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1.1  Introduction

The Strait of Hormuz lies sandwiched between Iran on the north and Oman on the south at the entrance to the Persian Gulf between 56° and 57° E and 26° and 27° N. No more than 52 kilometres wide, it presents a formidable, twisting, waisted entrance to ships passing between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman part of the larger Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. To the west lies Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Palestine and to the east, the Mekran, Oman, Afghanistan and India. On the northern side of the strait and 8 kilometres off the coast of Iran lies the island of Hormuz. Small, desolate and barren, this island was selected about ad 1300 to become the new town of Hormuz and replace the old one (otherwise known as Minab) on the mainland of Iran. Here it grew and prospered for over 300 years until once again it moved back to the mainland but west of the old town of Hormuz (Minab) and was renamed Bandar Abbas.

Throughout history the strait and the towns of Hormuz have been of strategic and commercial importance in the region. It begins in antiquity and the early trade that passed through the strait and continues up to present time, when the Strait of Hormuz once again assumed political and economic importance through the numerous oilfields in or about the Persian Gulf on which the Western economies are so heavily dependent. They are an integral part of the Middle East and the legend of wealth that has always been associated with it. Horatius Flaccus, better known as Horace, referred to the wealth of the Middle East in one of his Odes about 23 bc, seven years after Cleopatra’s death:

 

You who are richer than

The unplundered treasure chests of the Arabian

Sheikhs and the rajah kings ...^[1]

 

With the defeat of the Portuguese in 1622 and the advent of the English to the area, accounts and stories of Hormuz’s wealth circulated in Europe and in England. John Milton, who for a period of time was Latin (foreign) Secretary to Oliver Cromwell, drawing from Peter Heylen’s Cosmographie … containing the chorographic and historic of the world published in 1652 ^[2] wrote in 1665 of Hormuz in Paradise Lost:

 

High on a throne of royal state, which far

Outshone the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind,

Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand

Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold. ^[3]

 

As when to them who sail

Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past

Mozambic, off at Sea North-East winds blow

Sabean odors from the spicy shore

of Araby the Blest, with such delay

Well pleas’d they slack their course, and many a league

Cheer’d with the grateful smell old Ocean smile.^[4]

 

Wealth and the great diversity of peoples living and trading at Hormuz is a constant theme in the narratives and accounts that follow. It had not diminished by the end of the 18^th century when the French historian Abbé T. G. F. Raynal wrote the following account of Hormuz in his history published in 1770:

 

Hormúz became the capital of an empire … it afforded a more splendid and agreeable scene than any city in the East. Persons from all parts of the globe exchanged their commodities and transacted their business with an air of politeness and attention …. The streets were covered with mats and in some places with carpet, and the linen awnings which were suspended from the tops of the houses, prevented any inconvenience from the heat of the sun … Camels laden with water were stationed in the public squares. Persian wines, perfumes, and all the delicacies of the table were furnished in great abundance, and they had the music of the East in its highest perfection … In short, universal opulence, an extensive commerce, politeness in the men and gallantry in the women, united all their attractions to make this city the seat of pleasure.^[5]

 

Raynal’s account is that of Hormuz at its zenith at the end of the 16th century when it was an important commercial centre with, it is said, up to 40,000 people whose existence depended on trade by land and sea. In 1622 when Portuguese rule of the island and dominance of the region was removed by the Persians and the English, the town not only lost its position as a commercial centre but was moved to the mainland.  The decline of the island was rapid and although the English considered taking over from the Portuguese, the Persians had already set about establishing the new town of Hormuz, Bandar Abbas, on the mainland by dismantling the old. In contrast to Raynal we have an account by A.W. Stiffe of the Indian Navy who visited the island of Hormuz in March 1873 and found:

 

A few soldiers or armed men hold the old fort as a sort of military post for the Governor of Bandar ‘Abbasi. The place is rarely visited by a European vessel…. Of the Arab city, the most important ruin is a minaret, about 70 feet high…. Of the rest of the city nothing remains except mounds strewn with broken pottery …. [Of the houses] They are all more or less ruinous’ and estimated 200 men in the modern village.^[6]

 

