pottery makers and pottery users: in ras al-khaimah emirate and musandam wilayat of oman, and around...

Pottery makers and pottery users: in Rasal-Khaimah emirate and Musandam wilayatof Oman, and around Ra’s al-Junayz in thesouth-east of Ja’alan wilayat, Oman

IntroductionThis paper is based on ethnographic researchundertaken firstly for the Ra’s al-Hadd and Ra’s al-Junayz Joint Project under the direction of ProfessorsSerge Cleuziou, Julian Reade and Maurizio Tosi in1987–78 and 1988–89, and later, between 1997 and2004, for H.H. Shaikh Sultan bin Saqr al Qasimi, thethen Deputy-Ruler and Director of the NationalMuseum of Ras al-Khaimah, who wanted an archiveof life in the emirate before oil. This archive came toinclude information from areas bordering Ras al-Khaimah emirate but some of the material concern-ing pottery also came from people in OmaniMusandam. We are deeply grateful to the leadersof both projects and to all those who generouslyshared their time and knowledge with us.

Material from the two areas of research is pre-sented separately. Both regions (Fig. 1) were part of‘Uman in the traditional (pre-late eighteenth-cen-tury) geography of Arabia, where ‘the macroscaledivision of the eastern coast was between al-Bahraynand al-’Uman’ separated by al-Baynuna whichlinked al-Liwa oasis with the coast (Wilkinson1987: 27–28). Ja’alan and Ras al Khaimah emirateparticipated in the trading economy of the north-

west Indian Ocean, and their populations regardedthemselves as Arabs and tribes people. Research insouth-east Ja’alan was over a far shorter period,covered a much smaller area with more limitedresource areas, and we met fewer people. In addi-tion, the purposes of our research were to explicateformer uses and management strategies of resourceareas by local people for archaeologists. Archaeolo-gists do not discuss pottery sherds without contextsof excavation, stratification and known dateableassemblages. As ethnographers, we used surfacefinds of sherds or complete pots in order to have acontext for conversations with local people abouttheir use and acquisition of such pottery, to getintroductions to local potters, and as one meansamong others of building information on economicand jural ideas and processes. It is often said byarchaeologists working in the region that it isimpossible to be certain (Anne Benoist, pers. com.)of the identification of surface finds of local potteryas there appear to have been many local producersand variations within and between their products.Imported pottery items were also considered to be ofuncertain identification and provenance for similarreasons. While conversations with local users of pots

The authors present the results of ethnographic research undertaken between1987 and 2004 in the sultanate of Oman and the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah onpottery manufacture and usage. Drawing on a number of differentinformants in both areas, they illustrate the many different types of vesselsin use, discussing aspects of production, utility and exchange.

Keywords: pottery, ethnography,Oman,Ras al-Khaimah, ceramic production

William Lancaster andFidelity LancasterResearch Associates, Univer-sity of Aberdeen, Aberdeen,Scotland, UK

e-mail: wolancaster@

yahoo.co.uk

Arab. arch. epig. 2010: 21: 199–255 (2010)

Printed in Singapore. All rights reserved

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Fig. 1.

A map of the general region.

WILLIAM LANCASTER AND FIDELITY LANCASTER

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and local potters do not provide archaeologists withfirm identifications of pot type, use, maker or placeand date of production, they do supply ways ofthinking about pots, their uses and users, makersand acquisition that might enhance discussions oflocal social processes over time.

South-eastern OmanIn the south-eastern tip of Ja’alan (Fig. 2), eachenvironmental area has its resources which change

through the seasons for the production of subsis-tence and surplus and their exchange and distri-bution. The mountains and drainage systems, thejibal and the wudiyan, are associated with thoseliving off animals (goats, camels, donkeys, cowsand sheep), and the coasts and lagoons, sahel andkhor, with those living off the sea as fishermen orseamen, although fishing families graze their ani-mals in the wadis and jibal while herders collectfish and shellfish from the coasts and lagoons.Agriculture is concerned with the cultivation of

Fig. 2.

A map of south-east Ja’alan.

POTTERY MAKERS AND POTTERY USERS

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date trees,1 which, for the fishermen and herders ofthe study area, took place in the inland oasis ofBilad Bani bu Hassan where some owned or renteddate trees, in two small oases in the mountain, or ata few small gardens at al Hadd and Khor Jerama.The local diet was milk, dairy products, dates, fish— fresh, dried and salted — and shellfish, and avery little rice or grain. This is similar to Wellsted’sdescription (1978 [1838], ii: 81) of herding andfishing Janaba tribes people — ‘milk, dates, andfish form their principal food, and, as the water isindifferent, they drink large quantities of theformer.’ No single resource area provides for apopulation over an annual seasonal cycle andmovement between resource areas is essential(Lancaster & Lancaster 1992: 345–347). People ‘live’where there is permanent water, thus along thecoasts at ad-Daffa, al Hadd and Khor Jerama, andinland at Wadi Tawi and Wadi Nig’ad, and ‘use’other areas when water is available or for particularpurposes and bring in water if necessary.

Sherds were collected from sites in use in both therecent and more distant past: twelve sites aroundRa’s al-Junayz, nine around al-Hadd, three in WadiTawi, one at al-Ain, one in Wadi Nig’ad, one inWadi Abu Slayma, two along the track from Daffa toMhaina, three north of Jabal Saff’an and one to itssouth. The pieces were shown to a group of ‘Amriwomen in Ra’s al-Junayz, a Baluch trader in Sur, aBaluch trader in Bilad Bani bu ‘Ali, a group ofelderly Bani Ghazzali fishermen in al-Hadd, ‘Amriand Ghazzali in Khor Jerama, ‘Amri and Harbi inRa’s al-Junayz and al Hadd, an ‘Amri in Wadi Tawiand a Shomaghi in Wadi bu Slayma. Sherds fromfour sites (one at al-Hadd, al Ain, the tower in WadiTawi, and one east of around Ra’s al-Junayz) wereunrecognised and another three sites around al-

Hadd had unrecognised sherds among knownpieces.

One site at Ra’s al Junayz, known to have been inuse in the 1950s and earlier, had no pottery (or metalor glass) remains. One of its past users explainedthat very little pottery was needed: perhaps a burma(earthenware bowl) for clarifying butter, but milk,water and clarified butter were kept in skins thatpeople made themselves. Dates were kept in bags ofwoven date-palm fibre and fish were eaten raw orroasted in a fire. Some people had jars from BiladBani bu Hassan where there was pottery, but hisfamily had not, as they did not go to Bilad Bani buHassan for trade or for dates. There were no coffeepot or coffee cup sherds as his family did not drinkcoffee, although they could easily have afforded it.

Pottery pieces were recognised primarily in termsof use and then from where they had been bought ormade. Pottery was called2 tiin (‘clay’, ‘potters’ clay’)or fakhkhar (‘fired clay, earthenware, pottery’).

Water jar pieces were common and of three sorts:large 60 cm-high whitish jars with a basketworkpattern imprinted on the round base, made in BiladBani bu Hassan and seen at eighteen sites; smallerwhitish jars made to be hung up and said to comefrom either or both Rustak and Bahla; and moreunusual, made by the same pottery in Bilad Bani buHassan, jars of the same whitish clay, c.45 cm high,with a narrow base and swelling out towards theneck and then narrowing, with triangular patterningat the neck and base and scrolling in between(Fig. 3). These water jars were called jarra (‘earthen-ware jar’), sirdaab (see below) or jaddara, a localvariant of qaddara. Smaller ones may be called gallaor qalla (‘jug’, ‘pitcher’) or in Sur by Baluch traders,kuz (‘small clay or tin pitcher’). Very coarse andheavy pieces of pottery seen only at a beach site inal-Hadd were recognised instantly by Bani Ghazzalifishermen as sirdaab, ‘subterranean vault or cellar’long jars, in which they had stored water and buriedin the sand above the high-tide mark on beachesthey were using. The Bani Ghazzali said these jarscame from Basra on trading boats, others said theycame from the Batinah, Bahla or Mukallah, and that

1 Grains had been grown at Bilad Bani bu Hassan to alimited extent, as reported by Miles (1994 [1919]: 423) andC. Ward (1987: 148) in November 1845, who saw maize inthe gardens and noted bread was on sale in the market.Cole, at Wafi in Wadi Bani Khalid in November 1845,noted barley and millet growing, but not wheat (Ward1987: 151). A local agricultural expert at Wafi in 1989explained that no grain crops were grown at Bilad Benibu Hassan or Wafi because the high humidity causedmildews and it was now easy to buy grains; earlier, a littlebarley and millet were grown, and eaten straight afterharvesting.

2 Wehr’s (1974) Dictionary of Modern Literary Arabic wasconsulted for the meanings of local Arabic terms forpottery items. Many of these refer to functions and areuseful in thinking about pots.


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they were used to store other things, such as money,as they were then buried.

Burma (‘earthenware pot’) were round-based, forresting in ashes and on the ground, c.20 cm indiameter and height, and of red earthenware, andthe neck a little smaller than the body, with a smallrim. They were used for heating up milk. Most siteshad these, and most were said to come from apottery in Batin, in Wadi Siq near Kamil; a few camefrom a pottery in Bilad Bani bu ‘Ali. To the casualeye, only the decoration distinguished them. Cook-ing pots, jidur or yidur (‘cooking pot, pot’) weresimilar to burma but usually lacked any rim. Sherdswere sometimes identified as either yidur and ⁄ orburma. They came from the Siq pottery or from thepottery at Bilad Bani bu ‘Ali.

Coffee pots or dalla (‘pot with long curved spoutand handle used for making coffee among Syriannomads and in some parts of Saudi Arabia’) wereround-based, of red earthenware with a round bodyand narrower neck, a handle and opposite the handle,a short pouring lip. In 1835 Wellsted (1978 [1838], ii:76) saw Janaba women with ‘an earthen pot forboiling coffee…. A few skins for holding dates orwater…. And two or three copper pots for rice’.Coffee pots did not have pottery lids and a twist ofdate fibre was used instead. They were made at theSiq pottery, and were noticed at eight sites. Burma,yidur and dalla (Fig. 4) were in common use amongthe old in the late 1980s. This sort of pot was alsocalled a yahlah, which in the Emirates is used as awater jar for pouring water for washing, and is

Fig. 3.

Vessels, tools and a pottery wheel from the Miftah pottery, Bilad Bani bu Hassan: 1. water jar; 2. water jar; 3. pottery smoother; 4.

wooden beater; 5. potter’s wheel.


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possibly a variation on qalla, a jug or pitcher. Piecesidentified as coffee cups, finjan, were seen at all sitesthat had pieces of coffee pots and at an additional sixsites. These, like current coffee cups, were of white-glazed ware, usually decorated and imported fromChina. Pieces from coffee grinders, halul (from halla,‘to break up’), were recognised by their flat, thickbases, and were of red earthenware. Sherds werefound at three sites only, which may reflect the needto find part of a base in order to identify them. Halulwere said to come from Bahlah or Nizwa. One pieceof a coffee spoon, used for cooling the roasted beans,was seen; these were called mihmasa (‘having beenroasted’), made of red earthenware and shaped like awide, very shallow cup with a short handle. Theywere made at the Bilad Banu bu ‘Ali pottery.

Malha (probably from malaha, ‘nice’, ‘pretty’) werebowls to put food in or in which to keep food like

clarified butter and, in addition or alternatively,‘anything we ate or drank from’. Other people fromBani ‘Amr and Bani Harb described such pots assahan, ‘plate’, ‘dish’ or ‘bowl’. Sherds of two types ofmalha were seen: one, white-glazed china withdecoration, and referred to as Chinese, although insome instances, manufacturers’ marks were Euro-pean; the other, dark brown glazed pottery, werecontainers in which clarified butter was importedfrom East Africa or Sawahil, or Socotra. Whenemptied, these bowls or dishes were used ascontainers for henna, butter or other things. Piecesof ‘Chinese’ malha and the brown ‘Sawahil’ malhawere seen at nine sites, seven along the coast andtwo inland. It appears from displays at the BaitSayyid Nasr Museum in Ruwi that many of the‘Chinese’ dishes imported into Oman during thenineteenth century were from English potteries

Fig. 4.

Pots from the Siq pottery, Wadi Bani Khalid: 1. coffee pot (dalla), c.20 cm tall; 2. cooking pot (jidr), c.20 cm tall; 3. water jar, c.80 cm tall;

4. storage jar, c.1 m tall.


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imitating Chinese styles. C. Ward and others trav-elling in 1845, commented on ‘many articles ofEnglish manufacture…. while a plentiful supply ofearthenware was displayed on a species of shelf’ inthe house of the Shaikh of Bilad Bani bu Hassan(Ward 1987: 148). A Baluch merchant in Mattrahwho had Chinese jars and dishes in his shop, saidthat such pieces had been imported at the beginningof the twentieth century via India as containers forspices or medicinal products, and would have beenimported at Sur and possibly at the smaller localports of Khor Jerama, al Hadd and al Ashkarah.

Sherds of cream or fawn pottery with brownglazes in patterns, or with brown glaze around thetop half or two-thirds of the pot, while the rest wasunglazed, were identified as parts of storage jars,mangal (from the root nql, ‘transport’); here, possibly‘a container to which things had been transported’,and usually 30–45 cm high, although there werelarger ones. Clarified butter was often stored inthem, and also dates, oil or anything a personwanted. They were said to come from the interior ofOman, from near Ibra, Bahlah,3 or the Batinah.

Pieces of incense burner, mihmar (from hmr, ‘topour out’ referring to the smoke, like those in use atRa’s al Junayz in the late 1980s), were seen at twosites around Ra’s al Junayz. Because it is necessary tofind a piece of the foot, handle or pierced top of thecontainer to identify an incense burner as otherpieces could resemble those of burma or yidur, it isprobable more incense burners were in use in thearea. People said they came from Salalah or Mirbat,like the incense, but these incense burners were notlike those illustrated in Miller and Morris (1988: 81)or in Hawley (1987: 146, 150–151, for Salalah, wherewomen were potters) and looked more like Siq ware.Heard-Bey (1996: 193) mentioned incense burnersfrom potteries at Buraimi.

The sites with recognised pottery sherds can bedivided into those with a wide spread of pottery itemsand those with few or none. Those with a wide spreadwere identified by local people as sites of persistentseasonal use and in a variety of habitats, coastal andinland. Those with few or no sherds were either short-stay, temporary-use places or used by people who, asdescribed above, used very little pottery.

Three potteries were known to people aroundRa’s al Junayz and al-Hadd. A man named Ibrahimhad started one at Bilad Beni bu ‘Ali in c.1935.When he died, his wife, who worked with him,continued, and when she died in c.1975, the enter-prise ceased.

