In 1507, the city of Hormuz (Ormus) was captured by the Portuguese. From that year until 1622, when they were expelled from the Gulf by the Iranian Safavids, the Portuguese dominated the coasts of the Gulf. They profited from the Omani ports and seafaring expertise. The Ottoman fleets initially tried to wrestle the dominion over the Indian Ocean from the Portuguese, battling them all the way to the Indian coasts, but by the mid 16th Century the Portuguese hegemony was established. The Portuguese did not manage to capture the important city of Basra, but they conquered Bahrain in 1521. They exercised their sovereignty over the fertile island, home to a prosperous merchant community, for eighty years. There is still a Portuguese fort in Bahrain and some Portuguese words made their way into Gulf dialects, like the word ‘miz’ for table. The Portuguese retained a presence in Muscat until 1648.
The old Portuguese fort of Bahrain, now restored as a museum. Image courtesy of Bahrain Fort Museum
In the early 17th Century, Dutch seafarers, who were competing with the Portuguese over the profitable trade routes to Asia, established trading posts in Al Shihr, Hadramawt (1614-1616), Aden (1620) and then in Mocha (1621-1739), along the Red Sea coast of Yemen. Coffee, first cultivated in southern Yemen, became a hugely profitable merchandise as its use spread over the world. Porcelain, sugar and spices from the Far East were traded for coffee and gold. The Dutch East India Company also approached the Gulf from Iran, but never set up trading posts on the southern shores of the Gulf, operating from Bandar Abbas after the expulsion of the Portuguese, until 1758. They mainly traded spices from East India for local textiles (silk, wool) and fragrances, precious stones and metals. Both the Dutch and the English East India trading companies drew much of their wealth from Safavid Iran.
Mocha in 1692, engraving by Jean Peeters, Antwerp.
Although the Safavid Shahs of Iran ruled most of the Gulf after the expulsion of the Portuguese, their sovereignty was impaired by the British and Dutch dominion of the seas. The island of Bahrain, home to a lucrative pearl industry, did go through an intellectual flourishing in the 17th Century, partially through the clerical links to Shia Iran. The 18th Century, however, saw a lot of conflict on the southern shores of the Gulf, mainly about the dominion of Bahrain, and the island’s population was decimated through successive invasions by Oman (1717) and the attempts by Persians and Arab tribes to reclaim the island. Ultimately, the Al Khalifa tribe established its dominance over Bahrain in the late 18th Century; throughout the 19th Century it consolidated its hold over the island with British protection.
Mocha today, with mosque in the background. Photo by Hamerlik Barnabas on Panoramio
The Portuguese and Dutch presences on the Arabian peninsula did not leave many material or cultural traces, with the exception of the words such as ‘mocha’ (coffee & chocolate mix) or ‘burtugal’, orange in Arabic. This was different for the English, who ruled the coast from Aden to Basra during the following centuries. Their fleet supported Shah Abbas, the Safavid King who expelled Portugal from the Gulf in 1622. The English never lost their sway in this region, until the independence of the Gulf states, and, arguably, afterwards too. By the mid-19th Century, English hegemony over the Gulf was complete.
For England, the Gulf became increasingly important as their Indian colonies developed, as a midway station and a profitable place for trading goods from either India or England with Iran and Mesopotamia. There was also a strategic aspect to the English presence in the Gulf, which became all-important in the 19th and early 20th centuries: their rivalry with Russia – who wished to establish a presence in the warm waters of the Gulf, and therefore planned a railway link to Bandar Abbas – and with the Ottoman Turks.