The legend of the Hormoz Route have been puzzling generations of archaeologists and historians. Poems and chronicles portray it as the “dark” double of the Silk road, channeling the trade of a very specific commodity—workforce—from the deepest recesses of Africa and the central Asiatic uplands towards the strategic outpost of Hormoz. Tales and stories stress the violence through which far regions were plundered, and their young men and women made slaves and traded. Yet, stories from the Slave road were not only characterized by their dark tones. Rather, stories of heroism and resistance, escapes and piracy, desertion and rebellion fueled the legend of the Hormoz Road. While the Silk Road represented the well-honed order of the Asian Empires, and their capillary territorial control through a network of trade infrastructure made of roads, caravanserais and gardens for water management, the Hormoz Road seemed to nurture manifold forms of life which disrupting such an order: escaped slaves, prostitutes, pirates, charlatans, healers, prophets, venture captains, profiteers and bandits.
If the life of the Slave Road catalyzed stories and legends, and its history merges with myth. Its two main infrastructural focal points, the Great Bridges of Hormoz, in the Persian Gulf and Perim in the Red Sea inspired awe and admiration. An obscure passage of the book of Genesis has always arisen the curiosity of scholars.
"And the Lord said, Behold! A bridge, whose top may reach unto heaven, and whose firm and ample arches spread upon the Sea. For the Lord wanted the sons of Ur meet the daughters of Shinar and scatter their offspring upon both Lands" (Genesis 15:6)
The passage does not prove the historical existence of the such a bridge, but like the tower of Babel, which is presented in the same book, might have been described according to similar existing structures.
But the legend of the Slave road also tantalized the imagination of poets. Firdowsi, at the end of his epic poem Shanhameh (circa 977-1010) narrates the story of Katayoun, daughter of Shah Khosrau II, during the dramatic episodes of the Arab invasion of Persia. During the siege of the palace of the King, the Arab general Khalid falls in love with the princess, who is kidnapped made prisoner in the bridge of Hormoz. In a revolt against the invasors, the Persians destroy the bridge, without knowing that the princess was kept there in prison. During the tumult, many prisoners manage to escape and join the Persian rebels, but in the confused phases of commotion the princess is killed. The jail in which Katayoun is kept is described as one of the thousands cells which were occupied by slaves and bandits. Historians advanced the hypothesis that Firdowsi is referring to the cells occupying each pier of a long, hypothetical bridge, which allegedly connected the two sides of the Persian Gulf. Despite historical conjectures, the area has particular affective connotations for Iranians, still bearing the trauma of the Arabic invasion and the end of the Zoroastrian rule.
If Firdowsi's account were correct, the Bridge would have been destroyed between 633 and 651. Yet, traces of the bridge can be found again in geographer's Muhammad Al-Idrisi (1099–1165) classic treatise Kitab Nuzhatul al-Mushtaq. Al-Idrisi describes a commercial route competing with the Silk Road, which has been taken as an evidence for the existence of the Hormoz Road.
The next re-appearance of the Bridge dates the Portuguese conquest of Hormoz. In order to gain control over the maritime trade over the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese fleet led by admiral Tristao da Cunha conquered in 1507 the fortress of Hormoz. Seventeenth-century etchings of the island of Hormoz do not show any connection between the two sides of the strait. In order to establish maritime trade supremacy, the Portuguese effaced any possibility for land trade. It was only in 1622, through a joint action of English and Persian troops that the fort was re-conquered. It is said that Shah Abbas I, in his attempt to construct the capital of his Empire as an analogical double of the entire world, took the memory of the Hormoz bridge contained in chronicles and poems, in order to build the famous Siosepol bridge in Isfahan.
In the subsequent centuries the land connection between Persia and Arabia lost progressively its importance, and the Hormoz Strait gained prominence as the gate for maritime commerce in the Persian Gulf, especially since the discovery of oil reservoirs since the 1930. Today's situation is well known: 20 percent of world's oil transits from the Hormoz strait, and 35% of all oil traded by sea, making the area the world's most strategically contested geopolitical hotspots. But the perspective of a progressive exhaustion of oil reservoirs in the area and an ever-present threat of escalation of the Middle-Eastern conflicts, threaten the already precarious economic stability of the area. The implementation of a North-South international traffic route would then constitute an occasion for a complete re-configuration of the geopolitical significance of the area, opening new markets and enhancing the resilience trade network across Asia and Africa.
Specifically, a North-South transit between Iran and Oman would activate an alternative trade corridor to the Eurasian “Silk Road,” as well as the possibility to by-pass Suez. The Hormoz bridge will be part of a larger system called al-Dairah (the Circle) which will include the already planned Bridge of the Horns, connecting Yemen to Djibouti over the Red Sea, and it will activate an Euro-Mediterranean corridor in the Channel of Sicily, opening the relations between Tunisia and Italy, with the possibility to open and regulate the migratory fluxes between Africa and Europe. The Circle will then intercept to the Pan-European Adriatic trade corridor (between Brindisi and Helsinki) and the Pan-European Corridor V in the East-West direction, from Venice to Kiev.
The Hormoz Bridge would not only provide a transit connection between Iran and the states of the Gulf, but it will be configured as a true, linear, offshore city. Besides providing the necessary road and rail connection, the bridge will act as a logistic hub providing the possibility for a modal interchange between naval and road transportation, including all facilities to support logistic activities. Other activities will support and create the life of a city: directional centres, leisure facilities, places of worship, facilities for food storage and processing, as well as housing for 50,000 permanent and temporary inhabitants. Sea-current energy generation plants will provide the possibility for the Bridge to continue its 24/7 operations off-the-grid, making it at the same time a knot in a global network, and a self-sufficient entity.
Today, we find the possibility for the Hormoz Road to revive its legendary history, at the threshold of a new era of commercial and political relations.