These two accounts provide us with apposite images of wealth and desolation in a complex history that stretches from antiquity to the present day. To understand its history we are dependent on the accounts of travellers, soldiers, statesman, sailors and explorers to piece it together. Some of these accounts can be considered as accurate, others such as Raynal’s are embellished or exaggerated reflecting the perceived view at the time. Taken altogether a long and rich history appears not unsurprisingly for such an important geographical position that has provided a seaway between the important regions of the world through the millennia. That people were prepared to live and work in this inhospitable area goes some way to indicating that they were also aware of its importance and were prepared to put up with hardships for the benefits that were to be found. The area is generally barren with little or no water, high temperatures and winds, subject to earthquakes with the occasional tracts of rich agricultural land. The physical geography of the region and particularly either side of the strait has to be understood to appreciate the impact it had on the inhabitants and those passing through the strait. A sea journey under sail in the Persian Gulf might take 36 days going north and less than 10 on its return and the high temperatures often had a devastating impact on travellers.

The Eurasian and Arabian plate boundary passes through the northern side of the Strait of Hormuz separating Iran in the north and Arabia in the south. Most of Iran lies on a high plateau ringed on all sides by higher mountain ranges. To the west and south the Zagros folds extend in an arc from Armenia to Baluchistan. To the west of Hormuz the central Zagros main feature is folding, and not faulting, giving a succession of parallel ridges separated by deep valleys with bare expanses of coloured rock. Small lowland basins occur and some are enclosed producing salt marshes or lakes at the lowest part. Some of these basins are intensively cultivated in the non-saline stretches away from the lowest parts and have become important centres such as Shiraz. To the east of Hormuz the trend of the Zagros ridges alters abruptly and for 240 kms the folding is north-south. Then east of Cape Jask there is a trend from west-north-west to east-south-east and later from west to east. In contrast to the central Zagros the topography of the south-east is irregular and broken. A narrow coastal plain precedes a plateau country of an average elevation of 600 to 900 metres that in turn is crossed by lines of hills that occasionally reach 1,800 to 2,100 metres between which lie numerous river basins. Most of the south-eastern Zagros region comprises rugged desolate landscapes with occasional patches of cultivation. Temperatures and rainfall vary with freezing temperatures in the north-west to mean highs of 52 °C (125 °F) on the Persian Gulf coast and varied though sporadic rainfall to the north with an annual total of just 120mm (4.7 in) at Jask. One of the main features of the climate of Iran is the frequency of high winds which intensify the effects of extreme temperatures. In summer in the south-east there is a persistent northerly wind that frequently exceeds 110 km per hour (70 m.p.h.) for days on end during a period that lasts from May until September. Carsten Niebuhr, The Danish explorer, facing the temperamental weather of the Persian Gulf after the calm summer weather in the Indian Ocean aboard an English ship bound from Muscat to Bushire in January 1765, writes:

 

Never have I seen the wind change so much and so quickly as during this trip. One minute it was calm and the next minute there was a howling gale, and often the wind would switch suddenly from one direction to the direct opposite. I will not, however, expatiate on the dangers we had to contend with in these conditions. Sailors are frequently exposed to such things, and it would be a little unreasonable if we others on our infrequent voyages took to bemoaning the dangers and inconveniences.^[7]

 

South of Iran lies Arabia which has a surface below 300 metres elevation over the eastern half bordering the Persian Gulf. The exception to this is the region of the Musandam and Oman where fold movements have uplifted a chain of mountains to a height of 3,000 metres. This region is distinct structurally from the rest of Arabia and is considered to be part of the Zagros Range of Iran. On the landward side Oman is isolated by the desert of the Rub al Khali. Oman consists of an enormous upfold of rock series of many ages with extensive faulting. An extensive dislocation in the Musandam area has given rise to a varied topography of tectonic valleys and upland horsts. Subsequent drowning by the sea has produced a fjord like coastline with long deep inlets surrounded by steep walled cliffs. The largest of these is the Elphinstone Inlet about 16 kms (10 miles) long with cliffs reaching 900 to 1,200 metres in height. Jebel Harim in the centre rises to 1,755 metres. These inlets provide excellent harbours but surrounded in the most part by cliffs have few places to land ashore.

