ABSTRACT

Traditionally, agriculture not only acts as the economic basis for the Oman region but its associated village life forms one of the main roots from which its socio-political organisation stems. Today this old basis has all but collapsed and with it has disappeared not just a way of life but also much of the region's stability and an essential sense of Omaniness arising from the country's soil. The organisation of village life may be viewed as a pyramid of socio-political institutions and cultural values built on an economic base the form of which is determined by environmental, demographic and technological constraints. This chapter describes falaj as a unified irrigation system which distributes, by means of a network of canals, a source of water to those who have established rights in it. Traditionally, the upkeep of the falaj system, the pattern of the agricultural calendar and the division of labour and responsibility were based on a demographic structure that now no longer exists.