Salalah, the second largest city of Oman is the capital of the Dhofar region, a region which since the days of yore has been famous for frankincense. The city boomed economically thanks to this trade, second only to the great Chinese Silk trade. Salalah became an important trading port and traded with the Far East, Orient and the Occident.

Salalah is home to the ruins of Sumharam, a fortified town with an important port that functioned from 100 BC to 400 AD and recent archaeological excavations confirmed that Salalah’s Haffa district also nurtured a vital trading community between the 12th and 16th centuries – from mosques, palaces and houses to elaborate tombs. And in the heart of Salalah, a fenced off region protects the 14 footprints of Prophet Mohammed’s sacred camel, which have been embedded in rock.

The city was taken over by the Omani Sultanate in the 19th century and in 1932 it was made the capital of Oman when the Sultan settled here before moving his capital to Muscat in 1970.