The second was in Bilad Bani bu Hassan andowned by two elderly Miftah half-brothers, Sa’idand Yusuf, who knew it had been in the family forat least five generations, if not longer. They madeonly two types of water jars (sirdaab, jarra orjaddarah). As far as they could recall, the types ofpot made, their shapes, wares and patterns hadnever changed, and they could not see any reasonfor change. This pottery had a slow but steadybusiness in supplying water jars, and they wereconsidering installing an electric kiln as one of thesons was interested in continuing the business. Theclay came from the wadi bank about 0.5 km away,and had previously been brought to the pottery bydonkey and now by car. The clay was put in a hole(hars) and puddled. It was then kneaded andtempered with sand, which makes the water jarmore porous and thus keeps the water cooler(Hawley 1987: 146). Blocks of kneaded clay wereworked on a wooden turntable (duwar, see Fig. 3),fixed on an iron pin through a shallow hemispher-ical stone. The iron pin was held under the woodenturntable and the top of the stone by slivers ofpalm rib for an exact fit. The turntable was about25 cm across and 12 cm deep and was turned withthe right foot, the potter sitting at an angle.4 Theroughly shaped clay was taken off the turntable,and the base pared to a globular shape, and thensmoothed and beaten. The inside of the jar wasmade smooth using a hand-held smoother made ofclay from Bilad Bani bu ‘Ali. It was then beaten onthe outside, using the internal smoother at the sametime, with a wooden pat with grooves cut across itswidth. Ashes were put on the beater and patted orbeaten into the clay. This impressed the basketpattern and made the jar smooth and strong as wellas globular. The sound told the potter when theclay was strong. There used to be sixteen people

3 Hawley (1987: 146) noted glaze on large pots made atBahla.

4 Hawley (1987: 146–147) illustrates two ‘simple footoperated wheels’ used by Bahla potters, which are similarbut not identical to those used at the Miftah pottery, andby the potter at Siq.


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working at the pottery,5 but by 1989, only the twobrothers occasionally worked there. They fired thekiln (harraqa) once or twice a year, using date-fruitstalks for firing because they were very hard andheld the heat. People came to them to buy waterjars; at that time it was mostly Bedu, but earlier,everyone did. Between c.1974 and 1976 the youngerof the two half-brothers had taken pots to Hasa andRiyadh for sale, and also to Bahrain, where he thenfound work.

The third pottery was in Wadi Bani Khalid, at thesouthern end of the Bidiya region, just to the north ofJa’alan and near the village of Siq, with runningwater and large areas of date gardens. The masterpotter we met was ustadh Kholfan Khlaif from afamily of potters. He had taught his two sons, butthey preferred to work for the government. He hadstopped working because he had gone blind. Pro-fessional potters were always men, who lived frompottery, and it was a full-time occupation. Therewere certainly profits in pottery, but it was hardwork. The clay (trab, ‘dust’, ‘earth’) came frombetween Wadi Bani Khalid and Mintirib, and wasbrought to Batin, near Siq. He used a turntable(duwar, see Fig. 5 ⁄ 1) using the left foot and sittingsideways to it. The turntable was similar to that seenand demonstrated by the Miftah brothers at BiladBani bu Hassan. Kholfan Khlaif made all sorts ofpots, some for water were unfired, others were fired,and he never used glazes. Coffee pots, cooking pots,storage jars and water jars (see Fig. 4) were seen fromold stock, made before c.1972. He had also madeincense burners (mihmirr) but none were on view.

The coffee pots (dalla) were red-fired earthenware,round-based and jug-shaped with a handle and asmall, pinched-out spout; there was no lid. Theywere decorated with two lines around the neckseparated by pairs of diagonal slashes. The redearthenware cooking pots were small, round-based,globular with narrow necks, and undecorated. Red

earthenware storage jars (for dates, flour, oil oranything else) were about 1 m high, with flat bases,as these jars were placed on flat rock and walledround with stones, near a seasonal site associatedwith the jar owner. The tops of the jar were filledwith thorn bushes to prevent mice getting in.Storage jars were referred to as damun (among othermeanings, ‘secure’, ‘enclosed’ or ‘vestiges’, ‘ruins’,as in what one was being shown). These pots werestrengthened by three bands of clay pulled out andpinched by the potter’s fingers before firing. Thetops were finished by narrow rims. Water jars, about60 cm high, were unfired with long, almost pointedbases for placing in soft earth. They widened out inthe middle and then narrowed slightly in the neck,and had no rims. Cooking and storage pots werefired in a kiln.

In 1972, Kholfan Khlaif sold large storage jars for 10Omani riyals, and coffee pots and cooking pots forhalf an Omani riyal each. People from Kamil, theBidiya, Sur, anyone from anywhere, came to buy potsfrom him. Traders also came and bought pots by thefive or ten items, and doubled the price to buyers.

The kiln (furn, ‘oven’) (Fig. 5 ⁄ 2), was built into aslope and constructed from mud and stones, andlined on the interior with fired clay. The exteriormeasurements were c.2.4 m high and 3 m across, andthe walls were some 30 cm thick. A strong platformof fired pottery bars, strong enough to take theweight of an adult man, went across the kiln abouthalfway up. The pots to be fired were stacked on thisplatform up to the top of the walls, and covered withold date-palm mats and branches and then earth.The fire entrance, in the lower centre of the frontwall, had a short passage of stone and mud and aroof of two stone slabs resting together in a ridge.

The notes above indicate the types of pottery usedby the inhabitants of south-east Ja’alan; potteryitems made within Ja’alan and at Siq, on thesouthern edge of Bidiya, in the wider region ofOman and south Arabia; and items imported fromoverseas. Local people named pots in terms offunction, such as ‘pourers’ or ‘storage’; of process,such as ‘breakers-up’, ‘pourers-out’ (of smoke); ofitem, ‘milk-heating pot’, ‘cooking pot’; or of ob-served difference, as with the imported containers.While there were clear-cut differences in the uses forpots — storing, pouring, containing, heating, servingand so on — name references crossed between types

5 In Hawley’s (1987: 147) sample of Omani commercialpotteries, one at Bilad Bani bu Hassan is mentioned, theother two known to local people are not. George, in Costaand Wilkinson’s 1987 Hinterland of Sohar volume, re-ported that a potter had produced storage jars in Rahab, asmall agricultural settlement in Wadi Bani ‘Umar al-Gharbi; other pots had come from the commercial potteryat Saham. It is not known if there were many pottersworking on their own, or if this was unusual.


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of pots, and users referred to a general type of potusing different words. Although information fromlocal people about pots they had used and how theyhad acquired them did not often add to the knowl-edge of economic and political activities, it helped inunderstanding the seasonalities of these activities,and in the amounts of and reasons for movement

between coasts, wadis and mountains, and oases.The following two paragraphs describe these briefly.

People’s economic activities connected the threeenvironments of coasts, inland wadis and moun-tains, and oases, through management strategiesthat required jural identity as members of tribes.Tribes people participated as individuals and along

Fig. 5.

Ras al-Khaimah and Musandam.


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family networks through ownership of a varietyof means of production and access to necessaryresource areas. People living off the sea might maketheir profits from carrying goods by sea, and alsofish and herd, or they might make profits fromexchanges or from sales of dried sardines to herdersand oasis cultivators, and live from fishing, herdingand owning. Dates, a basic food item, were obtainedby purchase or exchange, by working for a share ofthe harvest or, more commonly in this area, rentingor owning a few trees in an oasis. Herders lived fromtheir herds, and made profits from live animals anddairy products, or by carrying dates from oases tothe coasts, and dried sardines and salt fish from thecoast to the oases, as well as using dates and fish forthemselves, and poor-quality dates and driedsardines for their animals. Individual members ofherding families might well work as fishermen or onboats for a season or two. Oasis cultivators lived andmade their profits from date cultivation and craftsthat used date leaves and fibres, but needed animalmanures or dried sardines as fertilisers from theherders and fishermen, and herders with camels ordonkeys to carry the dried sardines, animal manureand dates.

Members of eleven small tribes used this corner ofsouth-east Ja’alan in the recent past, although by thelate 1980s Muwalik and most Muhayyir had left al-Hadd, and a Settem herding family had newly comein from further west. Tribes people saw their tribesas linked politically to the shaikhly families of BiladBani bu Hassan and Bilad Bani bu ‘Ali. The twooases are politically opposed, and tribes peopleexplained this as different ideas of ‘ruling’. Thelandscape can be described in tribal terms — Bani‘Amr are here and over there, and that bit wasMuwalik, and Harb are that end — but people liveand work through jama’a, groups or communities,which cannot compete with tribes as jama’a have nojural aspect. Jama’a are constructed by individuals asnetworks of persons ‘who live, marry, and worktogether’ and stretch across and between resourceareas, and across political divisions. There weretherefore alternatives to markets, fishing areas, watersources and so on. Individuals also had knownkinship links to tribes outside their customary areas,which were used if necessary. Tribes and ⁄ or tribalgroupings had shaikhs and ⁄ or rashid who wereexperts in customary law and tried to reconcile

disputants. Individual tribes people were responsi-ble for their actions, and could not be commandedby others, except in certain contractual situations.

In Ja’alan and southern Bidiya the three commer-cial potteries that were mentioned were all sited inagricultural oases, since suitable clays and waterwere needed for manufacture, and the pottersworked full-time. It was unclear whether pottersand their families considered themselves as tribespeople, but they were clearly part of their localcommunities. Kholfan Khlaif, the Siq potter, de-scribed himself as khadim (‘servant’, ‘employee’), aterm which in central Oman describes someoneliving from employment or a craft and whoseattachment to the tribal system is basically throughplace rather than descent.6 No local tribespersonclaimed to have made any sort of pottery for him orherself, but to have used alternatives of skins orbaskets of various sorts; the lack of suitable andreadily available earths seems a plausible reason.

Ras al-Khaimah and Omani MusandamPotteries and potters in Ras al-Khaimah emirate andthe Omani wilayat of Musandam (Fig. 6) differedfrom those in Ja’alan in significant respects. Firstly,there were commercial potteries whose potters madesignificant livelihood and profits from pottery pro-duction, but there were also potters who madepottery for themselves, family and neighbours, andin some areas, local people said everyone had madetheir own pottery. Secondly, commercial potterieswere not only in areas of commercial oasis produc-tion, but more in mountain foothills and valleys.Thirdly, all potters, commercial or otherwise,

6 Serjeant (1981, ix: 232) noted that in the towns ofHadramaut, ‘workers in clay, that is to say, builders, pot-ters, and field workers’ were outside the tribal system.Bujra (1971: 17) described Hadrami towns as organisedpolitically by stratification, and therefore unlike tribes,although there were tribal towns (Hartley 1961). In Yemen,Posey (1994: 17) found that potters, along with some othercraftspeople and service providers, were at the bottom ofthe social hierarchy. Wilkinson (1987: 96–97) noted that incentral Oman, a khadim was an employed garden orcraftworker whose attachment to a tribe was by placerather than by descent. In Ras al-Khaimah emirate, akhadim was someone, usually of African descent, whoworked in date gardens without any decision-makingauthority or responsibilities, unlike bayadir.


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worked part-time and seasonally. Fourthly, virtuallyall potters were tribes people. And fifthly, ontechnical points, no glazes were used; and while aturntable was used, it was for easier handling thepot rather than drawing up revolving clay into a pot.Thus the output of Ras al-Khaimah emirate andMusandam potters was smaller than in Omanicentres of production.

It was the fact that potters were tribesmen,specifically the Bani Shamaili commercial potters ofWadi Hajil in Ras al-Khaimah, that attracted theattention of Dostal (1983: 137–157). He consideredthese potteries to date from the late eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries, although earlier potteries in theBani Shamaili area of Ghaylan produced waressimilar to those excavated by Hansman at Matafand dated to the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-ries. The Khanabila Bani Shamaili potteries of WadiHajil were the best known of the commercialpotteries of this region. There were also commercialpotteries operated by particular families of othertribal groups: Bani Khamis Dhahuriyiin at Sili at thetop of Wadi Sha’am and a short-lived Dhahuriyiinpottery at Hablain (Dostal 1983: 141); long-estab-lished Bani Murra and Hurrais Shihuh potteries at‘Alamah above Lima in Musandam (Croker Jones in

Fig. 6.

1. potter’s wheel at Khlaif Kholfan’s pottery, Siq, Wadi Bani Khalid; 2. Khlaif Kholfan’s kiln.


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Costa 1991: 151–152); and a Haslamani Shihuhpottery in Wadi Baana in Musandam. In the south-ern area of Ras al-Khaimah emirate, small-scalecommercial pottery was said to have been made atMasafi by Maharse tribes people. People in WadiMunai’y and Wadi al-Qawr said there had beencommercial potteries in Wadi Hatta in Dubai emir-ate and at Saham7 on the Omani Batinah coast, andlater, for a short time, at Fujairah town, but thatsome people of the area had made their own pottery.At Munai’y, bayadir men and especially womenoriginally from Oman8 had made pots for them-selves and neighbours, and thought that ‘everyonehad made their own pots’; they knew people atManama and Masafi had done the same. Tribespeople who said they had made their own pots as amatter of course or on occasions came from BaniLassam Shihuh at Isban in Musandam and MahbiibShihuh at Khamid in the Ru’us al-Jibal; Sharqiyiin atWadi Haiyir off Wadi Khabb in the western Hajar;Mazari’ in Wadi Kuub in the western Hajar; and aBani Sa’ad at Madha, an Omani enclave inland fromKhor Fakkan.

The resource areas of Ras al-Khaimah emirate andOmani Musandam are the sea, coastlines and creeks,off which the people of the sea lived and madeprofits from sea trading and transport, pearling,fishing, drying and salting fish, and boat-buildingand repairing. Towns are situated near creeks whereflood courses from the mountains have over timebuilt up silty plains and the waters eventually

entered the sea: the sayh — plains between themountains and the coast — where people lived andmade profits from date cultivation, some grain andvegetable growing, keeping goats, cows and sheepfor dairy products and meat, and firewood collect-ing; the sands where people made profits andlivelihood by transporting goods on their camelsand donkeys for traders, escorting people betweencoasts, from keeping goats and cows, and from thecollection and sale of firewood. The people of theRu’us al-Jibal mountains of northern Ras al-Khai-mah and Musandam and their coasts lived andmade profits from mountain grain cultivation, goats,collecting firewood and honey, fishing and in someplaces, pottery. In the western Hajar mountains,populations made their profits from tobacco, fruitssuch as mangos and limes, goats, the making ofcharcoal, honey collection and from cultivating datesand grains. Cultivation was practised in all resourceareas where there were sufficient silts and whereenough water flowed, or where it could be obtainedfrom wells or could be channelled from seasonalrainfall. Only in the sands and at places on the coastswhere soils and waters were saline was cultivationnot possible.

