Land of Frankincense
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How it came to be
The Land of Frankincense is made up of four sites in Dhofar in southern Oman. In Wadi Dawkah the frankincense tree, Boswellia sacra, still grows and its resin is still harvested. The frankincense trade flourished here for many centuries, carried by the inland caravan oasis of Shisr and the ports of Khor Rori and Al-Baleed, all three of them heavily fortified.
Khor Rori stands on a hilltop about 40 km east of Salalah and corresponds to the Moscha Limen of classical texts. It was active from the 4th century BC to the 5th century AD. Inscriptions record that its town, Sumhuram, was founded on royal initiative and settled by emigrants from the kingdom of Hadramawt, probably in part to control the production of frankincense.
Al-Baleed was a port from the 8th to the 16th century, and finds from Ming China and other lands show its place on the maritime Silk Road. It was attacked several times in the 13th century, and in the late 15th century the shifts in trade brought by the Portuguese and other Europeans sealed its decline. Inland, Shisr was an oasis where caravans found water. The property was inscribed in 2000.
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