Deramkū

The Deramku were the Arab royal house of Hormuz, named after Muhammad Diramku, also called Deramkub or the dirham minter, who emigrated from Oman to the Iranian coast in the eleventh century and founded the kingdom as a dependency of the Seljuk rulers of Kerman. His descendants built Hormuz into the leading emporium of the Persian Gulf, controlling both shores and levying tolls on traffic through the strait.

Around 1300, as raids made the mainland capital near Minab unsafe, King Mir Bahrudin Ayaz moved the court to Jerun, the later Hormuz island, where Hurmuzi merchants had just cast off Persian overlordship.

The island city became a by-word for wealth and luxury until Afonso de Albuquerque seized it for Portugal in 1515; the Deramku kings then ruled as Portuguese clients until Shah Abbas the Great, with English help, conquered Hormuz in 1622.