Local populations described themselves by tribe,by the locality in which they owned the resourcesfrom which they made their profits and by thesource of these profits. Movement between ownedresources and between different resources over theseasons was important for most, with the exceptionof the villages of the Shamailiyya coast. Few local-ities provided livelihood and profits from their ownresources throughout the year and over years.

Tribal membership conferred jural identity, whichgave access to tribal resources for livelihood andprofits, to develop and therefore own resourceswithout denying access to others for subsistence, arequirement to defend resources and rights and thusto bear arms, and the absolute obligations to begenerous and to provide protection to all who askedfor it. A person’s tribal identity gave contexts oflocalities and livelihoods, and to political, economicand moral attitudes, which may be summed up inthe frequently reiterated statements that in the past,tribes people ruled themselves, lived off their ownresources rather than off other people’s, and werecapable of all necessary skills; people could and didlearn new skills. In addition, all were entitled to a

7 Miles (1994 [1919]: 456) mentions ‘extensive potteries’ atSaham.

8 Wilkinson (1987: 96–98) identified bayadir in Oman as anoccupational term, describing villagers who did the mainagricultural work in tribally owned oases, often owningland themselves and ‘treated as theoretical equals by thetribesmen proper but in reality largely peripheral to theirpolitics’. Many in northern Ras al-Khaimah emirate usedthe term for tribesmen who were temporarily withoutland or enough land and therefore worked on the dategardens of others at Sha’am, Dhaya and places betweenRas al-Khaimah town and Khatt. Lorimer (1915: 1825–1826) used the term for a social class who worked incommercial date gardens around Ras al-Khaimah town.Their descendants consider ‘class’ inappropriate as itconceals the dynamics of families going up and down inthe world, often as a result of debt, and that such familiesoften owned land, worked by other bayadir (Lancaster &Lancaster, in press: chapters 6 and 9).


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livelihood, and no one could be commanded, exceptin specific contractual situations.

People of all types of resource area emphasisedover and over again that how a tribesman made hislivelihood and profits, ma’ash wa fa’ida, depended onwhat he chose to do. Obviously, what he did wasaffected by where his tribal and family resourceswere, and to what resources he had access as afamily member or owned outright by development,inheritance through his father and mother, throughhis wife, or by purchase, or by making contractualagreements. But if a mountain man really hadwanted to go to sea, there was nothing to stop himdoing so, although this was unknown. If a mountainman wanted to concentrate on raising male goats formeat, and already owned goats, there was nothing tostop him developing that option. He would not havetime to cultivate many fields for grain, but he wouldhave goats to sell on the Shamailiyya coast or inKhatt in order to buy dates. Someone with a lot ofmountain fields and a number of women in hisimmediate family had the possibility of growing alot of grain and milling some into flour for sale onthe coasts, where it sold very well, along with goatcheeses and clarified butter (the women milk andprocess the milk, mill grain, spread fields with goatdung and do the weeding). It is a similar case withpotters. Many potters were the sons or nephews ofpotters, but others had married the daughters ofpotters, or had decided to learn when they were notbusy with fields or goats. Those who lived andworked together, and married — i.e. were linkedtogether through women — were the informal, fluidand flexible groups and networks through whichsociety functioned.

As in Ja’alan, tribes people in Ras al-Khaimahemirate and Omani Musandam defined themselvesoften or largely in terms of work: ‘we were alwaysbusy going between our gardens and fields’, ‘wewere busy with our own affairs and minding ourown business.’ Competence in work was respected.It was seen as honourable to live from one’s ownresources, from one’s own labour and from whatone owned or had known access to, rather than atthe expense of others. Not to want more than youneeded and to be content with what you had, werevirtues. However, events occurred which made aman unable to support himself or his family: badseasons, ill fortune, bad judgements, the need to

pay compensation or a share of compensation, ordebt. In such circumstances, a man from themountains might go to an area of commercial dategardens or tobacco fields, and work as a bayadir, aknowledgeable employee with responsibilities, andmight take on the family name of his employerwhile he was there. In Ras al-Khaimah emirate andin Omani Musandam, people insisted that todescribe someone as a bayadir was a descriptionof his temporary circumstances, and did not definehim as a member of a social class. If a manremained a bayadir, he was considered to have littleambition.

All commercial potters in Ras al-Khaimah emirateand Omani Musandam had owned and workedmountain fields in the areas associated with theirtribal section. They had goats, donkeys and some-times camels, which grazed on tribal lands, and hadrights to clays, fuel for firing and water from triballands. Pottery making was a winter activity and wascarried out between cultivating grain on the moun-tain fields. How potters organised the work, thetechniques used and the production and distributionof pots will be discussed below.

The evidence for the pots that people had, andhow they were used comes from tribes people in theRu’us al-Jibal and Musandam, and to a lesser extent,from people in the western Hajar region of Rasal-Khaimah emirate. The compilation of archivematerial began in Shimal and Wadi Hajil, wherecommercial potteries had operated until the late1940s. Later we met Haslamani and Bani Murripotters from Wadi Baana and al-’Alamah. In theRu’us al-Jibal, people moved between their fieldsand houses, which were basically secure stores(buyut gufl). People spoke of the pots they had hadwhen they lived in the mountains before moderni-sation, and some showed us pots they had at theirbuyut gufl. Apart from those who had made pottery,or in a few cases, whose fathers had, people were notinterested in pottery; pots were ‘just stuff’. Evenpotters were not very excited by pottery, at least notin the way that drumming, dancing or embroideryinterested them.

The geology and hydrology of the western Hajarare different to those of the Ru’us al-Jibal. Tribes-people there did not move so far, did not depend onthe production of red wheat, had more but smallerharvests of different grain crops in a year, and


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storage was not so critical. Sherds in western Hajarfarij (the lands, buildings, trees, waters and thepeople that own and use them), resembled in formand wares sherds and pots of farij in the Ru’us al-Jibal. Whole pots were rarely seen in western Hajar,possibly because buildings in the more remote farijin the Ru’us al-Jibal and Musandam were notabandoned until the 1970s or 1980s, and were thenadapted for occasional use, while those farij acces-sible by truck continued to be used for goats,growing barley for animal feed and for processingmilk. In the western Hajar, remote farij were aban-doned during the 1940s while those closer have beencompletely modernised. There might always havebeen less storage in pottery jars in this region. Peoplewere even less interested in pottery than they werein the Ru’us al-Jibal and Musandam.

People said they needed pots for heating milk, toclarify butter, for storing water, grain and dates, aswell as any other foodstuffs they might have, such assalt fish or flour and for cooking. In conversationsabout other matters, they also said they had dishesand bowls to serve food in; dishes in which theykneaded bread dough; pots and cups for makingand drinking coffee; plates, incised plates for grind-ing up medicines; jars for cooling and ⁄ or holdingwater for drinking; jars for holding and pouringwater for washing themselves; small pots for storingsmall amounts of honey and oil; spouted dishes forfeeding small children, the very old and the sick;large cooking pots; and incense burners. In the date-garden areas of the Gulf coast, people mentionedlarge pots in which the rations were cooked for thebulls that raised the water in the yazara wells, andpottery drainpipes to carry rainwater off the roofs ofmud-brick houses. People often pointed out that alla family really needed was something in which toheat up milk, as all other functions could be fulfilledwith skins, woven sacks of goat hair or baskets ormats of date-tree fibres. They also said that everyoneknew how to skin and tan, and how to spin andweave animal and plant fibres.

Some individuals were asked what householditems they remembered from when they werechildren, i.e. from the mid- to late 1930s to the1950s. We began with three men brought up incoastal towns. The first was a Za’abi from Jaziratal-Hamra, who had a small private museum andwhose father had been a sea trader between India,

Iran and the Gulf. Their house had had six khars, harsor harz (‘guard, protect, secure’), one each for water,flour, large and small salt fish, dates and rice. Thejars he pointed out (Figs 7–9) as khars included thetypical large jars, up to 1.25 m high, and a largeround decorated pot with a small spout — else-where such pots were said to have been used forholding water in a washing area. They had a numberof varied white earthenware jars (Figs 10–12) fromIran for keeping drinking water cool. Jugs like thoseused as coffee pots in Ja’alan were what everyonehad for washing before prayers. For him, jidr andburma (Fig. 13) were the same, pots in which fishwas cooked and milk and butter heated up. Thewomen cooked over fire pits and did not use tannur.Two stoneware jars from India had containedpickles and were later used to store clarified butter.Incense burners came from Lima (Fig. 14) or Sawahil(Fig. 15, wooden). Imported glazed porcelain bowls(Fig. 16) were for serving food and mixing itemssuch as henna.

Fig. 7.

A water jar from the collection of Hamad bin ‘Ali az-Za’abi.


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The second man was brought up in Suddru, a partof Ras al-Khaimah town where fishing familieslived. In the house where he and his mother lived,they had a khars holding water in the washroom.They cooked using a tannur, an oven made bywomen, which is constructed by making a shallow

pit in the ground, lining it with small stones,smearing it with mud after which it is fired. Hementioned no other pots. They cooked using twometal saucepans, served the food on white metaltrays, had a large ladle and a spoon and drank froma kas, a white metal mug. Earlier, they had used acut-down pineapple tin — ‘only shaikhs and richmerchants had real glasses.’ He and his mother hadnot been poor, as they kept themselves adequatelyfrom their share of his dead father’s fishing boat andequipment, and so had fish, dairy products fromtheir household goats and regularly bought datesand grain, and later, flour.

The third man, a very elderly, former fishermanand pearl diver said that when he was young, theylived on fish, dates and coffee, and occasionally alittle rice. It seems unlikely that he was not eatingclarified butter with his fish and dates and notdrinking milk in various forms, but it was commonfor men to focus on their activities and to ignorethose of women, who were responsible for dairyproducts. This man also mentioned plant medicines,

Fig. 8.


Fig. 9.

Part of the collection of Hamad bin ‘Ali az-Za’abi.

Fig. 10.

Hanging water jars from the collection of Hamad bin ‘Ali

az-Za’abi.


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which would have been ground up in a pottery dish.This household would thus have had storage jars,water jars, milk pots, a dish or two, a coffee pot andcup and probably an incense burner.

Fig. 11.


Fig. 12.

More jars from the collection of Hamad bin ‘Ali az-Za’abi.

Fig. 13.

Two Bani Shamaili cooking pots from the collection of Hamad

bin ‘Ali az-Za’abi.

Fig. 14.

An incense burner from Lima from the collection of Hamad bin

‘Ali az-Za’abi.


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In the date-garden areas of the coastal plaininland from Ras al-Khaimah town, an Iranian traderand a Bani Shamaili described their use of khars inthe processing and storage of dates. When makingdate syrup (dibs) the sacks of dates are piled up in a

stack, (sadjit) on raised boards or plaster plinths sothat the pressed date juices trickle into tins or,formerly, jars or a basin. The jars to catch the syrupare described as khars as they hold things securely,although they are not the big storage jars normallyassociated with the term. This is a good example oflocal terms being descriptive rather than definitive.The dibs is then collected and stored in khars, i.e. anypot used for storing, until it comes to be used whenthe pot might well become an ibriq or a musbah, i.e.pourers. For mudabbas dry dates were put in a kharsand heated dibs with added pounded ginger andsesame oil were poured over them, so that the drydates absorbed the dibs and swelled. Tamr madjus,dates pounded into a paste, were also packed in akhars, which was then sealed with mud for storage.At Dhaya, inland from Rams, Tunaij womendescribed how they had collected drinking waterfrom the deep wells outside the gardens: theyhauled up the cow-skin bucket from the well,emptied the water into the jars they had broughtwith them, carried the water back on their headsand then emptied the jars into the khars at the house.Women and girls washed in qati’a, a cut-off part ofthe family house, where there was water in a burma,an earthenware pot but not the same as the burmafor milk. They poured water over themselves usinga jug or bowl. They cooked using jidr and burma,made bread in a tannur, ground up medicines on amedicine plate and had incense burners. A bride, onher arrival, was given a set of shelves filled with‘pretty things’, imported china and glass dishes andbowls. At Shimal and Sha’am, date-garden ownersdescribed ‘a really big earthenware pot (fukhara) inwhich the rations — grain, dates, dried small fish,broken fish, loz leaves — for the bulls that workedthe yazara wells and the milking cows, goats andsheep, were cooked.’

An elderly Naqbi at Fahlain, who had made hisprofits from animals and firewood, recalled thatmost people had at least one imported china coffeecup. Drinking water was taken from a large wide-mouthed pot (burma) with a brass cup. They hadmilk burma, yidr and kars for dates and grain. Foodwas served in burma, and they heated small amountsof water in a kuuz, a small pitcher, hung over the oillamp.

A Habus, whose family spent most of their timeon the sayh by the late 1940s and 1950s, remembered

Fig. 15.

A wooden incense burner from East Africa, from the collection of

Hamad bin ‘Ali az-Za’abi.

Fig. 16.

‘Pretty things’, imported china and glass display, from the

collection of Hamad bin ‘Ali az-Za’abi.


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that at their house they had two or three khurus fordry dates, the same for grain and one or two forwater. They had three jidr, one for aish (rice), one formilk and one for fish, usually salt fish. The womenmade bread in a tannur, which they had madethemselves. At their mountain fields, where theywent for two months, they had the same number ofkhurus and took their cooking pots with them. Goatswere milked into clean cooking pots. Another Habusrecalled that at their house in the wadi, they had akhars for grain, one for dry dates and one for water,which was outside the house (Figs 17–18). Theycooked in a munn or 4 kg copper pot and a muchlarger one that held two goats. They also had yidr,one of which was kept for milk, and from milk theymade ruub (yogurt), halib (salted milk that kept for amonth) and butter that was boiled, skimmed of theimpurities and thus clarified into samman or dihn.They also had brass coffee pots, one of which waslarge.

A Dhahuri at Sili in Wadi Sha’am in the Ru’us al-Jibal said that in their house at Sili they had a kharsfor grain, one for dates and one for water, and fouror five yidr and burma for cooking, which was mostlymilk-processing done over a tannur, as was bread.They had no dishes or plates (sahan). They madeshallow, round halula (‘low copper vessel’) from clayas drinking vessels for animals, which they filledfrom the cisterns. By this time, the kilns at Sili hadceased to be used. They had exactly the same thingsat their house at Sall Istam, where they had theirhigh mountain fields, and only took up a few smallitems. Another Dhahuri recalled that when he was achild, all their cooking things were made of alumin-ium or enamel.

At Wadi Kubb, at the top of Wadi Ghalilah, a BaniAssad Shihhi showed us his bait gufl (secure winterhouse), in which he had seventeen khurus of varioussizes and shapes, two of them large and almostglobular. All had been inherited. A large earthen-ware pot with lugs and incurving sides was used forcooking meat and aish (here, grain or rice). At WadiHalhal, lower down Wadi Ghalilah, a Shihhi saidthat at the house his wife had inherited there were

Fig. 17.

