13
EDUCATION
MONDAY, AUGUST 16, 2010
A study on exploiting
Omani heritage in tourism
O
MANI architecture constitutes an integral part of the Islamic architectural
tradition, which can be seen in various
forms of Omani architecture, including houses,
markets, mosques, dams, castles and forts. Over
the centuries, traditional Omani architecture has
maintained a distinctive character, which reflects
the social customs and ancestral traditions of the
country. From this standpoint, it is necessary to
exploit this great heritage to achieve economic,
cultural and social benefits in a way that would
contribute to the development of the Sultanate’s
economic resources and to the preservation of
the country’s heritage.
The abundance of the natural treasures endowed by the Almighty Creator and the richness
of Oman’s deeply rooted ancient heritage have
prompted the wise leadership of the Sultanate to
work on the restoration and preservation of this
heritage. Drawing on their strong moral values
and the available resources, Omani citizens have
during the Sultanate’s Renaissance participated
with great passion and enthusiasm in the revival
and advancement of their country.
Dr Fathi Abdel Aziz, an assistant professor at
the Department of Tourism at the College of Arts
and Social Science in Sultan Qaboos University,
conducted a pioneering study on exploiting the
Omani heritage as a tourism resource. The study
made several significant recommendations and
shed light on one of Oman’s most important
cultural assets. If utilised properly, these could
present new economic opportunities for the
country. Oman’s unique architecture, which is an
integral part of the cultural heritage of the country, must be promoted as resource for clean and
controlled tourism.
Enormous architectural treasures
To shed more light on the details of this study,
we met with D Hadad, who told us at the outset
about what motivated him to carry out this study.
“What prompted me to undertake this study is
the Sultanate’s enormous wealth of architectural
landmarks, including ancient houses, cemeteries,
and prayer houses from different historic eras, as
well as the castles and forts, mosques and houses
from the Islamic era, in addition to modern traditional architectural landmarks in many regions
in the Sultanate. Despite the abundance of these
architectural sites, they are not being properly
exploited as tourist attractions and cultural references. These landmarks, though rich in historiAsh'shumookh Fort
cal and artistic value, require serious rehabilitation in order to become tourist attractions. It is
worth noting that Omani architectural heritage
has not been studied before as a tourist attraction that could shore up the Omani economy, nor
has it been examined as a cultural resource which
would contribute to the world’s culture with its
unique heritage. More importantly, this heritage
can contribute to the development of all the locations that contain items of this heritage.”
Study Objectives
With regard to the objectives of this study, Dr
Hadad said, “This research aims to highlight the
cultural and artistic importance of Oman’s architectural heritage in its different forms as well as
its technical and aesthetic characteristics, and to
draw attention to the importance of utilising it in
tourism as a new source of revenue.
Moreover, this heritage will be a new addition
to the tourism sector, thus opening new horizons
The study aims to highlight the cultural and artistic importance of Oman’s architectural
heritage in its different forms as well as its technical and aesthetic characteristics, and to
draw attention to the importance of utilising it in tourism as a new source of revenue
Jibrin Fort
for the tourism industry. This will in turn result
Study recommendations
in new employment opportunities. Such an apDr Hadad’s study made the following recomproach aims to prepare the Omani architectural mendations:
treasures to be tourist attractions, which would z Re-examination of the environment surcontribute to the economic development of the
rounding the forts (eg, Bahla fort) through
country and to the dissemination of the OmaniArab culture at the global level. Another goal is
to educate the Omani people about the value of
this heritage, and also to draw up an outline of
the most important scientific steps required to
preserve and protect this heritage for future generations.”
Research method
With regard to his research method, Dr Hadad
said, “In my study, I initially compiled a list of
the most important items in Oman’s architectural
heritage belonging to different eras, and then I
wrote an introduction on this heritage, highlighting its importance. Later, I drew up a plan, which
suggests ways to make this heritage a tourist attraction. The study was conducted using the analytical and descriptive approach. This included
visiting the most important sites of this architectural heritage and photographing them, and then
collecting the necessary information about each
one of them from different sources, including
the demolition of some of the modern houses
books and scientific references, as well as interthat have been constructed in their vicinity,
views with specialists in the field of heritage and
the restoration of the old mud houses, and the
removal of some facilities along the roads,
which obscure the vision of those coming to
visit these forts.
z Completion of all infrastructure elements in
the architectural heritage sites, which will
greatly help in eliminating negative aspects
arising from the shortage in and the poor
quality of the infrastructure.
z Establishment of a series of pedestrian walkways enabling visitors to walk and hike, enjoying the best works of the architectural heritage of Oman. This will give the tourists the
opportunity to have an in-depth look at this
heritage. This recommendation can be applied
in many areas of the Omani heritage site, especially in the cities of Muscat and Muttrah,
which embrace both traditional architectural
heritage and modern constructions through
the construction of hanging corridors. Such
a project would be the first of its kind in the
Middle East.
tourism studies.”
z Identifying the premises of these cultural herAs for the factors that will contribute to the
itages to protect them from urban and agriculimplementation of this type of research, Dr Hatural encroachment.
dad said, “What has been achieved in the Ren- z Selection of suitable places in the forts, prefaissance era is an incentive to enter the world
erably wide places which overlook the front
of tourism with confident steps. The Sultanate’s
accomplishments in all areas (infrastructure, airports, educational facilities, ports, roads, parks,
institution-building, electronic government,
means of communications, museums, culture
centres, sports clubs, environmental protection
efforts, the preparation of a qualified workforce,
the establishment of Ministry of Tourism, and
the establishment of tourism programmes at institutions of higher education) are the backbone
of the tourism industry. Moreover, Oman adopts
fair and balanced policies in its relationships with
other countries, thus earning the Sultanate the
confidence of the world, which will in turn contribute to the prosperity of the Omani people.”
of the forts, with entrances and exits and natural lighting, to serve as museums.
z The transformation of some areas surrounding the architectural heritage sites into tourist
resorts, consisting of a number of chalets for
z
z
z
z
daily and short stays, and providing these resorts with necessary services as well as means
of entertainment.
