Hormuz

“ The Arabs of Ghassan, and other tribes who bordered on Syria, which was occupied by the Romans, sheltered themselves from the Persian power by a nominal alliance with their neighbours. Accordingly when Hormuz II., the seventh king of the Sassanian dynasty, attempted to exact a tribute of the tribe of Ghassan, they refused to comply with his demand. Without giving them time to seek assistance from their Roman allies, the Persian king invaded their territory, and entirely defeated them. But Hormuz himself was waylaid in the desert by a body of Arabs, who put him and his attendants to the sword. ”

“ The city of Hormuz stands on the shore of the sea. The name is also called Moghistān. The new city of Hormuz rises in face of the first in the middle of the sea, separated from it only by a channel 3 parasangs in width. We arrived at New Hormuz, which forms an island of which the capital is called Jaraun.... It is a mart for Hind and Sind."—Ibn Batuta, ii. 230.
1442.—"Ormus (qu. Hurmūz?) , which is now called Djerun, is a port situated in the middle of the sea, and which has not its equal on the face of the globe."—Abdurrazzāk, in India in XV. Cent. p. 5. ”

“ Highways, ut. sup.) About 1790, when Timúr Sháh of Kabul sent an army under the Sirdár-i-Sirdárán to put down a revolt in Meshed, this force on its return was struck by Simúm in the Plain of Farrah, and the Sirdár perished, with a great number of his men. (Ferrier, H. of the Afghans, 102; J. R. G. S. XXVI. 217; Khan. Mém. 210.)
Note 6.—The History of Hormuz is very imperfectly known. What I have met with on the subject consists of— (1) An abstract by Teixeira of a chronicle of Hormuz, written by Thurán Sháh, who was himself sovereign of Hormuz, and died in 1377 ”

“ The rise of the English trade and factories in the Indian seas in the beginning of the 17th century led to constant jealousies and broils with the Portuguese, and the successful efforts of the English company to open traffic with Persia especially embittered their rivals, to whom the possession of Hormuz had long given a monopoly of that trade. The officers of Shāh Abbās, who looked with a covetous and resentful eye on the Portuguese occupation of such a position, were strongly desirous of the aid of English ships in attacking Hormuz. ”

“ In the invasion of the Persian territory by the Arabs, on the death of Hormuz, the king of Hamyar, tobbaa Hassan, the son of Assaad, raised a numerous army, and proceeded into Irak, where he was meditating still greater conquests, having made preparations, according to the Arabian writers, to follow the footsteps of his ancestors into China. ”

“ We gather, however, that Hormuz before the Mongol time formed a government subordinate to the Salghur Atabegs of Fars (see note 1, ch. xv.) , and when the power of that Dynasty was falling, the governor Mahmúd Kalháti, established himself as Prince of Hormuz, and became the founder of a petty dynasty, being evidently identical with Teixeira’s Ruknuddin Mahmud above-named, who is represented as reigning from 1246 to 1277. In Wassáf we find, as in Teixeira, Mahmúd’s son Masa’úd killing his brother Nazrat, and Baháuddin expelling Masa’úd. ”

“ The former, writing in the 12th century, says that Hormuz stood on the banks of a canal or creek from the Gulf, by which vessels came up to the city. The latter specifies the breadth of sea between Old and New Hormuz as three farsakhs. (Edrisi, I. 424; I. B. II. 230.)
I now proceed to recapitulate the main features of Polo’s Itinerary from Kermán to Hormuz. We have:—
No European traveller, so far as I know, has described the most direct road from Kermán to Hormuz, or rather to its nearest modern representative Bander Abbási,—I mean the road by Báft. ”

“ Past Mosul and Bagdad they went, through Persia, where brocades are woven and merchants bring caravan after caravan of treasures, to Hormuz, on the Persian Gulf, into which port put the ships from India, laden with spices, drugs, scented woods, and jewels, gold tissues and elephants' teeth. Here they meant to take ship, but they desisted, perhaps because they feared to trust themselves to the flimsy nailless vessels in which the Arabs braved the dangers of the Indian Ocean. So they turned north again and prepared to make the journey by land. ”