Khars for water with burma for drinking, outside a house at al-

Aini, Ru’us al Jibal.

Fig. 18.

Khars for water and a metal drinker, outside a house at Haila,

Ru’us al-Jibal.


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twelve khurus, most of which would have heldwheat and dates. Khars for water were always keptoutside.

A Qiyaishi Shihhi at Wadi Sa’aili, like most,regarded khars as fittings. Since many are inherited,the really large and globular jars were put in placebefore the roof of the house was built, bedded on flatstones and held in place with plaster, sometimes onplaster plinths (Figs 19–21). In their house at Sa’ailithey had two burma, one plate and one jidr, and attheir mountain house at Mayya they had one burma,one plate and a big earthenware pot 60 cm indiameter in which salt fish and rice, brought upfrom the coast, were cooked. He pointed out that thenumbers of pots people possessed varied consider-ably and reflected choices over time; and thateveryone in the Ru’us al-Jibal had two to fourhouses, his family owning three, and that each ofthese houses was fully furnished.

In Wadi Ghabbas, a Bani Shamaili said he hadbought five khurus from bil Houn and another potterin Wadi Hajil when he built his house in the 1940s.He carried them up on his head, and they were putin before the roof went on. The jars he had held 25and 30 munn (100–120 kg) of dates, or a sack ofthreshed grain. Khars holding 20 munn were alsoavailable then. The really large globular kars (Fig. 22)held 90 munn (360 kg) and had not been made for along time. Because khars were installed in the bait

Fig. 19.

The interior of Ahmad bin Rashid al-Hubsi’s old store, Wadi

Quda’a, Ru’us al Jibal.

Fig. 20.

Six kharus, covered with other pots and bedded on flat stones and

plaster, in a store in Wadi Haila.

Fig. 21.

Khars embedded in plaster, Sabtan, Ru’us al Jibal.

Fig. 22.

Large globular khars in a storehouse at Wadi Shahha, Ru’us al

Jibal.


217

gufl on plinths or platforms, they rarely broke andoften lasted for generations. In the mountains,people had burma and jidr as well as khurus andnothing else was necessary. The tannur was a brokenkhars sunk in the ground (Fig. 23), or some otherlarge pot such as a mahrasa (Figs 24–25). Sometimeswomen made a tannur from mudded small stones,which were then fired (Figs 26–27).

At Musaylif, near al-Aini, a Khanbuli Shihuhshowed the fourteen khurus and habbiya of differentsizes and shapes in his grandfather’s bait gufl(Fig. 28), of which three were his, three his brother’s,three his mother’s and the other five belonged tocousins. There were several burma, jidr and sahan,and a ‘teapot’ used as a coffee pot; other people usedthese for storing and serving clarified butter, as theypoured well and had lids. His family had stored andserved clarified butter (dihn) in three narrow-necked

jugs, 30–40 cm high, with small spouts and glazeddark brown.

Fig. 23.

An old pot used as a tannur (oven) at the house complex of ‘Ali

bin Sa’id ash Shamaili, Wadi Lughshaib, Ru’us al Jibal.

Fig. 24.

Kitchen area: flat stones, pounding stone and a tannur made from

a broken mahrasa pot, Sabtan, Ru’us al Jibal.

Fig. 25.

Close-up of the tannur (Fig. 24).

Fig. 26.

A tannur built from stones and mud by a woman, Wadi Hajil.

Fig. 27.

A tannur made of layers of mud plaster and stones, Wadi

Ghalilah, Ru’us al-Jibal.


218

At al-Aini, pottery in one of the oldest houses wasseen and photographed (Figs 29–31), and discussedwith a Khanbuli and his elderly mother: ‘The largeglobular storage jars (hawba or hawbiyya) [Fig. 32] areold, for grain or flour. The large jars with long,swollen necks [Fig. 33] are khars or hars, for waterand dates. Smaller jars of this shape were used forstoring dihn, clarified butter. These brown pots[Figs 34–35], on top of the storage pots, wereimported, and used for water to use in the house,or for dihn. All houses, most houses, had this amountand range of pots. This [Fig. 36] is a mu’ajiin, a dishfor kneading dough, or we served food on it. This[Fig. 37] is a qubl, for drinking from, and so is this

[Fig. 38]. These two [Figs 39–40] are qaddah [drinkingvessel] for keeping honey in. These [Figs 41–43] areburma for milk, and so is this [Fig. 44]; these last twoaren’t very good. This one and this one [Figs 45–46]are small yidr for milk or laban. These [Figs 47–48]are jidr for food. These [Figs 49–51] are all pourers,musabh; this [Fig. 49] was for washing, the other twofor coffee or clarified butter, or heating up water incold weather. This one [Fig. 52] is a coffee pot, dalla,made in Lima. This one [Fig. 53] I don’t know, I’venever seen one like it. You could use these pots foranything you wanted, keeping things, cooking,heating up, serving…. The copper cooking pot[Fig. 54] was for rice and meat, we bought them inthe market, they weren’t expensive. The sidr (woodmortar) [Fig. 55] was what we used for poundingcoffee beans and other things.’

Other houses, bait gufl — lockable storehouses thatpeople lived around rather than in — were seen witha range of storage jars and other pots in various afrajin the mountains (Figs 56–58).

A Haslamani Shihuh former potter said that in theRu’us al-Jibal his family had had a big, round hawbathat held 60 munn or 240 kg, which held grain ordates, but not water. Khars were for water, the largeswollen necks helped to keep the water cool (Fig. 59shows hawba on the left, khars on the right). Yidr, jidror qidr — any of them — could be big. They had one,75 cm across and 60 cm high, which could hold24 kg of food and was used for feasts and weddings.Earthenware yidr the size of big white metal

Fig. 28.

The interior of a house at Musaylif, Ru’us al-Jibal, with a variety

of pots.

Fig. 29.

Hurrais al Wa’ab: an old house at al-Aini, Ru’us al Jibal, containing a large number of pots.


219

saucepans were ordinary (Fig. 59 on top of khars).Families were small in those days, but very often thefamilies in a farij took it in turns to cook, so bigcooking pots were useful and needed for celebra-tions. Water was dipped out of a khars with a glass(kaaz) or a cup (kuub) made of brass, white metal orearthenware. They had a kuuz in which they heatedup water in the ashes of the fire when someonewanted a really thorough wash.

Moving out of the Ru’us al-Jibal mountains andinto Wadi Khabb on the northern edge of thewestern Hajar mountains, a Hufayat Sharqi in hisearly fifties had two khars in his bait gufl, inheritedfrom his grandfather, one for dates and the other,smaller and painted, for water. In his opinion, kharsand habiya (hawbiyya) were the same. There was alsoa burma for clarifying butter, a yidr, and a sahan, ashallow dish in which they made cheese by filling itwith milk, adding salt, putting a food cover over it,and leaving it in the sun.

At Ghayl, in the foothills of the western Hajar, aMazrui said a family needed four khars, each holding20 mun or 80 kg of grain, dates and water. Mazrui atHabn said they had had khars for storing water whenthey were using the wadis, and stored grain in sacksin storehouses. From what they said about their

Fig. 30.

The interior of Hurrais al Wa’ab.

Fig. 31.

Hurrais al Wa’ab: pots under a stone bed platform.

Fig. 32.

Hawba or hawbiyya, large storage jars for grain and flour.

Fig. 33.

Khars or hars, large storage jars with swollen necks for dates and

water.


220

livelihoods and profits, they would have had burma,yidr, coffee pots and cups, and from sherds atvarious sites, incense burners and imported bowlsand dishes. Mazari’ at ‘Asimah said they had khars,habiya, burma, yidr, sahan, etc., ‘all the usual stuff.’ AtShawqa, a Qwaydi said they had stored threshedgrain and dates in habiya, in the yanz (storehouse), alockable stone building with a solid roof. In his yanzhe kept several of these jars, which were the swollen-necked sort usually described as khars in the Ru’usal-Jibal. At Sukhaibar in Wadi Munai’y, a Dahamnirecognised sherds (gahaf, guhuf) as the remains of

Fig. 34.

An imported brown glazed jar (dihn) for water or clarified butter.

Fig. 35.

An imported brown glazed jar for water or clarified butter.

Fig. 36.

A kneading dish (mu’aijin) also used for serving food.

Fig. 37.

A drinking vessel (qubl).


221

pots made locally by bayadir and used for storing saltmeat, dates, clarified butter or whatever there was tostore. They had cooked in biraam (pl. of burma), ofthe same ware and these were the general-purposepot. A bayadir family from Oman in Munai’yremembered making general-purpose pots and stor-age jars. At virtually all sites seen in the western

Hajar, there were sherds of earthenware and oftensome from imported glazed wares. The amounts andtypes of items were more numerous in placescultivated through the year with permanent water,but even the furthest places regularly used bypeople living off animals had pieces for generaluse, e.g. milk pots.

People acquired pottery items through purchase,trade, exchange, gift, inheritance or by making them

Fig. 38.

A drinking vessel (qubl).

Fig. 39.

A small pot (qaddah) for storing honey.

Fig. 40.

A qaddah for storing honey.

Fig. 41.

A burma for heating milk.


222

themselves. People who wanted large or specialitems commissioned a potter to make it ⁄ them or,more rarely, commissioned a trader to buy and bringin earthenware or china items, either as items intheir own right or as containers for desired goods,made or processed abroad. Commissioning largepots was mentioned by a Bani Shamaili at Ghabbas;the sons of former potters at Wadi Hajil; at Isban bya Bani Lasmi; and at Munai’y. At the latter two

places commissioning was the norm. Ordinary,smaller items were bought or exchanged for goodsat markets in the coastal towns. Ras al-Khaimahtown, Rams and Sha’am were mentioned as havingregular markets, and small, informal markets were

Fig. 42.

A burma.

Fig. 43.

A poor-quality burma.

Fig. 44.

A poor-quality burma.

Fig. 45.

A small yidr (or jidr) for milk or laban (yogurt).


223

held at places such as Khatt or Habhab before Fridayprayers, and there was also a big seasonal market atDibba Bai’ah. Tribes people across the study regionin general bought what they needed or wanted atthe markets where they sold or exchanged theirsurpluses.

People of the Ru’us al-Jibal and the coastal plainsold goods to small traders at the daily market at Rasal-Khaimah town and, to a lesser extent, at Ramsand Sha’am and at Khatt. Wadi Hajil ⁄ Shimal earth-

enware was sold at these markets and at Bukha andKhasab in Musandam where it was brought in onboats by traders. Earlier, Wadi Hajil pottery hadbeen taken in for sale by traders to Ras al-Khaimahor Rams markets, but most people remembered itcoming into the market by camel and sold by thewives of the Bani Shamaili potters. At Sha’am, the

Fig. 46.

A small yidr.

Fig. 47.

A yidr for food.

Fig. 48.

A yidr for food.

Fig. 49.

A pourer (musabbih) for washing oneself.


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pottery was sold by the potters themselves. Peoplein Khasab remembered pottery from Lima coming inby boat, sometimes via Hablain, and white earthen-ware water jars from southern Iran. A Dhahuri at Siliin Wadi Sha’am said that earlier, they had boughtearthenware pots from the Dhahuri potter family atSili but when that ended, possibly in the 1960s, theyhad bought Wadi Hajil pottery at Sha’am marketand special items from al-’Alama at Hablain wherethey had fields. Shihuh in Wadi Ghalilah remem-bered buying Wadi Hajil pottery at the Sha’ammarket, and Bani Ruhaiba had got Shimal pottery atthe markets at Rams and Ras al-Khaimah. A Qiyai-shi Shihuh at Wadi Sa’ali said they had bought potsfrom potters in Wadi Hajil or in Ras al-Khaimahmarket; mahrasa (large pots for cooking haris) camefrom Lima and might have been bought there or atDibba Bai’ah. Mahbiib at Maharriq said they had

bought pots at Wadi Hajil, al-’Alama and Lima.Habus remembered using the markets at Ras al-Khaimah and the Friday market at Khatt, where they

Fig. 50.

A pourer (musabbih) for serving coffee or clarified butter, or

heating up water in cold weather.

Fig. 51.

A pourer (as for Fig. 50).

Fig. 52.

A coffee pot (dalla) made in Lima.

Fig. 53.

Unknown.


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had bought Wadi Hajil pots. A Naqbi at Fahlain saidhe had bought imported coffee cups and Wadi Hajilpottery in Ras al-Khaimah market.

Pottery sherds were fewer, with little importedmaterial, at the high afraj of the Ru’us al-Jibal whereaccess was only available on foot. This has beentaken to show that these sites were not inhabiteduntil relatively recently (D. Kennet, pers. com.), butit does not take into account the way local peopledescribe their use and ownership of developed areasin the mountains, where individuals have claims ofaccess to and own developed resources in differentareas of a tribal region, at low and high places on

Fig. 54.

A copper cooking pot for rice and meat, bought either in Ras

al-Khaimah or Rams market.

Fig. 55.

Sidr wood mortar, for coffee beans and other foodstuffs.

Fig. 56.

Khars (water jar) and cooking pot in a store in Wadi Quda’a.

Fig. 57.

A water jar, enamel dish and aluminium kettle at a farij in Wadi

Sa’aili, Ru’us al Jibal.


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different mountain faces, so that the risks are spreadand options widened for grain harvests, goat rear-ing, honey and firewood collection. Owners of suchsites explained that high farij that were difficult ofaccess were worked in season by the physicallyactive and the only pots necessary were some forstorage, a pot for milk and a tannur for bread. Sitesthat were easier of access were used by the wholefamily, old and young, for half the year or more,after high summer and again after the cold months.Winter places were usually in the wadis or thefoothills, where it was warmer, and the very oldmight stay there all year round. A few groups offields were never inhabited because they were nearenough to be worked by day, although they hadbuildings for the midday rest and for storing water.Members of some Shihuh sections had date gardensand houses in Lima or Dibba Bai’ah. Pottery itemsat the high sites were limited to the basics, partly

because they had to be carried up on people’sheads.9 Sites — such as al-Aini — that were usedmore intensively by the whole family, for longerperiods and were accessible by camels, had far morepottery, with a wide range of items including coffeepots and cups, pourers, mahrasa and incense burnersfrom al-’Alamah, and useful imported wares such aswater pourers. An elderly Khanbuli Shihuh womanrecalled she had been told it took six men and acamel to get a large globular hars up to al-Aini. Awoman from Bani Murra remarked that peoplebought useful and pretty imported china, such asbowls or dishes, at Dibba Bai’ah market, and suchitems would have been kept at houses in Dibba orLima.

