20/03/2026
PART II | THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ -THE THROAT OF THE WORLD | ANTIQUITY - Two Thousand Years Before Oil
🛑 The Ancient World's Highway
The strategic importance of the long predates the petroleum age. For more than two millennia before the first oil well was drilled, the strait was the critical transit point for the trade routes connecting the Persian Empire, the Arabian Peninsula, the Indian subcontinent, and East Africa.
The earliest written records of Persian Gulf maritime trade date to the Sumerian civilization of approximately 3000 BCE, which documented sea trade with a land called 'Dilmun' (modern Bahrain) and 'Magan' (modern Oman) for copper, carnelian, timber, and cloth. The Persian Gulf was already an international highway when the Egyptian pyramids were being built.
🛑 The Achaemenid Persian Empire and Hormuz (550–330 BCE)
When Cyrus the Great founded the Achaemenid Persian Empire in 550 BCE, the Persian Gulf became an imperial sea — a strategic and commercial artery of the largest empire on earth. Darius I (522–486 BCE) completed a canal linking the Red Sea to the Nile and commissioned maritime surveys of the Arabian Sea.
The Achaemenid Persians were not primarily a naval power; their genius was in land administration; but they understood the commercial value of the Gulf trade routes that passed through what would later be called Hormuz.
The ancient city of Hormuz itself, after which the strait is named, was originally located on the mainland in what is now Minab County in southern Iran. It was an established trading settlement by at least the Seleucid period (312–63 BCE), handling goods moving between the Mediterranean world, Mesopotamia, the Indian subcontinent, and East Africa: spices, silk, pearls, frankincense, copper, gold, ivory, and horses.
Scholars including George Fadlo Hourani in Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times (Princeton University Press, 1951) document the Arab and Persian maritime commercial traditions that made the Persian Gulf the beating heart of the pre-modern world economy.
🛑 Alexander the Great and the Hormuz Passage
After Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Empire between 334 and 323 BCE, he recognized immediately the commercial and strategic significance of the Persian Gulf. In 326 BCE he dispatched his admiral Nearchus to survey the route from the Indus River mouth back to the Persian Gulf. Nearchus' voyage; recorded by the historian Arrian in Indica; is one of antiquity's great maritime records, documenting the coast of what is now Pakistan, Oman, and Iran, passing through the strait that would later bear Hormuz's name.
Alexander reportedly planned to establish a major commercial city on the Persian Gulf to rival Alexandria in Egypt, though his death in 323 BCE ended those ambitions. His successors, the Seleucids, maintained the Gulf trade network, and it was under Seleucid rule that Hormuz city became a firmly established commercial center.
🛑 The Sassanid Empire and Persian Naval Power (224–651 CE)
The Sassanid Persian Empire; which preceded the Arab Islamic conquest; controlled the Persian Gulf comprehensively. Sassanid naval forces patrolled the Gulf, imposed customs duties on merchant vessels, and projected power as far as the coast of Arabia and East Africa. The Sassanid port of Siraf on the Iranian coast became one of the ancient world's great commercial cities, processing goods from India, China, Zanzibar, and the Mediterranean.
Persian pearl diving in the Gulf; centered around Bahrain and the Iranian coast; was among the ancient world's most lucrative industries. The natural pearls of the Persian Gulf were traded as far as Rome and China. Iranian coastal communities developed the navigation, shipbuilding, and diving traditions that would sustain Gulf commerce for two thousand years.
The Arabic-language geographer al-Masudi, writing in the 10th century CE, describes the strait as the 'Gate of the Sea of Persia', acknowledging the Persian geographic identity of what had by then been islamized but not de-Persianized.
🛑 The Medieval Islamic Trade Empire
After the Arab conquest of Persia in 651 CE, the Persian Gulf trade network was absorbed into the Islamic Caliphate but continued to function with remarkable continuity; now with Persian merchant expertise operating within an Arab political framework. The city of Hormuz grew substantially in the 10th through 13th centuries, becoming the pre-eminent trading port of the entire Gulf region.
The Mongol invasions of the 13th century
devastated much of the Persian interior but paradoxically boosted Hormuz city's importance; merchants fleeing the chaos of the mainland relocated to the coast and later to the island of Jarun (renamed Hormuz Island), which became the new seat of the Kingdom of Hormuz, a sophisticated independent trading state that maintained its independence through commercial diplomacy rather than military power.
Marco Polo visited Hormuz in 1293 CE and described it vividly in The Travels of Marco Polo as a major commercial entrepôt where goods from India, Arabia, China, and Persia converged. He noted the intense summer heat; Hormuz sits at roughly 27 degrees North in one of the world's hottest climates; and the remarkable cosmopolitan character of its population.
"This is a great city and a noble. It is a center of commerce to which merchants come from India and from many other parts, bringing spices, precious stones, silks, cloth of gold, elephants' teeth, and other rich wares." - Marco Polo, The Travels, c. 1300 CE.
A Wise Muntu
Innocent Muteba
A Complete Historical, Strategic & Geopolitical Analysis for educational purposes only - From Antiquity to the Modern Crisis
