Simon Mattacks
speaker
2,982 appearances
18 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard yesterday
Simon Mattacks’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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And while the kingdom of Hormuz was Islamic, there would have been exchanges of different cultures and religions with traders from across Persia, the Arab world, and India.
we can imagine that for a medieval traveler, Hormuz would have seemed like an exciting destination, the historic equivalent of a lively metropolis like London, Istanbul, or New York City, albeit on a much smaller scale.
One notable visitor to Hormuz was Marco Polo, a merchant and explorer from Venice,
Marco Polo is best known for his travels along the Silk Road in the late 13th century and his vivid account of his experiences.
After visiting Baghdad, Marco Polo sailed across the Persian Gulf and arrived at Hormuz, a town with tall towers and a harbor filled with ships from many different nations.
The travels of Marco Polo, the travelogue based on his experiences, includes impressions of hummus.
Here's an extract.
The people lived, it appeared, mainly on dates and salt fish, and it was only when they were ill that they would taste bread.
For a beverage, they drank a very strong wine made of dates and spices.
the city seemed to have but few inhabitants who actually dwelt in it.
The buildings, except on the outskirts, were mostly given up to storehouses, shops, and other places of business.
And the surrounding plain was covered with dwellings, almost every one with a pretty shady garden, where the mass of the population resorted at nightfall.
Marco soon learned that the people lived in this way on account of the oppressive heat which existed in the city, and found, by his own experience, that it was one of the hottest places on earth.
He learned that sometimes winds swept across the deserts, so scorching that the people were obliged to plunge themselves up to the neck in cool water and stay there until the winds had gone down.
Otherwise, they would be burnt to death.
While many visitors commented on the intense heat in Hormuz, others had more positive impressions.
By the 16th century, the Kingdom of Hormuz had become even richer, thanks to its control of trade and export of valuable goods such as pearls from Bahrain.
Gaspar de Cruz, a Portuguese friar who traveled in the region, seems to have been impressed, remarking on the kingdom's extraordinary wealth.
A local saying was that the world was a ring and Hormuz was its stone.
The Portuguese Empire was well aware of just how valuable Hormuz was.
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