People in the western Hajar chose their marketsaccording to what they were selling and what theyneeded to buy. They used Dubai and Sharjah, and toa lesser extent Ajman or Ras al-Khaimah town, forselling live goats for meat, tobacco, charcoal, honeyand dairy goods. These places were bigger marketswith more buyers and the money realised from salesbought more, as Dubai and, to a lesser extentSharjah, were where imported goods came into theregion by steamship.10 They sold charcoal, honey,dairy products, grains and fresh vegetables in smalltowns on the Shamailiyya coast when they neededdried small fish as fertiliser, and wanted salt or freshfish, coffee and other small items, such as coffeecups. Mazari’, Qwayyid, Jalajil and Maharsa saidthey had normally bought earthenware storage,cooking, milk and water pots, and imported chinaat Dubai and Sharjah, but with occasional purchasesfrom traders on the Shamailiyya coasts. Pottery atDubai and Sharjah markets was brought in bytraders and consisted of water jars from southernIran and Oman, pouring jars and earthenware fromOmani potteries, china coffee cups, decorative

Fig. 58.

Water jars (khars) at a farij in Wadi Nagab, Ru’us al Jibal.

Fig. 59.

Hawba and khars on plaster plinths, smaller pots and copper

cooking pots, Wadi Hajil.

9 Miles (1987: 356), travelling in the high Jabal Akhdar in1876, noted the use of metal water and cooking pots,because of ‘the difficulty of bringing earthenware upfrom the plains’ and ‘the absence of good clay’.

10 Economic and technological change in the transporting ofgoods by sea in local trading boats and in the trade on theGulf and Shamailiyya coasts following the incorporationof the Gulf and the north-west Indian Ocean in globalsteamship routes, and of the Great Depression of the1930s, are examined by Lancaster & Lancaster (in press,Chapter 8).


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dishes and bowls from China and Europe, andpottery containers of goods for sale, usually oils andclarified butter from East Africa. Some Dahaminahof Wadi Munai’y said that when their tobacco cropwas really profitable, merchants from Bu Baqra andSaham on the Omani Batinah coast brought a marketwith them when they came to forward to buy thecrop, and people with tobacco crops to sell boughtthings they wanted, such as cloth, coffee, rice,sandals, pots, earthenware and metal cooking pots,salt, and so on, and paid, plus a premium at theharvest. Some had obtained storage and generalpurpose pots from local Omani bayadir at Munai’y,but whether commissioned or as presents is notknown. Later on, when the tobacco had to be takento merchants at Bu Baqra and Murair, people boughtpottery there or at Fujairah, but thought the potterycame from Saham.

Commissioning pots was not the only way toacquire them. Trading, using money or exchange,and gifts, which expected a return of equivalentvalue at some time, were more common, especiallyfor smaller items. Gifts (hadiya) were made betweenneighbours or relations, for instance when one couldmake pots and the other could not. A BeduShihihiyya at Lima in Musandam explained herfamily had exchanged woven woollen cloth, sacks orrugs for pottery articles with relations who specia-lised in making pots (and knives). Gifts were alsoexchanged during the summer movement to date-garden areas on the coasts and the western Hajarmountains. Much of this movement was by thefamilies of pearl divers from Dubai, Abu Dhabi,Ajman, Sharjah and Umm al-Qawain, some ofwhom went by boat to the Ras al-Khaimah andMusandam Gulf coasts, and others were escorted bytribesmen from the sands to places on the Sham-ailiyya coast. While in their summer areas, thesefamilies were given fresh dates and other fruit bytheir hosts, and the favour was returned with sharedmeals and small presents, which might includesmall pots or water jars. People from coastal townssummering at Shimal were given dry dates, and theygave their hosts presents of things they would havehad to spend money to obtain, such as clothes, cloth,imported china, etc. Traders from Ras al-Khaimahmoved to the date gardens inland of the town, andbrought with them goods to sell, including importedpots and china, and also collected goods, including

locally made pottery, for sale to traders fromelsewhere. A few traders, mostly from Dubai butalso from Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah, summered(or spent part of the summer) at ‘Asimah, forwardbuying mangoes and other fruit and selling goods,presumed to include pottery, to growers. Mostpeople in ‘Asimah bought their pottery at themarkets of Sharjah or Ras al-Khaimah town whenthey went to sell fruit.

In Ras al-Khaimah market, pottery from WadiHajil was readily available, as were white earthen-ware water jars from southern Iran. A Na’imi tradersaid that his uncle, whose main business was tradingbuilding wood from India, also sold Iranian waterjars but not Wadi Hajil pottery, as this was sold byShamaili women at the market. A Za’ab from Jaziratal-Hamra whose family had been sea traders andwhose grandfather had had a store in Ras al-Khaimah town assumed his family would have soldor taken goods in exchange for imported decorativechina, as they had for decorated mirrors, gramo-phones, wooden chests and other goods from Indiaand East Africa.

Many Shihuh, Habus, and Dhahuriyiin from theRu’us al-Jibal and Musandam went down to date-garden areas on the coasts and inland to obtain theirsupplies of dry dates. Maharsa at Masafi remem-bered Dhahuriyiin spending a night with themwhile on their way to Bithnah and Kilwa in Fujairah,where they sold goats and clarified butter in potsand got their date supplies. Naqbiyiin at Daftahremembered obtaining pots from Dhahuriyiin fam-ilies from Sili in Wadi Sha’am on their way to HaratBani Humaid, as well as buying pottery at themarkets they used for selling goods — Shimal (WadiHajil) pottery at Ras al-Khaimah market and Iranianwater jars at Dubai, Sharjah or Kalba. Mazari’ at‘Asimah said Dhahuriyiin had come through, someof whom had pots for sale. Za’ab at Bu Baqraremembered Khanazira Shihuh from Musandamselling live goats and pottery, as they did all alongthe route to Khabura, where they bought dry dates.A Bani Murriya woman who made pots at al-’Alamah recalled selling incense burners and otherpots where they summered near Shinaas, and givingincense burners or other small pots to people whogave her family fresh dates.

The main trading season was at the end of highsummer, during rabiya when the main pearling


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season was ended and trade by land and seainvolved dates from Basra, Minaw (Minab) insouthern Iran, and for some, from Buraimi. Drydates were a basic food for all, and not enough couldbe grown in the study region for its population, asdates for drying need high summer humidity, whichdoes not occur on the coasts. Traders from all overthe Gulf went to Basra and Minaw for dry dates andbrought them to the coastal towns of the Gulf, theShamailiyya coast and the Batinah coast, indeedanywhere where people gathered. People bought thedates with money they had made selling surplusesthey had brought to the coasts or collected en route.Traders also brought other goods to sell, either tocustomers or to small traders who then sold themon. Pottery and china were among these goods, andnot considered expensive. Intermittent trading con-tinued throughout the year.

Inheritance by which pots, especially large storagejars, were obtained was very common across thestudy region.

Potters and their descendants described whatthey had made and how production had beenorganised. Bani Shamaili potters of Wadi Hajil camefrom six families of Khanabila Bani Shamaili.11 Theskill was not limited to members of specific familiesand others who wanted to learn could as well.Pottery-making families were linked by marriageand descent with all other Khanabila wider families.The Khanabila tribal dira, the places associated witha named group and in which they developed ownedassets and made livelihood and profits from theirresources in the foothills and mountains, had clays,water, firewood and sites for kilns. Potteries were

active in the winter, because that was when water,needed for washing clays, was available. Potterymaking was necessarily a part-time occupation, aspotters also worked on their mountain grainfields.12 The part-time nature of pottery makingresulted from the nature of the organisation of workand time by tribes people, where each individualmakes his own decisions, is responsible for himselfand cannot command others13 but can negotiatepartnerships. Potters were always men, and thewomen decorated.

Potters worked as teams, and had partnerships inwhich one partner, the potter, made the pots and theother partner, the rafiqa, brought down clays andfuel for firing from the mountains; the partnersshared the profits. A Khanbuli Shamaili recalledhow he and his father had brought down clays andfuel by camel or donkey for a potter, and describedhow they spent two or three days doing this, spentthe next three days collecting firewood (hattab) andbringing it down to the market at Rams for sale, andthen spent a few days working on their fields. Anelderly Khanbuli Shamaili, whose uncle had been apotter, described partnerships (shariqa) between twomen, the ustadh (teacher) or mahar (the expert) whopotted, and the other, the kuuli, who got the claysand the fuel and helped with the firing of the potteryin the kiln. He remembered potters and their carriersworking at pottery until they knew there had beenrain in the mountains, when they went up to theirrespective fields and ploughed and sowed, and thencame down again. Rashid bin Haimur described toal-Tabur (1998: 424) how the men worked fromsunrise to sunset, digging or cutting out the clayswith knives from among the rocks on the slopes,hollows and peaks of the mountain, and thenbringing the clays down to the workplaces in sackson the backs of donkeys or camels.

Potters worked at places in the foothills wherethey had workshops (masna’a), often a store, a kilnand sometimes, a dwelling. Dostal’s (1983: 142) mapof Hajar, the most recently used pottery work area in

11 Dostal (1983: 143) lists Bait Haimur, Bait Duhayy, BaitSa’adun, Bait ‘Ayya and Bait Qaysi. Al-Tabur (1998: 429)interviewed the late Ahmad bin Houn and the late Rashidbin Haimur in 1985–1986. Our information came from thesons and nephews of potters.

12 Dostal (1983: 145) describes a partnership betweenbrothers — in which one brother was responsible for thelivelihood activities of grain cultivation, goats and fire-wood collection, leaving the other to make pots, andwhose profits were divided equally between them — thatwas not recognised by the sons and nephews of formerpotters, who all spoke of partnerships between a potterand a collector of clays and fuel, where both cultivated,had goats and collected firewood. It is possible that Do-stal’s informant was talking of an arrangement peculiar tohim and a brother.

13 The only remark that might contradict this was made byan elderly Murri, whose Shamaili mother’s father hadbeen a potter at Sharga in Wadi Hajil, and had had kha-wadim who worked in his date gardens. As winter is theseason for pottery making and a slack time for date cul-tivation, it is possible that these or some of these khawadimhad also been involved in pottery making.


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Wadi Hajil, was said by some descendants of formerowners to be incomplete, and the drawing of a kilnat Hajar (1983: 149) taken from a photograph(illustration 14) is unsatisfactory. Al-Tabur (1998:424) has a diagram of Rashid bin Haimur’s work-place and kiln at Hajar.

The following account of making pottery at Hajarin Wadi Hajil (Fig. 60) is taken from various sons andnephews of former potters, and is roughly consistentwith the descriptions in Dostal (1983: 149, 152) andal-Tabur (1998: 421–428). Potters used three or fourdifferent sorts of clay (Figs 61–62) from differentplaces, mixed in varying proportions depending onwhat items they intended to make, with a majordivision between pots as containers and cookingpots. Muhammad bin Qaysi said that as a very roughdivision, hard clays were used for containers but notfor cooking pots as they cracked when they came intocontact with the heat of the fire. Soft clays were usedfor cooking pots. Rashid bin Haimur described threeclays, red, green and yellow. Red clays were abun-dant, found on the surface or between rocks and sandand the most used. Green clay was scarce andmingled with earth and mountain rocks, and couldbe difficult to dig out. It was mixed, at the workplace,with red clays and a little yellow. The yellow claystended to be very pale to almost white, and werefound among rocks in the mountains. This clay wasmixed with other clays to make it stronger and toharden and improve it, so it did not break so easilyin the heat of the kiln. White clays from Iran weresometimes brought in, but these did not stand up tofiring properly.

A few informants said clays were washed in ashallow cistern (Fig. 63) at the workplace, otherinformants did not and it is thus unclear whether allclays were washed or only some sorts for particularitems. Clays were pounded up with sticks until fineand sieved. The temper — oyster shells according to

Fig. 60.

Workplaces and kilns at Hajar, Wadi Hajil.

Fig. 61.

Clay source, Sall ash-Shamaili, Ru’us al Jibal.


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Dostal, mussel shells or small stones according toour informants — was pounded up using a stoneand mixed with the clays and water using the handsand feet on a piece of wood. The clay was thenkneaded with the hands until smooth and even, andlumps were squeezed out. A piece of clay wasmoulded for the base on a wooden turntable(dawwar), which pivoted on a wooden base andwas pushed round by the potter’s leg. More pieces,slabs or coils, of worked clay were added to the basefor the walls and worked up, using the turntable.The walls of large pots were worked using a woodenblock or stick on the outside and a hand on theinside (Al-Tabur, 1998: 427, ill. 47). The bandsaround the large storage jars were pinched outusing the fingers. Necks, handles and lugs weremade by hand. Sayyid Muhammad bin Qaysi, Amirof Shimal Fowk, whose father had been a potter,commented on photographs taken by Dostal14 in1970 or 1977 to show how sahan (dishes) were made.

The pounded clays and temper were put into ametal sieve, made from an oilcan, and shaken intothe bottom mould. They were then dampened withwater from a bowl, smoothed with a piece of metaland the top mould be pressed down onto it. Themoulds were removed and the dish put to dry, andin due course the stack of dry dishes was fired.

Using paint, the women then decorated many ofthe pottery items that they would use themselves.15

The paint, called mushwaiq (from the root shwq ‘toadorn’, ‘to give pleasure’), came from red stonesfound in the mountains, which were pounded fine,mixed with water and applied with a fine twig in

Fig. 62.

Another clay source at Sall ash-Shamaili.

Fig. 63.

Birkat (built tank) at Hajar for washing clay.

14 In the library of the National Museum, Ras al-Khaimah.

15 It seems that some pots may have been decorated afterfiring and others before. The flaking wash and paint onsome (e.g. Fig. 13) indicate decoration after firing. Thelarge number of painted sherds at most Bani Shamailikiln sites might imply that some pots were painted beforefiring, or that fired and decorated pots were stored at thekilns for purchase, and at that point discarded by buyers.Alternatively, or as well, some types of pot might havebeen decorated before firing, or some potters, and ⁄ or onsome occasions, did so. A Bani Murriya woman potter,whose Bani Shamailiya mother-in-law was a noted potter,said painting was done before firing, and touched upafterwards if necessary.


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geometric patterns.16 Pots such as milk pots, cookingpots and pots for holding water for drinking andwashing were often given a wash of white or orange.The white probably came from another Ru’usal-Jibal stone — a Khanabila Bani Shamaili describedhow his mother and aunt had used a paste ofpounded white stone to enhance the appearance oftheir tannur (ovens; Fig. 64). Burnishing was alsodone after painting, and without washes, on somesmall pots. It is unclear if the term yam referred toburnishing alone, or to all finishes. Muhammad binQaysi reckoned that it took a month from gettingtogether the clays, preparing them, making the potsand collecting the firewood, to the firing of the kiln.

