In the final month of the Islamic calendar comes the festival of Eid al-Adha, a major celebration in Islam. But in Oman this year, it split the country. Some tribes in Dhofar, in the south of the country, chose to perform Eid al-Adha prayers on the date set by Saudi Arabia rather than that set by the Omani government, prompting interrogations and arrests. The al-Hakli tribes, including al-Mashani, gathered to assert their allegiance to the sultanate while also demanding that the Saudi date be used for determining Eid al-Adha. The gathering followed the issuing of a fatwa by Muhammad ibn al-Uthaymeen, a prominent Saudi authority of the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence. The fatwa allowed different fasting times in various countries yet stated that the moon sighting that officially marks the start of the festival should follow the calendar of the country witnessing the Hajj pilgrimage rather than local lunar calendars.
The issue is not new. The first time the Sultanate of Oman announced that it would not follow the Saudi lunar calendar was in 2008. On that occasion, people in Dhofar performed Eid al-Adha prayers with the Saudis, prompting an army raid. Official directives were sent to prosecutors, chiefs and local religious leaders to prevent recalcitrance. This marked the first tension over the moon sighting. The following year, Omani Sultan Qaboos decided to follow the Saudi calendar. The issue resurfaced in August 2019, with similar directives in place and police forces patrolling some mosques, including in the north.
What differed this year was the absence of directives and warnings. In Madinat al-Haqq, a stronghold of the al-Mashanis named to commemorate the tribal alliance that joined with Qaboos when he ousted his father during the Dhofar Revolution in 1970, this was seen as implicit permission to perform Eid prayers as they chose. The lawyer Ali al-Mashani argued this point to defend worshipers arrested on the morning of Eid, claiming that the lack of directives implied no restrictions on prayer.
Many people in Dhofar believe the subsequent uproar across Oman began with the arrests in Madinat al-Haqq. Tribal gatherings are important for discussing communal issues, so the meeting called by the al-Mashani chiefs after two tribe members were arrested was only normal. They sent a message to the sultan, demanding that the authorities follow the Saudi calendar. Anonymous social media accounts framed this as a demand by the al-Mashanis, not all Dhofari tribes. Al-Habib Salem al-Mashhour, a Dhofari writer and influencer, tweeted about the schism, attributing it to extremist Salafism and contrasting it with the majority view in Oman, which lies in the moderate Shafii school of Sunni jurisprudence.
In contemporary Oman, mosques are a social institution and public facility owned and managed by the state. Yet tribal alliances seem to be challenging the state and its claims to uphold the rule of law and define the values of citizenship.
Tribes have hardly been politically active in recent decades. This can be attributed to a general caution about tribal autonomy. During the Omani Spring — a series of sit-ins that coincided with the Arab revolutions in 2011 — tribal chiefs stayed outside the political arena. Yet the recent events in Dhofar mark a shift in tribal political dynamics, with tribes becoming involved in expressing desires for change, albeit over marginal issues like Eid prayer and religious observance. While Omanis are accustomed to tribal chiefs playing a role in elections to the Shura Council (the lower house of the Omani parliament), to maintain their status and interests through the state apparatus, the recent developments in Dhofar suggest that tribes are now seeking influence in the civic space and undergoing a shift in their political and social presence.
The events around Eid brought back old memories for me, from the 1980s, when I was a middle school student and we also experienced significant tribal transformations.
In 1980, our Arabic teacher called out names from the class list, a routine occurrence. This time, however, the names included “bin” or “ibn” (meaning “the son of”) along with the tribal name. While the school treated students equally, identifying them by their tribes made for salient distinctions. Some students were from large, influential tribes, while others had no tribal affiliation. I initially wondered if this change aimed to revive classical Arabic naming conventions. But it was much more than that. A royal decree in 1980 established a General Directorate of Tribal Affairs, mandating the inclusion of tribal names in personal names as a core component of Omani identity.
