Ṣūr

Sur stands beside a lagoon on Oman's eastern coast, near the headland of Ras al-Hadd. Its protected waters gave shelter to fishing boats and merchant vessels at the edge of the Arabian Sea. Sailors from Sur became known for their voyages across the ocean, while the town's shipwrights built wooden dhows in yards beside the lagoon.

The coast near Sur lay close to the first Arabian landfall for ships arriving from India. From this shore, Omani seafarers also sailed to East Africa. Under the Al Bu Said rulers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, shipbuilding prospered as Omani trade extended across the Indian Ocean. Builders produced different vessels for different purposes, including the cargo-carrying baggala and the faster ghanjah. Sur's lagoon could accommodate a large merchant fleet, making the town a centre of the traffic between Oman and the African coast alongside Muscat.