Day at the Arms Museum

     

     On the final full day of orientation SIT split us up into four different groups and each one would be sent to a different museum in Muscat. My group was sent to The Armed Forces Museum and it was quite something. Oman is country that many Americans do not know much about, but its military history is something that even less Americans know anything about, this is including myself. I was surprised, however, to find that the country truly did have a rich and interesting military history.

     The museum had an inside and an outside section and the inside was split up into two floors. We were given a tour guide, a lance corporal of the royal guard of Sultan Qaboos, and he started us on the first floor, when Islam came to Oman. The whole first part of the tour it was explained to us, in only Arabic, how Oman, while it was an Imamate (ruled by imams), was governed and what went on in those first thousand years or so. The tour included seeing what Omani weapons looked like back then as well as forts and other such things. We then saw the colonial presence in Oman during the 15 and 1600’s by the Portuguese and then the expulsion of the Portuguese with the help of modern day Iran., who would also come to colonize Oman. We then saw how British established themselves in the region as well as the transition of Oman from an Imamate to a Sultanate and how the current ruling family of Sultans came to power (in 1804, which means 206 years of rule, in case any one was wondering). The museum did a great job of showing how Omani people migrated to east Africa, Zanzibar, and how that affected, and still affects to this day, the current diversity of peoples here in Oman. Perhaps the most interesting part was seeing the modernizing of weapons in model form, from spears and axes to weapons they picked up from European traders and colonizers. The entire first floor was dedicated to Oman up until 1970 and then at the end we learned about the beginning of the current Sultan’s rule.

     The top floor was completely dedicated to the past 40 years and how Sultan Qaboos reformed the country’s military. At first most of the exhibits showed how the Sultan unified the country and defeated the rebels of Southern Oman, Dhofar, who were comprised mainly of opposing tribes. Different rooms of this floor showed the current state of affairs of Oman’s army and navy and other such things.  It is interesting to consider the respect that is given to the current Sultan as half of the entire museum is given to all of Oman’s history before his rule and half is given to his rule, which makes up only 40 years.

     My favorite part of the entire tour, however, was when we got to the outside portion. Outside was where the models of the airplanes of the Sultan’s air force and tanks of the army and even ships of the navy and they were all, if not actual old military vehicles, life size.