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Indians ruled Gulf through Hormuz. They paid to ban public cow slaughter, built temples
The shockwave rippled through the Western Indian Ocean; the decades after saw the end of Hormuz's prominence, the development of Iran's first maritime policy, and the immigration of tens of thousands of Indian traders and investors into the Gulf and Iran. This is the story of how Hormuz shaped the history of India and the world.
Since at least 1300 CE, Hormuz has been the hinge of Eurasian trade, where thousands of Indians, Arabs, Iranians, Mongols, and Turks made their fortunes. Goods poured through Hormuz, to and fro the Mediterranean, West and Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and China. But in the 16 th century, the Portuguese adventurer Alfonso da Albuquerque took control of the port.
Though an uneasy ceasefire between Israel and Iran continues, just two days ago, on 24 June, the Iranian parliament threatened the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But this was not the first time that Hormuz, situated at the narrowest point of the Persian Gulf, has turned into a flashpoint between Iran and the West.
Understanding the Gulf
Just as the Gulf's geography offered opportunities throughout time, it also created challenges. Its character was utterly unique, nothing like our world of monolithic nation-states. Sam Dalrymple, historian and author of Shattered Lands: The Five Partitions of India, described Gulf towns to me as 'trading islands/oasis towns wedged between the sand sea and the salt sea. They make less sense as states and more as oases filled with traders.' Their population was never consistent: it waxed and waned with the trading seasons, which in turn depended on the monsoon.
Outside these ports, weather conditions were extreme: storms, unseasonal winds, scorching heat and humidity. The Gulf's northern edge, shielded from the Iranian Plateau by a mountain range, allowed little room for coastal states to grow. On the south, the vast Arabian desert was home to small tribes that occasionally preyed on sea traffic.
Hormuz rose to prominence because it was able to offer safe ground for international trade, without the risk of piracy. This wasn't what one would expect from looking at it. Barely a few kilometres across, sweltering Hormuz was encrusted in salt, with only one freshwater source. Its rulers solved this problem by importing water on barges from the shore. Markets were kept open all night to avoid the daytime heat.
In The Persian Gulf: A Political and Economic History of Five Port Cities, historian Willem Floor further explains that the rulers of Hormuz imposed an embargo on timber, oars, coir, iron and steel, which prevented their rivals from building ships. They then took control of nearby ports, establishing a chokehold on the Gulf.
Also read: What is Strait of Hormuz & why its closure by Iran could disrupt global energy trade
The struggle over Hormuz
Though Hormuz's rulers were Muslim, the island made no segregations on ethnic or religious lines. The second-largest ethnic group on the island were Indians, who conducted a roaring trade in horses in the 13th century CE. In 'India's Sea Trade with Iran in Medieval Times', historian Shireen Moosvi discusses the Somanatha-Veraval inscription, recording the construction of a mosque in Somnath in 1264 by the Hormuz merchant Nuruddin Firoz.
The Sanskrit portion of the inscription describes the mosque as a dharma-sthanam, and mentions the direct involvement of Gujarat's ruling Chaulukya king and his officials in the grant. If this Hormuz merchant had such influence, writes Moosvi, 'Hormuz merchants must surely have formed an elite group of some importance… in the Chaulukya kingdom of Gujarat.'
For the next century, Hormuz continued to flourish. According to Moosvi, Hormuz's networks extended as far as Uzbekistan and Turkey. Goods shipped from Hormuz reached, in relays, all the way to China. The Chinese admiral Zheng He brought his vast armada there multiple times in the 15th century, where he exchanged ceramics and silks for the luxuries of Western Eurasia.
Strategic resources such as horses were shipped to India from Hormuz; in return, India provided necessities such as rice to the Gulf ports, as well as cloth, metals, woods, and spices. In his edited volume India and the Indian Ocean, 1500-1800, MN Pearson notes that exchanges overwhelmingly favoured India. Vast quantities of silver and salt were required to balance the trade.
In the early 1500s, the Portuguese erupted into the Indian Ocean. From their galleons—artillery platforms designed for deep-sea and coastal voyaging—they attempted to take control of trade gateways in the Indian Ocean, including Hormuz. They stationed a permanent garrison on the island in 1515, but immediately ran into problems.
At the same time, the Mughal Empire of the Indian subcontinent consolidated its reach into Afghanistan. Conquering Kandahar, the Mughals stabilised overland routes from India to Central Asia, further weakening the appeal of Hormuz.
