Page 146 - A Hand book of Arabia Vol 1 (iii) Ch 6 -10

THE SULTANATE OF OH/
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of ten shops in the town. The inhabitants depend on their own
cultivation of dates and wheat, and on fishing, There are six
sea-going boats.
2. Kumzar, a small town at the head of a cove on the V face ot
the promontory, built at the mouth of a gorge. There is no land
route, nor any cultivation ; the inhabitants are fishermen and
possess five sea-going boats which trade salt-fish and shark-fins to
Muscat and elsewhere. In the date season all but a few persons
migrate to Khasab and Dibah.
3. Bei‘ah, the southernmost village of the district, on the P.
coast of the promontory. It lies one mile to the X. of Dibah, and
is separated from it by a water-course up which the sea runs for
\.
two hundred yards. Behind the village the mountains rise at
a distance of a mile and a half. The inhabitants live by date
cultivation and fishing, and carry dates and fish to Muscat and the
Persian Gulf.

II. Batinah
This is the most important coastal district of the Sultanate,
running for 150 miles along the Gulf of Oman, from the S. border of
Shameiliyah, some 3 miles NXW. of Mureir, to Heil Al 'Umeir on the
SE. Inland it extends to the foot-hills of Western Hajar, which run
roughly parallel to the coast at a distance of from 10 to 20 miles.
The district consists of a low-lying plain, the stony character of the
hills inland giving place to clayey soil on the level, which becomes
sandy towards the sea. The channels of the great valleys, which
scar the seaward slope of Western Hajar, become broken and
dispersed when they reach the plain, and some of them are given
different names from those they bear in the hills. There are no
springs in Batinah, but water is everywhere obtainable from wells,
the average depth of which is from 15 to 20 ft.; all crops are irrigated
from the wells, the water being raised by cattle.
Batinah is celebrated for its magnificent date-belt, which fringes
the sea-shore almost continuously and in some places extends for
7 miles inland. There is also a good deal of other cultivation near
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the coast, and fruit-trees are extensively grown. The date is the
- •* only article exported, but the import trade from Muscat is not in­
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considerable, as the valleys of Western Hajar are supplied through
the Batinah ports. The interior of the district, with the exception
of a few isolated spots, is barren and uncultivated, It is said that
a large number of tribes, settled in the towns and villages, have
Bedouin sections which wander with their flocks and herds°over this
inner and unproductive belt.

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