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25-615: Mentioned in the Hudud al-'Alam as a good source for pearls around 982 AD, Khark was visited by the French traveller Jean de Thévenot in 1665, who recorded trade at the time with Isfahan and Basra . In 1753 the Dutch Empire established both a trading post and a fort on the island after securing perpetual ownership of the island from Mir Nasáir, the Arab ruler of Bandar Rig, in return for

50-579: A cuneiform inscription dating back to Achaemenid era was discovered on Kharg Island in Old Persian . The inscription is carved on a coral rock in Old Persian semi-syllabic cuneiform signs. Despite the usually well-ordered regular system of Achaemenid inscriptions, this one is in an unusual order written in five lines. Translation “The not irrigated land was happy [with] my bringing out [of water]” The linguist Habib Borjian explains that if

75-500: A damaged relief suggested to feature Nike on the face of a sphere-topped column. Mary-Joseph Steve has argued that the architecture of the tombs is more reminiscent of Nabataean architecture at Petra than anything Palmyrene . Another eighty three rock cut tombs and sixty two megalithic tombs have been studied on Kharg. The rock-cut tombs fall into four categories; single chambered, shallow tombs of varying shape, pit burials and excavated multi-chambered complexes. Steve also noticed

100-575: A manuscript with a copy of this text in 1892 in Bukhara. The copy from the original was made by the Persian chronographer Abu l-Mu'ayyad ʿAbd al-Qayyūm ibn al-Ḥusain ibn 'Alī al-Farīsī in 1258. The facsimile edition with introduction and index was published by Vasily Bartold in 1930; a thoroughly commented English translation was made by Vladmir Minorsky in 1937, and a printed Persian text by Manouchehr Sotudeh in 1962. Khargi language Khargi

125-594: A present of 2000 rupees. In 1766 the Dutch fort was captured by Mir Mahanna, the governor of Bandar Rig . The island was briefly occupied in 1838 by the British to block the Siege of Herat (1838) but was soon returned. Amoco built and operated the oil terminal on the island. Its property was expropriated after the revolution. Once the world's largest offshore crude oil terminal and the principal sea terminal for Iranian oil,

150-636: Is a Southwestern Iranian language spoken on the Iranian island of Kharg in the Persian Gulf . Khargi is related to the Iranian languages of Fars Province and those along the littoral areas down to the Strait of Hormuz . The language was first documented in the late 1950s by the publicist Jalal Al-e Ahmad , who reported in his ethnography that out of the 120 resident households who then inhabited

175-696: Is divided in Asia, Europe and " Libya " (i.e. the Maghreb ). The author counts 45 countries north of the equator. Among other things, Hudud al-Alam appears to mention a Rus' Khaganate ; it refers to the Rus' king as "Khāqān-i Rus". The author never visited those countries personally, but rather compiled the book from earlier works and tales. He did not indicate his sources, but researchers deduced several 9th-century sources. Minorsky (1937) reconstructed them as follows: The Orientalist scholar Alexander Tumansky found

200-439: Is hardly surprising. Kharg’s population was surely composed in part of refugees, sailors, and skilled labourers who settled on the island individually or in groups, and new settlers would have added strata to the original language. This multilayered Iranian-speaking community sustained itself by means of highly specialised skills of agriculture, purling , and piloting sea commerce before the advent of petroleum industry which changed

225-418: Is no contradicting evidence to make this hypothesis implausible". On May 31, 2008, the inscription was seriously damaged by unknown vandal(s). They destroyed it with a sharp object, such that about 70 percent of the inscription was seriously damaged. The nature of the damage indicates that it was done deliberately. The 17th-century French traveller Jean de Thévenot noted the presence of qanat (i.e. kariz) on

250-409: Is part of a larger manuscript which contains other works: The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam contains information about the known world at the time. The anonymous author reports about different countries ( nāḥiyat ), people, languages, clothing, food, religion, local products, towns and cities, rivers, seas, lakes, islands, the steppe, deserts, topography, politics and dynasties, as well as trade. The inhabited world

275-557: The 'regions within definite boundaries' into which the world is divided in the Ḥ.-'Ā., the author indicating with special care the frontiers of each one of these areas, v.i., p. 30." Finished in 982 CE, it was dedicated to Abu'l Haret Muhammad , the ruler of the Farighunids . Its author is unknown, but Vladimir Minorsky surmised that it might have been written by the enigmatic Šaʿyā bin Farīghūn . The available text of Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam

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300-657: The Khark Island facilities were put out of commission in the fall of 1986. Heavy bombing of the Khark Island facilities from 1980 through 1988 by the Iraqi Air Force during the Iran–Iraq War very nearly destroyed most of the terminal facilities. Khark Island was situated in the middle of the Darius Oilfield , also destroyed by the intensive bombing. Repair to all facilities has been very slow, even after

