Iranian Diaspora in Maritime Asia: A Study of Sixteenth Century Portuguese Sources

Persian Merchants in the Ports of South India

The presence of Persian merchants in Kerala ports, chiefly in Calicut, the great emporium of spices, is reported from the voyage of Pedro Álvares Cabral, in 1500–1. We have no exact figures as to the effectives of the community, but we know by Ludovico di Varthema, ³ who visited Calicut in about 1504, that all the trade was in the hands of the Muslims, whose total number reached almost 15,000, with most of them already born locally. The same thing, though certainly to a lesser degree, could be observed in other ports of the Indian West Coast, even in secondary places such as Bhatkal, in Canara, ⁴ and in Goa before the Portuguese conquest in 1510. After this, Persian merchants continued to frequent Goa, as Hormuz, the gateway of Persia, was also under Portuguese rule, and linked to Goa by regular lines of navigation.

We know, for instance, that in 1514 an ambassador of Shâh Ismâ‘îl to the Portuguese authorities returned to his country aboard the ship of Khwâja Amir, a Persian merchant who had come to Goa; Afonso de Albuquerque sent with him an ambassador to the Safavid court, and entrusted him with two carracks loaded with merchandise to be sold at Hormuz. ⁵

During the second half of the century Persian merchants continued frequenting Goa. In their letters the Jesuits note it, remarking that it was useless to try to evangelize them, since, like the Arabs, they never converted to Christianity. ⁶ As we will see later, there were, however, some exceptions. Others, who had come from the North (probably from Gujarat) or from the West (that is, directly from Persia), dwelt permanently in Goa. ⁷

Portuguese writers also bear witness to the presence of Persian merchants in the ports of Gujarat and Bengal, with which we will deal later. Probably some of them came from their country of origin simply to sell their merchandise in the local market, and then decided to settle, acting thereafter mainly as correspondents to their fellow countrymen. However, we may assume that others migrated purposely, seeking foreign conditions for their businesses; as in Iran the opportunities were scarcer, commerce being, so to speak, squeezed between the overwhelming bureaucracy of the state and the inveterate habits of a pastoral and agricultural society. ⁸

In the Portuguese records, the most famous of the Iranian merchants of this period is Khwâja Shamsu-d-Dîn Gîlânî, who was established at Cannanore. ⁹ Besides the references to him in the chronicles, we possess forty-eight original documents, among which fourteen letters signed by him, which bear witness to his commercial activities between 1504 and 1557. He was born around 1487–88, probably in Gîlân, as his nisba denotes, and settled in Malabar by 1504. In that year, yielding to the pleas of the Zamorin of Calicut, on rather unclear grounds, the Portuguese seized one of his vessels. Most probably, it was then that he came to terms with them, for in a letter of 1545 to the viceroy Dom João de Castro he declares to have been on the Portuguese King’s service for forty years. Nevertheless we only found detailed references to him in Portuguese records from 1543 onwards. He was then the treasurer of Asad Khân, the lord of Belgaum with whom we have largely dealt with in the preceding article. Not feeling secure in the sultanate of Bijapur, then ruled by the Sunnite Sultan Ibrâhîm ‘Âdil Shâh, and fearing his avaricious nature, Asad Khân had entrusted most of his riches to Khwâja Shamsu-d-Dîn, who kept them at Cannanore. Our man was, however, afraid of reprisals from the side of Bijapur vessels, and sought then the protection of the Portuguese, who granted him a seguro, that is, a kind of general safe-conduct for him and all his relatives and dependants.

He had a close relationship with Rui Gonçalves de Caminha, who was his prominent friend and attorney in Goa, and probably also his commercial partner. There are records of the presence of his ships at Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf and throughout the Western coast of India, from Diu to Cape Comorin. He also had interests in Cochin, where the Portuguese authorities bestowed upon him a plot of land. Feeling secure due to the protection of the Portuguese governors Martim Afonso de Sousa (1542–45) and Dom João de Castro (1545–48), he sent with impunity cargoes of gold, and even of pepper, to Jiddah, much to the dismay of the Portuguese captain of Cannanore, who could not prevent him from doing so. His brother and commercial correspondent Abdu-l-Jabbar lived in Arabia and regularly provided him with information on the movements of the Ottomans in the Red Sea, which allowed him to keep the Portuguese authorities well informed. This is certainly the reason why in 1546 the King of Portugal earnestly recommended him to his viceroy in India. In that very year, he rendered a new profitable service to the Portuguese: he succeeded in intercepting a letter of the Sultan of Gujarat to the Zamorin, inviting him to participate in a large alliance, together with the Sultans of Deccan, in order to expel the Portuguese from the Indian Ocean. Though the project fell through, the Portuguese had learnt their lessons.

