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5.1  Bandar Abbas

By the middle of the 17th century with the removal of the Portuguese dominance initially on the Persian coast but eventually extending to the Oman coast, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, the position that Hormuz had held for three hundred and fifty years as one of the leading trading centres of the world was over. Although the transfer to the new town of Hormuz, Bandar Abbas, included removing the old town’s material fabric to build the new, it never managed to replace the old town on the island. The Persians allowed trading to continue but in a more controlled manner. However with the advent of the English, Dutch, French and others it still remained an important transit point for merchants and travellers during the 17th and 18th centuries, many of whom recorded their accounts of the area.

Sir Thomas Herbert (1606-1682) obtained in 1627 a place in the suite of Sir Dodmore Cotton, accredited as ambassador to the King of Persia with whom he and Sir Robert Shirley sailed in March in the Rose, an East Indiaman, bound for Gombrun where they arrived on the 10 January 1628. Herbert, Cotton and Shirley went to Ashraff for an audience with the king afterwards visiting Mount Taurus and Caobin where Cotton and Shirley died. Towards the end of July Herbert left Caobin and with letters of safe conduct from the king visited Coom, Cashan, Baghdad and other important towns.He also visited Hormuz and wrote:

 

And both within and without the Castle so regularly built and so well fortified with deep trenches, counterscarp, and great Ordnance commanding both City and Haven, that none exceeded it through all the Orient.^[1]

 

Returning to Swali early in the following year he took a ship to England sailing on the 12 April 1629 via Ceylon, Mauritius and St. Helena and arriving in Plymouth Sound at the end of 1629.^[2]

The Duke of Holstein sent an embassy to the Persians to negotiate trade in 1633. Johann Albrecht von Mandelslo, a friend of Olearius and a former page to the Duke accompanied this embassy but having obtained permission left the ambassadors in Persia and proceeded to India sailing from Hormuz in 1638. Landing at Surat he then proceeded to Agra, Goa and Ceylon before returning home via the long sea route.^[3]

In 1648, La Boullaye-le-Gouz, from Anjou, assumed the Turkish name Ibrahim Beg and en route to Hormuz meets a Jesuit, Alexandre de Rhodes.^[4]

·       Jean Baptiste Tavernier

Jean Baptiste Tavernier, the French jewel trader^[5] made six journeys to the East between 1631 and 1668, visiting Persia, India and Batavia. One of his regular port of calls was Bandar Abbas, which he alternatively refers to as Hormuz or Gombroon, being one of the only two routes he says can be taken between Ispahan and Agra, the other being overland via Kandahar.

 

The first of these routes has been fully described up to Hormuz towards the end of the last book of my travels in Persia, and I have now to speak of the navigation from Hormuz to Surat.

Navigation in the Indian seas is not carried on at all seasons, as it is in our European seas, it being necessary to take the proper season, outside which no one ventures to put to sea. The months of November, December, January, February, and March, are the only months in the year in which you embark at Hormuz for Surat, and at Surat for Hormuz: with this difference, however, that you can rarely leave Surat later than the end of February, but for leaving Hormuz you may wait till the end of March, and even till the 15th of April, because the western wind, which brings the rains to India, begms to blow then. During the first four months a wind from the northeast prevails with which you may sail from Surat to Hormuz in fifteen or twenty days ; afterwards, veering by degrees to the north, it serves equally the vessels going to Surat and those coming from it; during this period the merchants generally reckon on spending thirty or thirty-five days at sea ; but if you desire to make the passage from Hormuz to Surat in fourteen or fifteen days, you must embark in the month of March or at the beginning of April, because you then have the western wind astern all the way.

Vessels leaving Hormuz steer for Muscat, on the coast of Arabia, so as not to approach too near that of Persia, and to give it a wide berth.^[6]

 

Tavernier takes this sea route from Hormuz to Masulipatam leaving Gombroon on the 11 May 1652 on board a ship for which the Dutch company (VOC) provided pilots and gunners:

 

and our vessel made much water. For it had remained nearly five months in the roads at Gombroon during the hot season, and if care is not then taken to wet the timbers which are exposed above water they open ; this is the reason why vessels make so much water when laden. The Dutch are careful to throw water all over theirs both morning and evening in order to preserve them, because without this precaution one runs risk of being lost in a tempest.^[7]

 

Apart from his first voyage, Tavernier passes through Bandar Abbas on each of his subsequent five journeys meeting Chardin there on his sixth and last journey.

·       de Thevenot

de Thevenot arrived at Kung in 1665 from Basra on board an Armenian ship of 260 tons crewed by Franks, Portuguese, English and Dutch.^[8] Jean Thevenot joined Tarvenier’s caravan in 1665 en route to Hormuz but leaves it at Basra where he takes an Armenian ship to India.^[9]

Johann Grueber, a Jesuit priest, set out from China with another Jesuit, Albert d’Orville, and passed through Hormuz, [presumably Bandar Abbas] became the first Europeans to enter Lhasa in June 1661. An account written of his travels states:

 

The Missionary set out for China, as we conjecture, in the year 1656. According to the first letter, he went from Venice to Smyrna by sea; from thence to Ormuz by land in five months; from Ormuz by sea in seven months to Macao. There landing, he passed through China partly by water, partly by land, to Peking in three months. He stayed in China three years: in one of which, 1660, he says the fifty-six Jesuits who were then in that empire baptized more than 50,000 men.^[10]

 

