Ormus

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Kingdom of Ormus (also known as Ohrmuzd, Hormuz, and Ohrmazd; Portuguese Ormuz) was a 16th and 17th century kingdom located within the Persian Gulf and extending as far as the Strait of Hormuz. During this time, it was a client state of the Portuguese Empire.

The kingdom received its name from the fortified port city which served as its capital. It was one of the most important ports in the Middle East at the time as it controlled sea-way trading routes through the Persian Gulf to India and East Africa. This port was probably located on the island of Hormoz, which is located near the modern city of Bandar-e Abbas.

The name of the port, the island, and the kingdom is Iranian and ultimately derives from that of the Zoroastrian deity, Ahura Mazda, which becomes Ohrmazd in Pahlavi, Hirmiz in Manichaean Middle Persian, and Hormoz in New-Persian.

[edit] History

The city-state of Ormus dates back to the 13th century when it controlled the slave market from Africa and Arabia to Khorasan in Persia. At its zenith in 13th to 14th century, Ormus (or Ormuz) was a powerful naval state with a large and active trading fleet and a powerful navy. Petrashevsky reports the size of the fleet to be up to 500 fighting ships. It should be noted that these ships were not armed with cannons.

In September, 1507, the Portuguese Afonso de Albuquerque landed on the island. Portugal occupied Ormuz from 1515 to 1622. It was during the Portuguese occupation of the island that the Mandaeans first came to western attention. The Mandaeans were fleeing persecution in the vilayet of Baghdad (which, at the time, included Basra) and Khuzestan in Iran. When the Portuguese first encountered them, they mistakenly identified them as "St. John Christians," analogous to the St. Thomas Christians of India. The Mandaeans, for their part, were all too willing to take advantage of the confusion, offering to accept papal authority and Portuguese suzerainty if the Portuguese would invade the Ottoman Empire and liberate their coreligionists. The Portuguese were attracted by the prospect of what appeared to be a large Christian community under Muslim rule. It was not until after the Portuguese had committed themselves to the conquest of Basra that they came to realize that the Mandaeans were not what they claimed to be.

After the Portuguese made several abortive attempts to seize control of Basra, the Safavid ruler Abbas I of Persia conquered the kingdom with the help of the British, and expelled the Portuguese from the rest of the Persian Gulf, with the exception of Muscat. The Portuguese returned to the Persian Gulf in the following year as allies of Afrasiyab, the Pasha of Basra, against the Persians. Afrasiyab was formerly an Ottoman vassal but had been effectively independent since 1612. They never returned to Ormus.

In the mid-17th century it was captured by the Imam of Muscat, but was subsequently recaptured by Persians. Today, it is part of the Iranian province of Hormozgan.

[edit] Depiction in literature

The following text was written by John Speed in 1626:

The Kingdome of Ormus
hath his owne King tributarte
vnto the King of Lu∫itania. it
containeth the whole shore of
Arabia from the paßage of the
riuer Euphrates vntil C. Raz. alga
ti, likewi∫e part of the Kingdome of
Per∫ia w. adioyneth to the Sea Ba∫ora
and almo∫t al the Ilands of the per∫ian
Gulfe. whose mothe r?itie is Ormus
in the Iland Geru a famous mart

Note that some of this text is missing due to printing faults; the ∫ is the letter for s or sh (see esh (letter)). The words "mothe r?itie" in the text can also be deciphered as "mother Litie", although there is a distinctive space between mothe and r, and the L (marked by ? above) looks most like a (. Lu∫itania refers to the Roman province of Lusitania, i.e. Portugal.

This text is likely derived from a caption on Ortelius' 1567 map of Asia, which was derived from Gastaldi's map of six years prior:

ORMVS Regnum, peculiarem habet Regem
Lusitaniæ Regi tributarium: continetque totam
Arabiam littoralem ab Euphratis fl. ostio vsque
ad C. Razalqati, nec nom partem Regni Persidis
quæ adiacet freto Basoræ, atque insulas fere omnes
sinus Persici. Cuius metropolis est vrbs Ormus
in insula Geru sita, emporium celebre.

[The Kingdom of Ormus has as a distinctive feature a king
who is a tributary to the king of Lusitania. It comprises all 
the Arab coasts from the mouth of the Euphrates to 
Cape Razalqati, the part of the Persian Empire 
bordering on the Bazora straights and almost all islands 
in the Persian Gulf. Its capital is the city of Ormus
on the isle of Gerus, a famous market town.]

Line 20 of Andrew Marvel's poem 'Bermudas' reads:

Jewels more rich than Ormus shows

Ormus is also mentioned in a famous passage from John Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost:

High on a throne of royal state, which far
outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Show'rs on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat,

from Book II, lines 1-5

[edit] References

• (On the religion of Ormus) Foltz, R.C. 2004, "Spirituality in the Land of the Noble: How Iran Shaped the World's Religions", Oneworld Publications, Oxford, England. ISBN 1-85168-336-4

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Coordinates: 27°06′N, 56°27′E