Liquid spaces have never been a barrier to the mobility of the societies settled on their seaboards. The Gulf is no exception. Archaeological evidence and literary sources unanimously maintain this image. Political and military upheavals did not hamper the crossing of the sea or the continuous traditional movements of local peoples sharing their individual cultural influences. Personal relations, and even marriages and ordinary practices, went on in spite of imperial or political upheavals. New political structures and new patterns of peopling were reorganised through new balances and counterbalances of power. Urban centres flourished and decayed. But urban life and traditional activities never came to an end, shaping the deep roots of a mobile, cosmopolitan society that still prospers all along the lands surrounding this liquid region, giving life to a cultural unicum per se.The aim of the following chapter is to take a closer look at the ‘underground world’ of the Gulf and its intrinsic strength and forces.

My chapter will focus on the kingdom of Hormuz. Made famous in Europe at the end of the fourteenth century by the description of Marco Polo (d. 1324 CE), Hormuz was long a great maritime dominion whose magnificent capital city rose on a rocky island, the island of Jarun, located at the entrance of the Gulf, at the crucial strategic Strait of Hormuz. I will examine a particularly critical time for the Hormuz Kingdom: the turn of the sixteenth century. This was just after Europeans had discovered the South African route to India. Locally, it was a time marked by the accession to the throne of Hormuz of Salghur Shah (d. 1505 CE) after a bloody internecine war, and the appearance on the maritime scene of two new dominant and ambitious actors: the Portuguese, newly arrived on the scene with their formidable fleet and firepower, on the one hand, and the Safavids, with their maritime ambitions, on the other. Despite recurrent warfare and spasmodic intrigues, despite tribal strife in Arabia and on some occasions sharp competition between seaboard and hinterland, the crown of Hormuz and its administrative system managed to keep to a pragmatic political strategy rooted in the traditional forces of the Gulf. This ensured a cultural continuity in the region for more than one century.