Albuquerque at Hormuz: the treaty of 10 October 1507

Early on the morning of 10 October 1507, the captains of a small Portuguese fleet rowed across the harbour of Hormuz in boats hung with flags and carpets, firing guns from the bows. On the beach the city's governors were waiting with saddled horses. Jorge Barreto de Castro, a nobleman of the fleet, rode at the front holding a new flag of white satin with the cross of the Order of Christ. Correia described it differently, as white and crimson damask with the royal arms.2 sources

The procession went up the main street to the palace, with the townspeople ahead of it shouting “Portugal, Portugal!” The young king met it on foot, took the flag and had it raised on the highest tower of his palace. When the sailors in the harbour saw it go up, every ship fired a salute.1 source

The flag was the visible part of a treaty. Two weeks or so earlier, Afonso de Albuquerque had sailed into Hormuz with six or seven battered ships and about 450 men, more than a hundred of them sick. Now the richest port in the Gulf had declared itself a vassal of Manuel I of Portugal and promised to pay him tribute every year.3 sources

Hormuz did not look like a prize. The city had stood on the Persian mainland until the end of the thirteenth century, when it moved to the island of Jarun near the mouth of the Gulf, apparently to escape raids. The island was rock and salt. Apart from rain caught in cisterns, drinking water came by boat from the mainland and was sold at doorways in clay cups and jars, “as on the riverside of Lisbon”, wrote Gaspar Correia, who served in India and saw the city himself.4 sources

Its wealth came from its position. Correia explained that big ships could not reach the shallow ports along the Gulf, so cargoes from India were unloaded at Hormuz and carried on in small boats, many of them to Basra. Goods came from Central Asia, northern Persia, Baghdad, Cairo and all of India. Hormuz shipped costly horses to India, and Correia described a street of pearl sellers whose stock on red cloths was worth more than 100,000 cruzados. He put the king's customs revenue at more than 500,000 xerafins a year.3 sources

The saying has several versions. Correia gave it as India being the ring and Hormuz the stone. The British historian Percy Sykes called it a Persian proverb: “If the world were a ring, Hormuz would be the jewel of that ring.”2 sources

In 1507 Hormuz was ruled by a boy king, Seyf ad-Din, whom the Portuguese called Ceifadim or Çafardim. Real power lay with his ministers, above all Khwaja Ata, the Cogeatar of the chronicles. By his own account, Khwaja Ata had put the boy on the throne after the royal guard murdered his predecessor. The kingdom held towns on the Arabian coast, including Muscat, and paid tribute to Persia, where Shah Ismail I had recently founded the Safavid dynasty and made Shia Islam the state religion.4 sources

Portugal had reached India by sea in 1498, and in 1505 Manuel I sent Francisco de Almeida out as his first viceroy. Albuquerque followed in 1506 with Tristão da Cunha's fleet, in command of six ships and 400 men on the Arabian coast. He also carried secret orders to take over from Almeida as governor after three years.2 sources

The two men wanted different things from what the Portuguese later called the Estado da Índia, their chain of forts, trading posts and fleets in the East. Almeida is said to have opposed settling in India or building more fortresses; his aim was to win the sea-borne trade for Portugal with ships. Whiteway notes that his views survive only second-hand. Albuquerque wanted a lasting Portuguese dominion, based on force, held by fortresses at the points where trade had to pass and by Portuguese settlers.1 source

Hormuz was the key to the Gulf. In Albuquerque's own reckoning, quoted by Whiteway, once Aden closed the Red Sea all the trade going north would have to pass through Hormuz, where the Portuguese were supreme.1 source

Albuquerque left Socotra in August 1507, on the 20th according to Whiteway, who counts seven ships and 450 fighting men, 120 of them sick. He worked his way up the Arabian coast, which belonged to Hormuz, and sacked and burned Qurayyat, Muscat and Khor Fakkan. Prisoners were released only after the women's noses and ears, and the men's noses and right hands, had been cut off, to spread fear ahead of him. Sohar and Qalhat, which chose peace, were spared, according to the Commentaries.2 sources

The fleet rounded the point of Hormuz Island at sunrise and anchored at sundown, on 26 September according to the Portuguese historian José Manuel Garcia. The harbour was full. The Commentaries describe 60 large ships, including the Meri of the King of Cambay, of about 1,000 tons, and some 200 oared galleys, with 15,000 to 20,000 armed men on the beach. Whiteway gives some 400 vessels and 30,000 men, 4,000 of them Persian archers.3 sources

Albuquerque's captains came alongside his ship and begged him to be careful: this was not one of the small towns they had destroyed. He told them it was too late for advice. When the king sent an Armenian who knew Portuguese, Khwaja Bairam, to ask what he wanted, he answered with an ultimatum.2 sources