In 1544, upon the death of Asad Khân, in December 1543, the Portuguese Governor Martim Afonso de Sousa dispatched Rui Gonçalves de Caminha to Cannanore to persuade Shamsu-d-Dîn to come to Goa and settle there; the intention of the governor was most probably to take hold of Asad Khân’s treasure. ¹⁰ But the endeavour did not bear much fruit; the merchant kept dwelling in Cannanore and contented himself with sending the governor an amount of 500,000 pardaos or pagodas, that is, almost 50,000 ounces of gold, which would be fairly enough to redress the precarious financial situation of the Estado da Índia. Upping his efforts, the governor then came in person to Cannanore to pay him a visit, and succeeded in exacting from him 250,000 pardaos more for the Estado and 30,000 for himself, as a personal gift. While returning to Portugal, a few months later, he could thus afford to offer the King a coffer containing 3000 pardaos, that is, c. 300 ounces of gold, ¹¹ which though being only 10 per cent of what he had received as a gift, was nevertheless a nice present.

The governor’s lust for riches had been propelled by the Sultan of Bijapur. Ibrâhîm ‘Âdil Shâh looked upon himself as the universal legatee of Asad Khân, who had been a mameluke of his grandfather, Yûsuf ‘Âdil Khân. He had taken control of his jâgîr of Belgaum. Unable to usurp the treasure deposited at Cannanore, he sent an ambassador to Goa with the proposal that he would gave it up in favour of the Portuguese Estado da Índia, on the condition that Miyã ‘Alî Khân, his uncle and pretender to his throne, who had taken shelter in Goa, be exiled to the Moluccas. The ambassador also offered the governor 32,000 pardaos and two plateaux; one with a single leaf of betel on it, whereas the other was fully covered with leaves, signifying that the sum entrusted to Shamsu-d-Dîn was to be considered as a single leaf, whereas what remained in Bijapur, and which would have amounted to one million, was as a tray full of them. ¹²

Under the honest government of Dom João de Castro there were no more extortions and Shamsu-d-Din rewarded the dispensation with rich presents: two foists, worth 230 pardaos, for the Portuguese armada, a silk rug, rice, dates and honey from Mecca for the governor, and an elephant for Rui Gonçalves de Caminha, who meanwhile had been appointed vedor da fazenda da Índia, the Portuguese equivalent of the amîr-i-jûmla or mîr jûmla in the sultanates.

Many people said that he was the richest merchant of India, and this, naturally, invoked much jealousy, including that on the part of the King of Cannanore. It was certainly because of this that in 1546 Shamsu-d-Dîn formed the project of shifting to Calicut; but the Portuguese captain of Cannanore, Manuel de Vasconcelos, succeeded in dissuading him. Six years later, governor Dom Afonso de Noronha, afflicted, as always, by the precarious financial situation of the state, resorted once more to his financial dole outs. ¹³

In 1544, Shamsu-d-Dîn had been appointed by Martim Afonso de Sousa justiça-mor dos Mouros de Goa, that is, ‘supreme judge of the Moors of Goa’, an appointment confirmed two years later by Dom João de Castro. ¹⁴ According to the terms of the nomination, he joined the functions of a cadi to those of a maliku-t-tujjâr, to act as arbiter in the quarrels between merchants, both resident and visiting. It appears, however, that he never settled in Goa, only visiting it from time to time. About 1554, when his fellow countryman ‘Ainu-l-Mulk Gîlânî rebelled against Ibrâhîm ‘Âdil Shâh, he backed him up as the head of a contingent of horsemen that operated in the surroundings of Goa; ¹⁵ probably, he recruited them from amongst the Muslims of Goa, his dependents. Beaten by ‘Âdil Shâh’s forces, he was compelled to flee with Miyã ‘Alî Khân, the pretender he supported, only to find shelter under the Nizâm Shâh of Ahmadnagar. This one, nevertheless, only remitted him to the Portuguese ambassador who was sent to negotiate his deliverance in 1557, and for a ransom of 60,000 pardaos, plus 30,000 for Miyã ‘Alî Khân. It is interesting to note that the merchant was worth twice as much as the prince. ¹⁶ The merchant was nearly seventy years old then; apparently, he did not survive long after his release, for thenceforward his name disappears from Portuguese chronicles and records.