Five sites of commercial pottery production inWadi Hajil were mapped by Dostal (1983: 140). Hisinformants provided rough dates for the ending ofoperations at each: before 1947 for Hajar, withthirteen kilns; before 1927 at Shiddu (Figs 65–67),an unclear number of kilns; before 1907, an unclear

number but many at Sharga (Figs 68–71); andseveral at Shaquun (Figs 72–73) and Siykh ⁄ Shiqqa(Figs 74–75), dates unknown.17 Dostal mentionsearlier pottery sites owned by Bani Shamaili atGhaylan ⁄ Baraama to the north, where elderly BaniShamaili knew there were old groups of kilns underrecent stone storehouses (Figs 76–78), but had noknowledge of pottery production. There are indica-tions of an older kiln further up Wadi Baraama(Figs 79–81). We were shown earlier clay sites at al-Ashgar, and a long-unused kiln at Wadi al-Aal.Beatrice de Cardi had seen another kiln at WadiFari’a, now under a camel yard. The last two sitesare now owned by Habus, who bought them fromKhanabila Bani Shamaili in the relatively recent past.

Bani Shamaili kilns at Hajar (Figs 82–86), where atleast twenty-three were noted, were built by digginginto a slope to create a flat base around which the kilnwas constructed from stones immediately to handwith mud mortars, and the interior lined with clay.An elderly Shamaili former potter pointed out thatthe front wall of the kiln had to be rebuilt fairlyfrequently, and that many kilns had a small entranceat the side, used to check how the firing of the potswas progressing. Firing material was ishbaq (Euphor-bia larica) and other bits and pieces, but never samra(Acacia tortilis). Before firing, the top of the kiln wascovered with flattened ‘breads’ of clay (Fig. 86), tokeep in the heat. Rashid bin Haimur (Al-Tabur, 1998:424) said there had been twenty-five kilns of differentsizes in the middle of the houses at Hajar, amongthem massive kilns that held 400–500 pieces, andothers that held only 100–200. Kilns were built fromlocal mountain stone, between 1.5 and 1.8 m deep,and divided up internally. The size of the kiln variedin accordance with the size of the objects to be fired:‘the small kilns over there were for making incenseburners (madkhkhan, ‘smokers’); baj, pots for coolingdrinking water; shariba or karua, drinkers; and masa-fir, plates’. Bigger kilns were used for making kars,water storage jars and salahi, an alternative to hawba,and also for storing drinking water. Pots ready forfiring were arranged in orderly rows in the kiln.

Dostal (1983: 150) illustrated twenty items madeand named by potters at Wadi Hajil: nos. 1–7 and 10are described as khars, storage containers; 8 and 9 asfakhkhaara, also storage containers; 11 as khaliya, awater jug; 12 as yahlii, another water jug; 13 as khraj,a water container; 14 as habiya, a container; 15 as

Fig. 64.

A tannur whitened on the inside, Wadi Hajil.

16 Hawley (1987: 149) commented on the ‘delight in orna-mentation’ evident in wood and metal work, embroideryand pottery. People commented that to adorn somethingone had made was fitting and pleasing to God.

17 Extending the twenty-year interval between the end ofproduction dates for Hajar, Shiddu and Sharqa to Sha’a-qun and Siykh is tempting but unrealistic. Is the twenty-year interval literal or figurative? What were the reasonsfor a site being abandoned and another started? Did allpotters at a site end production simultaneously or overtime? Did a site start with a group of potters, or with one,around whom others came together? Did two sitesoperate at the same time? And so on. Unfortunately, thesequestions cannot now be answered.


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burma, a cooking pot; 16 as mahrasa, a cooking pot; 17as yidr, a bowl; 18 as kuuz, a clay jug; 19 as dalla, as acoffee pot or teapot; 20 as mirzab, a rainwater gutteror downspout (Fig. 87). Al-Tabur (1998: 426–427)listed sixteen items from Rashid bin Haimur, withphotographs of eight of them: 1 al-habb or al-salahi,for keeping drinking water cool; 2 al-baj, for keepingdrinking water cool; 3 al-mudkhkhan, incense burner(illustrated); 4 al-khars, for storing dry dates or water;5 al-miswaka, a plate for crushing medicines (illus-trated); 6 al-burma, for cooking food (illustrated); 7al-karawa or al-shariba, in which water was takenfrom the centre of the well to obtain cool drinkingwater (illustrated); 8 al-tannur, an oven, for cookingfood; 9 kuwaar, in which tea and coffee wereprepared; and there was another sort of kuwaar,used for cooking food for cattle (i.e. the workingbulls); 10 danduni, used for carrying water from‘outside’ (i.e. not fit for drinking); 11 al-yahlii, forcarrying and storing water (illustrated); 12 sakawiya,

for holding drinking water; 13 majla, for holdingdrinking water; 14 haluula (more than one sort) usedfor washing fish, and for cooking beef and lamb; 15maqla, for making coffee and for carrying embersand ashes from the fire (illustrated); 16 miilah, forcarrying water to hens or birds. A qidr ⁄ jidr ⁄ yidr andan earthenware coffee cup are illustrated but notdiscussed in the text.

Fig. 65.

Old kilns, Shiddu, Wadi Hajil.

Fig. 66.

Small kiln, Shiddu.

Fig. 67.

Sherds found around kilns, Shiddu.


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The ‘People’s Association for the Revival of TheirHeritage’ at Shimal Fowk has a collection of WadiHajil pottery (Fig. 88), which includes burma formilk, yidr for laban and clarified butter, and a dish,sahan, for cheese-making; a two-handled dish,mata’am, in which food could be served (or doughkneaded); coffee cups and a pot; a mizbad for fresh

butter; a kuuz, for serving and storing clarifiedbutter; a khabiya or habiya, for storing drinking water;a mafun, a funnel for filling water jars; khars, forstorage; a khabun, a water jug with spout; and qidr forcooking. The Rams Folk Artists and Rowing Clubhas a good collection of artefacts, including potteryused in the town, from Wadi Hajil, Lima andimported (Figs 89–93).

Fig. 68.

The Sharga kiln area, south end.

Fig. 69.

The Sharqa kiln area, north end.

Fig. 70.

A kiln at Sharga.

Fig. 71.

Sherds from the kiln area, Sharga.


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Clearly, Wadi Hajil potters made more types ofpottery items that any one person or group of peoplehad said they had owned or used, and that therewere items18 used in the local area not mentioned by

the potters interviewed by Dostal and al-Tabur.Names given to pots were descriptive rather thandefinitive, and there were several ways of describingsome items of the pottery repertoire. In addition,people commissioned items they wanted, some ofwhich may have been one-off items. Potters exper-imented with shapes and items, and may haveresponded to interviewers only about the items theyhad made themselves or that interested them. Thecompilation of a complete inventory of Wadi Hajilpottery seems unrealistic.

Sons and nephews of Wadi Hajil potters explainedthey had no accurate knowledge of the selling ofpots at the dates when the potteries were known tohave been flourishing; those times were too far in thepast. Until the ending of pottery production in WadiHajil in the 1960s, pots had been sold in smallamounts to commissioning customers or traders butmostly in the Wednesday market at Ras al-Khaimah,the Friday market at Rams and at Sha’am. It wasknown that earlier, certainly in the late nineteenthand early twentieth centuries, when pearling wasprofitable and there was money in the Gulf, it hadbeen really big business, with buum (wooden tradingboats) going off to markets in the Gulf and southernIran. People assumed that commercial pottery withprofits and exports had probably existed earlierfrom the number of kiln sites around and becausethere were no memories of an earlier time whenthere were no Bani Shamaili potters.

Dostal (1983: 153–156), from information collectedin 1977, distinguished between saffaariin, long dis-tance traders or exporters, and jizaafiin, commissionagents. Saffaariin usually specialised in one kind ofgoods, whereas the jizaafiin were general agents forwhatever goods their clients requested. It was moreprofitable for potters to sell to long-distance tradersbecause they ordered large quantities — hundredsof pieces — whereas a commission agent orderedjust a few dozen. Potters produced only to order.The price was decided by bargaining and, as well asmoney, included some natural products, usually justdates and salt being acceptable. Exporters had tomake an advance payment with the rest paid ondelivery. The long-distance traders had stores atRams, Ras al-Khaimah and Ma’arid where goodswere kept before being shipped to north-easternOman and Hormuz. Dostal’s informants namedseven traders from Rams, six from Ras al-Khaimah

Fig. 72.

The kiln site at Shaqun.

Fig. 73.

Shaqun: sherd sample.

18 For example, some of the items seen at the old house,Wa’ab al-Hurrais at al-Aini in the Ru’us al-Jibal, andowned by a family from Khanabila Bani Shutair Shihuh.People from al-Aini said most of their pottery came fromthe market at Ras al-Khaimah town, and some of it fromLima. Also included are items seen at sites in the Ruus al-Jibal and the foothills.


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and four from Ma’arid. Boats from Rams suppliedMusandam and the north-west coast, while themarket at Ras al-Khaimah supplied Wadi Hajilpottery to the southern hinterlands.

Dostal (1983: 155) wrote that Bani Shamaili pottersconsidered that at some time they had produced forexchange with local groups, but this became unprof-itable, and they began producing for traders in themarkets of Ras al-Khaimah, Ma’arid and Rams. Hisinformant, Hassan bin Qaysi, emphasised that

exchanges with locals continued until pottery pro-duction stopped. Town traders consulted by Dostalthought that earlier local exchange systems wouldhave been liable to interruptions by feuds or wars,and so people preferred to use the neutral area of amarket.19 Dostal (1983: 141) believed that localmarkets arrived in this region in the late eighteenthto early nineteenth centuries, presumably with theestablishment of Qawasim rule. Another example ofeconomic change linked to politics was given by alocal young man, interested in history, who hadconsulted older, knowledgeable men in the area ofthe date gardens inland from Ras al-Khaimah town.He had been told that before Qawasim rule, peopleof the date gardens and the people of the coast hadexchanged their products to their mutual benefit, butafter the arrival of the Qawasim and al-’Ali mer-chant families, the people of the date gardens hadbecome burdened with debt and as a result lost theirgardens, although they remained as garden work-ers.20 Local people, whatever their sources of

Fig. 74.

Siykh ⁄ Shiqqa: kiln sites.

Fig. 75.

Siykh ⁄ Shiqqa: sherd sample.19 Lancaster & Lancaster, in press: Chapter 7. Local tribes

people considered that in general, feuds and wars mighthave hindered trade and exchange for particular groups,but that one of the functions of rulers was to arrangetruces for important economic activities, such as the greatpearling trade and the important seasonal markets.Individual families always had alternative strategies andnetworks by which they could obtain goods and services.

20 Wilkinson (1987: 222) described a similar situation, but ona far greater scale, in mid-eighteenth-century Oman,when Ya’ariba rulers greatly increased their wealththrough commerce and commercial ⁄ industrial agricul-ture, which, among other things, resulted in the dispos-session and diminishment of tribesmen.


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livelihood, regarded these as dynamic systemswhose participants were affected by and respondedto changing conditions. In our opinion, consideringwhat local people said about processes of produc-tion and distribution, and the history of the region, itis possible that commercial pottery production byBani Shamaili or their predecessors at the variouslocations was considerably earlier, and might haveshifted between production exchanged along localnetworks and production distributed to a greater orlesser degree by long-distance traders. At all times,local Bani Shamaili potters and their predecessors

were part of the production and exchange system ofthe north-west Indian Ocean region.

Pottery was also made at Sili in Wadi Sha’am bymembers of the Bani Khamis family of Dhahuriyiin,who learnt from Bani Shamaili. They made kars;jahla, water jars for washing water; jidda orpossibly jarra, jars; qidr, cooking pots; burma for

Fig. 76.

Ghaylan: old kiln sites.

Fig. 77.

Ghaylan: sherd sample 1.

Fig. 78.

Ghaylan: sherd sample 2.


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milk-processing; kuuz for storing clarified butter; andmabkhkhar, incense burners. This was a commercialpottery. The potters were men who worked part-timein the winters, in between cultivating fields aroundSili. Pots were fired in free-standing kilns (Figs 94–96), unlike those at Hajar in Wadi Hajil, where kilnswere built into the slopes. Pots were sold orexchanged in Sha’am, and taken down to the Batinahcoast in the summers, where they were sold alongwith goats, dairy products and bundles of goat hair

Fig. 79.

Wadi Barama: old kiln.

Fig. 80.

Wadi Barama: petrified kiln detritus.

Fig. 81.

Wadi Barama: close-up of petrified kiln detritus.

Fig. 82.

Hajar: kiln site 9.

Fig. 83.

Hajar: kiln site 12.


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to make sacks for dry dates. The pottery had ceasedby 1960, when a very heavy rainfall washed out theclay source (Dostal 1983: 141). There were no othermemories of how production or distribution ofpottery had been organised. Pots (Figs 97–100) wereseen at Sili, where people assumed they had beenmade, but could not be sure. Bani Khamis potters atHablain on the Musandam coast had made jars forcooling water for a few years in the 1960s; it ispossible that they were importing white clays fromQishm or Minaw in southern Iran.21

The pottery at al-’Alamah above Lima was com-mercial and long established, according to presentpotters. Pottery made at al-’Alamah was distributedat or through Lima and known as Lima pottery inthe wider region. No western report on Lima

Fig. 84.

Hajar: kiln site 12, ‘breads’.

Fig. 85.


Fig. 86.


21 In her notes from a botanical trip to Musandam in theearly 1970s, Mrs Rosemary Ash mentioned being told ofkiln fields underneath long-established date gardens atBukha, but she cannot remember who told her. Inquiriesat Bukha were fruitless.


239

mentions a pottery, but neither are there anymentions of Bani Shamaili pottery in, for example,Lorimer’s Gazetteer (1915, information collected1906), although it is known that the Shamailipotteries were flourishing then. Crocker Jones (Costa1991: 183–185) has photographs of old and recentLima and al-’Alamah pottery and information on

how it was made, gathered on brief visits in 1985and 1986. The following account combines CrockerJones’s material with information collected between2000 and 2005 in Lima and in Ras al-Khaimah frompeople who had been potters at Lima and al-’Alamah. Most of the information came from aHaslamani family, in which the late father and hisson, Khamis Qa’idu, had been commercial potters inWadi Baana. Khamis Qa’idu’s wife is from Bani

Fig. 87.

Shimal Tahat: mirzab (rain spouts) in mud-brick house.

Fig. 88.

Shimal Fowk: Part of the pottery display at The People’s

Association for the Revival of Their Heritage.

Fig. 89.

Rams: two pourers from the pottery display at The Rams Folk

Artists and Rowing Club.

Fig. 90.

A small painted pot for honey from the Rams Folk Artists and

Rowing Club display.

Fig. 91.

A bowl from the Rams Folk Artists and Rowing Club.


240

Murri and also a potter, with in-laws among Hurraisfamilies who were potters in al-’Alamah and Lima.

