{"id":125,"date":"2015-05-30T19:18:27","date_gmt":"2015-05-30T15:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oman.victorreynolds.net\/?p=125"},"modified":"2015-05-30T19:32:03","modified_gmt":"2015-05-30T15:32:03","slug":"exploring-nizwa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oman.victorreynolds.net\/?p=125","title":{"rendered":"Exploring Nizwa"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is from yesterday, but I didn’t have time to publish it because the images took too long to upload.<\/p>\n

One really important thing I’ve learned here that I didn’t understand very well before is that a lot of things that we consider Islamic are actually traditions among Arabs in the gulf. For example, the type of clothes that Omani men wear are simply traditional rather than Islamic. It’s the same with a lot of other behaviors and ideas. Another is that no generalizations can really be made about the Middle East because the cultures within are so vastly different. Omanis wear completely different clothes than Saudis, but they are neighboring countries! And as I mentioned before, the dialects of Arabic speak can be as different as the different languages in Europe. We don’t really make generalizations about all Europeans, so it’s not possible to make generalizations about all Arabs.<\/p>\n

Another thing that sets Oman apart is that the majority of people here are Ibadhi Muslims – they are part of a sect that formed before the Sunni and Shia sects did. As a result of this, they mostly stay outside of the Sunni-Shia conflicts and are able to remain practically unscathed. Maybe I’ll talk more about Ibadhi Islam in another blog post.<\/p>\n

Today was another busy day. We had to be on the bus by 7:00 in order to see the animal\u00a0auction at Nizwa. In case I didn’t make this clear earlier, Nizwa is a pretty big city that we’re about 30 minutes away from – there are definitely a lot more people there than in Manah.<\/p>\n

The auction was incredible; I’d never seen anything like it in my life. Goats also make some very strange noises. Most of what was being sold were cows and goats. There were people leading goats around all over the place and through the crowd, and we were really the only Americans there. Of course the vegetarian in me felt a little upset seeing the animals treated this way, but I also understand that this is a tradition in Nizwa.<\/p>\n