Magan in 218 B.C.

Magan — Spring 218 BC · The Copper Land at the Gulf’s Mouth.

The ancient land of south-eastern Arabia — the Oman peninsula and the lower Gulf shore, gathered about the Hajar mountains and the strait that closes the Gulf’s mouth. Magan bears a name old as Sumer, where it was sung as the land of copper and of the hard dark diorite of kings’ statues. In 218 BC it is a country of oasis towns, mountain and coast, peopled by Arab tribes and seafarers and lying outside the reach of the great empires: a hinge of the sea-road where the copper of its mountains and the aromatics of the Arabian shore meet the traffic between the Seleucid Gulf, Mesopotamia and India.

Far from the wars of the Mediterranean kings, where the long Arabian shore turns east toward the rising sun, lies Magan — the land the scribes of Sumer named, ages before, as the country of copper and of diorite. Here the bare ranges of the Hajar fall to a coast of pearling-banks and palm-groves, and a great cape and strait guard the narrow mouth of the Gulf. No empire holds it: its Arab tribes and seafarers keep their own oases and harbours, and grow what wealth they have from the sea-road. Copper comes down from the mountains; frankincense and aromatics move up the shore from the incense lands; and the ships of the Gulf, threading the strait, carry the goods of India and Mesopotamia past Magan’s capes. It is a quiet, half-seen country on the edge of the Greek world’s knowledge — a place of merchants more than of kings.