325-676: The West"). The sections of its geographical treatise which describes the margins of Islamic world, are of great historical importance, including early descriptions of the Turkic peoples in Central Asia . Also noteworthy is the archaic language and style of the Ḥudud , which makes it a valuable Persian linguistic document as well. In regards to the title, Vladimir Minorsky commented on it in his 1937 translation as follows: "The word ḥudūd (properly 'boundaries') in our case evidently refers to

350-569: The World," "Limits of the World," or in also in English "The Regions of the World" ) is a 10th-century geography book written in Persian by an anonymous author from Guzgan (present day northern Afghanistan), possibly Šaʿyā bin Farīghūn . The title in full is حدود العالم من المشرق الی المغرب ( Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam min al-Mashriq ilá l-Maghrib , lit. "The Boundaries of The World from The East to

375-502: The dominant language in all spheres of life. Fieldwork on Kharg by the linguist Habib Borjian in 2016 showed that Khargi was still spoken "by as few as a dozen families, and even therein it was not properly transmitted to the next generation". Borjian adds that the "rest of the local population of the island was either the indigenous Khargis who had lost the native language or the immigrants from nearby littoral settlements who spoke their own kindred dialects". Worried about its extinction,

400-610: The fact that historically sustainable farming on Kharg was only possible using kariz , Borjian points out that a permanent human settlement on the island "cannot predate the spread of the kariz , which came about under the Achaemenid rule in the Near East (550–330 BCE)". In 2007, a rock graffiti inscription was discovered on Kharg with a short writing in Old Persian cuneiform . The Old Persian inscription, according to preliminary decipherment, reads: “The not irrigated land

425-594: The inscription is authentic, combined with the island's known history of kariz usage, "which came about under the Achaemenid rule in the Near East (550–330 BCE)", it can be suggested that there was a Persian colonisation of Kharg under the Achaemenids. The Iranian dialect of the Persian settlers of the Achaemenid period may have in turn been the ancestor of the Khargi language , with Borjian adding that "there

450-788: The island that would have provided ancient irrigation. The island appears with a SAM radar installation on it in the Sega Genesis flight simulator F-15 Strike Eagle II in the Persian Gulf mission map. The island is featured as a playable map in DICE 's Battlefield 3 video game, having some resemblance to the real island. It also appears in Delta Force: Black Hawk Down – Team Sabre . Kharg Kharg District Hudud al-%27Alam The Ḥudūd al-ʿĀlam ( Arabic : حدود العالم , lit. "Boundaries of

475-440: The island, most had migrated from the coastal areas of Tangestan with only a minority of the population being locals. The native speakers of Khargi at the time characterized the language as a dialect close to that of Tangestan and Bushehr . Within the next few decades, as Kharg transformed from an isolated rural society into an petroleum export hub , large-scale social and demographic changes took place, with Persian becoming

500-541: The language of the Achaemenid-era Persian settlers could very well be the ancestor of the Khargi language, noting that "there is no contradicting evidence to make this hypothesis implausible". Simultaneously however, given Khargi's multidirectional agreements with various South Iranian languages, polygenesis is implied. Borjian concludes: Given the divergent historical contexts of the island, this outcome

525-464: The local Khargi speakers however have published new materials on the Khargi language, including poetry and proverbs. Borjian explains that sustaining human life on Kharg in a continuous way was mainly made possible due to a continuous water supply. However, due to low amounts of rainfall, people brought underground water from aquifers in the central foothills of the islands down to the fields by using manmade subterranean channels known as kariz . Due to

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550-466: The presence of several Nestorian style crosses at some of the tombs. There are also ruins of a coarse stone temple on the island measuring around 7.5 m (25 ft) square with a plastered altar for fire in the centre. A Christian church complex or ancient monastery of some 96 m (315 ft) by 85 m (279 ft) is also located on the island featuring a chapel, nineteen monks cells, library and courtyard. On November 14, 2007,

575-454: The war ended in 1988. The events experienced by this island gave rise to the dispute in the English contract law case The Kanchenjunga [1990] 1 Lloyd's Rep 391, regarding the conditions for repudiatory breach of contract and a claimant's right to elect to accept repudiation. In 2009, Iran exported and swapped 950 million barrels of crude oil via southern Khark oil terminal. The first archaeological evidence of human occupation on Khark island

600-567: Was happy [with] my bringing out [of water]”. Borjian explains that although this reading has neither been confirmed nor disputed by other experts, "it accords perfectly with the possible beginning of a permanent human settlement on the Kharg island". Borjian narrates that if the inscription turns out to be authentic, it can be suggested that there was a Persian colonisation of Kharg under the Persian Achaemenid rulers. Borjian adds that

625-506: Was reported by Captain A. W. Stiffe in 1898, with studies published about his discoveries by F. Sarre and E. Herzfeld in 1910. They discovered two rock-cut chambered tombs featuring arched entranceways to a main chamber with vestibule from which spawned around twenty smaller chambers. The southern tomb is 13 m (43 ft) deep and features a relief of a reclining man drinking in the Seleucid and Parthian styles of Palmyra along with

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