Kish Island

Kish, also called Qays, lay within the maritime network linking the Persian Gulf with India and Arabia. At the beginning of the fourteenth century it retained the legacy of a powerful trading centre, including an Ilkhanid mint and a pearl industry. That prominence should not be extended unchanged across the following centuries. Historical research places Hormuz’s decisive replacement of Kish as the Gulf’s principal port in the 1330s. The island’s surviving remains help explain its earlier commercial capacity: at Harira on the north coast, archaeologists found a mosque, boat-loading bays, cisterns, kilns and imported ceramics, including East Asian wares. Water storage and maritime access were therefore central features of the inhabited island. For the surrounding waters, Kish provides a geographical reference within a changing Gulf trading system.