Click image to view larger version

written by ROB ARNHEM
photographed by PINAKI CHAKRAVARTY

the truth about bander jissa
“Bandar Jissa itself may have derived its name from jus, the burnt limestone-based plaster used in Oman as a building material”

FIVE KILOMETRES
Pleasure domes and goats
Some five kilometres down the coast from Muscat, between an azure sea and the buttery limestone cliffs that are such a prominent feature of Oman, lies the sheltered bay of Bandar Jissa, beloved of divers and Muscat’s Friday beach picnickers. Just over the rise to the right are the oriental pleasure domes of the spanking swish Shangri-La’s Barr al Jissah Resort and Spa, and the Oman Dive Center, an old favourite, nestling unseen in its very own private bay.

Just to the left as you approach Bandar Jissa’s public beach, a road loops over a shoulder of mountain and brings you to the village of Qantab. This was once one of the coast’s best-kept
residential secrets, but the news is out. You can live in your own Omani non-designer fishing village sandwiched between the sea and the looming mountains. Here are nimble goat garbage disposal units, sunsets seen through nets draped to dry, and a lazily flapping osprey or two. Then it’s just the sea horizon and the open deep waters of the Gulf of Oman between you and Makran.

SEA LEVEL
Plagues and loss
As you drop down to sea level again after the stunning sinuous sweep of the road to Bandar Jissa, the remains of a deserted ruined village are all around you. Few people notice them, though, as they’re more intent on hitting the beach. The highest walls still standing belong to the crumbling mosque, now scarred with daubed graffiti. Why does no one live here now? One current tale has it that it was abandoned because of a plague, while others talk of it being fought over – and lost.
Whatever the truth, fishermen still take their boats out from here, and boats of tourists intent on seeing bouncing schools of spinner dolphins further out to sea embark here, too. There was once fresh water in this place, and even fields, as the remains of crumbling stone walls mutely testify. Were these falajs deliberately destroyed to make resettlement impossible, or have they just fallen into disrepair?

A GREEDY SEA
Twenty million years And what if these rocks could speak? What do they tell us? It’s a saga going back at least 20mn years and more to the Tertiary limestones that were once laid down by the sea. In fact, these typical yellow limestones cover about two thirds of Oman. They are the youngest rocks in the sultanate, something better appreciated when you compare them with some of the oldest. In marked contrast, those are the jagged and grim brown ophiolite mountains that began as lava bubbled out on to the sea floor. They form a dramatic backdrop to this scene. The charming little islands that shelter fishing boats and swimmers from the dangers of the deep blue are what’s left of early bits of land eroded away by the soft caresses of waves over aeons. Some 15,000 years ago, sea levels were about 100m lower than today; the indented coastline we see now has been reclaimed by a greedy sea, relentlessly gnawing back at the land and creating those pristine coves and beaches. But between five and two million years ago, raised rocky coastal terraces further down the coast, ending in the high cliffs of Ras al Hadd, layer upon layer of fossilised beaches in fact, point to times when seas were much higher. It doesn’t need much imagination to realise that the creamy limestone originated in a huge, shallow, earlier sea geologists call the Tethys Ocean. The sparkling white sands we enjoy today are also calcite, or calcium carbonate, and began as the powdered remains of dead corals and shells. Dozens of fossilised seashells washed out of their rock matrix lie at your feet if you look. Billions of little lens-shaped fossils called nummulites crowd a whole slice of rock laid down between 55 and 36mn years ago on the southeast side of the bay at sea level. They are so dense in places it looks like peanut brittle. Blobs of reddish-brown iron oxide lie embedded among them like raisins in a cake. These fascinating fossils rejoice in the family name Foraminifera. They’re about the size of 15bz and 50bz coins. Their flat spirals are meticulous copies in stone of their single-celled protozoan living models. Take a closer look and you’ll see an intricate coil of cells pierced with tiny holes. They reminded the Romans of old coins called nummuli. But when they got to Egypt and saw that the
pyramids were built of the same limestone and contained the same fossilised discs, they heard the local version. Wait for it – they were all those extra lentils that the well-fed builders of the pyramids ate as their staple food. Bandar Jissa itself may have derived its name from jus, the burnt limestone-based plaster used in Oman as a building material.

The subtle range of colours as the sun plays out its intensity on these limestone rocks is due to limonite, or iron hydroxide, deposited in the calcium carbonate which is the raw material of this rock. It’s also quite soft and this is how those lavishly sculptured forms evolve. In some places, rounded rocks mass together in distinct layers. Their peculiar shape is due to mud being rolled into pellets by waves and then being solidified. Kingfish, tuna, sharks

The draw of the coast
So why all this talk of dry stones and geology? And fishing? Because they explain why people settle where they do, and literally underlie the intrinsic appeal of a place. Qantab, Quriyat, Qalhat – a chain of Qs down the coast towards Sur, and landfalls for mariners from the earliest days of sail. The land may be pretty barren, but the sea is not.
Not far offshore, the sea floor drops off quite sharply and brings in colder water from deeper currents, rich in nutrients, and this results in the wealth of fish that Omanis have depended on for
millennia. Those meaty kingfish, tuna and sharks were much more abundant than they are today, and fed large populations in dried or fresh form. This stretch of rugged coastline, so apparently barren, until you spot that hidden inlet or freshwater creek like those at Tiwi or Shab, with its tell-tale green vegetation snaking down from the mountains above, has been envied and fought over and has witnessed scenes of mayhem.

The smaller settlements that sprang up, like Bandar Jissa and Qantab, relied mainly on the natural harvest of the sea, and still do. There was a flourishing marine trade with the Gulf, the Indian
subcontinent and East Africa. Quriyat, and Qalhat, now a ruin, were both important urban centres for centuries. Before airports, wadi beds and the sea were often the easiest access routes between two points. These shores saw successive waves of visitors with an eye
on possible real estate or trading outlets. Now, of course, more harmless tourists frolic in the gentle ripples.