Khwaja Ata played for time while he waited for troops from the mainland. After three days of messages, Albuquerque opened fire at dawn. The first two shots sank two big ships with their crews. His men boarded the Meri and killed all 60 men left on board, then went after the galleys in their boats.1 source

Men who jumped into the sea were hunted down in the water; the Commentaries credit one cabin boy with killing 80. Khwaja Ata's own boat was chased ashore, and Albuquerque was wounded attacking a jetty. The fighting lasted from seven in the morning until three in the afternoon.1 source

Neither the Commentaries nor Correia gives the day of the battle. For eight days afterwards, the Commentaries say, sailors fished bodies out of the harbour to strip them of money and jewels. About 80 had died of arrow wounds alone, though no Portuguese carried a bow; the chronicler called it a miracle, but the only archers in the battle were on the Hormuz side.1 source

As the tide carried the dead ashore, families came down to the beach to find their sons and husbands and bury them. Their weeping, the chronicler admitted, was painful to hear from the ships.1 source

The king sued for peace and sent word that he looked up to Albuquerque as to a father. Albuquerque asked for 30,000 xerafins a year, plus the costs of his fleet. The xerafim was the Portuguese name for the ashrafi of Hormuz, a coin worth 300 Portuguese reais. The king pleaded that his kingdom was ruined and offered 6,000 a year and 5,000 towards expenses. The captains wanted to take it and go.2 sources

Albuquerque overruled them and named his own figure. According to the Commentaries, the deal was 15,000 xerafins every year to Manuel I and his successors, and 5,000 in cash at once. Goods coming from Portugal to the royal trading post would pay no duty, and goods the Portuguese bought in Hormuz would pay no more than the local merchants did. The kings of Portugal kept the right to raise the tribute later.1 source

Correia's version agrees on the yearly 15,000 but not on the cash. In his account the king paid 100,000 xerafins towards the cost of the fleet before the flag was raised, and the owners of the captured ships paid another 100,000 to buy them back. The king of Portugal's merchandise was free of all duties, and other Portuguese goods paid nothing coming in but paid duty going out. He has Albuquerque reckon that the tribute would keep a fortress with 400 paid men, 300 on land and 100 at sea.1 source

The treaty was written out twice. One copy was in Arabic on sheets of gold leaf bound like a book, with the seals of the king, of Khwaja Ata and of the city hanging from it on gold chains. The other was in Persian, the common language of the city, in gold letters on paper. Both went to Lisbon in silver caskets, and the chronicler wrote that they ought to be in the Torre do Tombo, the royal archive, unless someone had let them perish.1 source

A few days later Albuquerque met the king on a carpeted jetty. The Commentaries describe him as about 15, short and well made, in a crimson satin robe with a gold dagger and a gold sceptre topped with crystal. Whiteway, writing in 1899, gives his age as 12.2 sources

Within weeks, a captain of Shah Ismail arrived on the mainland opposite with a troop of horsemen to collect the tribute Hormuz owed Persia. Albuquerque had cannonballs, guns, matchlocks and grenades sent ashore for the king to forward, “for that was the sort of money wherewith the King of Portugal had ordered his captain to pay the tribute of that kingdom”. Caught between two overlords, the city's rulers sent them on with word that they could no longer pay Persia.2 sources

What Albuquerque wanted most was a fortress. Khwaja Ata suggested sites on other islands or on the mainland; Albuquerque chose the point of Morona, on Hormuz itself, between the city's two harbours. He laid out the foundations of the main tower on 24 October, according to the Commentaries, or on 6 October, according to Correia, and named the fort Nossa Senhora da Vitória, Our Lady of Victory. Three stone anchors from the captured Meri went into its gateway.2 sources

His captains did not want a fort. Their ships were not fit to stay at sea, they said, and they had too few men to leave a garrison. They also wanted the cash shared out among the crews; Albuquerque meant it for the fort and for pepper for the king. At one council he lost his temper and seized João da Nova by the shoulder. Da Nova picked hairs he said had come from his beard off the deck and swore he would have justice from the king.2 sources

Four men deserted to the city and told Khwaja Ata how divided the Portuguese were. He stopped cooperating. On 5 January 1508 five captains, João da Nova, António do Campo, Afonso Lopes da Costa, Francisco de Távora and Manuel Teles, signed a letter warning that they would not follow him if he attacked the city.3 sources

Albuquerque bombarded Hormuz until his powder ran low, then blockaded it and cut off its water. While he did so, three of his captains, António do Campo, Afonso Lopes da Costa and Manuel Teles, slipped away from their stations and sailed for India. With three ships left he could not hold the blockade. He left early in 1508, in January according to José Manuel Garcia, with the fort unfinished, and João da Nova left him too on the way to Socotra.3 sources

