Hormuz

Hormuz, mostly barren, hilly island of Iran on the Strait of Hormuz, between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, 5 miles (8 km) off the coast. The population may decline by half in summer through migration. Hormuz village is the only permanent settlement. Resources include red ocher for export.

After the Arab conquest, Hormuz early became the chief market of Kerman, with palm groves, indigo, grain, and spices. By about 1200 it monopolized India’s and China’s trade. The famous Venetian traveler Marco Polo twice visited Hormuz. Around 1300 the Arab ruler of Hormuz abandoned the mainland because of robbers and founded New Hormuz on the island; it gradually superseded Qeys as the most important Persian Gulf emporium, again becoming a market for India, and dominated other gulf islands and occasionally mainland Oman.

In 1514 the Portuguese captured Hormuz and built a fort. For more than a century the island remained Portuguese, but the rise of the English locally and the Persian shah’s resentment of Portuguese occupation culminated, in 1622, in Hormuz’ capture by joint Anglo-Persian forces. Hormuz, along with the nearby larger island of Qeshm and the mainland port of Bandar Abbas, was leased to the rulers of Muscat and Oman between 1798 and 1868. Of the old and famous city scarcely anything now remains except for part of the Portuguese fort.

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