Another case of a Persian merchant often mentioned in our records, though not so well known as Shamsu-d-Dîn, is that of Khwâja Shîhâbu-d-Dîn, whom the Portuguese called Coge Sabadim or Coge Xabadim. He was a native of Hormuz, traded in horses and visited Goa every year, to sell his merchandise to the Deccan sultans. Afonso de Albuquerque wanted to appoint him shâhbandar of Goa, but died before carrying out his intent. Apparently, he did not stand very high in the subsequent governors’ books, and ceased frequenting Goa. ¹⁷ A little later, Portuguese sources record his presence in Bengal. He had settled in Chittagong, where he traded and was in correspondence with several merchants of Hormuz. Lest the commerce with Hormuz declined, and with it the good income it afforded to the customs, the local authorities did not allow him to leave, keeping him as a kind of hostage in Chittagong. As many Portuguese in the same area, ¹⁸ he added to the profits of the commerce of those privateering. For this purpose, he built a Portuguese-style galliot, which was forbidden both by Portuguese laws and by local rules, since this promoted the disguise of privateers and rendered it difficult to impute the damages to the real culprits. ¹⁹ On this pretext, Rui Vaz Pereira, who was sent by the governor Lopo Vaz de Sampaio to Bengal for trading purposes in 1526, seized not only the galliot, but also a galleon that Shîhâbu-d-Dîn had in the harbour, loaded up and ready to depart. The merchant complained to the Portuguese authorities, but the process still lingered when Lopo Vaz was replaced as governor by Nuno da Cunha (1529–38).

Meanwhile, in 1528, in circumstances that cannot be detailed here, ²⁰ another Portuguese, Martim Afonso de Melo Jusarte, was wrecked on the coast of Bengal and taken prisoner with his men by Khudâ Baksh Khân, governor of Chittagong, who used them as soldiers in wars with neighbouring potentates. ²¹ In order to please the Portuguese governor and accelerate the delivery of his vessels, Shîhâbu-d-Dîn took the initiative of redeeming them for a ransom of 3000 pardaos, and sent them to Nuno da Cunha aboard the ship of his cousin Coge Sucurulá, that is, Khwâja Shukru-l-Lâh. At the same time he suggested to the governor that a Portuguese fortress be built at Chittagong; he also wrote a letter to the King of Portugal, presenting his project.

In 1531, Nuno da Cunha asked Khwâja Shîhâbu-d-Din to arrest a Portuguese captain, Damião Bernaldes, who had turned pirate while doubling Cape Comorin, as it often happened; Shîhâbu-d-Din indeed tried to do so with the help of eighteen Portuguese ships that were stationed at Chittagong, but in vain. The man could only be caught at Nagapattinam, on the Coromandel coast. He died shortly after being lodged in a jail in Goa. ²²

Nuno da Cunha had in the meantime received letters from the King accepting the suggestion of Shîhâbu-d-Dîn, and decided to build a fortress in Chittagong, or at least to open a factory there. Accordingly, in 1533, he sent Martim Afonso to Bengal again, to negotiate the matter with the local authorities; Nuno da Cunha also charged him with obtaining from the Sultan, permission for Shîhâbu-d-Dîn to leave the country and return to Hormuz. ²³ Later, Afonso was, quite unwillingly, involved in the wars of Shêr Khân Sûrî with the sultan of Bengal, and then in those of Humâyûn with Shêr Khân; but his misadventures do not concern us here. As for Shîhâbu-d-Dîn, his name disappears from our sources, remaining unclear whether he returned to his country or passed away.

Another Persian merchant about whom we are relatively well informed is Coje Percoli, that is to say, Khwâja Pîr Qulî. ²⁴ He had lived in Goa for many years before he became a trusted aide of Nuno da Cunha (1529–38), who charged him with several missions, both at home and abroad. In 1531, da Cunha sent him to Diu, which the Portuguese had coveted since the days of Albuquerque, feigning business travel, to frighten the local governor, Malik Tughân, son and successor of Malik Ayâz, with the naval power of the Portuguese, and so induce him to surrender the area without a fight. ²⁵ As the device proved fruitless, Nuno da Cunha decided to initiate hostilities. Pîr Qulî accompanied him to act as his interpreter and, if necessary, as a spy, ²⁶ but that expedition failed, too.

