Abstract
It is striking that many port cities in the Persian Gulf have had only a temporary period of fluorescence. A number of the great ports in history have now been abandoned and forgotten, while the megaports built on oil wealth are relatively new. The port cities connected the Gulf region to the Indian Ocean and the wider world, and were central to integrating the social and economic life of the littoral.1 The rise and fall of ports there has been a feature throughout its history, having to do with both changing geographical as well as political and economic conditions. No one city ever dominated the entire Gulf, and the fall of one port city always led to the rise of another.
I greatly appreciate the helpful comments and corrections of Robert A. Carter, Nelida Fuccaro, Shahnaz Nadjmabadi, Haideh Sahim, and Donald Whitcomb. Needless to say, they may not agree with all aspects of my analysis and I am responsible for any errors. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Gulf Studies Symposium, American University of Kuwait, March 22, 2013; the Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Doha, Qatar, May 16, 2012; and the Fifth Biennial Convention of The Association for the Study of Persianate Societies, Hyderabad, India, January 6, 2012.
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Notes
Basra lay 12 miles from the Tigris and was connected by two canals (G. Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem Conquest to the Time of Timur (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905; repr. Lahore: Al-Biruni, 1977), 44.
For a review of Gulf ports in the medieval period, see “Trade and Port Towns of the Classical and Medieval Islamic Period” in Dionisius A. Agius, Classic Ships of Islam: From Mesopotamia to the Indian Ocean (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 63–108
and Donald Whitcomb, “The Gulf in the Early Islamic Period: The Contribution of Archaeology to Regional History” in The Persian Gulf in History, ed. Lawrence G. Potter (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 71–87.
An earlier treatment is R. B. Serjeant, “Historical Sketch of the Gulf in the Islamic Era from the Seventh to the Eighteenth Century A.D.,” in Qatar Archaeological Report: Excavations 1973, ed. Beatrice de Cardi (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Qatar National Museum, 1978), 147–63.
Early Arabic sources are cited in Arnold T. Wilson, The Persian Gulf: An Historical Sketch from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1928), especially chapters 5–7.
For the nineteenth century see Nelida Fuccaro, “The Making of Gulf Port Towns before Oil,” in Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama Since 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 43–72, and chapter 1 of this book.
See also Monique Kervran, “Suhar,” Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (online). Also Al-Muqaddasi, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions: Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Ma‘rifat al-Aqalim, trans. Basil Collins and reviewed by Mohammad Hamid Alta’i (Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing for The Center for Muslim Contribution to Civilization, 2001), 79.
For a modern treatment see Fredrik Barth, Sohar: Culture and Society in an Omani Town (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
Mohammed Redha Bhacker and Bernadette Bhacker, “Qalhat in Arabian History: Context and Chronicles,” The Journal of Oman Studies, vol. 13 (2004): 11–55.
See a report on new excavations there in Axelle Rougeulle, “The Qalhat Project: new research at the medieval harbour site of Qalhat, Oman (2008),” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 40 (2010): 303–20.
Jayanti Maitra Afra Al-Hajji, Qasr Al Hosn: The History of the Rulers of Abu Dhabi 1793–1966 (Abu Dhabi: Centre for Documentation and Research, 2001), 3–11.
J. G. Lorimer, comp., Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, Omân, and Central Arabia (Calcutta: Superintendent, Government Printing, vol. I (1915), vol. II (1908)); various reprints. See here vol. II, 1761–62. At this time Sharjah had a population of about 15,000.
Mariam Behnam, Zelzelah: A Woman Before Her Time (Dubai: Motivate Publishing, 1994), 16.
According to Istakhri, cited in Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, 258. Excavations in the 1970s revealed that the walls of Siraf enclosed an area of more than 250 hectares (see David Whitehouse, “Excavations at Siraf: Sixth Interim Report,” Iran 12 (1974): 2.)
