Kingdom of Hormuz

The Kingdom of Hormuz was a trading state on the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf, ruled by a dynasty of southern Arabian origin. It began in the eleventh century as a dependency of the Kerman Seljuks, with its original port on the Iranian coast near present-day Minab. At the turn of the fourteenth century the court moved to the island of Jarun, thereafter called Hormuz, which became one of the busiest entrepots linking the Gulf with India and the Indian Ocean. Hormuz grew wealthy by taxing maritime commerce and by controlling Bahrain's pearl fisheries. Its rulers balanced the competing claims of Persian, Timurid and Turkoman powers, and from 1507 the Portuguese imposed a protectorate, building a fortress and channelling trade through their customs system. The arrangement provoked repeated resistance, and in 1622 Shah Abbas I of Safavid Persia, aided by English ships, captured the island and expelled the Portuguese. The fall of Hormuz shifted the region's commercial centre to Bandar Abbas and Muscat.