In subsequent years, Khwâja Pîr Qulî became a sort of grand-dragoman of the Portuguese Estado da Índia: it was he who received, accommodated and accompanied foreign ambassadors to Goa. He also redacted the Persian version of the treaties between the Portuguese and local powers and signed them as witness. Such is the case of the treaty of 1535, whereby the Sultan of Gujarat cedes the territory of Bassein to the Portuguese and allows them to settle in Diu, ²⁷ the case of the treaty of 1537 with Mirzâ Muhammad az-Zamân, ²⁸ with whom we shall deal later, of that of 1542 with the Nizâm Shâh, ²⁹ of that of 1543 with Gujarat, ³⁰ and that of 1548 with Bijapur. ³¹ We also know that in 1547 he translated a letter of the Âdil Shâh that a Brahmin had brought to Goa. ³²

In 1535, he served as interpreter in the interview between governor Nuno da Cunha and Sultan Bahâdur of Gujarat (r. 1526–36). ³³ The next year, the governor instructed him to receive and escort the ambassadors that had come from Gujarat, namely Xacoez, that is, Sheikh ‘Uwais and Mîr Muhammad, to watch them and try to discover their secrets. ³⁴ It was on the basis of the information he provided that Nuno da Cunha, suspecting Bahâdur of hatching a trap to catch him, conceived a stratagem to ensnare the Sultan, which, intentionally or otherwise, finally led to his death.

Thereupon, Pîr Qulî was charged with collecting the treasure the Sultan kept in Diu, out of which only 200,000 pardaos (weighing c. 700 kg of gold) and a few jewels were officially found. ³⁵ Our well-known Khwâja Shamsu-d-Dîn later on accused Pîr Qulî of having appropriated a large part of that treasure, ³⁶ while others pointed at the governor and his satellites. ³⁷ The reason is that, as people said, the only treasure of ‘Imâdu-l-Mulk Khush Qadam, which Bahâbur had seized amounted to 36 million pardaos, that is, 126,000 kg of gold, not to speak of jewels and precious objects. ³⁸ It was certainly to exculpate Nuno da Cunha of any wrongdoing that the official chronicler João de Barros enumerates the expenditures Bahâdur had had to make in the meantime, which amounted to at least 19 million pardaos.

Some years later, in 1546, we see Pîr Qulî voyaging between Goa and Cannanore, lured by the treasure of Asad Khân, but we do not know exactly the role he played.

Before definitively quitting the scene, Pîr Qulî wrote a short information on Persia in Portuguese, a kind of kitâb al-maçâlik w’al mamâlik, similar to those of the Abbassid period but quite basic. It is kept in a manuscript dated 1548. ³⁹ He probably died soon after.

Finally, let us examine the case of António Fernandes, a Persian merchant, cousin of Khwâja Shamsu-d-Dîn, who converted to Christianity. We do not know his original name. As there were at least four namesakes in Goa in this period, it is difficult to match names and deeds. In the documents he signed, which included two autographed letters and a judicial deposition, he is easily identifiable by his signature, which is quite different from those of his namesakes, but in other instances there can be doubt about his identity. The key to his identification is his deposition in a process on the treasure of Asad Khân, which he dictated and signed in Portuguese, authenticating it with his seal, engraved with Arabic characters. ⁴⁰ Though grammatically correct, the text is full of literal translations and quotations in direct speech, which show that he thought in Persian what he said in Portuguese.

In this deposition, he avowed himself a relative of Shamsu-d-Dîn who acted as his servant for seventeen years. He recounts that before the death of Asad Khân, Martim Afonso de Sousa, who had a shortage of financial means, had sent him to Cannanore to borrow money from his relative. They came to Goa together, but Asad Khân died three or four days after their arrival. He then lodged Shamsu-d-Dîn at home and served him as an interpreter in the affair of Asad Khân’s bequest.

António Fernandes was the brother-in-law of Sebastião Lopes Lobato, a citizen of Goa, who had lived there since 1514, and whom governor Dom João de Castro had appointed ouvidor-geral (the main judge of Portuguese India). Lobato had married António Fernandes’ sister. Anyway, as a reward for the services he had rendered during the siege of Diu in 1546—probably money loans—the governor granted him a ship that had been seized from the enemy, and a license to send it to Hormuz, laden with merchandise. In the following year, together with his brother-in-law, he received the grant of a coconut grove with a thousand trees in the village of Majordá, Salsete, and in 1548 a permit to send a ship to trade in Bengal. In the meantime, he had been appointed knight of the ‘Military Order of the Chivalry of Our Lord Jesus Christ’, a distinction that automatically conferred him access to the ranks of the nobility. His case is not unique: the Order, of which both Prince Henry the Navigator (1395–1460) and King Emmanuel before his accession had been administrators, was very concerned about the Portuguese overseas expansion. The title was often bestowed on local nobles whom the Portuguese authorities wished to reward for their services, such as, Kaichil Labuzaza, the uncle of the Sultan of Tidore in the Moluccas, ⁴¹ and Dom João da Cruz, a Chetti convert who played an important role in South India and brought about the conversion of the Paravas of the Fishery Coast to the Christian faith. ⁴²

