Bayt Na'man, the House of Grace, Oman
By Viju James
It is easy to drive past the turn off to Bayt Na'man a few kilometres beyond Barka. The sign board is small and there is no way a car travelling at a minimum of 140 kph can read the address. Take the turn right, drive westward and you get to see the mansion built by Imam Saif bin Sultan in the closing years of the 17th century.
Bayt Na'man was a house built for distinguished travellers. Much of the information about Bayt Na'man is available in the work of the historian, Salil Ibn Raziq, History of Imams and Seyyids of Oman translated by G B Badger. Historical records add up to a wonderful profile of this house. It was a country house built by a rich and aristocratic owner exclusively for his personal use. The house was a garden retreat and not a residential palace. In 1711, Imam Saif bin Sultan planted 30,000 date palms and 6,000 coconut trees near the house. It was the largest date garden on the Batinah at that time. Remains of the garden layout are visible even today. Every creature comfort possible at that time was available at Bayt Na'man. In the southwest corner of the building was an inlet for the Abu Halfah falaj. The gardens also received water from this falaj and from the zajarah — animal powered wells, which were popular at the time. Security systems were sophisticated.
The entrance hall was surrounded by an arch and the door was set back into the wall to enable soldiers to defend it from a slit in the room above the entrance. The inclusion of elements of military architecture made it possible to throw stones or boiling liquids onto the attackers. It was also possible to extinguish fires started by the enemy outside the door. Above all, Bayt Na'man had a private
mosque in a section of the first floor with a well-sculptured mihrab. Imam Ahmed bin Said (reign 1749-1783) restored the house, added towers and transformed it into a fortified home. He planted gardens and adopted it as his own country residence.
He used to stop at Bayt Na'man and stay there for at least two days on his travels between Rustaq and Muscat. Being equidistant from both Rustaq and Muscat, it was a pleasant and convenient halting place to break the journey. It is said that he used the place to give audience to people living between Masna and Seeb. Two of the sons of Ahmed bin Saif, Sayf and Sultan were allowed to use Bayt Na'man as a residence for a number of years. Bayt Na'man was a trifle removed from the historical events of the day but one event that took place at this house is well recorded.
Badger in his translations mentions that the Bayt Na'man castle was at the centre of a fight in the mid-19th century between Said bin Sultan bin Ahmed and the regent Badr bin Sayf. At a point in the fight, Badr is said to have thrown himself out of a window in Bayt Na'man. He fled on horseback to the coconut grove; the respite was brief and he was no longer the regent at the end of the day.
After that Bayt Na'man had an eventless calendar. The house was inhabited and in use till a few decades ago. It was maintained by the Royal Family and administered by a wakil. The walls crumbled the windows and doors were removed and the entire place went into total disrepair. Today, Bayt Na'man can be seen in all its original glory thanks to the restoration work that was undertaken on the instructions of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos. The restoration work was entrusted to the late Guiseppe Biancifiori.
The meticulous records maintained by the architect and published posthumously by his sister give us a complete picture of the condition of Bayt Na'man before and after his work. "The building was a ruin when restoration work was started in 1988" he mentions in his records. Rubble hid the original ground;the southeast tower and dome were damaged but stable. The tower in the northwest had collapsed. The ceiling and roof were no longer there and the wooden floors had disappeared. The painted ceiling of the tower remained.
This led the architect to believe that there must have been splendid decorations on the ceilings that had collapsed. The good part was there were still traces of the original form and it was possible to get the original measurements of the various parts of the castle. P M Costa writing in the Journal of Oman Studies mentions that the ground floor walls were bare and had no decoration. Those on the first floor included numerous niches with elaborate plaster mouldings. The best-preserved section of the castle was the first floor room above the entrance in which halfway along the western wall was the small well-sculptured mihrab.
This room had been used as a mosque and had better decoration than the rest of the house. Biancifiori's mentions that he removed the rubble and built the internal walls using stone and sarooj mortar. The missing parts of the towers were re-built in their original form. The ground floor ceilings were reconstructed using candlewood and matting. Teak wood was used for the first floor and for the reconstruction of windows and doors. The building was plastered using sarooj for the outside and gypsum for the inside walls. The deviation from the original was the introduction of electricity and plumbing.
Bayt Na'man figures in the brochure titled Experience History brought out by the Department of Domestic Tourism. The place can be reached in an hour's drive from the capital area. Once you pass Barka, look out for the tiny board and the turn off. A further two or three kilometres and you see the towers on the horizon. Park the car and break your journey like the noblemen did in the past.
Oman Observer, 21st December 2002