·       Jean Chardin

Jean Chardin, born in France on 26 November 1643, spent six years in Persia and the gulf area studying the Persians and Arabs at the time of Shah Abbas II before returning to Europe in May 1670. He returned to Persia on the 17 August 1671, arriving on 24 June the following year at Isphahan and staying till the end of 1677. Between 1671 and 1677 Chardin visited ‘Congue’ (Kung).^[11] Proceeding to London in 1681 he entered the ‘Cie anglaise des Indes’ in 1683, and acted as “plénipotentiaire britannique nuprès des États de Hollande, fonctions qu’il occupa jusqu’en en 1712.” He wrote his journal of his voyage in 1686 and died in 1713.^[12]

John Struys made three voyages between December 1647 and July 1672. The first voyage to Japan, the second to Venice and Turkey and the third to Moscow and Persia. He relates the following:

 

Gameron is alƒo by the Perƒians called Bendar, which is as much to ƒay, The Key of the Kingdom, like the Name Derbent, already mentioned.

Gammeron is in reƒpect of it’s commodious ƒite becom a very famous Emporium and that on a ƒudden, being lately a poor ƒmall Town, inhabited by Fiƒhers It is frequented by Indians, Moors, English, French and Hollanders, who drive here a mighty Trade which three laƒt have their Houƒes of Reƒidence next to the ƒhore, and ƒtand very convenient for loading and unloading of Goods.

The Perƒians and Armenians come by way of Iƒpahan, and the Arabians thro Babylon, or Bagdet as it is now called, with multitudes of Caravans conƒiƒting of many Thouƒands of Camels, Horƒes, Mules and other Beaƒts of Portage. Hither alƒo repair both English and Hollanders bringing all ƒorts of Commodities that there Marketable and may be vended. The English bring moƒtly Woolen Manufactory, Pewter, Steel, &c. The Hollander trade there moƒtly in Spices and Indian Commodities. The Portugeez Tongue is here almoƒt univerƒally ƒpoke, they having ƒo long had that place, and yet above all other Europeans are obliged to pay cuƒtom: The Dutch Factors buy their silks at the Price Courant and are alƒo cuƒtom-free. But the English are not only Cuƒtom-free here but alƒo go Sharers with the King of Perƒia in the Cuƒtom that is received at Ormus, for the good Service they did aƒƒiƒting the King to take that Town from the Portugeezes.^[13]

 

·       John Fryer

John Fryer travelled from London to the East Indies in a journey that was to last nine years, 1672-1681, and wrote of his experiences on his return. Just before arriving at Muscat in the year 1676/7, he describes Ras Al Hadd as marking the entrance to the Persian Gulf:

 

March the 9th we were Weƒtward off Cape Rouƒelgaot, which lies in Twenty two and an half North. It is that Promontory in Arabia Fœlix which gives Entrance to the Mouth of the Perƒian Gulf, and riƒses high, being moƒt notoriouƒly Sandy.

 

On reaching the Strait of Hormuz, he continues his description:

 

… we stemmed the furious Current, till we could ƒee on each ƒide Land from Perƒia and Arabia; on the one ƒide St. Jaques his Head-land, on the other that of Muƒƒendown appeared, and afore Sun-ƒet we entred the Streights Mouth, not above a League wide: It lies in Thirty ƒix Degrees North Latitude; a Mile within its Neck on a row, are Four or Five Rocks, or Tƒlets, by Mariners called the Coines; from the resemblance of thoƒe Leavers of the ƒame Name, wherewith they raiƒe, or lower Breeches of their Guns.

About Midnight we were between Ormus and Larack, Forty four Miles from the entry of the Streights, the biggeƒt not above Four Miles in Length; the leƒƒer is Ormus; great indeed for Name in time of yore, now only famous for its Clifts of Salt/which though pierced by extreme Heat, yet are a cure for the moƒt burning fever, the only known Remedy for ƒuch caƒes in this Climate/ and the Casƒtle built by the Portugals, the chief ƒtrength of all theƒe Seas.

 

Arriving on the 22 March at Gombroon, Doctor Fryer made a number of observations about the ships that were in the port “… 2 lofty Dutch ships, Two great ones of the Moors, One small from Bombaim”; the construction of the English factory “a gift of the emperor in stone construction” which was situated between those of the Dutch and French, the latter constructed of mud; the wind towers “Ventoƒo’s or Funnels” common to the area for catching any wind and ventilating the houses and the supremacy of the Dutch “Hollanders Abƒolute” in the main trade at that time which was spice and then Indian cloth but with which the French had nothing to do and the English very little.^[14]Fryer also refers to the condition at Gombroon, and the feelings of the British sailors of the East India Company:

 

… stigmatized this Place for its Excessive Heat, with this sarcastical Saying, ‘That there was but an Inch-Deal betwixt Gomberoon and Hell’.^[15]

 

Between 1693 and 1699 Dr. Gemelli Carreri travelled from Shiraz to Lar and Congo (Kung) where Joseph Pereira d’Azevedo was superintendent of the royal Portuguese agency.^[16]

Schillinger, a German traveller, gives the following description of Gambroon in the year 1700.^[17]

 

Wann die grosse Hitze einfallet legen sich die Innwohner den gantzen Tag durch in darzu bequemte Wasser-tröge, oder stehen in mit wasser angefüllten Fassern biss an hals, umb also zu ruhen, und sich der unleydentlichen Hitze zu erwehren.

 

The travellers mentioned above are just a selection from the extensive list of travellers to Persia in the seventeenth century.^[18]