“ Hormuz, like Kishm, was also recovered from the Portuguese by the English for Shah Abbas in 1623, until which period it was a stately and rich place, of which the inhabitants made the boast that “if the world were a ring, Ormus must be considered as the diamond”.
165The city has now completely disappeared, and over the space of about one square mile of its site may be seen, here and there, the foundations of houses, those near the sea being the most visible. ”

“ Such, then, was the magnificent province lying between the Desert and mountain range of Persia—the cradle of civilization and the arts—which now attracted the Muslim arms. The first to oppose them was Hormuz, Satrap of the Delta, a tyrant hated by his Arab subjects. To him, as master of the tribes gathering in front, Khalid addressed a letter in the haughty type of Muslim summons: "Accept the Faith and thou art safe; else pay tribute, thou and thy people; which if thou refusest, thou shalt have thyself to blame. A people is already on thee, loving death even as thou lovest life2." ”

“ During the afternoon and evening hours of 2 July 1988 and continuing into the morning of 3 July 1988, Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) armed small boats (Boghammers, and Boston Whalers) positioned themselves at the western approach to the Strait of Hormuz (SOH) . From this position, they were challenging merchant vessels, which has been a precursor to merchant ship attacks. ”

“ Twelve thousand men were to sail and row the newly-built ships along the coast of the Arabian Sea, through the Straits of Hormuz, and along the northern coast of the Persian Gulf to the mouth of the Euphrates. ”

“ Al-Hormuzan, with a great Persian following, was pursued by it; again routed at Ram Hormuz, he fled to Tostar, fifty miles north of Al-Ahwaz, a stronghold which, obstinately defended by the Persians, kept the Muslims for several months at bay. In the end, but not without considerable loss, it was stormed, and Al-Hormuzan, with the garrison, surrendered at the discretion of the Caliph, and was accordingly sent to the Court at Medina. ”

“ The climate of Hormuz, although hot, is, according to medical experts, the best in the Persian Gulf. Rain falls in January, February and March, and the annual rainfall is said to be about the same as that of Bushire, 12 to 13 in.
Capt. A. W. Stiffe in Geogr. Mag. (April 1874) ; William Foster in Geogr. Journal (Aug. 1894) ; writer’s notes taken on island. (A. H.-S.) ”

“ His Excellency informed us that Kaïd Mohammed Jafar would be ready to start for Sultanabad at the asr (about half past three) , so we have made all our preparations for departure. Although the heat has been great, 96° at coolest, I have managed to make a sketch of Ram Hormuz, but nothing can do justice to its beauty. We have been more pleasantly received here, than anywhere else in Persia, and I feel sure we might make friends with the people if only we could speak their language. Travelling without knowing the language, is like walking with one’s eyes shut. ”

“ About 1740 Nadir Shah granted the town and district with the fort of Shamil and the town of Mināb, together with the islands of Kishm, Hormuz (Ormus) and Lārak, to the Arab tribe of the Beni Ma‛īni in return for a payment of a yearly rent or tribute. ”

“ It was re-established, but at the time of Niebuhr’s visit to the gulf a few years later no European remained. Niebuhr mentions that in his time (c. 1765) Mulla ’Ali Shāh, formerly admiral of Nādir Shāh, was established on the island of Hormuz and part of Kishm as an independent chief.
See also Barros, Asia; Commentaries of Albuquerque, trans. by Birch (Hak. Society) ; Relaciones de Pedro Teixeira (Antwerp, 1610) ; Narratives in Hakluyt’s Collection (reprint in 1809, vol. ii.) and in Purchas’s Pilgrims, vol. ii.; Pietro della Valle, Persia, lett. ”

“ II. book x. c. 7, there is a curious detail of the revenue and expenditure of the kingdom of Ormuz, which would seem to exhibit the former as not more than £100,000. ↑ The attack on Kishm was notable in that one of the two Englishmen killed there was the great navigator Baffin. ”

“ Enterprise by the branch railway through Aleppo and Damascus against Egypt, with a view to further developments in Africa, was related to this conception of land-power. The measures adopted by the Allies for the reconstitution of Serbia, the expeditions to the Dardanelles and Salonika, the strong action taken in Greece, the naval movements on the coast of Syria, the operations in the Sinai peninsula and Palestine, and the expedition from the Persian Gulf to Baghdad were the answer to these gigantesque projects of the enemy. ”

