National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

of Hormos, and which these in turn carry all over the world to dispose of again.
In fact, 'tis a city of immense trade.'¹

But what he relates of the 'fine streams of water with plenty of date-palms and
other fruit-trees' to be found in the surroundings is still true. The canals taking
off close below the fort, picturesquely perched on a rocky spur above the narrow
lanes of the town (Fig. 58), carry fertility over an area which, varying in width
and broken here and there by belts of scrubby waste, extends for fully 10 miles
to the south and about the same distance to the west. With its date-palm groves,
fields growing barley and other cereals, and luxuriant orchards of sub-tropical
fruit trees, the oasis of Mīnāb is bound greatly to impress the traveller, whether
he descends to it from the arid barren hills inland or reaches it after following the
still more forbidding coast from the side of Makrān. But the pleasing contrast
thus presented cannot obscure the truth of what the Venetian notes of Hormuz:
'It is a very sickly place, and the heat of the sun is tremendous.' This observa-
tion and what he says about the residents avoiding living in the towns during the
summer, are in full agreement with the notices of the early Arab geographers.²

In view of plain geographical facts the location in the Mīnāb tract of the
Hormuz seen by them and Marco Polo cannot be subject to any doubt; for
nowhere else on this coast is a river to be found that could possibly allow of such
plentiful cultivation and local resources as their descriptions imply. Nor can such
advantages for safe anchorage as the tidal creeks at the mouth of the Mīnāb river
provide for ships of shallow draught be looked for anywhere else on the Persian
coast near the mouth of the Gulf. If any more explicit proof were needed for this
location it is furnished by the notices of two Muhammadan travellers, Abūlfidā
and Ibn Baṭūṭa, who wrote of 'Old Hurmūz' not very long after Tartar ravages
had brought about the transfer of the trade emporium from the mainland to the
island of 'New Hurmūz' about the close of the thirteenth century. In the accounts
of both travellers this island of Hurmūz, which formerly was known as Jarūn or
Zarūn, and since that transfer soon rose to fame as one of the richest ports in the
East, is clearly stated as lying within a short distance to the west of 'Old Hur-
mūz'.³ And in fact the distance of 3 farsakh across the sea, which Abūlfidā gives