Hormuz Island
Interesting facts
- The island's colourful salt belongs to the Hormuz Formation, deposited in the Ediacaran to Early Cambrian, more than 500 million years ago.
- Stone tools made with the Levallois technique, found on an uplifted marine terrace on the east coast, show people were here more than 40,000 years ago.
- Ancient Greeks called the island Organa, and in the Islamic period it was Jarun; it took the name Hormuz from a mainland port about 60 km away.
- In 1552 an Ottoman fleet under the admiral and cartographer Piri Reis laid siege to the Portuguese stronghold here.
- Augustinian friars settled on the island in 1575 and from here founded a Catholic mission in Isfahan in 1602.
- The Portuguese were ousted in 1622 by a Persian army backed by an English East India Company fleet of five warships and four pinnaces.
- The Arctic explorer William Baffin was killed during the same 1622 campaign, in the bombardment of a Portuguese fort on neighbouring Qeshm.
- After the capture, both King James I and the Duke of Buckingham extracted £10,000 apiece from the East India Company as their share.
- The Portuguese tried to retake Hormuz in 1623, 1624, 1625 and 1627, failing every time.
- Long after its trading days, the island exported rock salt and lumps of iron oxide that sailing ships used as ballast.
Why it is worth it
Hormuz is a small island of 42 km² in the Strait of Hormuz, about 8 km off the Iranian coast opposite Bandar Abbas, and it looks like nowhere else in the Gulf. It is a salt dome: ancient salt deposits, pushed up through the overlying rock, have surfaced and eroded into hills streaked with red, ochre, yellow, purple and white. Locals dig the red ochre, called golak, for pigment and even for cooking, and heavy use has led the environment authorities to protect it.
Most visitors spend a day circling the island with a local driver or guide. The Red Beach is the signature stop: waves wash red at the foot of a hill of ochre, and in places the sand glitters with metallic grains. Rainbow Valley shows the full range of colours in bands on its walls, and the Valley of Statues is a field of wind-carved rock that people read as animals and faces. There are also salt caves and mangroves along the shore. The island is an Important Bird Area for species such as Saunders's tern and the great thick-knee. In the small town on the north coast, the Dr Nadalian Museum shows the environmental art of Ahmad Nadalian together with work by local women and objects made from beach finds.
History gives the island a second layer. It became the seat of the kingdom of Hormuz around 1300, and Ibn Battuta visited it. Afonso de Albuquerque took it for Portugal in 1507, and the Portuguese built the Fort of Our Lady of the Conception, whose ruined walls and cisterns still stand on the northern tip. After the Portuguese were driven out in 1622, Shah Abbas I shifted trade to the mainland at Bandar Abbas and the island faded.
Getting there
Ferries and speedboats cross to the island from Bandar Abbas in about 40–50 minutes; there are also boats from Qeshm. Bandar Abbas International Airport (BND) is about 19 km from the island in a straight line. On the island, local drivers wait at the pier to take visitors round the sights.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Hormuz Island, also spelled Hormoz, Ormoz, Ormuz or Ormus, is an Iranian island in the Persian Gulf.
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