Here I accept the reasoning of Floor, who suggests 40,000 as the maximum population of Hormuz in the winter season, although he feels that 25,000–30,000 was more likely. (Willem Floor, The Persian Gulf: A Political and Economic History of Five Port Cities 1500–1730 (Washington, DC: Mage, 2006), 16. Others commonly cite a figure of 50,000 at the beginning of the sixteenth century proposed by Jean Aubin in “Le royaume d’Ormuz au début du XVIe siècle,” Mare Luso-Indicum II (1973): 150.
For the Hawala on the Arab side, see chapter 11 in this book. For those on the Persian side, see Willem Floor, The Hula Arabs of the Shibkuh Coast of Iran (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2014).
Lawrence G. Potter, “The Consolidation of Iran’s Frontier on the Persian Gulf in the Nineteenth Century,” in War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and Present, ed. Roxane Farmanfarmaian (London: Routledge, 2008), 125–48.
George N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, vol. 2 (London: Longmans, Green, 1892; repr. London: Frank Cass & Co., 1966), 409.
Derek Kennet, “Julfar and the Urbanisation of Southeast Arabia,” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 14 (2003): 119
and Tobias Richter, Paul Wordsworth and Alan Walmsley, “Pearl Fishers, Townfolk, Bedouin, and Shaykhs: Economic and Social Relations in Islamic al-Zubarah,” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 41 (2011): 6.
Lawrence Potter, “The Port of Siraf: Historical Memory and Iran’s Role in the Persian Gulf,” Proceedings of the International Congress of Siraf Port, November 14–16, 2005 (Bushehr, Iran: Bushehr Branch of Iranology Foundation, 2005), 28–49.
Malcolm Yapp, “British Policy in the Persian Gulf,” in The Persian Gulf States: A General Survey, gen. ed. Alvin J. Cottrell (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 71–72.
Willem Floor, The Persian Gulf The Rise and Fall of Bandar-e Lengeh, The Distribution Center for the Arabian Coast, 1750–1930 (Washington, DC: Mage, 2010), 100–06. In the 1890s the trade of Lengeh amounted to £1 million, but after the new customs tariff was introduced this fell to £250,000. (Ibid., 154).
Peter Reeves, Frank Broeze, and Kenneth McPherson, “Studying the Asian Port City,” in Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th–20th Centuries, ed. Frank Broeze (Kensington, NSW, Australia: New South Wales University Press, 1989), 32.
Internal quote is from R. Murphey, “Traditionalism and Colonialism: Changing Urban Roles in Asia,” Journal of Asian Studies 29 (1969): 83.
William Lancaster and Fidelity Lancaster, Honour Is in Contentment: Life Before Oil in Ras al-Khaimah (UAE) and Some Neighboring Regions, Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des islamischen Orients (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), especially chapter 6; quotes are on 239 and 243.
Willem Floor, The Persian Gulf: Bandar Abbas—The Natural Trade Gateway of Southeast Iran (Washington, DC: Mage, 2011), 57.
Lewis Pelly, “Remarks on the Tribes, Trade, and Resources around the shore line of the Persian Gulf,” Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society, vol. 17 (1865): 43.
Naval Intelligence Division, British Admiralty, Iraq and the Persian Gulf, Geographical Handbook Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1944), 149.
Peter Lienhardt, Shaikhdoms of Eastern Arabia (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 116–17.
R. J. Barendse, The Arabian Seas: The Indian Ocean World of the Seventeenth Century (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2002), 40.
See Hans E. Wulff, “The Qanats of Iran,” Scientific American 218 (1968): 94–105
and Dale R. Lightfoot, “The Origin and Diffusion of Qanats in Arabia: New Evidence from the Northern and Southern Peninsula,” The Geographical Journal 166, no. 3 (2000): 215–26.
David Whitehouse et al., Siraf History, Topography and Environment (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2009), 23–25.
Yacoub Yusuf AI-Hijji, Kuwait and the Sea: A Brief Social and Economic History, trans. Fahad Ahmad ‘Isa Bishara (London: Arabian Publishing, 2010), 103.
