Sof Omar Cave System features a spectacular limestone karst landscape with its underground river, irregular lime stone sinks, cave passages and caverns. It represents exceptional geological processes, krastic limestone landforms, and physiographic features that would qualify the site to be considered as a place of the most significant geological and geomorphological formations. The concentration of caves and karstic limestone land formations with its geomorphic and structural characteristics is an outstanding geological feature which allows a greater understanding of the Earth’s history.
The caves are profoundly important for their classic features of underground geomorphology, demonstrating an evolutionary history of millions of years. Caves and krasts are important as store houses of past climates, vegetation, fauna and human cultures, and the same is true for Sof Omar cave system. Sof Omar cave system is estimated to have been created between 23 and 5.3 Million of years B.P., in the Miocene geological period.
The outstanding universal natural heritage values of Sof Omar Cave System can precisely be stated in terms of the following two basic perspectives:
– Sof Omar cave system is an outstanding example to represent the major stage in the earth’s evolutionary history.
– Sof Omar cave system contains superlative natural phenomena or areas of exceptional natural beauty and natural aesthetic significance.
The karst features of the cave system, the spectacular limestone pinnacles, the cave passages and the underground stream as a singular outstanding cultural landscape demonstrate the incomparable geological and natural phenomenon it is endowed with. This reveals the story of the cave systems formation over hundreds of millions of years, and helps unlock the story of the earth’s history.
As a sacred place of worship Sof Omar cave system is believed to be the Caves of Mystery where the ancestral cult of Sheik Sof Omar Ahmad, his families and descendants is observed and practiced annually. Each and every cave structures are assigned and designated to diverse ritual practices. Annual festive events with comprehensive Islamic religious processions and traditional beliefs and practices are conducted in the cave shrines and mosques of this underground karstic limestone caverns. Thus this site has exceptional cultural significance to the spiritual life of the Islamic community making pilgrims visit this site of outstanding cultural values as specified under the above criteria (iii), (v) and (vi). These ancestral cult beliefs and practices have revived for nearly 1000 years and are still a living culture for the Islamic community of this part of the region.
