ABSTRACT
The picture drawn here of rural communities has been created from the results of the series of studies, mentioned above, undertaken by a team from the University of Durham in the early and mid-1970s of a cross-section of northern Oman. The study area extended from the village of al-Khabura in the central part of the Batina coast, across the Batina coastal plain, up the wadi al-Hawasina to the pass over the Hajar mountains, and down the wadi al-Kabir to the villages of the Dhahira and the desert edge beyond them (Figure 1). The studies were made at a time of increasingly rapid change induced by growing oil wealth. However, there was also enough left of the physical, social and economic structure of the pre-oil period to envisage the rural communities as they had been before oil exports began from Oman or its neighbouring Gulf States.
