Star clocks and water management in Oman

Abstract

For centuries, if not millennia, the farmers of Oman have used the stars and sun for timing their share of water from gravity-fed irrigation systems (aflāj). When wristwatches became widely available in the late 1960s, many communities abandoned the traditional methods. Today, the use of stars for this purpose survives in eight communities. This contribution focuses on the near extinct system of time reckoning with stars.