Oman, Culture and Diplomacy

It comes as a surprise that one of the book’s authors, Nicholas Ridout, while being reader in theatre and performance studies is without background in Islamic ones, in general, and Oman, in particular. This is made up for, though, by his co-author, Jeremy Jones, who had worked in Oman as a consultant. At any rate, with direct access to Omani foreign policy documentation (p. 146) and following Carsten Niebuhr’s footsteps, the authors put Oman squarely back on the literary world map. Having myself spent some weeks in Oman, I can well appreciate Jones’ and Ridout’s achievement: as a tour de force, opening up for literary consumption, the richness of both Omani history and its culture of politeness and tact, both assuring an amazingly quiet stability in a crucial area. Unusual is the authors’ successful approach to understanding the country via its culture of diplomatic politeness and pluralism whose key characteristics are: