Flag of Oman

How to read it

The flag was adopted by royal decree on 17 December 1970 and updated by royal decree on 22 May 2004, Oman’s Foreign Ministry says. The 2004 decree (Royal Decree 53/2004) issued the Law of the State Flag, Emblem and National Anthem, which calls the flag the symbol of the state’s sovereignty. Its first annex sets the design: a vertical red part next to the pole, a third of the flag, with the emblem in white in its upper quarter, and three horizontal parts across the rest, white at the top, red in the middle, joined to the red at the pole, and green at the bottom. The annex specifies spun polyester cloth and gives a colour code for the red and for the green. The law has the flag lowered to half-mast when official mourning is declared.

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The khanjar and the swords

The national emblem is a sheathed khanjar, the curved Omani dagger, with its belt, laid over two crossed swords. The Foreign Ministry says it dates from the middle of the eighteenth century, when it was adopted as the royal crest of the Al Bu Said dynasty, and that the swords and dagger are the traditional weapons of the Omani people; Omani men still wear the khanjar and belt with ceremonial dress on formal occasions. The Norwegian encyclopedia Store norske leksikon dates it a century later, to the middle of the 1800s, as the emblem of the Al Said dynasty; it became the country’s emblem under the sultans who ruled from 1888 to 1932 and was put on the flag in 1970. The flag law describes it as two traditional Omani swords crossed with the Omani khanjar between them, and bans its use as a trademark or in advertising.

From the all-red flag to the present one

Before 1970 the flag was plain red, and the Foreign Ministry says the red band comes from that old flag. On the flag of 1970, the encyclopedia writes, the red stripe was half as deep as the white and the green; the three were made equal on 25 April 1995, and the encyclopedia gives the proportions as 1:2. The 2004 law lists three sizes for flagpoles that are not all the same shape: 2 × 1 m (6 ft 7 in × 3 ft 3 in) on a 6 m (20 ft) pole, 3.5 × 2 m (11 ft 6 in × 6 ft 7 in) on a 10 m (33 ft) pole and 3 × 1.7 m (9 ft 10 in × 5 ft 7 in) on a 12 m (39 ft) pole, along with a square car flag of 35 × 35 cm (14 × 14 in).

Telling it from the UAE flag

The UAE flag also has a red vertical band at the pole and three horizontal stripes, but its stripes are green, white and black and it has no emblem, as the UAE government’s flag guideline describes it. Oman’s stripes are white, red and green, the red joined to the band at the pole, and the white emblem sits at the top of the band.