THE Friday goat and cow market in Nizwah was particularly busy. Two days before the end of Ramadan, a plump goat was high on most shopping lists for the Eid festival, which marks the end of the month-long fast.

By 8am, the bidding was at its peak and the splendidly bearded charges were being hauled on a circular parade, soliciting ever-higher prices on each circuit from clamorous bidders two or three deep on the fringe of the goat run.

It was a crisp, clear morning in Oman’s former capital, high in the mountains 160km (100 miles) inland from its successor, Muscat. The bevy of buyers dazzled the few tourists with loud bartering and their brilliantly white dishdashes, the ubiquitous Omani dress.

The local paper later revealed that high prices were achieved at the market last November, with cows making £600 and goats selling for £240, even those smuggled in across the Strait of Hormuz from Iran, where their price is better measured in cartons of American cigarettes.

Drifting away from the sale, the souk was humming, with whole yellowfish tuna going for £30, alongside imported citrus fruits and eggs.

A small crowd gathered at the souk gates, where ancient rifles were on sale. A row had broken out between a policeman and a mountain tribesman, who had demonstrated the worth of his gun by firing it into the air.

After two days in Dubai, the bustle and vitality of Oman was the antithesis to shopping malls and hotel resorts — Oman is sensibly looking to complement Dubai, not to compete with it.

The conservative Muslim state on the edge of the Arabian peninsula is instead promoting its natural resources and largely untouched interior and coastline. To that end, Oman is hosting a conference on environmental tourism from February 7 to 10, supported by the World Tourism Organisation and Unesco.

Until 1970, Oman was largely a closed nation. The then Sultan banned sunglasses and there were only a dozen miles of metal road. As cars were also banned, it wasn’t a problem. But his son Qaboos bin Said is regarded as a moderate, progressive ruler.

Sarah White is a British artist who moved to Oman in 1986 and now runs, among other projects, the Bait al Zubair foundation — a private museum in Muscat based in the former home of an adviser to the Sultan.

“Oman is like a village — it is very hospitable and very easy to get things done here,” she said.

The Omanis are Ibadi Muslims, and call themselves “the people of straightness”; they are among the least fanatical and sectarian of all Muslims, in this young country, where 60 per cent of the two million inhabitants are under 18. Half of all jobs must now go to locals, a process frequently referred to as Omanisation.

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