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The Nomenclature of the Persian Gulf

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

C. Edmund Bosworth
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Extract

The earliest historical references to the Persian Gulf appear to stem from the time of the Sumerian rulers of Mesopotamia in the third millennium B.C., when, for instance, the trade with Dilmun (on the western shores of the upper part of the Gulf) of Ur Nanše, King of Lagash (2494–2465 B.C.), is mentioned. The Gulf itself is specifically named in a historical text of Lugal Zagesi, King of Uruk (2340–2316 B.C.), where it is said that “then from the Lower Sea, by the Tigris and Euphrates, as far as the Upper Sea, [the god Enlil] provided him with clear routes”; and, in an inscription of Sargon of Akkad, it is said that Enlil gave him the Upper Sea and the Lower Sea.

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Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 1-2 , Spring Winter 1997 , pp. 77 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1997

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Footnotes

*

Reprinted with permission from Alvin J. Cottrell, gen. ed., The Persian Gulf States: A General Survey (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), courtesy of the Johns Hopkins University Press. The editor wishes to thank Professor Bosworth for consenting to this reprint. The article is reprinted verbatim, with only a few minor modifications in transliteration and the omission of the Selected Bibliography.—ED

References

1. For the early texts, see Luckenbill, D. D., Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylon (Chicago, 1927), 2:123Google Scholar, 246; and Sollberger, E. Inscriptions royales sumériennes et akkadiennes (Paris, 1971)Google Scholar, s.v. the rulers in question. For a general account of the Gulf in this ancient period, see Wilson, Sir Arnold, The Persian Gulf, an Historical Sketch from the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century (London, 1928), pp. 32–34Google Scholar.

2. For the Gulf in the Old Persian Period, see Wilson, The Persian Gulf, pp. 34–36.

3. Various suggestions are reviewed by Schoff, W. H., “The Name of the Erythraean Sea,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 33 (1913): 349–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; it seems impossible now, at a distance of 2,000 years or more, to discern the true origin of the name.

4. The material of the classical period on the Gulf is gathered together in Pauly-Wissowa, Realenzyklopaedie des klassischen Altertums, vi/1, cols. 592–601, art. “Erythra thalassa” (Berger), brought up-to-date in Der Kleine Pauly, 2, cols. 366–67 (H. Treidler). This material is utilized in Wilson, The Persian Gulf, pp. 36–52, and in Hourani, G. F., Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times (Princeton, 1951), pp. 13–17Google Scholar.

5. Herodotus, The Histories, 1: 180.

6. The elucidation of many of the topographical problems here was undertaken by W. Tomaschek, “Topographische Erlaüterung der Küstenfahrt Nearchs,” Sitzungsber. der Raised. Akad. der Wiss. zu Wien, Phil.-Hist. Cl. 71, no. 8 (1890): 1–88.

7. Such are the views recently expressed by Rodinson, M., “Le Périple de la Mer Erythrée,” Annuaire de I'École Pratique des Hautes Études, 1975–76. IV Section, sciences historiques et philologiques (Paris, 1976), pp. 218–19Google Scholar.

8. The relevant passage of the Periplus (§§ 34–37) is translated in Schoff, W. H., The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century (New York, 1912), pp. 35–37Google Scholar; cf. commentary pp. 147–51; see also Wilson, The Persian Gulf, pp. 52–53, and Hourani, Arab Seafaring, pp. 15–18.

9. We lack a comprehensive history of medieval Islamic commerce, and, in particular, a work for the Indian Ocean and its shores comparable to W. Heyd's classic Histoire du commerce du Levant. Meanwhile, see on this trade through the Gulf and the Indian ocean, the rather outdated work of Mez, A., Die Renaissance des Islams (Heidelberg, 1922)Google Scholar, The Renaissance of Islam, English tr. Khuda Bakhsh (Patna, 1936), pp. 505–17; Wilson, The Persian Gulf, pp. 56 ff.; the section “le commerce de l'Extrême-Orient” in the Introd., pp. 25–40, by J. Sauvaget to his text and French tr. of Ahbār aṣ-Ṣīn wa ‘l-Hind, Relation de la Chine et de I'Inde, rédigée en 851 (Paris, 1948); Hourani, Arab Seafaring, pp. 61 ff.; and the relevant papers, those of B. Spuler, J. M. Rogers, G. T. Scanlon, R. R. di Meglio, M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz, and G. F. Hudson, in Islam and the Trade of Asia, a colloquium, ed. D. S. Richards (Oxford, 1970). That there was direct sailing between the Persian Gulf, under Sasanid control, and China in the pre-lslamic period is more dubious; the evidence is reviewed by Hourani, Arab Seafaring, pp. 46–50.

10. For general analyses of this early Islamic geographical and travel literature tradition, see Encyl. of Islam2, art. “Djughrāfiyā. I-V” (S. Maqbul Ahmad), and A. Miquel. La géographie humaine du monde musulmane jusqu'au milieu du XIe siècle: géographie et géographie humaine dans la littérature arabe (des origines à 1050) (The Hague, 1967).

11. In quotations from the Qurɔan, the verse numbering given first is that of the Fliigel text, followed by that of the Egyptian “royal Qurɔan,” where differing.

12. Cf. Maqdisi's discussion of the identification of the seas in his Aḥsan altaqāsīm2, ed. Goeje, M. J. de, Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, iii (Leiden, 1906), 15 ff.Google Scholar, French tr. Miquel, A., La Meilleure répartition pour la connaissance des provinces (Damascus, 1963), pp. 43 ff.Google Scholar, and also Encycl. of Islam2, art. “Barzakh” (B. Carrade Vaux).

