Whoever wants to go to China must cross seven seas, each one with its own colour and wind and fish and breeze, completely unlike the sea that lies beside it. The first of them is the Sea of Fars, which men sail, setting out from Siraf.

THE Persian Gulf, a.k.a. Sea of Fars, is perhaps better known to most Bermudians than are the outer reaches of Castle Harbour with its islands and magnificent early seventeenth century fortifications. It is a sea through which much of the oil for the Americas must traverse, carrying the black gold from beneath the desert sands of Arabia, Iraq and Persia itself, now called Iran. It is a sea claimed by an Iran that is determined in present times to reclaim its status of old as the superpower of the region. Inland, the ancient city of Persepolis is a stunning ruin of a reminder that Darius the Great once held sway over much of the Middle East.

The Persian Empire at one time extended from the Indus River in India westwards through to Turkey and down the Mediterranean coast to include parts of Egypt and Libya. It is perhaps the thought of that great hegemony over the nations of the region that impels the current Iranian leader to speak of driving some of the peoples in those lands "into the sea". To accomplish such a goal, he or his successors may resort to the use of nuclear weapons, which idea will keep the Persian Gulf on our radar screens for some years to come. The President of Iran has Israel in mind, but he may expand his scope of attack to the Greeks and Macedonians, for it was they, under Alexander the Great, who destroyed the great city of Persepolis, now a World Heritage Site.

With our World Heritage Site at St. George's, we have therefore a more direct connection with the Persian Gulf and Iran. However, news is now coming out that the mullahs are intent upon modern development that could destroy the site of Persepolis, one of the world's greatest heritage assemblages.

As in many countries, it appears that there is a major gulf between the people's heritage and their governments, secular or religious. It almost seems as if a major function of modern governments is to be at war with its own people.

One of the easiest ways to prosecute such wars and undermine the local populace is to destroy its heritage, by neglect or more immediately, as the Taliban did with those majestic statues in Afghanistan.

To return to the maritime gulf fronting the province of Fars in Iran, it was a privilege to join an archaeological expedition in 1968 to the ancient port of Siraf, organised by the British Institute of Persian Studies.

For a young lad from Bermuda, just the journey there overland from Britain was a great adventure, moving through Eastern Europe, across the Anatolian plateau of Turkey and into Teheran. From there we drove south through Persepolis and over mountain ranges to descend into the arid coastal plain, lapped by the waters of the Persian Gulf.

At the village of Tahiri, which borders Siraf, we lived in a mud fort belonging to the local sheik, a structure now in ruin itself, according to images on the internet.

One of my jobs was the quartermaster, so I spent a lot of time on expeditions into the surrounding region, buying goats, chickens and sticky dates crammed into reused five-gallon kerosene cans.

My companion on these trips was the cook, an Iranian who became something of an anthropologist, analysing the strange habits among the archaeological team from northern Europe. Often I wonder if he survived the coming revolutions, for those were the days of the Shah of Iran and secular government.

As is often the case in the region, Siraf is a whole city buried under the weight of the destruction of the upper storeys of its buildings. This has the value of preserving the lower floors, alleys, roads and other features at ground level.

Walking over the site meant traversing mounds of rubble, replete with Chinese porcelain and other pottery sherds amid carved stones and building fragments on the surface.

To the rear of the port, the country is mountainous rock in semi-desert conditions. Graves abound in several cemeteries cut into the hard stone and first photographed by the great archaeologist and explorer Sir Aurel Stein, in the 1930s.

Much of the port of Siraf was demolished in a seven-day earthquake in 977 AD, with more damage sustained in the seismic activity that destroyed the Iranian city of Bam in 2003. Archaeological excavations took place into the early 1970s and a few years ago a conference was held in a nearby town to bring new attention to one of Iran's most important city-sites. It still remains the only seaport on the Persian Gulf coast of Iran to be examined archaeologically.

The heyday of Siraf was between 800 and 1000 AD, during which time it was an incredibly wealthy town, based upon the trading of its ships with India and China.

Five hundred years before Columbus discovered the Americas while seeking China, the Persians were making annual trips to Canton with coastal vessels.

Pepper and other spices, as well as silks and other exotic goods, were staples of the trade, much in demand in what is now Iraq and elsewhere in the region. For several centuries, Siraf was the major emporium of the Persian Gulf, later to be replaced by Hormuz, at the chokepoint entry of the Gulf at the Straits of Hormuz.

A number of the houses at Siraf likely survived the earthquake of 977 for they were made of teak from Zanzibar. That timber signals the very considerable trading routes from Siraf down the eastern coast of Africa, centuries before Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope bound for the Far East.

Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. The views expressed here are his opinion, not necessarily those of the Trustees or Staff of the Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm or to P.O. Box MA 133, Sandys MABX, or by telephone 799-5480