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Bait al Baranda

Muscat Municipality is at the forefront of efforts that preserve the past – and showcase the capital

After more than a century in hibernation, shuffling from one owner to the other, Bait al Baranda has swung open its heavy wooden doors, again. Over the past 100 years it has been periodically uninhabited, hosted a clinic, been rented out, said to be haunted by ghosts and renovated. With age has come character, evident in its stained glass, thin columns, wood trimmings and of course, the famous veranda that gives the house its name.

Most fitting, though, is its present role – keeper of the memories of a city, a house that has gone beyond individual owners. To call it a museum would be unfair – museums tend to be ends in themselves, while this is a ‘visitor’s centre,’ the starting point of the Muttrah corniche and your exploration of the city.

It is also fitting that it is the Muscat Municipality that has taken it over, renovated it and turned it into a historical and cultural centre. Development over the last 36 years has turned Muscat into an award-winning city, earning trophies from the United Nations, Organisation of Arab Cities and the Arab Organisation for Administration Development. Perhaps it is because of such achievements that the municipality felt the need to celebrate its city’s history and culture with this centre.

They’ve been particularly broad minded about their history: encompassing 750mn years to be exact. That covers everything from moving ocean floor, herbivorous dinosaurs running amok and the occasional colonial invasion. And the best part of the presentation is that it’s all interactive – you can walk through the entire centre without a guide, for it’s all self explanatory. Turn a wheel and you’ll see the continents float to their present positions, press a button and animated graphics will glow across LCDs. Walk into a room with the fantastic Rhabdodon dinosaur skeleton and its presumed call will roar down on you. Other exhibits include video, where figures through history tell you their stories, while another section has a book that reads itself to you as you turn its pages.

Do keep in mind one thing – you will be disappointed if you’re looking for a museum. You might have to head further down the corniche for that. Bait al Baranda has fantastic stories to tell, but it’s beauty lies in their presentation. There aren’t maps disintegrating behind glass here, they’re printed larger than life on the walls. You won’t look at centuries-old wood of an ancient dhow here, you’ll walk into a room done up like the inside of a hull, cases of ammunition, grain and all. This is an educational centre, and it’s using every method it can to catch your eye and tell you its stories. You’ll love every step of the way.

There’s lots more to come. Local and international artists will soon be exhibiting their work here, conducting workshops and giving lectures. Schools will be targeted in particular, invited to come over and be a part of the house. In time, a café will turn up around an open courtyard, and you will have a bookshop, gift store, library and exhibition rooms.

Proposed workshops include those on ceramics and pottery, sculpture, astronomy and navigation, poetry, nature, weaving and embroidery, art, photography and documentary films.

Through open doors:
A walk through the Bait al Baranda

Past and present Muscat

* You’ll see Qurm build itself, from reed huts to blazing white villas, Ruwi, from rubble and a lone airstrip to a bustling business district, and the corniche being developed
* On H M the Sultan’s Accession Day, July 23, 1970, Muscat had just half a mile of coastline between Jalali and Mirani forts, two primary schools and one hospital. It had seven kilometres of asphalt road, a landing strip for small aircraft and a little port for small boats
* Today, it occupies 3,900 square kilometres and has 200km of coastline, boasts a deep-sea harbour and an international airport

Pre-history

* Plate tectonics form the beginning of the museum’s story, from 750mn years ago. See how the Gulf of Oman is all what’s left of what used to be the prehistoric Tethys Ocean
* Subduction – the process by which dense oceanic floor is pushed under continents – and obduction – where oceanic crust was pushed up to form the Oman Mountains – are explained
* Animated graphics will explain alluvial fans, wave cutting and sink holes
* Dinosaur bones, similar to those of the herbivorous Zalmoxes and Rhabdodon of France and Romania, have been found around Muscat. Look at the skeleton model, and hear the dinosaur roar

Earliest settlements

* Walk into a reconstruction of a tomb from a settlement in Bausher from the Iron Age first millennium BC. Settlements have been at Bausher through more than three millennia, and beehive shaped tombs date back to 3,000BC
* The Ras al Hamra archeological site dates back to 5,000BC. You can’t actually see the artefacts here in the museum, but it does print them out for you: shell jewellery, stone hammers, fishing hooks and burial grounds where people were layed to rest facing the sea, lying on their side, curled foetus-like
* Settlements at Al Wattayah date back to 10,000 BC. Stone Age tools were discovered, charcoal burners dated to 9,615BC. Bronze Age pottery remains date back 3,100BC, and adornment shells to 850BC

Music and dance

A room above exhibits musical instruments, and shows video of traditional performances

A book that reads itself:
just turn the pages

* Oman’s seafarers reached Persia, Iraq, east Africa, Canton, Java, India, Egypt and Sudan
* The Azd tribes from Yemen migrated to Oman, and settled in Qalhat, from where they liberated the country from the Persians
* Alexander the Great planned to invade Oman for its frankincense, but died before he could
* Oman had a major copper smelting industry in Sohar, Samad as Sham and Masirah
* Homoerectus lived here, more than a million years before the later Homosapiens

Historical writings, travel and maps

* Oman in Ptolemy’s map, 168AD. He referred to its inhabitants as ‘Ichthyophagi,’ or fish eaters
* Ibn Hawqal’s map, 10th century AD
* Al Sharif al Idrissi’s map, 12th century AD
* Ahmed Ibn Maajid’s Fundamentals of Maritime Science, 1490
* Muscat in Miler’s Atlas, 1515
* Herman Moll’s (1678-1732) map, undated
* Map of the coast between Muscat and Musandam, 1778
* Map of Arab coast and Red Sea, 1740
* Portuguese drawing of Muscat, sometime after 1662
* Muscat harbour in a 17th century Portuguese map
* Tirion’s map, from 1731
* Muscat and Quriyat on Blaeu’s map of 1662
* Map of Indian Ocean by Pieter Goos in 1660
* History of the Ya’aruba dynasty from 1624-1744, and the Al Bu Said dynasty, from 1744 onwards