But the presence of tribes in Omani politics was nothing new, even then. For most of Oman’s history, they have played a significant role in political and social life, with shifting alliances and tensions among tribal, religious and political identities. The Eid divisions in Dhofar have brought these mostly hidden conflicts into view, showing that the same fault lines are still in place today.
The contemporary politics of Oman cannot be examined without an understanding of both religious and tribal dynamics throughout history. Tribal affiliation grants individuals social status and identity, influencing their relations with the state and shaping politics and society alike, in complex, often unclear ways. While writing my book “Citizenship in the Sultanate of Oman” (2014), I realized that citizenship and statehood are problematic precisely because of their unclear definitions. In Oman and the Gulf, and given myriad cultural, historical and social factors, citizenship is not about participation in a system of rights and duties, but rather about mere belonging to the country or even to the tribe within the country.
The change of names that surprised me in my middle school years signaled an official return to premodern tribal norms. The state still values the tribe, with tribal chiefs receiving financial allocations based on their social status and importance as determined by the tribal directorate. To understand these features of Oman today, we have to return to its history.
Before Islam, Oman did not have a unified political structure but rather a mixture of tribal leaderships based on transient alliances. In “The System of Government in Oman,” historian Tahani Al-Hosani notes that regional divisions continued to stem from this ancient social system, with Arabs settling in the interior and Persians on the coast, each exerting local influence.
From the time Islam arrived in the region, religion played a huge role in adding to the complexity of this political and social system. The Ibadi Muslims, who still maintain a strong presence in Oman, emerged as a less militant sect from the Kharijites, who had split off from the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin Ali bin Abi Talib. Their system of governance was an imamate, which involved a social contract whereby religious elites pledged allegiance to an imam, monitored his adherence to Ibadi teachings and had the authority to remove him should he fail to adhere to them. The first Ibadi imamate in Oman was declared in 748 but lasted only two years, and it was then revived in 793. It was to gain and lose power repeatedly over the centuries before being reinstated for the last time in 1868, then dissolved once again in 1959. It remains a political force in the country despite its lack of an official organization.
The Muslim traveler and geographer Shams al-Din al-Maqdisi, who died in 990, noted the diversity of what is now Oman in his book “The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions.” He described the presence of a variety of Muslim sects, including Mutazili Shiites, militant Shurats and Dawoodi Kharijites, and also mentioned the prevalence of the Persian language in Sohar, now in northern Oman.
This diversity was compounded by calling in help from outsiders when under attack: Since the 17th century, the ruling dynasties (first Yarubid and then Busaid) often sought help from external groups, including the South Asian Baloch, to help enforce the loyalty of local tribes. Omani tribes intermarried with Baloch tribespeople, particularly from the 19th century onward, creating a uniquely Omani blend of South Asian and East Arabian tribal relations.
The practice was renewed in the mid-1950s. The Jebel Akhdar Revolution saw war between an imamate in the interior and the sultans of Muscat, the former ultimately backed by Arab states and the latter by the British. The conflict revealed the need for a modern army free from tribal and class rivalries. The sultans of Muscat had not had any form of regular army before British intervention in Oman in 1921. Prior to that, they had relied on tribal fighters, gendarmes and paramilitary forces made up of East African slaves, people from the Baloch tribes, and fighters from neighboring Yemen. In times of crisis, colonial forces had protected the sultans.
The Dhofar Revolution (1965-75) helped to create new identities that transcended tribal authority, in opposition to the U.K.-backed Sultan Said bin Taimur. Equality became the most important consideration among the Dhofari revolutionaries. As Palestinian researcher Abdel Razzaq Takriti notes in “Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman,” the Dhofar Revolution created a civic space where individuals from lower social classes, including freed slaves, rose to leadership positions. This disturbed the British, who relied on tribes as a traditional tool of dominion in the Arab Gulf. The Omani authority has inherited and continued to use this tool.