“ Invasion is impossible—the German Navy is convinced of that.
“As far as our own Continent of Europe is concerned, we are sure of our troops, and are working with known factors. For that reason we must rule out enterprises in the East, where England can only be struck at [Pg 12] indirectly. Victories at Salonica, the Suez Canal, or in Mesopotamia can only help us in so far as they intensify the doubts about England’s invulnerability which have already been aroused among the Mediterranean peoples and in the Mohammedan world. Defeats in the East could do us palpable harm among our allies. ”

“ Third, if we were to stop sending munitions to the British and the Russians in the Mediterranean, in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, we would be helping the Nazis to overrun Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Persia, Egypt and the Suez Canal, the whole coast of North Africa itself, and with that inevitably the whole coast of West Africa— putting Germany within easy striking distance of South America— fifteen hundred miles away. ”

“ Save in the Persian Gulf, there could be no rival base for sea-power which combined security with the needful resources, and Britain made it a declared principle of her policy that no sea-base should be established on either the Persian or Turkish shores of the Persian Gulf. Superficially there is a striking similarity between the closed Mediterranean of the Romans, with the legions along the Rhine frontier, and the closed Indian Ocean, with the British Army on the North-West Frontier of India. ”

“ Directly it became certain that Turkey had thrown in her lot with the Central Powers, in the autumn of 1914, an expeditionary force sailed from India for the Persian Gulf, and seized the mouth of the Shat-el-Arab, by which the Tigris and Euphrates pour into the sea. The objects of this expedition were at first limited. The protection of the oil-wells, of such importance to our Navy, and the blocking of the German strategical railway through Baghdad, were all that was immediately contemplated. ”

“ The end of the Cold War, however, did not bring an end to the challenges facing our submarine force, as the outbreak of regional disturbances replaced the threat of all-out nuclear conflict. Modern submarines, with their ability to remain submerged for long periods of time, excel at gathering timely and accurate information about potential trouble spots around the globe. Should the need arise, our submarine force can also exercise powerful offensive capabilities, as it did during Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq and Operation Allied Force in Kosovo. ”

“ The forces destined by the Sultan for the invasion of Europe would, therefore, either have to be conveyed in swift transports by sea, protected by squadrons of air-ships and flotillas of submarine battleships, or else they would have to go by land round the Levant by Syria, and so through Asia Minor to the shores of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. ”

“ As to the Arabs, a steamer has nothing to fear, for by keeping mid-stream at the rate they go, no Arab would touch them or attempt to do it. The present vessels they have no power over in going down, but when they are dragged up by Arab trackers, then they are easily attacked. As to the second objection, the want of water, there appears no insurmountable difficulty here, as all the heavy ordnance from Constantinople were brought down the Euphrates from Beer, on rafts, or, as they are called, kelecks ”

“ The testimony of an outsider, is given in a recent article in the Cologne Gazette, which thus describes the political and naval supremacy of England in Eastern Arabia and the Persian Gulf:
“A disguised protectorate over Oman and control over the actions of the Sultan of Muscat; actual protectorate over Bahrein; coaling station on the island of Kishm, in the Straits of Ormuz; presence of a political Resident at Bushire who, with the help of an association called the Trucial League, decides all disputes between Turkish, Arab, and Persian chiefs in the Persian Gulf.... ”

“ At all events, the submarines came, with the result that the battleships Goliath and Triumph were sunk with appalling swiftness and great loss of life.
Then, and then only, did the Fleet awaken to its danger; the battleships and cruisers vanished into the unknown, while the transports disappeared in a night, and we felt, as it were, marooned on this inhospitable Peninsula, from which the Turks had removed every living thing, [167] save only a few dogs, which were found to be so dangerous that they had to be shot at sight. ”

“ We had asked Russia to relieve the pressure on our Western front by using her military force in Prussia and Galicia; and it was reasonable enough for Russia to ask us to reciprocate and relieve the Turkish pressure on her flank in the Caucasus by a naval attack on Turkey. The German Fleet lay snug in port beyond the reach of naval power: could not our supremacy on the sea find an offensive function somewhere else? There was, moreover, our own position in Egypt to be defended ”