Page 71 - Arabian Gulf Intellegence

BAHREIN—ORMUS. 29
who would join them, and co-operate in the reduction of Bahrein, were
upheld by the promise of grants of land, money, and exclusive
privileges of tenure. This service was shortly completed, and the
rewards conferred, in the distribution of which the four sons of Jaber
bin Uttoobee claimed a voice in the government, and were refused,
although by the original compact they possessed a just hereditary right
to an equal share of the benefits of a conquest, in the completion of
which they had shed their blood.
On this they left the island of Bahrein in disgust, and commenced
the mode of life their progenitor had pointed out to them, in which
they have since persevered.
Of the four brothers, sons of Jaber bin Uttoobee Yalahimah, Rahmah
bin Jaber only is alive ; Abdoolla bin Jaber was inhumanly butchered
by the Prince of Fars, while living under his pledged protection;
Shahin bin Jaber died five years ago, on his return from pilgrimage ;
and Mahomed bin Jaber was lately killed while defending the family
of his brother, at Khor Hassan, from the attack of the Shaikhs of
Bahrein.
After this conquest, the Uttoobees paid a trifling tribute to the
Persians only four times, and then discontinued it altogether.

ISLAND OF ORMUS.
The Portuguese, by their conquest of Ormus in the sixteenth century,
not only secured the command of the Persian Gulf, but gave increased
life and animation to a commerce, which, after having long subsisted
at Siraff,* a port on the Persian shore, sixty leagues from Shiraz, and
twice that distance from Bussora, had passed to this insular station,
and transformed it from a desert to an earthly paradise, which has more
than once been described in terms of splendid eloquence by celebrated
authors.
Justamond, in his History of the East Indies, says :—“ At the mouth of
the Strait of Mocandon, which leads into the Persian Gulf, lies the
island of Gombroon. In the eleventh century an Arabian conqueror
built upon this barren rock the city of Ormus, which afterwards became
the capital of an empire, comprehending a considerable part of Arabia
on one side, and ol Persia on the other. Ormus had two good harbours,
and was large and well fortified; its riches and strength were entirely
owing to its situation. It was the centre of trade between Persia and
the Indies, which was very considerable, if we remember that the

* A. D. 851. Vide Pinkerton’s Collection, Travels. &c., Vol. I. pp. 181—185.