This case of the Persian, who had converted to Christianity and been ennobled by the Portuguese, is the exact counterpart of the Portuguese, who had converted to Islam and were appointed Khans by the Nizâm Shâh, such as, Islam Khân and Fîrangî Khân, whom we came across in Ahmadnagar. Though rare, the case of António Fernandes is not unique, for we know of at least three other instances of Catholics of Persian birth. In 1556, the list of students at the Jesuit college of Goa included a certain Dom Antão, who was said to be the ‘son of a nobleman of Persia and relative of the King of Hormuz’; ⁴³ it was for that reason that he affixed the honorific particle dom (from Latin dominus, ‘Lord’), reserved for kings, bishops and noblemen, before his Christian name. Anyway, the presence of Persian pupils in St Paul’s College at Goa—who in 1563 numbered 645—was recorded at least in 1555, ⁴⁴ 1560 ⁴⁵ and 1563; ⁴⁶ in 1560, there were some Khorasânîs, too. Presumably, they were Christians, but we do not know whether they were sons of Persian merchants settled in Portuguese possessions or came from Persia, via Hormuz, expressly to study.

Another case of a Persian convert to Christianity was that of the Augustinian monk Fr Jerónimo dos Anjos, called o Joete, since he was the son of Xeque Joete, that is, Sheikh Jâwed, allegedly the son of Tûrân Shâh V and pretender to the throne of Hormuz. He was baptized in Hormuz in c. 1581 and received the Portuguese captain of the place, Simão de Melo, as his godfather. He entered the Augustinian order in 1601 and made his profession the following year. In 1620, he visited Portugal, where he was ordained priest, and appointed preacher and confessor. Later on, he became superior of the convent of his order in Santhome of Mylapore. He died in Goa in 1638. ⁴⁷

The case of Jesuit Francisco Henriques is slightly different. He was born in Persia in c. 1538, but was kidnapped by the Portuguese of Hormuz, probably during a raid into the mainland; he was educated by the Portuguese, spoke Persian, but could not write. ⁴⁸ He joined the Society of Jesus in Bassein in 1556 and was ordained priest in 1579. He participated in the Jesuit Mission sent to the Mogul court in 1580–81, and was received by Akbar, who was pleased at hearing him speak Persian. ⁴⁹ After spending some time in Fatehpur Sikri, he returned to Goa, where he died in 1597. His case is curious, since by then the Jesuits only accepted Europeans into their ranks, even excluding Portuguese people born in India. In fact, it was impressed upon them that tropical climes made people slothful and unfit for apostolic zeal. During the sixteenth century, the sole exception was in favour of the Japanese, who appeared to be quite talented and earnest, and moreover natives of a cold country. Apparently, the same line of reasoning was applied in his case, if not to Persians in general.

The Case of Gujarat

The case of Gujarat is quite different, since there, as in the Deccan sultanates, the political power was Muslim. Therefore, Iranians not only appeared there as merchants, but also as warriors, civil servants, magistrates and religious teachers. However, in Portuguese sources we seldom find references to Persians, but rather to Khurasânîs. There appears to be a reason for such a contrast with the situation in Bijapur, Ahmadabad and Golconda, where, as we have seen in the first part of this study, Persians clearly predominated. Persians stricto sensu were mostly Shiite, and, therefore, were especially welcomed by Shiite rulers, such as, those of the aforesaid sultanates, whereas Khurasânîs, being predominantly Sunnites, logically preferred Sunnite states, such as, Gujarat and Bengal; moreover, as we shall see later, the ruling house of Gujarat was also of Khurasânî origin, and therefore tended to welcome and even prefer fellow countrymen.

