Bahla Fort
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How it came to be
Bahla is an oasis 25 km west of Nizwa at the foot of the Jebel Akhdar highlands. The Banu Nebhan, who ruled the area from the 12th to the end of the 15th century, made it their capital and built a great fort of unbaked brick on stone foundations. Bahla was also a centre of Ibadism, the branch of Islam on which the old Omani Imamates were founded.
The oasis is watered by wells and underground channels called falaj, and the town keeps its Friday Mosque with a richly decorated mihrab, a souq and quarters of mud-brick family houses. The oldest part of the fort is Al-Qasabah, while Bait al-Hadith was built under the Ya'ariba dynasty (1624 to 1743).
The fort was inscribed in 1987 and placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger the next year. Consolidation work in the early 1990s used unsuitable materials, and the sabla, an audience hall, was demolished in 1992. The sabla was rebuilt in 1999, and the fort was removed from the danger list in 2004.
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