In the third week of the US-Israel war on Iran, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by the beleaguered West Asian country has led to a looming global shortage of gas and fuel. In India, one of Iran’s oldest trade partners, the crisis is growing bigger by the day as most of India’s energy needs are met through gas and oil that pass through this narrow gateway between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.
The US-Israeli war on Iran has led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. (REUTERS/Representative)
Like much of the Persian region, Hormuz has Zoroastrian roots that now live on only in name. During the twilight of the Sassanian empire, around 640 CE, the Chinese traveller Xuanzang reported about Po-la-sse (Fars) while travelling in Sind. According to his account, the main commercial town on its eastern frontier was Ho-mo, which scholars associate with Old Hormuz located near present-day Minab. Later, toward the end of the eighth century (785-805 CE), another Chinese report described a significant mercantile town of Ta-shi (Iran) named Mo-lo, which has also been identified as Hormuz.
India and Hormuz
The earliest Indian reference to Old Hormuz and its trade with India appears in a 13th-century Sanskrit work from Gujarat. The Jagadu-charita, written by Sarvananda, narrates the life of a Jain merchant from Gujarat, who was active around 1256-1258. The text says that Jagadu maintained regular commercial relations with Iran and even had his own agent stationed at Hormuz to manage his trading activities. It notes that he transported goods using his own ship.
Further evidence of flourishing trade between Gujarat and Hormuz during the 13th century is found in a document preserved in the Lekhapaddhati. The document contains instructions from an official named Jayataka at Pattan in Gujarat to Vijayasimha, who was stationed at the port of Ghogha in the Gulf of Cambay. Jayataka directed him to report the kinds of goods, as well as the number and breeds of horses, carried by any ship that arrived there from Hormuz.
The presence of Iranian Muslim merchants in Gujarat is also indicated by a remarkable bilingual inscription discovered at Somnath (Veraval) on the Gujarat coast. The inscription, written in Sanskrit (almost complete) and Arabic (partly damaged), is dated according to four eras—Hijri, Vikrama, Valabhi, and Simha. All correspond to AD 1264. It records the construction of a mosque, along with shops and lands assigned to provide revenue for its maintenance.
This centuries-old bond between India’s western seaboard and the Persian Gulf survives through the Nakhuda, a community of ship-captains that dates back to at least this bilingual inscription at Somnath.
Historian Ranabir Chakravarti writes in “Ship-owning Merchants in the West Coast of India” that the key figure in this bilingual record is a nakhuda, named Nuruddin Firuz, whose name is Sanskritised as Noradina Piroja. “He came to Somnath (Sumnat in the Arabic text) from the famous port of Hormuz situated at the opening of the Persian Gulf. From Hormuz (Hurmujavelakula), Firuz came to Somnath for some business (karyavasat). With a view to impressing his social eminence, the inscription introduces Nakhuda Noradina as the son (suta) of nau (= nau- vittaka) Khoja (Khwaja) Abubrahima, ie, Abu Ibrahim. Today, the Najhudas can be found from Malabar in the south to Konkan up north on the western coast. “
Among the chief items of import into India through Hormuz were horses and slaves. Hormuz had a customs house that was called bangsar, derived from the Sanskrit word bhandagaram, which became popular from Iraq to Indonesia for describing a storehouse. Much before industrial revolution and the oil-based geopolitics that wrecked the old world order, Hormuz was a very strategic strait for empires. Be it the Ottoman, Iranian, Arab, or the Portuguese, who took over in the 16th century after defeating the local king Turan in 1515.
Hormuz was actually key for the Portuguese Estada da India, and the commander of this port was a coveted position given to Fidalgos.
In 1565, Portuguese traveller Gaspar da Cruz, wrote, “Hormuz... is, among all the wealthy countries of India, one of the wealthiest, through the many and rich goods that come from all parts of India, and from the whole of Arabia and of Persia, as far as the territories of the Mongols, and even from Russia in Europe. I saw merchants there, and from Venice. And thus the inhabitants of Ormuz say that the whole world is a ring and Hormuz is the stone thereof...”
India’s links with Hormuz and Iran predate the Portuguese by centuries. Indian spicery, ivory, textiles, medical drugs, jewellery were imported to Iran and beyond into European countries. In return, traders served the need for horses, weapons, and slaves both from and to India.
Iranian historian Mohammad Bagher Vosoughi writes in the “History of the Persian Gulf” about the importation of African and Indian slaves to Hormuz and the export of horses to India. “Since the climate of southern India was not suitable for raising horses, the (Muslim) Bahmanid kings in the northern Deccan and the Hindu kings of the Vijayanagara region were regular customers. In 1506, three thousand horses were exported to India, and this amount reached ten thousand head in 1567.”
Quoting Persian historian Firishta and other contemporary sources, Vosoughi writes, “In search of better jobs and better economic conditions, Iranian youths departed for India from different regions. There are around ten to twelve thousand Iranian warriors in the Deccan. Some of these warriors were from Iran’s Turkish tribes who left Iran after intense insecurity during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and immediately after entering India, joined the military forces”.
One such warrior, according to the legend, became the Sultan of Bijapur. Amir Yusuf Adil Shah, son of a fruit seller from Iran, who came to the Deccan to sell his master’s horses. He stayed back and enlisted in the services of the Bahmani Sultanate, where he achieved a high military rank, and eventually founded a new dynasty in 1489.
The Portuguese rule, which lasted nearly 200 years, obliterated Hormuz’s independence, and by the 17th century, its status as a vassal port of the Iranian kingdom became solidified.
Voshoughi writes that by applying their overwhelmingly militaristic policies, the Portuguese disrupted the trade of the region and created conditions under which the merchants and traders of Hormuz were not able to continue their activities and, as a result, gradually left the region’s economic scene. Since then, Hormuz has remained in Iranian control, whether directly or indirectly.
Author Valay Singh’s HistoriCity is a column about a city in the news based on its documented history, mythology, and archaeological digs. The views expressed are personal.
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