Oman

From the copper of Magan and the frankincense roads to a seafaring empire that reached Zanzibar, reborn as a modern sultanate.

Oman occupies the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, a land of mountains, desert and a long Indian Ocean coast that has made it one of the oldest seafaring and trading societies on Earth. In antiquity it was the copper-rich land the Sumerians called Magan and the heartland of the frankincense trade that linked southern Arabia to the Mediterranean. It adopted Islam in the Prophet's lifetime and became the world's principal home of the Ibadi school, governed for centuries by elected imams. Under the Al Bu Said dynasty, founded in 1744, Oman built a maritime empire that stretched to Zanzibar and the East African coast, before a long decline, growing British influence, and the 1970 accession of Sultan Qaboos bin Said opened the country's modern renaissance.