Thanks to reader Ian who brought to my attention the very unusual situation of Nahwa, an exclave of the United Arab Emirates which consists of 40 homes surrounded by an exclave of Oman called Madha, which is further surrounded by the U.A.E. You just have to see the map to understand it.
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And thanks to your blog for waking me up to these enclaves. It looks like we aren’t going to get the complete answer to not the Nahwa double-exclave exists but I guess the sheiks simply look at things differently than I do. I suppose they just figure there’s no reason the exclaves should not exist. Thanks to them for making international geography more interesting, while it doesn’t look (to outsider me) that Nahwa & Madha would even be worth the trouble of administation. I’m feeling a little like Adrian Monk.
And thanks to your blog for waking me up to these enclaves. It looks like we aren’t going to get the complete answer to why the Nahwa double-exclave exists but I guess the sheiks simply look at things differently than I do. I suppose they just figure there’s no reason the exclaves should not exist. Thanks to them for making international geography more interesting, while it doesn’t look (to outsider me) that Nahwa & Madha would even be worth the trouble of administation. I’m feeling a little like Adrian Monk. [Oops, I fluffed one word when I encoded the previous version of this message.]
Wow, I never knew that, thanks Matt!
I am not sure whether this is fact or urban myth but the Brits asked the various tribes who they wanted to belong to. Some chose to be part of Oman, others part of UAE and so the enclaves were established. I guess this is perhaps a similar reason why you have the bit of Oman at the top of the which is separated from the rest of Oman by the Emirate of Sharjah. I am not sure of the timing of all this – perhaps in the early 1970s when the Emirates were created from the Trucial States.
I think there are a bunch of those on the Indo-Bangladesh border. As in, a piece of India surrounded by Bangladesh surrounded by India surrounded by Bangladesh
Countries nested like Russian dolls with no better purpose than to amuse.