The three captains complained to the viceroy, Francisco de Almeida, who on 26 May 1508 ordered an inquiry into Albuquerque's conduct. Almeida also wrote to Hormuz that he was satisfied with the tribute and would punish Albuquerque in due course. When Albuquerque came back that September, the city's ministers refused him everything, and after six weeks off the city he sailed for India. Hormuz went back to its allegiance to Persia, and its king, according to Sykes, adopted Shia practice to please Shah Ismail.3 sources

Albuquerque became governor of India in 1509. In the next four years he stormed Goa on 25 November 1510, took Malacca in August 1511 and failed at Aden on 26 March 1513, when his scaling ladders proved too short and broke under the weight of the men.1 source

On 21 February 1515 he sailed from Goa for Hormuz. The Commentaries give 26 ships carrying 1,500 Portuguese and 700 men from Malabar; Sykes gives 27 ships and 3,000 men. Hormuz had a new king, and real power had passed to Rais Hamid, a Persian nephew of the chief minister, who kept the king close to a prisoner. The Portuguese took over the fortress site without a fight on Palm Sunday, which the Commentaries date to 31 March; in 1515 Palm Sunday actually fell on 1 April.2 sources

Soon afterwards Rais Hamid came armed to a meeting with Albuquerque and the king. Albuquerque told his nephew Pero to kill him, and he was stabbed to death on the spot. The young king, who had wanted Rais Hamid banished, not killed, was terrified he would be next, until Albuquerque assured him he would remain king. The Portuguese then disarmed the city's inhabitants and took over its artillery.2 sources

Persia was courted rather than fought. Albuquerque received an ambassador from Shah Ismail with great ceremony and sent Fernão Gomes de Lemos to the Shah's court with the terms of a treaty.1 source

This time the fort was built. Work went on through the summer, and the fortress was named Nossa Senhora da Conceição, Our Lady of the Conception. Albuquerque left his nephew Pero de Albuquerque as its captain.3 sources

By then he was ill. He sailed from Hormuz on 8 November 1515 and on the voyage learned that the king had replaced him with Lopo Soares de Albergaria. He died on board on Sunday 16 December 1515, at anchor off the bar of Goa, and was buried in the chapel he had built in the city. The Commentaries call it Our Lady of the Conception; Whiteway names it Nossa Senhora da Serra.2 sources

For 107 years Hormuz kept its own kings, who paid tribute to Portugal while a Portuguese captain held the fort. The historian Ghoncheh Tazmini, of ISCTE in Lisbon, argues that the Portuguese came as traders, ruthless ones, and that their ambitions there were limited, an episode of economic imperialism rather than full colonial rule.1 source

The end came from Persia. By then the Persians of Shah Abbas I were at war with the Portuguese in the Gulf, and the English East India Company, newly trading in Persian silk, was drawn in. At the end of 1621 the Persian commander Imam Quli Khan, governor of Fars, persuaded the English merchants to lend their fleet, partly by hinting that their trading privileges and the silk already in transit would otherwise be lost. Five ships and four pinnaces sailed from Surat.3 sources

A Persian army was already besieging the new Portuguese fort on the neighbouring island of Qeshm. The English ships forced it to surrender on 1 February 1622, by Danvers's date, or 2 February in Diário de Notícias. The Arctic navigator William Baffin was killed there by a shot from the castle while measuring its walls.3 sources

From 9 February the English bombarded Hormuz from the sea while the Persians, who had landed and taken the town, attacked the fort by land. They blew up part of its wall, but their assault was beaten back with heavy losses; Sykes notes that English casualties were trifling by comparison. The garrison's commander died during the siege, and his successor, Simão de Melo, opened talks.2 sources

The fort surrendered in the spring of 1622. The sources disagree on the day: Danvers gives 22 May for the handover, Diário de Notícias 15 May. About 2,000 Portuguese men, women and children were shipped to Muscat, leaving their property behind. At a later trial Simão de Melo was sentenced to death; he had escaped, so the sentence was carried out on his effigy.2 sources

The fort outlived the city. When Percy Sykes visited around 1900, he found it “still practically intact”: a studded gate, bastions, barracks built into a massive 40-foot wall with a parapet 18 feet wide, a great empty cistern and, on the summit, the ruins of a palace among scattered cannon.1 source

Much of it still stands on the northern point of Hormuz Island, in Iran, though the historian José Manuel Garcia told Diário de Notícias in 2026 that it is little known and very hard to reach. Iranian nationalist accounts treat the Portuguese years as an early chapter of Western colonialism. Tazmini argues that the 107 years should not be reduced to one more dark episode of colonial history.3 sources

Other traces were smaller. Writing in 1915, Sykes noted that the Persians called the sweet orange portugale, after the people who had held Hormuz. The strait the island guards is as strategic now as it was 500 years ago, as Garcia put it.2 sources

Of Albuquerque's three keys, Aden was never taken, and Hormuz fell 19 years before the Dutch took Malacca in 1641. Goa, which he chose as the seat of Portuguese government in the East, outlasted both.2 sources