Establishment of information centres in some
forts to provide information using all means
of information technology. This is in addition
to providing short bulletins, which introduce
the architectural heritage of Oman.
Preparation of documentary films and CDROM, which narrate the stories of each item
in the architectural heritage of Oman, describing the condition of the construction, its
various historic aspects, and illustrating the
artistic values involved in its construction.
Raising awareness among Omani people
about the importance of exploiting these tourist attractions and archaeological sites, and
ensuring that such exploitation does not have
negative impacts on these sites in terms of its
maintenance and preservation, provided that
this exploitation is consistent with the nature
of site.
Establishment of libraries for researchers in
the field of heritage, compiling all records,
new and old, that deal with the architectural
heritage of Oman to be a source and a guide
for researchers. This would help in carrying
out further research on this heritage in order
to shed more light on its value.
Communication and Information
Research Center (CIRC)
The CIRC’s mission is to promote and
enhance ICT research and capacity building
through University/Industry partnerships in
focused and shared competitive research
programmes. The current Center’s activities
include applied research, feasibility studies,
hardware/software prototype development
and specialised training with relevance to the
needs of the Sultanate of Oman
T
By Dr Hadj Bourdoucen, Director
HE Communication and Information Research
Center (CIRC) has been established with the aim
to provide leadership in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) areas through conducting
state-of-the-art applied research, consultancy and continuing education. Over the last few decades, there has been an
overwhelming progress in the communication and computer based-fields. Such progress has resulted from a great
advancement in microelectronics as well as the remarkable
achievements in computing hardware and software systems. It has become clear to everyone how important the
role that ICT plays in our life. Its far-reaching effects on
the world’s economy and social lives justify the worldwide
interest on such a topic. As a result, there has been research
and development activities, technical meetings, workshops,
symposia and specialised conferences held everywhere in
the world for the study of such topics.
The CIRC’s mission is to promote and enhance ICT research and capacity building through University/Industry
partnerships in focused and shared competitive research
programmes.
The current Center’s activities include applied research,
feasibility studies, hardware/software prototype development, and specialised training with relevance to the needs of
the Sultanate of Oman. These are accomplished through:
™ Sustaining a collaborative research activity between the
CIRC and industry in order to maximise intellectual capacity deployed to meet the global challenges in information and communications sciences and technologies.
™ Organising seminars, symposia, workshops and conferences on ICT issues with the assistance of local, regional and international sponsors.
™ Publishing digests, directories, conference proceedings
and special issues of journals to disseminate research
findings.
Within the above themes, the CIRC is in the process of
strengthening the existing links and setting up new ones
with renowned research and capacity building international institutions. With respect to international links, the
Center has research activities with City University London
(UK), University of Kiel (Germany), University of Tours
(France), the Network Computing and Control Research
Centre (NCCT), University of Ottawa (Canada). Other
research links are being developed with the University of
Strathclyde (UK) and the Institute for Information Industry
(III) (Taiwan.)
The current main focus of the centre is to establish
research infrastructure with the required hardware and
software platforms for setting a strong ground to ensure
sustained research activities in a number of strategic and
up-to-date areas of communications and Information Technology.
Current research and consultancy and training directions
are towards setting up a free and pen source software development laboratory with an international certification for
the offered training courses. The centre will also involve
undergraduate and postgraduate students in projects to develop useful applications based on Free and Open source
software.
Other fields of strategic value to the country are the
smart fields where the main activities will be directed towards the hardware level. Here, the research will focus
on sensors and sensor networks for oil fields whereas at
software level the focus will be on “soft” systems that can
operate on sensor networks.
Although research in the area of networking has been
going on for many years, there are still a number of open
important problems to research at both the academic and
practical level. Among these, the CIRC will investigate the
critical issues of guaranteeing QoS, mathematic modelling
of DiffServ, mapping various protocols to a unified mechanism for QoS unified services such that internetworking
and traffic control are facilitated automatically.
The Center plans in the medium terms to initiate research in the field of E-health, which is a rich domain in
research challenges related to the generation of distributed
databases, distributed applications, integration at the data
and metadata level, federation of repositories, document
management and data unification. Another potential area
of great relevance to the Sultanate and the region is the arabisation aspect of e-government and e-health applications.
To sum up, there are many important research and innovation domains that can be tackled by the CIRC. However,
the financial support is a key ingredient for selecting the
appropriate direction for success.
Oxidative stress and autism
Bahla Fort
D
R Mustafa I Wali,
Assistant Professor in
the Department of Food
Sciences and Nutrition
at SQU's College of
Agricultural and Marine
Sciences is conducting
research on the biological
and nutritional causes
of autism by first
assessing statistics of
its occurrence among
Omani children.
The study then examines the
biological and genetic implications among affected
children, defines the extent of influences from
environmental variables,
and tests the importance
of folic acid and vitamin
B12 as a possible cure
for the disease.
Autism is a modern condition which shows itself
during the second or
third year of life.
Autistic children have impaired social interaction
and communication, fail
to respond to stimuli and
can exhibit abnormally
repetitive behaviour.
This mental and neurological handicap can become
life-long.
So far, despite many investigative studies, its causes
are not yet known. Hence
the importance of this
study.