according to the oriental fashion. From his father he had inherited a war against the Byzantine empire and against the Turks in the east, and negotiations of peace had just begun with the emperor Tiberius, but Hormizd haughtily declined to cede anything of the conquests of his father. Therefore the accounts given of him by the Byzantine authors, Theophylact, Simocatta (iii. 16 ff.), Menander Protector and John of Ephesus (vi. 22), who give a full account of these negotiations, are far from favourable. In 588 his general, Bahram Chobin, defeated the Turks, but in the next year was beaten by the Romans; and when the king superseded him he rebelled with his army. This was the signal for a general insurrection. The magnates deposed and blinded Hormizd and proclaimed his son Chosroes II. king. In the war which now followed between Bahram Chobin and Chosroes II. Hormizd was killed by some partisans of his son (590).
5. Hormizd V. was one of the many pretenders who rose after the murder of Chosroes II. (628). He maintained himself about two years (631, 632) in the district of Nisibis. (Ed. M.)
HORMUZ (Hurmuz, Ormuz, Ormus), a famous city on the
shores of the Persian Gulf, which occupied more than one position
in the course of history, and has now long practically ceased to
exist. The earliest mention of the name occurs in the voyage
of Nearchus (325 B.C.). When that admiral beached his fleet
at the mouth of the river Anamis on the shore of Harmozia, a
coast district of Carmania, he found the country to be kindly,
rich in every product except the olive. The Anamis appears
to be the river now known as the Minab, discharging into the
Persian Gulf near the entrance of the latter. The name Hormuz
is derived by some from that of the Persian god Hormuzd
(Ormazd), but it is more likely that the original etymology was
connected with khurma, “a date”; for the meaning of Moghistan
the modern name of the territory Harmozia is “the region of
date-palms.” The foundation of the city of Hormuz in this
territory is ascribed by one Persian writer to the Sassanian
Ardashir Babegan (c. 230 A.D.). But it must have existed
at an earlier date, for Ptolemy takes note of Ἅρμονζα πόλις
(vi. 8).
Hormuz is mentioned by Idrisi, who wrote c. 1150, under the title of Hormuz-al-sāhilīah, “Hormuz of the shore” (to distinguish it from inland cities of the same name then existing), as a large and well-built city, the chief mart of Kirman. Siraf and Kish (Ḳais), farther up the gulf, had preceded it as ports of trade with India, but in the 13th century Hormuz had become the chief seat of this traffic. It was at this time the seat also of a petty dynasty of kings, of which there is a history by one of their number (Turan Shah); an abstract of it is given by the Jesuit Teixeira. According to this history the founder of the dynasty was Shah Mohammed Dirhem-Kub (“the Drachma-coiner”), an Arab chief who crossed the gulf and established himself here. The date is not given, but it must have been before 1100 A.D., as Ruḳnuddīn Mahmūd, who succeeded in 1246, was the twelfth of the line. These princes appear to have been at times in dependence necessarily on the atabegs of Fars and on the princes of Kirman. About the year 1300 Hormuz was so severely and repeatedly harassed by raids of Tatar horsemen that the king and his people abandoned their city on the mainland and transferred themselves to the island of Jerun (Organa of Nearchus), about 12 m. westward and 4 m. from the nearest shore.
The site of the continental or ancient Hormuz was first traced in modern times by Colonel (Sir Lewis) Pelly when resident at Bushire. It stands in the present district of Minab, several miles from the sea, and on a creek which communicates with the Minab river, but is partially silted up and not now accessible for vessels. There remain traces of a long wharf and extensive ruins. The new city occupied a triangular plain forming the northern part of the island, the southern wall, as its remains still show, being about 2 m. in extent from east to west. A suburb with a wharf or pier, called Turan Bagh (garden of Turan) after one of the kings, a name now corrupted to Trumpak, stood about 3 m. from the town to the south-east.
Odoric gives the earliest notice we have of the new city (c. 1320). He calls it Ormes, a city strongly fortified and abounding in costly wares, situated on an island 5 m. distant from the main, having no trees and no fresh water, unhealthy and (as all evidence confirms) incredibly hot. Some years later it was visited more than once by Ibn Batuta, who seems to speak of the old city as likewise still standing. The new Hormuz, called also Jerun (i.e. still retaining the original name of the island), was a great and fine city rising out of the sea, and serving as a mart for all the products of India, which were distributed hence over all Persia. The hills on the island were of rock-salt, from which vases and pedestals for lamps were carved. Near the gate of the chief mosque stood an enormous skull, apparently that of a sperm-whale. The king at this time was Kutbuddīn Tahamtan, and the traveller gives a curious description of him, seated on the throne, in patched and dirty raiment, holding a rosary of enormous pearls, procured from the Bahrein fisheries, which at one time or another belonged, with other islands in the gulf and on the Oman shores from Rās-el-had (C. Rosalgat of the Portuguese) on the ocean round to Julfar on the gulf, to the princes of Hormuz. Abdurazzāk, the envoy of Shah Rukh on his way to the Hindu court of Vijayanagar, was in Hormuz in 1442, and speaks of it as a mart which had no equal, frequented by the merchants of all the countries of Asia, among which he enumerates China, Java, Bengal, Tenasserim, Shahr-ī-nao (i.e. Siam) and the Maldives. Nikitin, the Russian (c. 1470), gives a similar account; he calls it “a vast emporium of all the world.”
In September 1507 the king of Hormuz, after for some time hearing of the terrible foe who was carrying fire and sword along the shores of Arabia, saw the squadron of Alphonso d’Albuquerque appear before his city, an appearance speedily followed by extravagant demands, by refusal of these from the ministers of the young king, and by deeds of matchless daring and cruelty on the part of the Portuguese, which speedily broke down resistance. The king acknowledged himself tributary to Portugal, and gave leave to the Portuguese to build a castle, which was at once commenced on the northern part of the island, commanding the city and the anchorage on both sides. But the mutinous conduct and desertion of several of Albuquerque’s captains compelled him suddenly to abandon the enterprise; and it was not till 1514, after the great leader had captured Goa and Malacca, and had for five years been viceroy, that he returned to Hormuz (or Ormuz, as the Portuguese called it), and without encountering resistance to a name now so terrible, laid his grasp again on the island and completed his castle. For more than a century Hormuz remained practically in the dominions of Portugal, though the hereditary prince, paying from his revenues a tribute to Portugal (in lieu of which eventually the latter took the whole of the customs collections), continued to be the instrument of government. The position of things during the Portuguese rule may be understood from the description of Cesare de’ Federici, a Venetian merchant who was at Hormuz about 1565. After speaking of the great trade in spices, drugs, silk and silk stuffs, and pearls of Bahrein, and in horses for export to India, he says the king was a Moor (i.e. Mahommedan), chosen by and subordinate to the Portuguese. “At the election of the king I was there and saw the ceremonies that they use . . . The old king being dead, the captain of the Portugals chooseth another of the blood-royal, and makes this election in the castle with great ceremony. And when he is elected the captain sweareth him to be true . . . to the K. of Portugal as his lord and governor, and then he giveth him the sceptre regal. After this . . . with great pomp . . . he is brought into the royal palace in the city. The king keeps a good train and hath sufficient revenues, . . . because the captain of the castle doth maintain and defend his right . . . he is honoured as a king, yet he cannot ride abroad with his train, without the consent of the captain first had” (in Hakluyt).[1]
- ↑ In Barros, Dec. 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.
