Jabal Shams

Where is Jabal Shams?

Jabal Shams is part of the Al Hajar Mountains.

You will find it in: Oman.

Summit: 23.237° N, 57.264° E

The story behind it

The mountain is built of pale limestone that formed on the floor of a warm sea, and walkers still find shells turned to stone in the rocks. Right beside the summit the ground breaks away into Wadi Ghul, a canyon so deep that people call it the Grand Canyon of Arabia. A path called the Balcony Walk follows a narrow ledge along the cliff to an abandoned village whose houses stand under an overhang, where families once collected water from a spring in the rock. Up here the air is cool: frost forms in winter and snow sometimes dusts the top, while the desert below stays hot. Wild goats called Arabian tahr climb the steep faces, and in the villages people grow pomegranates and roses on stone terraces. The very top belongs to a restricted zone, so visitors stop at the viewpoints just below.

Find it on the globe

Jabal Shams is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.