The Murriya said that previously, when theyspent most of their time up in the mountains, all the

pottery was made at al-’Alamah, where there was afarij with a water seep. It was only later, whenpottery-making families lived some of the time atLima, that pottery was made at Lima. Al-’Alamabelonged, wholly or in part, to al Haslaman Shihuh,but some forty years ago it, or part of it, was sold toBani Hassuun Shihuh, as they were increasing innumbers and the Haslaman decreasing. Commercial

Fig. 92.

A khamm (water storage jar) from the Rams Folk Artists and

Rowing Club.

Fig. 93.

Pretty imported china from the Rams Folk Artists and Rowing

Club display.

Fig. 94.

A kiln at Sili, Wadi Sha’am, Ru’us al Jibal.

Fig. 95.

Close-up of kiln at Sili.


241

pottery at Wadi Banna was made by some HaslamanShihuh and Bani Murra Shihuh families, andrecalled by Khanabila Shihuh and a Habus. KhamisQa’idu pointed out that there had been an earliercommercial pottery in Wadi Baana, shown by theremains of an old kiln. Wadi Baana pottery(Figs 101–107, all seen in Wadi Baana but notnecessarily made there) was regarded as similar tothat of Lima and al-’Alamah. Potters and their

families all owned mountain fields above Lima orWadi Baana and other places higher in the moun-tains — such as Sall Imit — and goats, sometimes inlarge numbers. Pottery was a part-time occupation,from which they made a profit, alongside otherresources, which were usually goat rearing.

Clays were collected from the mountains nearby.At al-’Alamah, the clay sources were on slopes sosteep that donkeys could not be used to bring down

Fig. 96.

The interior of the kiln at Sili.

Fig. 97.

A water jar outside a house at Sili.

Fig. 98.

A bowl, Sili.

Fig. 99.

Water jar and broken khars, Sili.


242

the clay. Clays were carried down in sacks on men’sbacks (Crocker Jones) while the Murriya remem-bered carrying clays down either in a basket on herhead or in a sack on her back. Clay was alsocollected at Qabil for potters at Lima (Crocker Jones).Khamis Qa’idu al-Haslamani, who had worked inWadi Baana, said two sorts of clays were needed,rizik (‘blessing from God’, ‘livelihood’) and ahrash

(‘coarse’), which were mixed roughly half and half.This made a strong clay, whereas either of the clayson its own made pottery that split and flaked. TheMurriya said there were three different clay sourcesabove al-’Alamah with slightly different qualities,and they used a variety of tempers — grits of

Fig. 100.

A water jar and aluminium dish, Sili.

Fig. 101.

A large cooking pot (mahrasa), Wadi Bana.

Fig. 102.

Broken incense burners on a grave, Wadi Bana.

Fig. 103.

A bowl, Wadi Bana.


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various sorts and chaff — depending on the itemthey were making.

The dry clays were pounded in a large mortar ofsidr wood (Zizyphus spina christi), sieved and mixedwith water, and a pot was made immediately theclay was mixed, as otherwise the mixture spoiled.Pots were made on a round, flat, wooden surface(duwar) on a wooden base (kursi). Crocker Jones wastold the work surface did not turn, but the Murriyapointed out the locking pin on her father-in-law’sduwar (Fig. 108) which held it on its base, and thatthe duwar (‘turn’, ‘rotate’) was turned by the potteras needed to make working easier. It was a turntablerather than a wheel. Each pot started as a lump ofclay on the base and was built by hand. CrockerJones was told the pot was built up in coils. TheMurriya said the way the pot was built depended onits size and shape: large pots were started as coilsand then slabs, smaller ones as coils. The potter useda flat piece of wood to smooth the outside of the pot

Fig. 104.

A storehouse (bait gufl), Wadi Bana.

Fig. 105.

The interior of the storehouse (Fig. 104) containing hawba, khars

and other pots.

Fig. 106.

A water jar on top of a large pot in the storehouse (Fig. 104).

Fig. 107.

The cleaned water jar (Fig. 106) showing incised decoration.


244

while the palm of his other hand was working theinside. The rounded bases of hawba, mahrasa, burma,yidr and some other pots were started as coils usinga dish or some other piece as a mould; theserounded bases were seen as typical of items to beused in the mountains rather than on the coasts.Rims and double-pierced lugs were made for manyitems, apart for storage jars, so they could be hungup in trees or on posts or from pegs or rafters inbuildings, again as typical of use in the mountains.Storage jars had rims, so that closing the tops againstdirt and mice was easier.

Crocker Jones was given information on the timetaken to make different sizes of pots: a small onetook one and a half hours, a medium one two hours,which involved two work sessions as the first parthad to be dry before the second was started toprevent collapse. The largest cooking pot held 12 kgof rice or 16 kg of meat, and took three days to make— an hour on the first two days and half an hour onthe third day. The large ‘barrel-shaped’ pots for

storage, 1.25 m high, took six days at an hour a day.The pot was fired the following day, when it wasdry; leaving it would make the pot crack. Potters didnot build kilns, but placed pots ‘individually onburning logs of sidr in holes in the ground’ (CrockerJones). The Murriya elaborated, saying that a pottermade more than one pot at a time, obviouslydepending on size and complexity; for example,she made several bases for incense burners, andwhile they were drying she made several tops, andwhen they were dry, tops and bottoms were puttogether. If a potter was firing only a few smallitems, he or she used a tannur or dug a small holeand fired them in it, or dug a hole of the requiredsize for a large item or several small items. The pot(or pots) was bedded on and covered with kurb (thethick woody bases of date branches), yarid (the drystems of date branches), camel and donkey dungand general trash, which was then set on fire.

After firing, the pot was painted with a ‘finishcalled mshak or mashuwaiq’, a red powder. CrockerJones suggests this powder was made from the plantof the same name, Fagonia indica, which Shihuh saidwas called klim and had no use for pottery painting.Khamis Qa’idu al Haslamani and his Murriya wifesaid the paint came from a red stone in themountains, and was put on before firing andtouched up afterwards, whereas Wadi Hajil potterssaid painting was done after firing. The root shwqmeans ‘to adorn’, which is consistent with its use asdecoration. The Murriya said families did not ownpatterns and women did what they felt like and ⁄ orwhat they liked. She had not known of new patternsbeing made until very recently, but now young girlswere making new patterns, such as hearts. Incenseburners were decorated with impressed patternsusing little sidr wood rollers and stamps (Figs 109–110), and each potter had their own set of tools(Fig. 111) which included little blades and scrapersfor scratching incisions, as seen on Figure 10722

(which is Fig. 106 after cleaning). Burnishing wasalso used, especially on small objects.23

Fig. 108.

A potter’s duwar, owned by the late father of Khamis bin Qaidu

al-Haslamani of Salhad and Wadi Bana.

22 The incised patterns on Figure 107 are similar to somepainted designs, cf. Figures 39, 43, 47 and 53.

23 Hamad bin ‘Ali az-Za’abi remembered his mother andaunts burnishing the silver embroidery on their dressesand drawers with a seashell.


245

Crocker Jones was told only men were potters. Wewere told by several people at Lima and Wadi Baanathat both men and women made pottery, that bothsexes could do everything: ‘A man might start apiece, then have to go and do something else, so thewoman would take over.’

Crocker Jones was told that no large storage jarshad been made at al-’Alama in her informants’

lifetimes. However, Khamis Qa’idu and his wife saidit was the really large globular storage jars (hawba,hawbiyya) that had not been made for a long time, atleast 100 years. These, like other large items, wereonly ever made on commission. When potters madeeveryday items at al-’Alamah, they were takendown by donkey load to markets at Ras al-Khaimahtown, Umm al-Qawain, Sharjah and Fujairah. Kha-ims Qa’idu had done this. The Murriya rememberedtaking pots and goats down along the Shamailiyyacoast to the market at Shinaas on the Batinah in thesummer, and selling them to get dry dates. Whetherthey took down more goats or more pots dependedon which they had more of. They were givenpresents of rutub (fresh dates) at Lima and Shinaas,and in return gave presents of pots, usually incenseburners. She also said that al-’Alamah pottery wassold in the seasonal market at Lima. An elderlyHurrais in Lima recalled rowing down to KhorFakkan and Fujairah in the summer to sell pots andknives on their way to buy dry dates. Most of thepots were incense burners and storage jars (khuruus)but they also took down large (Fig. 112) and smallcooking pots, plates, small jars and anything elsethey thought would sell.

Fig. 109.

Incense burners made by the Murriya wife of Khamis bin Qaidu

al-Haslamani.

Fig. 110.

The Murriya wife’s tools for decorating.

Fig. 111.

Potters’ tools used by Khamis bin Qaidu and his late father.

Fig. 112.

A broken mahrasa, a pot for cooking haris (pounded wheat and

meat), from Lima at Wadi Sa’aili.


246

Since incorporation in the nation state and the oileconomy, the market for pots has declined with agrowing amount of modernisation in importedgoods, the provision of electricity and piped waterand men’s employment. Pottery continues at Lima,mostly by women, who use clay brought from Ramsto produce incense burners and zainat, small deco-rative items usually given as presents. Other items,such as coffee pots, burma, sahan, medicine plates,food-serving dishes or bread-kneading bowls andwater jars, continue to be made on commission, withno production date.

The Murriya explained that although some itemsmade in al-’Alamah were the same as those in WadiHajil, al-’Alamah potters had made things thatShimal potters did not, and vice versa. For example,al-’Alamah potters made the more expensive items,because they demanded more workmanship, suchas coffee pots and the large mahrasa — cooking potsfor haris, pounded grain and meat eaten at feasts.Only Shimal potters made the water pourers withthe bridge spout, and rainspouts. In general, Shimalpottery broke more easily than al-’Alamah goods,and Shimal cooking pots were flat-based andstraight-sided with a slight out-turned rim, whileal-’Alamah cooking pots had rounded bases, sidesthat narrowed towards the top and a knobbed lid.She could identify pots from Shimal and al-’Alamahby their wares, clays and tempers, and comment onsherds identified by archaeologists as Iron Age asbeing unknown to her and ‘from a very long timeago.’ An elderly Lima potter, al Murr, could also dothis, and was able to associate Lima pots to theirmakers, including recognising a rather misshapenkars as an early attempt of his own. The Murriyamentioned that when potters moved from al-’Ala-mah down to Lima, they had imported white clayfrom sources on Qishm island or Minaw, both insouthern Iran, but had found it unsatisfactory, andnow used clays from Rams.

The range of wares made at al-’Alamah and Limawas further shown when a large piece of coarsepottery seen outside an old house in Lima wasidentified by the house owner as khaam (‘unworked’)(Fig. 113). This ware was coarse, pale cream to greywith large black grits, and closely resembled a largepot, labelled khaam (see Fig. 92) in the Rams FolkArtists and Rowing Society collection. Members ofthe society said these jars had come from Basra or

Iran with sea traders. This pot was very like the largesirdab seen at al-Hadd in Ja’alan, and identified byBani Ghazzali fishermen, who said it had come fromBasra with traders and possibly as ballast, whileothers around al Hadd thought they came from theBatinah, Bahla or Mukalla. When asked if the pot towhich the piece had belonged had been brought toLima by traders, the house owner was positive thatit had been made in Lima. The Murriya recognisedthe sherd and said that that sort of ware had indeedbeen made in Lima for storing water, the samefunction that the men in al Hadd and Rams hadgiven.

An elderly Bani Murri in Wadi Baana said thatseveral people in that area — Haslamani, Ahl Salhadand Bani Murri — had made pottery for themselvesand others, and were professionals, ‘like KhamisQa’idu al-Haslamani, although I wasn’t.’ The elderlymother of Humaid ‘Ali al-Khanbuli Shihuh, discuss-ing pots seen at al-Aini where she had lived before,said ‘it is possible to say some pieces were made inal-’Alamah and some in Wadi Hajil, but others camein from outside. Others were made by unknownpeople, because people from the Khanabila, Hasla-mani, Khanazira and Murri had, if they felt like it,gone to Wadi Hajil or to al-’Alamah to learn how tomake pots. They worked as kuulis for a while, andthen they made their own. They did it for them-selves, and sometimes as presents for a few people.Some of them liked doing it and became reallyskilled and changed the designs to what they

Fig. 113.

A khamm sherd found at Lima, from a pot known to have been

made at Lima.


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wanted. So that is why there are details and shapesin the pottery from the mountains that you havenever seen before, like the detailing on this jar[Fig. 114]’.

Teaching people pottery was mentioned by Ah-mad bin Khamis al-Qa’idu al Haslamani, who saidthat in the late 1980s his late grandmother who wasBani Shamailiyya had been asked by the late Ahmadbil Houn of Shimal to show Iranians how to makeLima-type pots for sale. She spent a week showingthem, which in his opinion meant they must alreadyhave known how to make pottery, and was wellpaid for this. The resulting workshop lasted at themost two or three years.

In southern Ras al-Khaimah emirate, many of thesherds seen at various sites were like those seen inthe north, both local and imported (Figs 115–118),

and consistent with what people there said abouthow they obtained pots. Two potteries in thesouthern part of the emirate were mentioned. ‘AliKhamis Maharsa said he had been told that potteryhad been made in Masafi, using clays from a sitenow developed as commercial gardens (Fig. 119).One clay came from this area, and another camefrom a place behind the mountain to the east. Theremight have been a kiln, but there are no traces. Thered clay was ahrash, coarse, rough and mixed withthe second clay; the grits were red gravel. Thispottery broke easily. The potters had made storagejars, kars, for water and dates; jahla for pouringwater; qidri for cooking pots; and cups for drinking.As he had seen sherds from red pottery with red

Fig. 114.

A khars with unusual details, al-Aini.

Fig. 115.

Broken khars and other sherds at a site in Wadi Sfuni, western

Hajar.

Fig. 116.

Sherd sample from a livestock-rearing site off Wadi Shawqa,

western Hajar.

Fig. 117.

A water pot, pourer and pot at Mayya, western Hajar.


248

grits at several places around Masafi and we hadseen similar pieces further afield, it was assumedthat this pottery was commercial to some degree. Inabout 1980 he became interested in pottery when hewas in Pakistan, and brought clay from there, as hedid from his travels to Egypt and Jordan. Heobtained backing from H.H. Shaikh Sultan bin Saqral-Qasimi and has set up several commercial potter-

ies (Figs 120–121) with Baluch or Pathan workmen,which sell decorative pots for gardens and houses atvarious markets and sites by the roadside. When hestarted, he got clays from Wadi Hajil, then from thequarry at Shawqa, and when that was taken over bya cement company, from Rams.

