Subdivisions of Oman in Arabic: governorates, wilayat and their seats

How the Arabic names of Oman's wilayat are built

Each name in the first column is a two-word phrase. The word ولاية comes first, the place name second, and Arabic joins them in a genitive construction: ولاية صحار reads Wilāyâẗu Ṣuḥār, literally the province of Sohar. The second column gives the seat on its own, so the place name appears once with the administrative word and once without it.

When the place name carries the article al-, the article blends with the preceding vowel and often with its own first consonant. Al-Rustāq turns into Wilāyâẗu r-Rustāq, as-Suwayq into Wilāyâẗu s-Suwayq, ad-Duqm into Wilāyâẗu d-Duqm. Arabic grammar calls the letters that absorb the l in this way sun letters; r, s, d, ṭ and š are among them, while ḫ and ʿ are not, so al-Ḫābūrâ keeps its l.

In most rows the seat simply repeats the name of the wilayah. A handful of rows differ, and the difference is meaningful. Two wilayat in the south-east, Jaʿlān Banī Bū ʿAlī and Jaʿlān Banī Bū Ḥasan, are administered from Bilād Banī Bū ʿAlī and Bilād Banī Bū Ḥasan: the seat swaps Jaʿlān for bilād, the Arabic word for land or town. Al-Kāmil wa-l-Wāfī and Damāʾ wa-ṭ-Ṭāʾiyīn join two places in one name and take the first as seat. The Ḥallāniyāt islands appear in the province name as Ǧuzur al-Ḥallāniyāt, the islands of al-Ḥallāniyāt.

What changed in Oman's subdivisions

Two reforms shaped the present map. In October 2006 Al Buraimi was separated from the Adh Dhahirah region and became a governorate of its own; today it holds the wilayat of al-Buraymī, Maḥḍâ and as-Sinaynâ. On 28 October 2011 every first-level unit became a governorate and divided the two largest regions: Al Batinah into a northern half governed from Sohar and a southern half governed from Rustaq, Ash Sharqiyah into a northern part around Ibra and a southern part around Sur.

ISO 3166-2 followed in two steps. Newsletter II-2 of 30 June 2010 added OM-BU for Al Buraimi and replaced OM-JA, the code of the old southern governorate al-Janūbīyah, with OM-ZU for Dhofar. On 27 November 2015 the Online Browsing Platform recorded the 2011 reform: OM-BA became OM-BJ, OM-SH became OM-SJ, and OM-BS and OM-SS were added for the two northern halves. The old codes OM-BA and OM-SH are therefore not simply renamed units; each one now covers only part of its former area.

At the level of the wilayat the 2023 statistics of the National Centre for Statistics and Information count 63 units. Three are newer than the list above and two of its Dhofar rows are counted as one. The population figures there also show how uneven the wilayat are: Muqšin in Dhofar had 705 residents in 2022, while as-Sīb in Muscat had over half a million.

Two ways of writing the same names in Latin letters

The wilayat list uses a scholarly transliteration in which every Arabic letter has its own Latin sign: ḥ, ḫ, ṣ, ḍ, ṭ and ẓ for the emphatic and guttural consonants, ǧ for jīm, š for shīn, ṯ for thāʾ, ʿ for ʿayn and ʾ for hamza. Case endings are written where the grammar requires them, so the seat of Musandam's southern wilayah is Dabāʾu l-Bayʿâ on its own and Dabāʾi l-Bayʿâ after ولاية.

The governorate table follows ISO 3166-2, which takes the BGN/PCGN system of 1956. It drops the case endings and marks emphatic consonants with a cedilla, writing Masqaţ, Z̧ufār and Az̧ Z̧āhirah. Ẓufār and Z̧ufār are therefore the same word, the governorate known in English as Dhofar, and Muscat is the English name of the city that both systems spell Masqaṭ or Masqaţ.