Simon Mattacks
speaker
2,981 appearances
17 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 13 Sep
Simon Mattacks’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 14 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 3.
Appearances
These days, control of this southern region is divided between Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
The Strait of Hormuz is at a geographical crossroads.
It's the only natural sea outlet for the Persian Gulf, providing a passage between the Middle East and India and the rest of the world.
So we can see why access to the strait is so important.
It's an essential gateway for trade and commerce.
The strait is also relatively narrow.
At its narrowest point, it's only 21 miles or 30 kilometers.
We might think of it as a corridor.
Clearly, having control over that corridor is advantageous.
Even in ancient times, the Strait of Hormuz was seen as a strategic waterway.
The people who lived in the area, the Persian Empire on the north coast and Arab communities on the south, would have taken advantage of the opportunities it offered.
The waters of the Persian Gulf provided not just fish and pearls, but access to a world of trade.
From at least the time of the Achaemenid Empire, founded in the 6th century BCE, the Strait of Hormuz was recognized as an important route.
It connected the Persian Empire to the Indian Ocean.
Ports were built, settlements grew, and islands such as Keshem became hubs of commerce.
The Strait of Hormuz is named after another one of its islands.
The island of Hormuz may have taken its name from the Middle Persian pronunciation of Ahura Mazda, the main deity in the Zoroastrian religion.
Another theory is that the name Hormuz means place of dates, a reference to the date palm trees that once lined the coast.
Around the 11th century, an important kingdom began to emerge in this area, the Kingdom of Hormuz.
By this point in history, the area around Hormuz had become part of the Islamic world.
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