1516.—"Kingdom of Orisa. Further on towards the interior there is another kingdom which is conterminous with that of Narsynga, and on another side with Bengala, and on another with the great Kingdom of Dely...."—Barbosa, in Lisbon ed. 306.
c. 1568.—"Orisa fu già vn Regno molto bello e securo ... sina che regnò il suo Rè legitimo, qual era Gentile."—Ces. Federici, Ramusio, iii. 392.
[c. 1616.—"Vdeza, the Chiefe Citty called Iekanat ([Juggurnaut])."—Sir T. Roe, Hak. Soc. ii. 538.]
ORMESINE, s. A kind of silk texture, which we are unable to define. The name suggests derivation from Ormus. [The Draper's Dict. defines "Armozeen, a stout silk, almost invariably black. It is used for hat-bands and scarfs at funerals by those not family mourners. Sometimes sold for making clergymen's gowns." The N.E.D. s.v. Armozeen, leaves the etymology doubtful. The Stanf. Dict. gives Ormuzine, "a fabric exported from Ormuz.">[
c. 1566.—"... a little Island called Tana, a place very populous with Portugals, Moores and Gentiles: these have nothing but Rice; they are makers of Armesie and weavers of girdles of wooll and bumbast."—Caes. Fredericke, in Hakl. ii. 344.
1726.—"Velvet, Damasks, Armosyn, Sattyn."—Valentijn, v. 183.
ORMUS, ORMUZ, n.p. Properly Hurmuz or Hurmūz, a famous maritime city and minor kingdom near the mouth of the Persian Gulf. The original place of the city was on the northern shore of the Gulf, some 30 miles east of the site of Bandar Abbās or [Gombroon] (q.v.); but about A.D. 1300, apparently to escape from Tartar raids, it was transferred to the small island of Gerūn or Jerūn, which may be identified with the Organa of Nearchus, about 12 m. westward, and five miles from the shore, and this was the seat of the kingdom when first visited and attacked by the Portuguese under Alboquerque in 1506. It was taken by them about 1515, and occupied permanently (though the nominal reign of the native kings was maintained), until wrested from them by Shāh 'Abbās, with the assistance of an English squadron from Surat, in 1622. The place was destroyed by the Persians, and the island has since remained desolate, and all but uninhabited, though the Portuguese citadel and water-tanks remain. The islands of Hormuz, Kishm, &c., as well as Bandar 'Abbās and other ports on the coast of Kerman, had been held by the Sultans of Omān as fiefs of Persia, for upwards of a century, when in 1854 the latter State asserted its dominion, and occupied those places in force (see Badger's Imams of Omān, &c., p. xciv.).
B.C. c. 325.—"They weighed next day at dawn, and after a course of 100 stadia anchored at the mouth of the river Anamis, in a country called Harmozeia."—Arrian, Voyage of Nearchus, ch. xxxiii., tr. by M‘Crindle, p. 202.
c. A.D. 150.—(on the coast of Carmania)
"Ἅρμουζα πόλις.