In the Portuguese sixteenth century texts, the name Curaçones is normally used in a loose sense, referring to the inhabitants of Greater Khorasan, which was comprised of what is nowadays the Iranian province of Khorasân, around Nishapur and Mashhad, as well as a part of Afghanistan, with the cities of Balkh and Herat, Tajikistan, and the southernmost fringes of Turkestan, which correspond to the present-day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, with Merv, Bukhara and Samarcand as the main centres. The name, which etymologically means ‘whence the sun comes’, was used since the Sassanian period (224–652 AD) for the north-eastern parts of the Empire, formerly known as Parthia. Originally its population was of Iranian stock, but from the seventh century onwards many Turkish tribes migrated there; some Mongols also settled there after the conquest of the region by Chinghiz Khân or Genghis Khan (1206–27). Hence, the name Moghul or Mogul, was loosely used in India for the people coming from the basins of the Oxus or Amû-Daryâ and of the Iaxartes or Sîr-Daryâ, often irrespective of their ethnic origin, as the Portuguese chronicler João de Barros ⁵⁰ explains quite well. Sometimes, a distinction was made between Moghul Irânî, who spoke Persian or related languages, and Moghul Tûrânî, who spoke Ural–Altaic tongues. The name Tûrânî comes from Tûr, the mythical forefather or early ruler of the people of the countries beyond the Oxus, who were nomadic Iranians. The nomenclature was later used in relation with the names of the Turks; in the nineteenth century, some European linguists used the term in an even looser sense, to designate any Asian people speaking languages, which were neither Semitic nor Indo-European, including Dravidian. Anyway, this name has not been used in Portuguese texts and can therefore be left aside.

The ambiguity of the usual terminology is evident, for example in the treaty signed in 1537 between the Portuguese and Imiza Mamede Zamom, that is, Mirzâ Muhammad al-Zamân, ⁵¹ a Timurid pretender to the throne of Gujarat with whom we shall deal hereinafter, and who was of Mongol descent but has been described as a ‘Mogul, son of Sultan Badî’ Mirzâ al-Zamân, king of the Khorasânîs’.

Portuguese chroniclers that sketch the history of the sultanate—including Barros, who translated and outlined some Persian sources—ascribe the ruling dynasty of Gujarat as of being of ‘Tartarian’ origin. ⁵² In fact Tatar appears in the fifth century AD as the name of confederacy of nomads of Turkish stock, then settled in the north-eastern part of the Gobi desert. Integrated in the hosts of Genghis Khan, with whom they formed the Golden Horde, they invaded South Russia and ran over Hungary between 1237 and 1245; it was seemingly because the fear they inspired that they were named Tartars, by association with the Greek and Latin term Tartarus, the name of the abyss below Hades or hell, where the Titans were confined. Anyway, subsequently, in European languages Tartar, Tartarian, etc., became a generic name for people of Inner Asia, irrespectively of their ethnic kinship. We know by other sources that, in fact, between its independence in 1396 and its annexation by the Mogul Empire in 1572, Gujarat was ruled by a family of Seids (descendants of the Prophet) from Bokhara, in Greater Khorasan. It is interesting to note that among the eleven principal families of Seids of Gujarat mentioned by the Mirat-i Ahmadi, ⁵³ a local chronicle of the eighteenth century, the Bokhârîs, the Mashhadîs and the Termezîs, bear nisbas that denote a Khorasânî origin, while that of the forth, the Shîrâzîs, denotes that they had come from Persia.

Independently of the ethno-linguistic group to which they belonged, virtually all the people of Greater Khorasan used Persian as their cultural and written language. It is interesting to note that it was exactly in Transoxiana that, after a dark phase of two and a half centuries caused by the Arab conquest, Persian began to be used again as a literary language under the Samanid dynasty (874–999), who even ordered the Koran to be translated into Persian.

Transoxiana had from yore a significant merchant tradition, as the main knot between the old Silk Road, coming from China, and the trading routes leading to India and Iran, and through the latter to the Mediterranean basin; an Iranian people, the Sogdians, played an important role in that trade. ⁵⁴ These precedents must be borne in mind to understand the interest of the Khorasânîs, in spite of being inland people, in the commerce of the Indian Ocean, particularly in Gujarati ports.

Though not revealing his name, Portuguese chronicles note the existence of at least one Khorasânî merchant and ship fitter in Gujarat. His brother was secretary to the Sultan, and he used his influence to deliver Diogo Fernandes de Beja, who had been sent in 1521 to obtain the cession of Diu or take hold of it, from the hands of the local governor, Malik Ayâz. He owned several ships and in compensation for his services he asked and obtained from the Portuguese safe-conduct for two of them, that had been fitted in Surat. ⁵⁵ The presence of Khurasânî merchants, also attested by Indo-Persian sources, is partly related with the commerce of Khurasânî fabrics and rugs, some of which were sold locally and others exported to Southeast Asia, mainly to Sumatra and eastern Indonesia, up to the Banda islands. ⁵⁶ Besides cotton, there was also silk fabric, which was quite valuable for trade. The most appreciated fabric was that, that was spun and woven in Astarâbâd and was already being exported to Europe in the Middle Ages and called stravai or stravatine in Italian. ⁵⁷