The Musandam peninsula is about 35 km wide and lies 80 kms almost due south of Bandar Abbas across the Strait of Hormuz in south east Arabia. The Musandam is today part of but separated from the Oman by the United Arab Emirates. The west coast (56° 04’ to 12” E.) of the Musandam extends some 25 km. and the east coast (56° 15’ to 30’ E.) some 55 km. from its most northern point in the Strait of Hormuz. The sheer cliffs present an inhospitable coastline to sailors with only the occasional bay and beach on which to land. Despite the subsistence level of living that the extreme climatic conditions impose on any inhabitants, there are a number of small towns and villages located around the Musandam. In the 16^th century the Portuguese considered some of them to be sufficiently important to their overall domination of the region to establish forts at Bukha on the west coast, Khasab in the centre north and Limah and Bayah (Diba) on the east coast. Kumzar at the far north is hemmed in by sheer cliffs on both sides and with all available land built on there would not have sufficient space to build a fort. Nonetheless the Portuguese did establish a factor in the town. Captain Robert Taylor of the 3rd Regiment Bombay Native Infantry and Assistant Political Agent in Turkish Arabia prepared some notes in 1818 in which he describes the Musandam. He provides details of the northern most part of the Musandam in a section entitled ‘Cape Musseldom, and Amsandam Island’, Musseldom and Amsandam being place name variations of Musandam:

 

The cape or promontory above mentioned is called by the Natives Musseldom, and is formed by a chain of rocky mountains, commencing on its eastern side, in about lat. 25° 53’ N., and terminating in the sea at the headland of this name. The whole of this promontory is deeply indented with wide fissures, and affords several secure anchorages. A large island, admitting a creek named Amsandam, which is situated in lat. 26° 22’ 30” N., directly north-east of the promontory, forms, with the main, a channel impassable to ships from its extreme narrowness, whose depth, however, is never less than sixteen fathoms. It has undoubtedly been riven asunder from the rocky main in some convulsion of nature, to its extreme point. The Natives have given it the name Ras-ool-Jabal, and British navigators that of Cape Musseldom.

 

The island he refers to is now known as Jazirat Musandam and has at its most northern point Ra’s Musandam. The channel now known as Fakk al Asad or Bab Musandam is about 500 metres wide. He continues:

 

Three small islands, or rather large rocks, dry and barren, lie to the northward of Cape Musseldom, and are by the Arabs named Salamah. The northernmost, in lat. 26° 29’ 30” N., is ten miles distant from the cape, and lies due north from the east end of Amsandam, which lies in lat. 26° 22’ 30” N. The water near the rocks is deep, and the channel between them and the main wide, and free from danger. The tides, however, run here with considerable, and even dangerous rapidity. The Ghanam Islands lie off Khasab.

Amsandam is intersected by a creek running inwards for a day’s journey, and its inhabitants are a part of the tribe Shihiyyin, consisting of three thousand men, who profess Mahomedanism, but are unobservant of its forms and ceremonies to the last degree, and in fact, will entertain no religious instructors .... Their language is different from that of other tribes, and as there are many individuals among them remarkable for the redness of their hair, it may fairly be concluded, as the Arabs declare, that their language is formed from corruptions of the dialects of their Portuguese and Danish ancestors, engrafted on an impure stock of the Arabic. Both these nations have settlements on Amsandam, and also at Khasab, a bay to the westward of the promontory, on the main, where there was, and exists also at present, a flourishing manufactory of cloth, of a peculiar sort, which has long been used as wrappers for head and loins throughout the two shores of the Gulf. Khasab, too, is said to contain descendants of the Portuguese, in the humble capacity of fishermen.^[8]

 

In contrast to the records we have of the towns of Hormuz both on the mainland and the island we have scant knowledge of the southern side of the Strait of Hormuz, the Musandam. Mentioned by some of the classical writers and surfacing in Portuguese accounts from the 16^th century it does not rise to prominence again till the 19^th century and the advent of the British. Bertram Thomas having spent some time in the area posed the following question in his paper on the Musandam in 1929:

 

But the silence of the ancients is strange, having regard to the importance of the Persian Gulf as an ancient trade route, the prominence Musandam Peninsula must have attained as a landfall for mariners, and the tribal tradition of an ancient Shihuh occupation.^[9]

 

The occupation of the islands and the littoral of the Persian Gulf by various groups and tribes has been in a continuous state of flux over the centuries. The Kumzaris had close ties with other tribes on the Persian littoral and  provided sailors to Hormuz during the Portuguese occupation of the island, if not before. What is not explained is the origin of the Shihuh tribe of the Musandam or the origin of  the Kumzari dialect, questions that Bertram Thomas raised and which so far have not been answered conclusively. The Musandam because it is unique and part of the strait will be examined in more detail later. The three islands lying off the northern tip of the Musandam that Taylor refers to are very small and were uninhabited until the 20^th century when a lighthouse was built on one of them. There are a number of islands in the strait close to the Iranian littoral the largest of which is Qeshm, about 110 kms long by about 15 kms wide, lying 17 kms to the south west of the island of Hormuz. The other two significant islands are Larak and Hengam on the south east side of Qeshm and closer to the present main shipping lanes.