Yacoub Y. Al-Hijji, Old Kuwait: Memories in Photographs (Kuwait: Center for Research and Studies on Kuwait, 1997), 93–101; “Maritime Museum” (Kuwait: Kuwait Maritime Museum, n.d.), 16–17.
Lewis Pelly, “Visit to Lingah, Kishm, and Bunder Abbass,” Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. 34 (1864): 255.
That is, near the Clarence Strait. See Frauke Heard-Bey, From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates, 2nd ed. (London: Longman, 1996), 245.
William and Fidelity Lancaster, “Identities and economics: mountain and coastal Ras Al-Khaimah,” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 29 (1999): 92.
Alan Villiers, Sons of Sinbad (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), especially 223–46. For the standard size of the poles, see Farah Al-Nakib, “Kuwait City: Urbanisation, the Built Environment, and the Urban Experience Before and After Oil (1716–1986)” (PhD diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2011), 122.
Heard-Bey, From Trucial States to United Arab Emirates, 247. Also Sandra Piesik, Arish: Palm-Leaf Architecture (London: Thames & Hudson, 2012).
Richard LeBaron Bowen Jr., “Marine Industries of Eastern Arabia,” The Geographical Review 41 (1951): 393–95.
The issue of city-hinterland relations is particularly important for the ports in Persia and Oman. See Willem Floor, The Persian Gulf: Links with the Hinterland-Bushehr, Borazjan, Kazerun, Banu Ka‘b & Bandar Abbas (Washington, DC: Mage, 2011); T.J. Wilkinson, “The Hinterland” in Siraf History, Topography and Environment, 54–76;
Gareth Rees, Tobias Richter, and Alan Walmsley, “Investigations in al-Zubarah Hinterland at Murayr and al-Furayhah, North-west Qatar,” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 41 (2011): 309–16
and R.A. Carter, K. Challis, S. M. N. Priestman, and H. Tofighian, “The Bushehr Hinterland: Results of the First Season of the Iranian-British Archaeological Survey of Bushehr Province, November-December 2004,” Iran 44 (2006): 63–103.
Derek Kennet, “Julfar and the Urbanisation of Southeast Arabia,” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 14 (2003): 103–25.
Fuccaro, Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf, 43–44. See also Nelida Fuccaro, “Pearl Towns and Early Oil Cities: Migration and Integration in the Arab Coast of the Persian Gulf,” in The City in the Ottoman Empire: Migration and the Making of Urban Modernity, eds. Ulrike Freitag, Malte Fuhrmann, Nora Lafi and Florian Riedler (London: Routledge, 2011), 99–116.
Robert A. Carter, Sea of Pearls: Seven Thousand Years of the Industry that Shaped the Gulf (London: Arabian Publishing, 2012), 109. See chapters 5 (“The Rise of the Arab Pearling Powers 1700–1820”) and 6 (“The Boom Century, 1820–1912”). He first developed this thesis in “How Pearls Made the Modern Emirates” in Proceedings of the International History Conference on New Perspectives on Recording UAE History (Abu Dhabi: National Center for Documentation and Research, 2009), 265–81. I am grateful to him for providing copies of these publications.
Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, “The Arab Gulf Moment,” in The Transformation of the Gulf: Politics, Economics and the Global Order, ed. David Held and Kristian Ulrichsen (London: Routledge, 2012), 118.
Arang Keshavarzian, “Geopolitics and the Genealogy of Free Trade Zones in the Persian Gulf,” Geopolitics 15 (2010): 263–89.
Also Chapter 4, “Jebel Ali,” in Stephen J. Ramos, Dubai Amplified: The Engineering of a Port Geography (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2010).
Mari Luomi, The Gulf Monarchies and Climate Change: Abu Dhabi and Qatar in an Era of Natural Unsustainability (London: Hurst, 2012), 26.
Abdelrahman Munif, Cities of Salt, trans. Peter Theroux (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 38.
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Potter, L.G. (2014). The Rise and Fall of Port Cities in the Persian Gulf. In: Potter, L.G. (eds) The Persian Gulf in Modern Times. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137485779_6
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