13. Sauvaget, Ahbār aṣ-Ṣīn wa l-Hind, text § 4, commentary 35; Masсudi, Murūj aldhahab wa-maсādin al-jawhar, ed. and French tr. Barbier, A. C. de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille (Paris, 1861-77), 1: 330Google Scholar, 332.

14. Kitāb al-hhtiqāq, ed. сAbd al-Salam Muhammad Harun (Cairo, 1378/1958), p. 499.

15. Sauvaget, Ahbār aṣ-Ṣīn wa l-Hind, text § 13, Commentary, pp. 41–42.

16. Kitāb al Tanbīh, ed. de Goeje, Bibl. Geogr. Arab., viii (Leiden, 1894), pp. 51–56, French tr. B. Carra de Vaux (Paris, 1896), pp. 76–84; Murūj al-dhahab, 1: 229.

17. Ibid., 1: 238–41.

18. Ibid., 1: 255, 325 ff., Khusraw, Nasir-i, Safar-nāma, ed. Dabirsiyaqi, Muhammad (Tehran, 1335/1956), pp. 119–20Google Scholar; cf. Encycl. of Islam2, art. “Khashabāt” (E. Wiedemann). The fame of the Khashabāt penetrated even to China, as mentions in the T'ang annals show; cf. Hourani, Arab Seafaring, p. 69

19. Ḥuduū al-сālam, tr. V. Minorsky, Gibb Memorial Series, N.S. xi, §§ 3–4, tr. 52–53,’ 56–57.

20. A name already used in the previous century by Ibn Khurradadhbih in his Kitāb al-Masālik wa ‘l-mamālik, ed. de Goeje, Bibl. Geogr. Arab., vi (Leiden, 1889), p. 61: al-Bahr al-sharqī al-kabīr.

21. Aḥsan al-taqāsīm, pp. 10 ff., tr. Miquel, pp. 29 ff.

22. See Encycl. of Islam2, art. “Hurmuz” (L. Lockhart).

23. Riḥla, ed. C. Defrémery and B. R. Sanguinetti (Paris, 1853–59), 2: 230 ff., tr. Gibb, H. A. R., The Travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, A.D. 1325–1354 (Cambridge, 1958-71), 2Google Scholar: 400 ff.

24. Tibbetts, G. R., Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean before the Coming of the Portuguese, Being a Translation of the Kitāb al-Fawāɔid … Together with an Introduction on the History of Arab Navigation … (London, 1971), pp. 5, 7Google Scholar.

25. Ibid., pp. 212–14, 221–22, 447–48.

26. História do descobrimento e conquista da India pelos Portugueses, 3rd ed. by Pedro de Azevendo (Coimbra, 1924–33), 2: 365. The “Second Borgian Map” is reproduced in The Book of Duarte Barbosa, an account of the countries bordering on the Indian Ocean and their inhabitants, written by Duarte Barbosa and completed about the year 1518 A.D., tr. M. Longworth Dames (London, 1918–21), 1: at end.

27. Decadas, Selecçāo … de Antonio Boiao (Lisbon, 1945–46), 2: 228; 3: 14, 16; 4: 112–13, 121.

28. Lockhart, Encycl. of Islam2, art. “Hurmuz.“

29. The Book of Duarte Barbosa, 1: tr. 68–82, 90–105.

30. Hakluyt, R., The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (Glasgow, 1903-5), 3: 161Google Scholar; 8: 128.

31. Purchas, S., Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his pilgrimes, contayning a history of the world in sea voyages and lande travells by Englishmen and others (Glasgow, 1905-7), 8: 450Google Scholar.

32. See Wood, A. C., A History of the Levant Company (Oxford, 1935), p. 103Google Scholar.

33. Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, v. 371.

34. The Turkish Histories, 6th ed. (London, 1687), 1: 451.

35. See Wood, The Levant Company, p. 145; Grant, C. P., The Syrian Desert: Caravans, Travel and Exploration (London, 1937), p. 100Google Scholar; Amin, Abdul Amir, British Interests in the Persian Gulf (Leiden, 1967), pp. 24 ffGoogle Scholar.

36. Bossuet, J. B., Discours . .. (Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1755)Google Scholar, map no. 25.

37. Heylin, Cosmographie (London, 1669), p. 146Google Scholar.

38. A, Salmon, new . .. grammar, 9th ed. (London, 1764), pp. 398, 399, 408Google Scholar.

39. Chronicle of events between the years 1623 and 1733 relating to the settlement of the Order of Carmelites in Mesopotamia (Bassora), ed. and tr. Sir Hermann Gollancz (London, 1927), Latin text, 15, tr. 344.

40. Ortelius, Abraham, Theatrum Orbis terrarum (Antwerp, 1573)Google Scholar.

41. Blaeu, Johannes, Asia, quae est geographiae blauianae, pars quarta, libri duo, volumen decimum (Amsterdam, 1662)Google Scholar.

42. Cf. the Hon. Curzon, G. N., Persia and the Persian Question (London, 1892), 2Google Scholar: 410 n. 1.

43. Speed, John, A prospect of the most famous parts … (London, 1668), p. 12Google Scholar: Raynal, G. T. F., Atlas de toutes les parties connues du globe terrestre, dressé pour Vhistoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Geneva, 1780)Google Scholar, Atlas vol., map no. 14.

44. Map reproduced at end of Abdul Amir Amin, British Interests in the Persian Gulf.

45. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1795–1880 (Oxford, 1968), p. 363Google Scholar n. 2. However, Lorimer, J. G., Gazetteer of the Persian Gulf, сOmān, and Central Arabia, ii. Geographical and Statistical (Calcutta, 1908)Google Scholar, p. 1427 n., says that the term “Trucial Oman” originated with captain F. B. Prideaux, political agent in Bahrain, in 1904.