Bahla



Bahla is a fortified oasis town in Northern Oman, best known for its immense 14th-century fortress and for a unique style of pottery.

Understand
The fortress and the town are enclosed by the extensive remnants of a 12-km long fortified wall. Most buildings in the town are constructed of traditional mud brick, many of them hundreds of years old. The best view of the fortifications and the fortress can be had from just outside the western entrance, near the Jabrin junction.

Bahla is also known in Oman as Madinat Al Sehr ('City of Magic') due to its long association with djinn and sorcerers, an association continuing to the present day.

Read

 * Mandana Limbert, In the Time of Oil: Piety, Memory, and Social Life in an Omani Town. An in-depth examination of the many changes in Bahlawi life following the discovery of oil, based on the writer's year-and-a-half stay there in the late 1990s.

Get in
Bahla is bisected by Highway 21, about halfway between Nizwa and Ibri.



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