858 O R M O R M broon lingered on till 1759, when it was seized by two French ships of war under Comte d Estaing. It was re-established, but at the time of Niebuhr s visit to the gulf a few years later no European remained. Niebuhr mentions that in his time (c. 1765) Mulla Ali Shdh, formerly admiral of Nadir Shdh, was established on the island of Ormuz and part of Kishm as an independent chief. On Ormuz the solidly-built Portuguese castle still stands, and some of the immense water-tanks, with fresh water in them, in almost perfect integrity. " With their arched and groined roofs, supported on heavy pillars, they appeared like the crypts of some great cathedral " (Colomb, Slave -catching in the Indian Ocean, 1873, pp. 142-143). Of the city hardly anything stands except a minaret, 1 by some called a lighthouse, but the traces of buildings are 1 Fraser heard that this was erected by Shah Abbas after the capture. numerous and extensive. A small band of fishermen and salt -diggers living in mat huts and a small guard from Muscat in the castle form the sole population. The island is, with Kishm and other places near, rented from Persia by the sultan of Muscat, chiefly for the salt and sulphur. Works consulted, besides some of those specifically quoted above, have been Barros, Asia; Commentaries of Albuquerque, trans, by Birch (Hak. Society) ; Relaciones de Pedro Teixeira (Antwerp, 1610) ; Narratives in Hakluyt s Collection (reprint of 1809, vol. ii.) and in Purchas s Pilgrims, vol. ii. ; Pietro della Yalle, Persia, lett. xii.-xvii. ; Calendar of E. I. Papers, by Sainsbury, vol. iii. ; Ritter, Erdkunde, xii. ; Jour. Roy. Gcog. Soc., Kempthorne in vol. v., Whitelocke in vol. viii., Pelly in vol. xxxiv. ; Fraser, Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan (1825) ; Constable and Stiffe, Persian Gulf Pilot (1864) ; Bruce, Annals of the E. I. Company, &c. (1810). (H. Y.) OIIMUZD (for Ahura-mazda or Auramazda, " the wise lord "), the good principle in the dualism of Zoroastrianism, opposed to Ahriman or Angromainyu. (See ZOBO ASTER.) END OF VOLUME SEVENTEENTH, PRINTED FOR A. & C. BLACK BY NK1LL & CO. AND R. & R. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