Other Khorasânîs excelled at scholarship and theology. João de Barros ⁵⁸ reports that at the accession of Humâyûn, Sultan Bahâdur Shâh of Gujarat (r. 1526–36) sent Humâyûn an ambassador who was a Khorasânî ‘very versed in the Law of Muhammad and very acquainted with the style of the Moguls’. He was charged with instructing the Padeshah, on the pretext that in Gujarat there were more contacts with Mecca, and therefore more proximity to the sources of religious knowledge. He was probably Muat’amînu-z-Zamân Khurasânî, who was mentioned in the correspondence between Humâyûn and Bahâdur transcribed in the Mirat-i-Sikandari. ⁵⁹

Portuguese writers note that in Gujarat, as well as in the sultanates of Deccan, the base of the Sultans’ effective power was an army mainly formed by foreign mercenaries, Tartars, Persians, Arabs and Levantines, who were very well paid and therefore joined in large numbers. We know that about 1525, Malik Ayâz, governor of Diu, had at his service 200 Khorasânîs, besides 300 Arabs, 100 Rumes and 120 Fartaques. ⁶⁰ By Rumes (that is, Rûmî, lit. ‘Romans’) the Portuguese meant in general the Ottoman subjects, who were not necessarily Turks, whereas many ethnic Turks were not the subjects of the Ottoman Empire, but rather of the Safavid, Timurid or petty kingdoms on the periphery of their empires; by Fartaques (a name that comes from Cape Fartak, in Arabia) they designated the people of the Mahra or Mehri tribe of Hadramaut, who spoke a South-Arabian language, related with that of Socotra and also to the Semitic languages of Ethiopia. Anyway, in Diu, the Khorasânî, Arab and Mahra mercenaries were among the best remunerated, for they received 40 to 50 feddas of silver a month, which, though being only one half of what the Rûmîs received, was almost twice the salary paid to local and Sindhi soldiers, which did not exceed 25 to 30 feddas.

Both Castanheda ⁶¹ and João de Barros ⁶² mention a certain Khurasân Khân, according to the latter ‘captain of all the Kurasânîs, Moguls and Persians of Gujarat, man of very great authority’, who in 1535 was made prisoner of the Moguls in the war between Humâyûn and Bahâdur Shâh. Barros asserts that, in circumstances rather unclear, he was put to death by the Moguls. Neither Abu-l-Fazl ⁶³ nor Ferishta ⁶⁴ confirm this detail, for they note his defeat at Bayâna without mentioning his execution, while Nizâmuddîn ⁶⁵ simply says that he passed to the side of the enemy. The Humâyûn Nâma ⁶⁶ presents him as vizier of Bahâdur Shâh, but the functions the Portuguese chronicles ascribe him with rather agree with those of a amir-l-umarâ or khân-i-khânân. Hâjji ad-Dabir ⁶⁷ informs that before being titled Khurasân Khân he was called Mirzâ Muqîm, and that he was in the vanguard of Bahâdur’s army; but does not give details about his end. We do not know whether he is the same person as the Khurasân Khân who, according to the Mirat-i-Sikandari, ⁶⁸ distinguished himself under the reign of Bahâdur’s father, Muzaffar Shâh II (r. 1511–26); conversely, he cannot be the same person as the Khurasân Khân who appears later in the feuds between I‘timad Khân and Chenghiz Khân, upon the assassination of the Sultan Ahmad Shâh III (r. 1553–61).

It is in 1537 that, suddenly, Mirzâ Muhammad az-Zamân appears in our records. He was the son of the last Timurid sovereign who reigned at Herat, and the grandson of the well-known Husain-i Baiqara; he was thus a Moghul Tûrânî rather than a true Iranian. In 1507, after one year of reign, his father had been evicted by the Uzbeks, whereupon he took up service with Humâyun, his brother-in-law; but he was involved in a conspiracy against the latter and had to take shelter in Gujarat. This episode originated a war between both kingdoms, where a corps of some 300 Portuguese soldiers participated, fighting for Gujarat under the command of Martim Afonso de Sousa, later on (1542–15) governor of Portuguese India. This is why the Portuguese chroniclers ⁶⁹ dwell a fair bit on these wars, especially João de Barros, who appears to have used a relation written by one of the participants, of which, as we have mentioned in the first part of this study, two manuscript copies subsist.

