A Suggestion for the Place of the Parthian Port of Omana based on the Investigations and Excavations in the Northern and Southern Coasts of the Strait of Hormuz

During the reign of the Parthian Empire, the coasts of the Persian Gulf were divided among some Iranian states or provinces. Its southern coasts comprised a part of the Arabian Peninsula; its western coasts were a part of the Maysan state or province, and its northern coasts belonged to the three Karmania )Kerman(, Pars )Fars(, and Khuzestan Provinces. There were also some important ports on the coasts or in the coastal regions of the Persian Gulf. One of the most important Parthian ports which Pliny the Elder and Periplus have referred to is Omana, which was probably located on the coasts of the Strait of Hormuz. In the course of investigations on the northern and southern coasts of this Strait, a number of ancient sites which were associated with the trade ports belonging to the Parthian period were identified, inscribed, and reported. The ancient port of Omana could have been one of them. The names of the sites mentioned above are as follows: Kahur Langar Chini )Nakhl-e Ebrahimi( on the coasts of Minab, al-Duur on the coasts of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, and Sahar on the coasts of Oman. In this paper, the authors have tried to shed some light on the place of the ancient port of Omana, which has been mentioned in historical sources and documents as one of the major ports of the Persian Gulf during the reign of Parthian Empire. In doing so, they have collected a part of the required data with reference to classical written sources following the method of library research. They have also collected some of their data through field research and by resorting to archeological findings of foreign archeologists in the southern coastal regions of the Persian Gulf and those of Iranian archeologists on its northern coasts. It is worth noting that two of the three authors of the present paper )Khosrozadeh and Esma’ili Jelodar( were actively involved in the exploration of these sites on the northern coasts of the Persian Gulf in the regions near the Strait of Hormuz.