief description situates my own experience with the country in a wider context. Located in the southeastern part of the Arabian peninsula, Oman is surrounded to the north by the United Arab Emirates, to the west by Saudi Arabia and to the southwest by the Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen.
Geographically, ethnically, and religiously Oman is one of the more complex states of the Arabian peninsula. Its major regions include the southern province of Dhofar; the Batina coast, the fertile coastal plain of northern Oman; and inner Oman, a string of oasis towns and villages located in the valleys and foothills of the Hajar mountain range. The coastal ports and oases along the Batina coast have a multiethnic, polyglot population that has lived for generations by seafaring, trade and fishing. The towns and oases of the interior have almost exclusively tribal populations. Until the advent of economic opportunities created by oil wealth in Oman and neighboring countries, most of the tribes of the interior lived from agriculture and some livestock herding. This subsistence livelihood was supplemented in this century by migrant labor to East Africa and to Bahrain.
Ibadism has been a major factor in distinguishing Oman from its neighbors. Most of the population of the Omani interior is Ibadi Muslim, together with a significant part of the coastal population. The third major orientation in Islam together with the Sunni and Shia, Ibadism originated in the eighth century C.E., in the course of disputes over succession to the leadership of the Islamic community. Most Ibadi beliefs are similar to those of Sunni Muslims, but the Ibadi have in the past firmly rejected the notion of dynastic rule, even that of descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. Instead, they selected the person most qualified by reason of piety and religious training as their spiritual and temporal leader (
