Ḵawr Fakkān

Khor Fakkan was a prosperous port on Arabia's eastern coast when Albuquerque's Portuguese fleet attacked in 1507. His account describes wealthy merchants from India, stables holding horses for export, and fishing boats with nets in the harbour. Inland estates had fruit and vegetable trees and pools supplying irrigation. The port's maritime trade therefore rested beside a cultivated hinterland.

The attackers captured and burned the town, destroying buildings, taking women and children prisoner and killing inhabitants. Portuguese intervention brought armed demands for control into an established commercial landscape. A later fortress, commissioned around 1620, had a triangular plan with bastions at its corners; archaeological work has also documented a protected well. Khor Fakkan's early modern history joined local commerce and agriculture with the fortifications and violence of a wider struggle over maritime access.