By the mid-1990s, twenty-five years after Sultan Qaboos came to power and in the middle of his reign, the past—and local values associated with it—garnered significant interest for many in Bahla, a medium-sized pre-Islamic oasis town in interior Oman. Townspeople organized and opened a new library for the first time and town elders wrote and copied local histories to disseminate and sell at bookshops in the town suq. Such interest in local history did not appear suddenly or out of the blue. International and national attention had already been drawn to Bahla’s history. Its citadel had been declared a UNESCO heritage site in 1986, a first on the Arabian Peninsula, and work on it continued through 2012 serving as a daily reminder of ongoing—and regularly challenging—attempts at capturing the town’s past. As I have explored elsewhere, plans for national museums (and heritage festivals) as well as concerns about pious learning and practice all helped to direct and encourage attention to how the town and Oman’s past more generally should and would be represented.

Even in his first public speech in 1970, Sultan Qaboos invoked history, “Our country in the past was famous and strong. If we work in unity and cooperation, we will regenerate that glorious past.” Sultan Qaboos also referenced “customs and traditions” in his 1971 and 1978 national day speeches. Nevertheless, most of the attention in his speeches from the first twenty-three years was directed at ending the Dhofar war, establishing infrastructure associated with a modern state, and entering the world political scene as a respected member and participant. The early 1990s was a turning point, however, with 1993 declared to be the “year of national heritage.” The heritage year, however, was postponed until the following year with celebrations in Nizwa marking the occasion. The declarations of national focus on heritage in 1993 and 1994 heightened an already emerging concern about how the past and the values associated with it should be publicly addressed, displayed, and sustained. While studies of national heritage projects are important for understanding state priorities and investments, this chapter focuses on the complex ways those state projects are experienced and understood.