Ancient roots of idyllic Bilad Sait

The idyllic oasis hamlet of Bilad Sait in Al Hamra wilayat is the subject of an interesting article featured recently in the German travel magazine, RP Donnersberger Rundschau. Reproduced in five other German publications — Nordsee-Zeitung, Cuxhavener Nachrichten, Bremervorden Zeitung, Die Rheinpfalz and RP Pfalzische Volkzeitung — the article delves into the rich antiquity of the hamlet, which according to the writer is believed to have been continuously inhabited for more than 3,000 years.

Author Yvonne Mabille says the presence of life-sustaining water has been key to the existence of this hamlet over millennia. “For more than 2,000 years, this blue gold (water) has determined the rhythm of life in the mountain oasis. Springs which deliver a lot of water once made nomadic shepherds settle in the midst of the meagre and rough mountains on top of a rock,” writes Mabille.

Given these interesting insights about Bilad Sait, the picturesque oasis village is now the subject of a research project undertaken by scientists of a number of German academic and research institutions. The project is supported by Sultan Qaboos University and the German Research Association.

The objective of the study, Mabille writes, is to study the traditional structures of the settlement, the design of its earthen homes and the ancient systems of land use in place. The ultimate goal, she adds, is to preserve the traditional and systems of Bilad Sait.

According to the author, farmers who settled in Bilad Sait constructed kilometre-long channels bringing water to their date palm and millet fields. These irrigation systems, which are traditionally known as aflaj, ensured supplies of water in a region where seasonal rains are far from uncertain. Inhabitants looked at the position of the sun in the sky to parcel out water to each farmer, thereby ensuring an equitable distribution of this ‘blue gold’.

But with modernisation, the historical and traditional appeal of oasis settlements is increasingly under threat, says the author. “When we first came here at the end of the 1990s there were only gravel roads… with no refrigerators and not enough electricity for our measuring instruments. It’s a completely different world now,” Mabille quotes Andreas Burkert, an agricultural researcher of Kassel University as saying.

Burkert, an expert in ecological cultivation in the tropics and subtropics, is working alongside orientalists form Tubingen, archaeologists from Berlin, a town planner from Stuttgart and ethnologists from Oman. Using fragments and rubble unearthed from around the hilltop settlement, the project team hopes to prove that Bilad Sait was inhabited without interruption for 3,000 years.

The oasis appeal of Bilad Sait — home to around 200 people — is provided by some 2,900 date palm trees and fodder grass grown on terraced farms spread around nine hectares of land which originally was nothing but hard rock, says Mabille. The soil came from a wadi, which was brought by the inhabitants in baskets over the centuries. Thousands of cubic metres of soil had to be scraped together laboriously to create Bilad Seet’s new farmland, sustained by an ingenious and well-maintained irrigation system. It is one of the few systems in the world where an irrigation system has lasted many centuries, the author quotes Burkert as stating.

Happily, Bilad Sait’s terraced gardens haven’t suffered from the kind of salinity witnessed in some areas of the Batinah region. However, modernisation and the growing demand for water pose a threat to the traditional-style practices that have sustained the hamlet for centuries. Vibrant oases like Bilad Seet have a chance of surviving in today’s modern era only as a tourist attraction, the author stresses in conclusion.