Indian Antiquary Vol 52

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 452

24
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(MAY, 1933
acoepted combat and was defeated and taken prisoner after a desperate resistance. He Was brought in chains to the King, but as the booty he had taken was all recovered and as he gave his word never to repeat his offence, he was set at liberty and returned to France (Osorio, I, 357). This courtesy, very unlike their behaviour to the Moors, the Portuguese extended to English pirates also. In 1521, Vasco Fernandez Caesar took after & severe fight in the Mediterranean four English vessels which were towing a Portuguese ship which they had taken. The English protested that they had taken it with them only to protect it from the Barbary pirates (!), and so were allowed to go free (Osorio, II, 356).
Portuguese. 89. In 1506 the Portuguese fleet under Tristiat d'Aounho and Alfonso Albuquerque was sent to establish the Portuguese on the coast of Afrioa and to obtain command of the navigation of the Red Sea (Bruce, I, 13; Kerr, VI, 92). Almost immediately the Portu. guese issued orders that native vessels must carry passes signed by Portuguese officers demand which the English imitated many years later as soon as they settled at Surat (800 para. 324 below). The historian Khafi Khan (Elliott, VII, 344) says "On the sea they (the Portuguese) are not like the English and do not attack other ships, except those which have not received their passes according to rule, or the ships of Arabia or Muscat, with which two countries they have a long-standing enmity and attack each other whenever an opportunity occurs" (Campos, p. 160). As a matter of fact (see para. 118 below), like the Barbary pirates, the Portuguese did not always respect their own passes when the ships carrying them were rich enough to excite their cupidity. In 1607 Gonzalo Vaz, meeting a rich Vengel carrying a pass from Lorenzo de Brito, Commandant of Cannanoro, declarod it to be a forgery and plundered the ship. To prevent any complaints he sewed up the crew in a sail and threw them into the sea. The stitching ooming loose, some of the corpses were washed ashore and one of them being recognised as that of the son (or son-in-law or nephew) of Mamale, a rich Malabar merchant, the hideous crime was discovered (Osorio, I, 261. 3; Logan, T, 314). Faria, (1, 110) says that Vaz was broken for this crime, but the punishment was so inadequate that many evils resulted to the Portuguese (Kerr, VI, 98). Osorio (I, 261-3)says that Mamale at once wrote to the Arabians at Calicut, and, at their instigation, the Zamorin sent Mayimamma Marakkar for Assistance to the Sultan of Egypt. In rosponse to this appeal, a fleet of 12 ships with a large force of Mamelukes was sent from Suez to Cambay under Amir Husain governor of Jeddah. Colonel Miles (p. 140) says that this feet was a combined force of Turks and Venetians, 16 the latter strongly objecting to the Portuguese discovery of a new trade route to India. At first in alliance with the Gujaratis, under the command of Malik Ayyaz, Governor of Diu, a Russian renegade (Dames in RAS. Journ., June 1921), Amir Husain had some success, defeating the Portuguese off Chaul in April 1507 and killing Don Lorenzo son of the Vioeroy (Faria in Kerr, VI, 112-3). The Zamorin's envoy Mayimamma was also killed in the fight (Logan, I, 317) and in February 1609 Amir Husain was totally defeated off Diu by the Viceroy Francisco de Almeyda. He himself escaped and returned to Mocha, but this disaster deprived the Moors of the command of the Red Sea (Barbosa, p. 21). Husain was killed at Jeddah in 1617 (Zainuddin, 96-7) and Sultan Salim having annexed Egypt, the command of the Turkish fleet was given to the Reis Sulaiman "a Turk of base parentage but a powerful and bold pyrate, born in Mitylene" (Faria, I, 212). On his way to Diu, Don Francisco plundered Dabul, and in February 1510 Don Francisco Albuquerque took Goa and destroyed all the ships and galleys of the "Rumes” (Barbosa, pp. 72-76).
16 Possibly in reforence to the Expedition of Sulaiman Pasha in 1637 (hoe para. 120 below).