2009/01/01 by João Teles e Cunha · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Global Maritime and Colonial Histories #Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts #Socioeconomic Development in MENA
paper · doi:10.1057/9780230618459_12
openalex publication_date 2009/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
The history of the Kingdom of Hormuz, as French historian Jean Aubin put it in his classic article, is similar to that of other city-states like Calicut, Cochin, Cannanore, Kilwa, and Qais (Kish): a type of metropolis, capital of a small autonomous state whose survival depended on maritime commerce, whose merchant groups influenced its fate, and whose cultural framework was characterized by an ethnic cosmopolitanism and religious diversity.1 According to Aubin, what made the difference in Hormuz, and thus its specificity, was its geographical position between three major worlds (Persian, Arab, and Indian). Socially and materially speaking Hormuz was more an Indo-Muslim urban center than an Islamic Middle Eastern one. Even so, its history was closely connected with the wider region of which Hormuz was a part, and thus suffered from the attention of all political powers with hegemonic designs on the Persian Gulf.2