Kish Island has been mentioned in history variously as Kamtina, Arakia, Arakata, and Ghiss. In 325 BC, Alexander the Great commissioned Nearchus to set off an expedition voyage into the Sea of Oman and the Persian Gulf.
Nearchus's writings on Arakata is the first known mention of Kish Island in antiquity. When Marco Polo visited the Imperial court in China, he commented on the Emperor's wife's pearls, he was told that they were from Kish. In the 1970s the last Shah of Iran turned the island into a luxury resort for the international elite complete with a Grand Casino (now known as the Shayan International Hotel) and an airport designed to handle the Concorde. After the Islamic Revolution, Kish Island became a duty-free shopping center.
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