[13] Qaboos, who died childless, had named his cousin, Haitham bin Tariq, as his successor in a letter, and the ruling family confirmed him as the new Sultan of Oman.

[24] At Aybut Al Auwal, in the Dhofar Governorate of Oman, a site was discovered in 2011 containing more than 100 surface scatters of stone tools, belonging to a regionally specific African lithic industry—the late Nubian Complex—known previously only from the northeast and Horn of Africa.

At the archaeological sites of Bat, Al-Janah, and Al-Ayn wheel-turned pottery, hand-made stone vessels, metals industry artifacts, and monumental architecture have been preserved.

[29] In the 1970s and 1980s, scholars like John C. Wilkinson[30] believed by virtue of oral history that in the 6th century BCE, the Achaemenids exerted control over the Omani peninsula, most likely ruling from a coastal centre such as Suhar.

[36] Seventy years after the first Azd migration, another branch of Alazdi under Malik bin Fahm, the founder of Kingdom of Tanukhites on the west of Euphrates, is believed to have settled in Oman.

Many of the Omani Azd who settled in Basra became wealthy merchants and, under their leader al-Muhallab ibn Abi Sufra, started to expand their influence of power eastwards towards Khorasan.

[29][58] The Nabhani dynasty started to deteriorate in 1507 when Portuguese colonisers captured the coastal city of Muscat, and gradually extended their control along the coast up to Sohar in the north and down to Sur in the southeast.

[29] A decade after Vasco da Gama succeeded in his voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and to India in 1497–1498, the Portuguese arrived in Oman and occupied Muscat for a 143-year period, from 1507 to 1650.

However, in 1552 an Ottoman fleet briefly captured the fort in Muscat, during their fight for control of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, but soon departed after destroying the surroundings of the fortress.

With the power of the Yaruba Dynasty dwindling, Imam Saif bin Sultan II eventually asked for help against his rivals from Nader Shah of Persia.

Since the revival of the Imamate with the Yaruba dynasty, the Omanis continued with the elective system but, provided that the person is deemed qualified, gave preference to a member of the ruling family.

[75] Between 1862 and 1892, the Political Residents, Lewis Pelly and Edward Ross, played an instrumental role in securing British supremacy over the Persian Gulf and Muscat by a system of indirect governance.

[80] The Hajar Mountains, of which the Jebel Akhdar is a part, separate the country into two distinct regions: the interior, and the coastal area dominated by the capital, Muscat.

52 crew members died, with the sole survivor, Matrosengefreiter Günther Schmidt, taken aboard HMIS Hiravati near Khor Fakkan and made a prisoner of war.

[97] The British political agent in Muscat believed that the only method of gaining access to the oil reserves in the interior was by assisting the sultan in taking over the Imamate.

[102][90] Colonel David Smiley, who had been seconded to organise the Sultan's Armed Forces, managed to isolate the mountain in autumn 1958 and found a route to the plateau from Wadi Bani Kharus.

[103] On 4 August 1957, the British Foreign Secretary gave the approval to carry out air strikes without prior warning to the locals residing in the interior of Oman.

[88] Between July and December 1958, the British RAF made 1,635 raids, dropping 1,094 tons and firing 900 rockets at the interior of Oman targeting insurgents, mountain top villages, water channels and crops.

In 2004, the Sultan appointed Oman's first female minister with portfolio, Sheikha Aisha bint Khalfan bin Jameel al-Sayabiyah, to the post of National Authority for Industrial Craftsmanship.

[159] Torture methods in use in Oman include mock execution, beating, hooding, solitary confinement, subjection to extremes of temperature and to constant noise, abuse and humiliation.

[162] Human Rights Watch issued in 2016, that an Omani court sentenced three journalists to prison and ordered the permanent closure of their newspaper, over an article that alleged corruption in the judiciary.

Agriculture, often subsistence in its character, produces dates, limes, grains and vegetables, but with less than 1% of the country under cultivation, Oman is likely to remain a net importer of food.

[178] Since a slump in oil prices in 1998, Oman has made active plans to diversify its economy and is placing a greater emphasis on other areas of industry, namely tourism and infrastructure.

[178] A free-trade agreement with the United States took effect 1 January 2009, which eliminated tariff barriers on all consumer and industrial products and provided strong protections for foreign businesses investing in Oman.

[183] The largest foreign community is from the Indian states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat and the Punjab,[184] representing more than half of entire workforce in Oman.

Another challenge to innovation is the Dutch disease phenomenon, which creates an oil and gas investment lock-in, while relying heavily on imported products and services in other sectors.

Accreditation standards and mechanisms with a quality control that focuses on input assessments, rather than output, are areas of improvement in Oman, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 2014 report.

[252] Oman has a long tradition of shipbuilding, as maritime travel played a major role in the Omanis' ability to stay in contact with the civilisations of the ancient world.

Established in 2000 by Sayyida Susan Al Said, Bait Muzna has served as a platform for emerging Omani artists to showcase their talent and place themselves on the wider art scene.

The 23rd Arabian Gulf Cup that took place in Kuwait, from 22 December 2017 until 5 January 2018 with Oman winning their second title, defeating the United Arab Emirates in the final.