page_title: Dhofar Governorate
section_title: 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Dhofar Governorate / History / 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Sugar cane (top) grown using the Rizat irrigation system and bananas (bottom) being grown in Dhofar Governorate.
context_page_description: The Dhofar Governorate is the largest of the eleven Governorates in the Sultanate of Oman in terms of area. It lies in Southern Oman, on the eastern border with Yemen's Al Mahrah Governorate. It is a rather mountainous area that covers 99,300 km² and has a population of 249,729 as of the 2010 census. The largest city, as well as capital of the Governorate, is Salalah. Historically, the region was the chief source of frankincense in the world. The local variety of Arabic is Dhofari Arabic, which is quite distinct from that of the rest of Oman and from Yemen.
context_section_description: Dhofar is extensively detailed in the 1917 publication Gazetteer of Arabia, produced by the Government in British India and mostly based on information gathered by J.G. Lorimer's in his 1908 and 1915 handbook Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Oman and Central Arabia. In it, Dhofar's boundaries are given as between the Samhan hills (Jebel Samhan) and the sea, from Ra's Risut eastwards for 30 miles to Khor Rori. Colloquially, the term Dhofar was used to describe the villages of Al Haffah and Salalah, which housed about two-thirds of Dhofar's population at that time; however, on an official capacity, the term was understood to refer to the entire region of Dhofar, much like in the modern sense. Dhofar's physical geography was noted as consisting mainly of barren plains, a mountain range and several valleys, the most important of which was Wadi Raikut.
  Communication outside of Dhofar was made difficult on account of the rugged landscape and the fact that no large harbors existed on the coast, though Mirbat and Risut were said to offer good anchorage for smaller vessels. The mountain paths were, for all intents and purposes, inaccessible during the rainy season. Aside from camels, no other transport animals were widely used. Frankincense was said to comprise the bulk of economic trade, with 9,000 cwt. being sent to Mumbai annually. Other exports were hides, sheep-skins, gums and beeswax. Among the chief imports were khat (which was mistaken for tobacco) from Mukalla and rice, sugar, dates and cloths from Mumbai.
  Gordon Noel Jackson's 1943 essay on Dhofar provides a historical glimpse into the administration of the region:
  The administration of the Dhufar Province is in the hands of the Sultan of Muscat himself. He appears to regard Dhufar more as a private estate than as a Province of his Sultanate and maintains a separate treasury. According to an article published some 65 years ago in the Nehla, a superior Arabic magazine of the last century, Sayyid Turki, the present Sultan's grandfather, established his rule there at the invitation of the Sayyids of Salalah to forestall the unwelcome interest of the Turks. He entrusted the task of establishing Muscat authority to one Sulaiman bin Suwailim, a former slave, and supplied him with a small body of soldiers to secure the towns from the tribesmen. Sulaiman bin Suwailim built a fort on the site of the present palace which was later seized and looted by the Kathiri, but it was not long before Muscat authority was re-established. His father took little interest in the Province but Sayyid Said bin Taimur, the present Sultan, has now been in residence there for over a year, has a trained agricultural adviser and an engineer with him and is making great strides in developing the agricultural resources.
  During World War I it was fertile enough to produce food and grain to supply a large proportion of the requirement of the British Army fighting in Mesopotamia.
  A counter-insurgency campaign—the Omani Civil War (1963-76)—was fought here by the Sultan of Oman's Armed Forces in 1965–1975 against guerrilla fighters of the nationalist Dhofar Liberation Front and later the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman and the Persian Gulf (PFLOAG), supported by Communist South Yemen after that territory's independence and several other socialist states, including East Germany. It aimed to depose the Sultan. The Sultan's forces, assisted by the United Kingdom, Iran, and support from loaned officers and doctors from Pakistan and India, prevailed, and once the campaign was declared over in December 1975, the active remainder of PFLOAG forces surrendered.
caption: Sugar cane grown using the Rizat irrigation system in Dhofar Governorate, dated 1948
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