#EchosOfHer: Omani Women, Heritage and Identity at Bait Al Zubair
In the historic heart of Muscat, Bait Al Zubair offers a window into Oman’s cultural heritage. Through clothing, jewellery, household objects, architecture and other material traces of everyday life, the museum preserves stories of a society shaped across generations.
For #EchosOfHer, we turn to Oman and consider the place of women within this heritage. Bait Al Zubair is not a women’s museum. Yet among its collections are objects that allow us to explore women’s identity, craftsmanship and traditions – and to consider why preserving the material history of women matters.
From a Family Collection to a Museum
Bait Al Zubair opened to the public in 1998, developing from the private collection of the Zubair family into one of Oman’s established cultural institutions. Located in Old Muscat, it now encompasses several traditional Omani buildings and collections documenting the country’s material culture and social history.
The museum holds thousands of objects representing different aspects of Omani life. Its collections include traditional clothing, jewellery, household objects, weapons, musical instruments and examples of traditional craftsmanship. Oman’s official tourism platform describes the complex as connecting the country’s past, present and future through both its collections and traditional architecture.
Among these objects, women’s clothing and jewellery provide a particularly fascinating route into women’s cultural history.
Clothing as a Record of Women’s Lives
Traditional dress can tell us much more than what people wore.
Colour, embroidery, materials and decorative techniques can preserve information about geography, community, social customs and skills passed between generations. Bait Al Zubair’s displays include traditional women’s clothing and jewellery, alongside objects associated with the traditional Omani wedding.
Oman’s traditional women’s dress is particularly diverse. Clothing and decorative practices developed differently across regions, creating distinctive expressions of local identity.
These traditions also demonstrate women’s role in transmitting cultural knowledge.
In 2026, the Oman News Agency highlighted the traditional craft of Al Badla, a decorative element associated with women’s dress in A’Dhahirah. Omani craftswoman Marhoona bint Rashid Al Aziziyah described how knowledge of the craft has been transmitted between generations, with women playing an important historical role in preserving and passing on this heritage.
A garment therefore becomes more than an object behind museum glass. It can represent hours of women’s work, creative decisions, knowledge inherited from previous generations and a connection between women and the communities in which they lived.
Jewellery, Craftsmanship and Identity
Jewellery provides another important part of the story.
Bait Al Zubair preserves examples of traditional Omani jewellery alongside clothing and other objects from daily life.
When these pieces enter a museum collection, they also become historical evidence. They help document aesthetics, craftsmanship, social traditions and the ways women presented and expressed identity.
Looking at women’s history through material culture is particularly valuable because conventional historical records have not always preserved women’s everyday experiences with the same attention given to political leaders, conflicts or major public events.
A piece of jewellery, an embroidered garment or an object associated with marriage can therefore provide another way into the past.
The Stories Within Everyday Objects
One of the strengths of Bait Al Zubair is that its collections extend beyond exceptional or ceremonial objects.
Household objects sit alongside clothing, jewellery and other artefacts. The museum also incorporates traditional Omani houses, creating a broader picture of the environments in which people lived.
For women’s history, the everyday is important.
Women’s contributions to family and community life have often taken place in spaces that traditional histories considered private rather than public. Domestic work, textile skills, craft traditions, family knowledge and cultural practices may leave fewer written records, but objects can preserve traces of these experiences.
Museums can therefore help us ask different questions.
Who made an object? Who wore it? Who taught the techniques used to create it? What did it mean within a woman’s community? And whose knowledge allowed that tradition to survive?
Preserving Heritage Across Generations
Heritage is not static.
Traditional practices survive because people continue to teach, adapt and reinterpret them. Al Badla provides a good contemporary example. The traditional decorative craft is now also being incorporated into modern clothing and abayas, adapting its colours, scale and placement while maintaining the precision of its handmade production.
This relationship between continuity and change is significant.
Preserving women’s heritage does not have to mean presenting women’s lives as belonging only to the past. It can also recognise women as active participants in shaping how culture develops and how knowledge is carried forward.
Why Women’s Stories in Museums Matter
Bait Al Zubair is not a museum dedicated specifically to women, and that distinction matters.
Yet #EchosOfHer is also about looking at where women’s histories are preserved, how they are represented and where they may be less visible.
Women’s experiences exist throughout social and cultural history. They should not become visible only when we enter a building labelled a women’s museum.
Collections such as those at Bait Al Zubair offer an opportunity to look more closely at familiar objects and ask what they reveal about the women who made, wore, used and preserved them.
At Anah Project, we understand the importance of women being able to tell their own stories and of recognising experiences that can otherwise remain unseen. Looking at women’s heritage through museums around the world reminds us that visibility matters – in our understanding of history as much as in the present.
Through its preservation of Omani dress, jewellery, craftsmanship and everyday objects, Bait Al Zubair gives us another place in which to search for those echoes.
And behind the objects are generations of women whose skills, creativity and knowledge remain part of Oman’s living cultural heritage.