The island of Hormuz, formerly known as Jerun, on the north side of the Strait of Hormuz (centred at 27° 03’ 47” N 56° 27’ 43” E) lies 7 km. due south from the marsh coastline of mainland Iran, 19 km. to the south east from Bandar Abbas and is no more than 6.5 km deep and 8 km wide. Elliptical in shape and covering an area of about 41 sq. km., it has a triangular promontory on its northern side providing a natural anchorage to the east of it. More than 32 sq. km. some 75% of the land area is steep hilly terrain rising from 40 m. to 186 m. The habitable area is no more than 9 sq. km. with most dwellings concentrated on the promontory on the north side of the island. A.W. Stiffe, a Lieutenant in Her Majestys Indian Navy, visited the island of Hormuz in March 1873 and wrote this detailed description for the Geographical Magazine:

 

The island, which is rather more than four geographical miles across, and roughly circular in shape, presents a mass of hills, from 300 to 700 feet in height, occupying a space of about 3 miles each way on the south and south-west sides, the shores of which part are quite precipitous, the north and east sides presenting a low plain. Its surface is therefore pretty equally divided between hills and plain.

The hills are of somewhat remarkable geological character. There are some stratified rocks, forming the cliffs at the south-east angle, but the whole of the rest are probably of volcanic origin, and consist of rock-salt, which is raised to a height of 300 to 400 feet, and presents the most fantastic outline conceivable owing to the dissolution of the salt. They are encrusted with bright-coloured earths, red, purple, and yellow, and are almost impassable, owing to the exceeding ruggedness of the surface.

With these salt hills are associated several peaks of white or light grey-coloured rock of trachytic character, the highest of which rises to 700 feet, and all are of sharp, precipitous outline. A view from the top of the high peak presented a perfect wilderness of pointed and rugged ridges, separated by abrupt valleys and singular funnel-shaped holes of various sizes, some of very large dimensions, possibly 200 feet in depth, and others only a few feet deep, but all at a very steep slope. The trachytic rock is studded with iron pyrites and other minerals, often in most beautifully developed crystals.

The valleys or ravines opening out of this mass of hills, and carrying off the rain-water which is not absorbed in the funnel-shaped pits, have in their course through the plain all the appearance of frozen rivers winding down to the sea. I walked about a mile up one on the salt incrustation, and the illusion was perfect, except as regards the temperature. This salt incrustation is collected and exported to Bandar ‘Abbasi and Maskat.

The general plan, taken from the Persian Gulf chart, shows the situation of the island with reference to the surrounding land. The Portuguese fort in Kesm town is in fair preservation. An old writer not inaptly sums up the appearance of the island thus:—“Formerly this island was on fire, which left it so uncouth, that it is amazing to those who behold it.^[10]

 

Stiffe is referring to the salt-plugs a feature to be found in the Zagros region which have deposits of red oxide, sulphur and rock salt. The deposits on the island of Hormuz were mined and exported up to the 20^th century. This description of the island is in stark contrast to the once rich agricultural land of the original town of Hormuz (Minab) located on the mainland where  cereals, grapes, dates and other produce were grown.

This town was located some 11 kilometres south-west of the present town of Minab at 27° 04’ 54” N 56° 59’ 16” E, and about 10 kilometres north-east of the mouth of the river Minab which stemmed from a substantial lake in the mountains behind the low plain of the town. The area was sufficiently rich to provide a diversity of produce as described in the accounts to follow but we also know that in the 10^th century, the original town acted as seaport for Kirman a provincial capital some 400 kilometres to the north-east on the Iranian plateau. The foundation of the old town has been ascribed to Ardashir Papakan (ad 224-241) but there are indications that it may have been substantially older than this.^[11] What we do know is that Alexander the Great’s admiral, Nearchus, put ashore here in 325 bc as did Marco Polo, the Chinese and many others. The old and new Hormuz towns were the outlets for inland provincial towns such as Kerman as well as seaports in their own right located as they were on various land and sea routes.