According to Floor, the Ottoman Empire, which controlled Iraq, attempted to get rid of the Portuguese in 1552 but failed. It would be an Iranian power which finally expelled them and restored some normalcy to the Gulf trade. But Hormuz would never again be independent.
Also read: Crude oil prices to freight rates: How Iran's chokehold on Strait of Hormuz impacts India
Iranians and banias
Up to this point, riven by internal strife, the Safavid dynasty of Iran had paid little attention to events in Hormuz—though they were technically its overlords. However, Shah Abbas I (r. 1587–1629), a contemporary of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, eventually consolidated power. He was alarmed by the loss of both Kandahar and Hormuz, crucial to Iran's trade with the steppe and the ocean.
In 'The Gulf in the Seventeenth Century', historian Abdul Aziz M Awad describes how, in 1622, Abbas I used a mixture of threats and promises to convince the English East India Company to attack Hormuz on his behalf. This was successful, and the Portuguese stranglehold was broken. Simultaneously, Abbas recaptured Kandahar from the Mughals, reestablishing Iran as a major economic player.
Abbas had learned from the mistakes of earlier Gulf rulers: Allowing foreign control over the Hormuz Island would make it impossible to challenge European sea power in the strait. And so, Abbas routed Gulf trade into a tiny mainland port called Gombroon, renamed Bandar Abbas (Abbas Port). He also encouraged the immigration of Indian merchants throughout Iran, in unprecedented numbers.
According to Floor (Persian Gulf), about a third of all homes in Bandar Abbas belonged to Indians. There was a large temple, and Hindu processions were allowed; the Banias also paid the Persian authorities to ban public cow slaughter. Historian Scott Levi, in his paper 'The Indian Merchant Diaspora in Early Modern Central Asia and Iran', writes that 12,000 Indian merchants resided in Isfahan, the capital of Safavid Iran.
These merchants traded primarily in cloth and luxury commodities, but used the proceeds for investments and moneylending. As such, they were favoured by Iranian authorities: they 'provided a considerable source of income for the treasury, facilitated taxation by extending a monetised economy into the countryside, and provided village craftsmen and farmers with an important source of investment capital and credit services.'
This didn't automatically imply good relations between Safavid Iran and Mughal India. Trade in Hormuz fluctuated as both states competed, occasionally banning trade or rerouting it to other ports. By this point, in the 1600s, both these superpowers had something approaching a modern maritime policy, in which ports like Surat and Hormuz featured front and centre. At the beginning of this column, we saw how Gulf ports, especially Hormuz, had conducted their own business in the 1300s; by the 1600s, they had become chess pieces wielded by gunpowder empires.
Yet, some patterns were deeper than the transient politics of states. Indian immigration to the Gulf continued. As the East India Company, and then the British Raj, expanded through the Gulf, their officials noted again and again the ubiquity of Indians.
English government official Thomas Herbert, writing in 1627–30, claimed that they 'swarm throughout the Orient… pursuing trade in infinite numbers.' Indians in general, not just Banias, worked as shopkeepers, brokers, bankers, accountants, translators and secretaries. Indian craftsmen and labourers made up a huge proportion of the economy of Oman. Indian soldiers travelled via the Gulf to fight British battles in World War I.
And, as Sam Dalrymple writes, it was possible in the early 20th century that Gulf states could have joined an Independent India. Even after the partitioning of the Indian Ocean world into nation-states, Indians continue to work and live in all echelons of Gulf society.
The Strait of Hormuz once made Indian fortunes, both before and after the era of powerful states that looked to the sea. What will happen if tensions rise again, and it is closed?
'About 20 per cent of oil and natural gas consumed across the world flows through the Strait of Hormuz… Even if ships heading to India aren't blocked, a major disruption in Hormuz will likely cause energy prices to spike up and make it hard to insure vessels. In a time of economic uncertainty, the last thing India wants is an oil shock,' Aditya Ramanathan, Research Fellow at the Takshashila Institution, told me.
The Gulf and the Indian seaboard are not, perhaps, as close as they once were. But they will always be interlocked.
Anirudh Kanisetti is a public historian. He is the author of 'Lords of Earth and Sea: A History of the Chola Empire' and the award-winning 'Lords of the Deccan'. He hosts the Echoes of India and Yuddha podcasts. He tweets @AKanisetti and is on Instagram @anirbuddha.
This article is a part of the 'Thinking Medieval' series that takes a deep dive into India's medieval culture, politics, and history.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