Dahamina at Munai’y said pottery had never beenmade there; people had bought their pots fromtraders who came to buy their tobacco crops or fromcoastal markets. But at Sukhaibar, just down thewadi, a large piece of pale, cream-grey coarse warewith large black grits was seen at two stonebuildings, which belonged to the Khalfiin family.Muhammad ‘Ali al-Khalfiin called the piece gahaf,broken pottery, made locally by bayadir women andwas part of a kars, in which people stored salt meat,dates, fat, water, etc. They cooked in biram (pl. ofburma), which were made from the same ware(fukhkhar) and were general-purpose pots for every-thing except long-term storage. Qidr, sahan and biramfor special purposes came from markets. But previ-ously, they did not often go to markets, insteadtraders came to them, bringing a market. Unfortu-nately, he was called away before explaining howhis family and others had obtained the kars andbiram, but by commissions or as presents expecting areturn seems logical.

Khalifa bin Salim, an Omani bayadir who hadcome to Munai’y at the age of 12, said that, as far ashe remembered and in contradiction to Dahamina,garden-owning families, ‘everyone’ in fact, made

Fig. 118.

A water jar at Riyama, Wadi al ‘Ayaili, western Hajar.

Fig. 119.

The site of a former clay source, Masafi, western Hajar.


249

their own pottery just as they made their owntannur. ‘Everyone’ meant both men and women, butmostly women. They preferred to use clay from nearHatta, where there was a commercial pottery,although there was a closer clay source, but it wasnot as good. They made the pots they needed, andfired them by covering the dry pots with firingmaterial, setting it alight after which it burned fortwo days. For him, pottery was women’s work andwithout interest. He and his wife knew people atMasafi who had made pottery commercially, using a

clay source in the mountains between the emirates ofRas al-Khaimah and Sharjah. Muhammad ‘Ali alKhalfiin and Muhammad Ka’abi confirmed this, thelatter adding that Bani Ka’ab women in Wadi al-Qawr had made their own pottery, using clays fromsomewhere near Wadi Barid.

The assumption that ‘we thought everyone madetheir own pottery’ was consistent with tribespeoples’ statements that everyone knew how to skinand tan, spin and weave, make baskets, build housesand water channels, coppice trees, and so on. Those

Fig. 120.

Modern commercial pottery, Masafi.

Fig. 121.

Pottery items, modern commercial pottery, Masafi.


250

who said they had made their own pottery were notpoorer than those who exchanged for it or bought it,in their own eyes or in the estimation of others. ‘It alldepends’ comes into play. Having suitable earths inthe tribal area as well as water and fuel for firing isessential. Another factor is how much of a family’sneeds can be satisfied from production within tribalareas, and how much they need to exchange or selloutside to procure what they lack — in particular,supplies of dry dates, a main staple. If people arealready going to big markets like Dubai, Sharjah orRas al-Khaimah with live goats or charcoal and otheritems, buying a few cheap pottery items is easy, justas it is if traders bring a market to producers oftobacco. On examining the information, it seemspeople who made pottery commercially were fromfamilies in those areas where date trees could notgrow and therefore there was a lack of supplies ofdates, but clay sources were available as one optionamong others, there was the possibility of learningthe skills and easy access to inherited sites andequipment, along with fields and animals. Giventhat pottery production is possible in a particulararea, choosing to make pottery for sale or exchangeis a reasonable strategy as items are useful, inex-pensive and durable, there is a steady demand forthem and they are portable.

However, there are tribal areas where some of theinhabitants insisted they had everything theyneeded — they hardly ever moved down or out.Most of these are in the western Hajar, and havedate gardens using run-off water and channelledflows, grain fields and grazing areas. An exceptionwas Khamid in the Ru’us al-Jibal, a farij belonging toMahbib Shihuh, and with a spring that watersmountain date trees. A Mahbiibi said he and hisfamily had rarely come down from the mountains,where they had everything they needed, and theyhad made their own pottery — tannur, ovens andother things, even storage jars, although they hadbought ‘proper’ pottery at Shimal or Lima. OtherMahbib from Khamid said they bought all theirpottery at Shimal. Bani Lassam Shihuh at Isban,north of Dibba Bai’ah, said that there, peoplecommissioned storage jars (Figs 122–124 were seenat Isban but not necessarily made there) fromsomeone among the inhabitants who could makethem (around one in ten of the adult population) andthese people were paid when the jar was ready. At

Wadi Haiyir off Wadi Khabb, where the Ru’us al-Jibal meets the western Hajar mountains, twoSharqiyiin said everyone there had made their ownpottery, including kars, storage jars, water jars andburma. They got clay and grits, mixed them, addedwater, made the shape required and baked them in a

Fig. 122.

A water pot, Isban, Musandam.

Fig. 123.

Pots in a house, Isban.


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fire. An elderly Mazrui in Wadi Kuub stated that theonly reason they needed pottery was for makingclarified butter, which was then stored in skins,although people had storage jars and water jars, etc.which they had inherited, bought at markets inDubai or Ras al-Khaimah or made themselves,which everybody could do. A Bani Sa’ad in Madha,who explained that Madha had been a wealthydistrict with tobacco crops, dates, grain, fruit andanimals, said that most people there made their ownpots, and his family, like others, had grown cottonwhich was sent down to Qidfa on the coast to bespun and woven into cloth for clothes. The twoyoung men at Wadi Haiyir said they too had beentold that earlier the women had made the familyclothes from cotton from trees.

These individuals, or rather members of particularfamilies, who recalled making their own pots orseeing others doing so, seem to be those who saw aparticular value in self-sufficiency, not necessarilybecause they lacked money or goods to exchange,but because they had materials to hand and theability to make a pot.

Plasters and mortarsThis completes the information from people of thestudy area, but before we can draw any conclusions,

it is appropriate to mention the various plasters andmortars made by burning earths that people saidthey had used on buildings, cisterns and waterchannels for irrigated agriculture. These were jiss,juz and saruj.

Jiss, possibly from jass (‘touch’, ‘feel’) was thesmooth white plaster used on the interior (andsometimes external) walls of buildings, especiallyrooms where people met socially. Examples wereseen at the houses of the bigger traders, such asZa’ab houses in Jazirat al-Hamra and Ma’arid; theSirkar complex at Ma’arid; the house of an Iraniantrader, ‘Abd al Karim, at Khatt; the bin Salih Tunaijcomplex at Rams; the Mansuri house at al-’Asimah;and the Khalfiin house at Sukahibar in WadiMunai’y. Old men at Rams who knew aboutbuildings said jiss had been made at Muharriq, inthe foothills inland from Rams, by burning localearths. This came from enquiries as to whetherpottery had been made at Muharriq, since muharriqis a word for kiln. An old kiln at al-Ashgar in thefoothills inland from Ma’arid was also thought tohave been for jiss rather than for pottery. Muham-mad ‘Ali al-Khalfiin at Sukhaibar could just remem-ber his grandfather’s house being rebuilt in itspresent form in the 1940s. The jiss work (Fig. 125)was done by some Omani bayadir, who were part ofthe bayadir who worked in the gardens, maintainedthe falaj da’udi (underground water channels) andmade pottery.

Saruj is the waterproof mortar associated with falajsystems, the falay ghaili on the surface, and the falayda’udi underground. Khalifa bin Saif at Munai’yknew how saruj was made. Red earth (ardh hamra),which was not the same as clays for pottery, wasdug out from the slope near Bait Nasr al-Hanjari inMunai’y. It was sieved and brought by donkey loadto a place in the wadi where it was mixed with waterand made into small bricks the size of a hand. Thesewere dried in the sun. When the bricks wereproperly dry, layers of the bricks were alternatedwith layers of firewood, such as dry date-palmtrunks, and built up into the shape and size of ahouse. The top layer was firewood, and the kindlingwas at the bottom, and this was set on fire. The stackwas made on some unused ground at the side of thewadi, where there was a good breeze, so it burnedwell and evenly, but not too fast or too hot; it had toburn for four or five days, sometimes even a week.

Fig. 124.

Large pot, Isban.


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When it was all cooled down, the fired blocks werepounded to powder, mixed with water, after whichit was ready for use. It was far stronger than cementand lasted for years. This account is similar to thatgiven to George (Costa & Wilkinson 1987: 221–222)at Rahab in Wadi Bani ‘Umar al-Gharbi for the SoharProject, by a man who had watched others doing itwhen he was young. This account mentions sievingby throwing the clods of earth against a pyramid ofdry date branches (minshib) and the firing of thestack of thousands of bricks within a large, house-like structure of dry date-tree trunks.

Yuz or yizz was also a waterproof mortar andused in the date gardens inland from Ras al-Khaimah town for water channels and water-holding basins, and in the Ru’us al Jibal andMusandam for cisterns. In date gardens in ShimalTahat, the method was to dig a pit about 2 m deepby 2 m wide and 2.5 m long. The first layer wasmade up of old bits of date palms and dry datebranches, then a good layer of old dung, a layer offirewood, a layer of damp cow dung and morefirewood, and the whole thing was covered withclay (tiin) and sand (rammal). This was set alightand had to burn for two to four days; it collapsedin on itself, and what was left was yuz, which wasmixed with water and used as waterproof mortar.At Wadi Quda’a in the Ru’us al Jibal, AhmadRashid Mtair al-Habsi said the lining of his cistern

was yuz, made from burnt dung and earth, whichhe had burnt in a building, not a pit. KhamisQa’idu al-Haslamani, describing yuz he had madefor cisterns at Sall Imit, high in Musandam, saidthat he got together lots of tiin from the mountain,which was not the same as that for pottery, and lotsof goat manure. The clay and manure were mixedtogether very thoroughly, water was added andagain mixed together thoroughly and carefully. Themix was made into handful-sized little ‘breads’ andleft to dry in the sun for two to three days. Whilethey dried, the firewood was collected. When thebreads were really dry, they were piled up,completely covered over and around with thefirewood, and set on fire. The fire had to burnevenly and for a long time. When it was cool, thebreads were taken out, broken up and beaten to apowder, using a stick in each hand and using bothhands together. When it was all fine powder, it wasmixed with water and slapped on. It was betterthan cement and lasted far longer, more than alifetime.

The basic difference between saruj and yuz seemsto be the presence of large amounts of animal dungin yuz. Muhammad Sulaiman Suwaid Habus fromthe southern end of the Ru’us al-Jibal said that sarujand yuz do the same work, but which a personmakes depends on where he lives and what stoneand earths are available there. In the western Hajar

Fig. 125.

Jiss interior, Sukhaiba.


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people use saruj, and in the Ru’us al Jibal andMusandam they make yuz, as the two mountainareas differ geologically and hydrologically.

ConclusionsThe accumulated information bears out the viewthat there were many local producers, many varia-tions within and between their products, and thatimported items were also of uncertain provenanceand identification. Information gained from conver-sations about pots and potters supports what localpeople across the study area said about the ways inwhich they used the region, made livelihoods andprofits, distributed goods and how they lived beforeoil. The acquisition of pottery items pointed to theimportance of movement within and betweenresource areas of production and markets or otherareas, and methods of distribution for tribes peopleof most areas, and showed that decisions as to whatto produce and where to sell or buy were made byindividuals and their families, not by tribes or tribalsections. The use of tribal identities in generaldescriptions of seasonal movement or preferredlivelihood and profits options is a shorthand thatlocal people take for granted and which researchersshould be aware of. People switched betweengeneral descriptions and what they themselves hadknown or done personally.

Tribesmen and women in Ras al-Khaimah emirateand Musandam who used pottery making as onepart of their multi-resource strategies for livelihoodand profits seem to contradict the Arab tribal systemideology where everyone can do everything andtherefore there are no specialists with the necessaryprofessionalism for commercial profit, and where allown access to tribal resources for livelihood andprofits. Specialist craftspeople are usually protected,whether by rulers in towns in Hadramaut, asdescribed by Bujra (1971), or by tribesmen in ruralsettlements in central Oman (e.g. Wilkinson 1987)and in Yemen (e.g. Posey 1994). But while alltribesmen are capable of the techniques and havethe basic knowledge to secure a livelihood and someprofit, in reality each makes profits by developinghis skills and knowledge and so is a little more thanordinarily proficient at one or two options from histhree to four resources. All of this takes place withina wider society in which virtually all are aware of

the need for surpluses to move to areas of deficit bya variety of means, and that no one area can supplyeverything. Interdependence between resource areasand their populations is a fact of life and achievedthrough many options in social relations betweenpersons. Mere pursuit of economic profit is notenough: a tribesman or woman must behave prop-erly, contribute, share and ensure the needy arelooked after. He ⁄ she must have a commitment toproper behaviour, known as reputation and equatedwith honour, and morality is more important thaneconomic profit. Shameful behaviour blackens theface of the perpetrator and insults those involved,disturbing the peace between equals, and suchbehaviour must be redressed and resolved so thatthe peace is kept and honour restored. This is a largepart of tribal politics.

Those tribes people in Ras al-Khaimah emirateand Omani Musandam who were part-time com-mercial potters, as well as part-time farmers, part-time livestock rearers and part-time collectors offirewood and honey, regarded themselves and wereregarded by others as living within the practice ofArab tribal systems and following their moralpremises. Unlike non-tribal craftspeople, theyowned other resources and options as tribal mem-bers, and had their autonomy. The situation inJa’alan, where the only commercial potteries were inthe two inland oasis settlements and a small oasissettlement in southern Bidiya, and where no tribes-person made his or her own pots, does not contra-dict the region-wide assumption of culturalhomogeneity for the following reasons, which them-selves rest on the widespread regional response tomany questions — ‘It all depends…’

The geology of Ja’alan, and that of the mountainsof the Ru’us al-Jibal and Musandam and the westernHajar differ. Suitable clays in Ja’alan seem to berestricted to places in Wadi Batha, widespread in theRu’us al Jibal and Musandam, and at certain placesin the western Hajar mountains. People of south-eastJa’alan therefore have no claims of access to claysources, whereas members of particular tribalgroups in Ras al-Khaimah emirate and OmaniMusandam and Madha enclave do. People of bothregions had access to pottery from outside the regionor abroad, at markets or brought in by traders, andmade profits as surplus goods or money to obtainthese pots, some of which were containers for


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desired purchases. It is not known if the commis-sioning of pottery items, and the giving of items asgifts which expected a return of equal value at sometime, were practices in Ja’alan as they were in Ras al-Khaimah emirate and Musandam. Nor is it known ifthere were others like the potter at Wadi Bani ‘Umaral-Gharbi in rural settlements of other parts ofOman, who would make Omani pottery productionpractice more like that of Ras al Khaimah andMusandam.

The examination of pottery production and itsdistribution, the methods of acquisition of potteryitems by local inhabitants and their need for and useof pottery items in south-east Ja’alan and in Ras al-Khaimah emirate and Omani Musandam has alsodemonstrated the relevance of social relationsbetween persons, and the moral concepts thatinform them.

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pottery makers and pottery users: in ras al-khaimah emirate and musandam wilayat of oman, and around...

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