With the emergence of the modern nation-state, rulers sought to control tribal powers and take away their privileges. In the Gulf countries, tribes became the object of state engineering, integrated into their institutions to maintain their legitimacy and sovereignty, preventing both external interference and internal fissures. This has altered the role of the tribes, stripping them of old functions yet preserving their symbolic legacy in line with state interests. As such, tribal factions and loyalties have remained crucial in Omani history and contemporary political development. The Ibadi authorities have treated political loyalty as part of “ihtisab” (policing, or the social responsibility to prohibit vices).
The postcolonial concept of the state is heavily influenced by Western political theory, which emphasizes ideals such as human emancipation, sovereignty, justice, citizenship and the separation of powers. But the Omani state is also deeply rooted in Arab cultural heritage and its traditional concepts and structures, including the roles of religion, tribe and ruler. Additionally, states in the Gulf are driven by a desire to maintain unity and prevent the transfer of power.
These contradictory agendas result in conceptual conflicts over the relationship between traditional culture and modern statehood. Modernity in the Gulf has exhibited more material transformations than intellectual or cultural developments, focusing on the enjoyment of wealth rather than understanding human nature and theorizing for freedom. This is partly the result of sudden economic booms and the rapid adoption of modern technology and infrastructure. The subjects of such hastily modernized environments are thus consumers of state resources, with the rentier economy promoting luxury goods and services. The shadow of the tribe further limits ideas of citizenship and the state, precluding the development of a state based on institutions and law.
The integration of tribal culture into Omani society has complicated modern notions of citizenship. This is evident in various writings, discourses and policies that seem to portray Oman as an exceptional case, whereby the Omani identity is self-sufficient regardless of preexisting societal structures. This exceptionalism fosters a sense of complacency, leading to persistent traditional norms and to a misunderstanding of the state’s nature and the role of citizens. The authority of the tribe continues to influence identity and politics in Oman and to challenge the more modern notion of individual citizens.
The conceptual confusion is visible in many books and articles authored by Omanis. In a 2015 article titled “Inclusive Citizenship” by Saif al-Mamari, and a 2008 book titled “Citizenship: Perspectives and Applications” by Ibrahim al-Subhi, citizenship is defined primarily as “belonging” rather than a system of rights and duties. In contrast, Ali al-Rawahi’s 2017 book “Marx in Muscat” argues that the tribe is integral to the structure of Omani ethnic and class privileges, orchestrated by the state. Rawahi highlights monopolies, traditional alliances, marriages of convenience and tribal and regional disputes as sites of tribal influence. He illustrates how religious and tribal economic alliances have aligned with political interests and rivalries, often undermining the values of citizenship and equality. These dynamics favor cultural norms that are reinforced by public policies and state narratives. State institutions thus promote the interests of certain groups by reinforcing the role of tribes, making opportunism and sectarianism integral to Omani political culture. This state of affairs goes beyond the mere existence of loyal and rebellious tribes, highlighting the role of the state in leveraging tribal structures to achieve its hegemonic goals.
These complex tribal dynamics in Oman do not necessarily conflict with the transition to modern citizenship and the rule of law. While acknowledging the historical and emotional ties to tribes, I agree with Palestinian researcher Azmi Bishara, who argues in his book “On the Arab Question” (2014) that tribal pluralism can create social units incompatible with democracy, but it can also prevent the formation of an authoritarian political system. The challenge lies in establishing ideological, or even religious, pluralism. As al-Rawahi notes, some religious movements in Oman, rooted in historic ethnic groups and supportive of the imamate, can revive tribal identities under the guise of religion, as seen in the recent Eid al-Adha moon sighting controversy.
Tribes in Oman still hold significant social and political sway, compounded by their history of shifting loyalties. Over the past 50 years, the state has attempted to reshape their character to align with national unity. Given the tribes’ changing roles throughout the centuries, there is no fundamental argument against another reframing of relationships between the state, tribes and religion. The question remains just how the state will act as it contends with how to integrate the role of tribes with modern conceptions of citizenship and the law.
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