Chapter GOGOLLA to GOMBROON of G by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

GOMBROON, n.p. The old name in European documents of the place on the Persian Gulf now known as Bandar ’Abbas, or ’Abbasi. The latter name was given to it when Shah ’Abbas, after the capture and destruction of the island city of Hormuz, established a port there. The site which he selected was the little town of Gambrún. This had been occupied by the Portuguese, who took it from the ‘King of Lar’ in 1612, but two years later it was taken by the Shah. The name is said (in the Geog. Magazine, i. 17) to be Turkish, meaning ‘a Custom House.’ The word alluded to is probably gumruk, which has that meaning, and which is again, through Low Greek, from the Latin commercium. But this etymology of the name seems hardly probable. That indicated in the extract from A. Hamilton below is from Pers. kamrun, ‘a shrimp,’ or Port. camarão, meaning the same.

The first mention of Gombroon in the E. I. Papers seems to be in 1616, when Edmund Connok, the Company’s chief agent in the Gulf, calls it “Gombraun, the best port in all Persia,” and “that hopeful and glorious port of Gombroon” (Sainsbury, i. 484-5; [Foster, Letters, iv. 264]). There was an English factory here soon after the capture of Hormuz, and it continued to be maintained in 1759, when it was taken by the Comte d’Estaing. The factory was re-established, but ceased to exist a year or two after.

[1565.—“Bamdel Gombruc, so-called in Persian and Turkish, which means Customhouse.”—Mestre Afonso’s Overland Journey, Ann. Maritim. e Colon.’ ser. 4. p. 217.]

1614.—(The Captain-major) “under orders of Dom Luis da Gama returned to succour Comorão, but found the enemy’s fleet already there and the fort surrendered.…News which was heard by Dom Luis da Gama and most of the people of Ormuz in such way as might be expected, some of the old folks of Ormuz prognosticating at once that in losing Comorão Ormuz itself would be lost before long, seeing that the former was like a barbican or outwork on which the rage of the Persian enemy spent itself, giving time to Ormuz to prepare against their coming thither.”—Bocarro, Decada, 349.

1622.—“That evening, at two hours of the night, we started from below that fine tree, and after travelling about a league and a half…we arrived here in Combrú, a place of decent size and population on the sea-shore, which the Persians now-a-days, laying aside as it were the old name, call the ‘Port of Abbas,’ because it was wrested from the Portuguese, who formerly possessed it, in the time of the present King Abbas.”—P. della Valle, ii. 413; [in Hak. Soc. i. 3, he calls it Combu].

c. 1630.—“Gumbrown (or Gomroon, as some pronounce it) is by most Persians [Greek Text] Kat’ exochn cald Bander or the Port Towne…some (but I commend them not) write it Gamrou, others Gomrow, and other-some Cummeroon.…A Towne it is of no Antiquity, rising daily out of the ruines of late glorious (now most wretched) Ormus.”—Sir T. Herbert, 121.

1673.—“The Sailors had stigmatized this place of its Excessive Heat, with this sarcastical Saying, That there was but an Inch-Deal between Gomberoon and Hell.”—Fryer, 224.

Fryer in another place (marginal rubric, p. 331) says: “Gombroon ware, made of Earth, the best next China.” Was this one of the sites of manufacture of the Persian porcelain now so highly prized? [“The main varieties of this Perso-Chinese ware are the following:—(1) A sort of semi-porcelain, called by English dealers, quite without reason, ‘Gombroon ware,’ which is pure white and semi-transparent, but, unlike Chinese porcelain, is soft and friable where not protected by the glaze.”—Ency. Brit. 9th ed. xix. 621.]

1727.—“This Gombroon was formerly a Fishing Town, and when Shaw Abass began to build it, had its Appellation from the Portugueze, in Derision, because it was a good place for catching Prawns and Shrimps, which they call Camerong.”—A. Hamilton, i. 92; [ed. 1744, i. 93].

1762.—“As this officer (Comte d’Estaing)… broke his parole by taking and destroying our settlements at Gombroon, and upon the west Coast of Sumatra, at a time when he was still a prisoner of war, we have laid before his Majesty a true state of the case.”—In Long, 288.

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