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Paper short abstract:

This paper shows how inhabitants of a town on the Omani-Emirati border defy a British-inherited imperial border epistemology by espousing border visions that clash with the Omani state’s: both as separate from modern Oman, but also as part of a larger historical formation called Greater Oman.

Paper long abstract:

A curiosity presently besets Oman’s desert borderlands with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). At a time when the Omani state has been pursuing policy to incorporate peripheral, non-coastal regions into modern Oman’s national territory, inhabitants of the Omani border town of Buraimi continue to espouse border visions that clash with those of the state. Buraimians young and old imagine the Omani hinterlands both as separate from contemporary Oman, but also as part of a historical formation called Greater Oman or the Coast of Oman. In doing so, these Buraimians defy the imperial border epistemology that the last two sultans of Oman inherited from British agents seeking to secure oil concessions in the mid-twentieth century.

This paper argues that the recent materialisation and securitisation of the Oman-UAE border, alongside discursive attempts to anchor the Omani body politic, have not diminished the strength of these border visions. It narrates and explains the history of this particular border in order to highlight the disruption and violence that imperialist borders cause from the moment they are drawn. In this case, these borders have locked Buraimians into a fixed national identity, where previous generations enjoyed greater mobility and the ability to shift allegiances with ease. Drawing on archival research conducted in the United Kingdom, and on a combined 17 months of fieldwork in Oman, this paper explodes the normality of borders in the Arabian Peninsula.