On the third of Ramadhan 943 A.H. (13 February 1537) Sultan Bahâdur died after drowning in the port of Diu during an interview with Portuguese governor Nuno da Cunha, under pretty suspicious circumstances, which are not discussed here. ⁷⁰ It was thereupon that Muhammad Zamân, claiming to be the adopted son of Bahâdur’s mother and thus the foster brother of the late sultan, and therefore wearing black garments, tried to take hold of the throne of Gujarat. ⁷¹ With this aim, on 27 March 1537 he signed an agreement with the Portuguese, ⁷² promising to cede them the town of Daman and, on the coast of Kathiawar, a strip of land two kos broad (that is to say, with the breadth of one and a quarter league, that is, seven to eight kilometres) between Mangrol and Salbet islands, including Diu. The Portuguese granted him full liberty to import horses and weapons, and allowed all the lashkaris of the Bahâdur to take up service with him, and promised to guarantee that in the all the mosques of the sultanate the khutba should be said in his name. The Portuguese were authorized to mint coins, but only with his sikka. ⁷³

Anyway, the agreement remained ineffectual, since the nobles of the realm, led by ‘Imâdu-l-Mulk, preferred to offer the throne to a nephew of Bahâdur, Mirân Muhammad Shâh Fârûqî, king of Khandesh, and upon his death, which happened only a few weeks later, to his cousin Mahmûd ibn Latîf. Attacked by the nobles of Bahâdur’s court and by ‘Imâdu-l-Mulk, Muhammad az-Zamân was forced to desist. Anyway, his case is interesting, since it shows how a man coming from an inland country could understand the importance of the sea, to the point of seeking an alliance with a power virtually devoid of land forces, but able to support him from the ocean. According to Castanheda, he had even promised to give 50,000 gold pardaos or pagodas, that is, c. 5000 ounces of gold, for the maintenance of the Portuguese fleet. ⁷⁴ It must be noted that such a sensibility was not shared by everybody: in the autobiography of Bâbar, ⁷⁵ the founder of the Mogul Empire (r. 1526–30), in the Humâyûn-Nâma or history of the reign of Humâyûn (1530–56) written by his daughter Gul-Badan Begam, and even in the Memoirs of Jahângîr (r. 1605–27) or Tûzuk-i-Jahângîrî, ⁷⁶ the references to the Portuguese, if any, can be counted on the fingers of a hand, in spite of their omnipresence throughout the Indian Ocean.

We know by a Portuguese document that in 1546 Surat was in the hands of a Khurasânî captain, whose name is not indicated; ⁷⁷ he was apparently defying the Sultan’s authority, with the support of a force formed, quite oddly, by Javanese and Negro slaves furnished by the Portuguese.

Probably there was no link between the attempts of rebellion of this Khurasânî captain and the pretensions of Mirzâ Muhammad az-Zamân. The support given him, perhaps not officially, by the Portuguese is easily understandable if we bear in mind that in this very moment there was war between them and the sultan of Gujarat, who had beleaguered the Portuguese fortress of Diu. We do not know how this captain’s story finished; we only know that a few years later Surat was already under the power of a Rûmî captain, less prone to embark in agreements with the Portuguese. ⁷⁸ Our sources provide an array of elements on him and his family; however, being not Iranian, we shall not insist on his career, limiting ourselves to some brief notes. He was then titled Khudâvand Khân, but his proper name was Rajab, and his former title Rûmî Khân. He was a son of Khwâja Çafar Salmânî, the Coge Sofar of Portuguese chronicles, who had also been titled Khudâvand Khân in 945 AH (1538 AD), at the same moment as his son Muharram was titled Rûmî Khân, Rume Cão in Portuguese texts; ⁷⁹ they commanded the Gujarati forces in the second siege of Diu, in 953 AH (1546 AD), during which both died, wherefore Rajab succeeded them. They were of Albanese breed, born in Otranto, Italia, and came to India with the fleet of Salmân Râ’îs Turkmânî, sent by the Ottoman Sultan to support the last Mameluke Sultan of Egypt, Qansawh al-Ghaurî, against the Portuguese. The Portuguese chronicler Diogo do Couto met once this Khudâvand Khân Rajab, then lord of Surat, who, in his own terms, ‘was blond as a German and still could speak Italian’; they spent a while together, reading poems of Dante, Petrarca and Bembo.

Most of the Indo-Persian chroniclers ⁸⁰ ascribe to this Khudâvand Khân the fortification of Surat, whose date is given by a chronogram attributed to an Iranian, Maulâ Muhammad Astrâbâdî: Sadd bawad bar sinâ ô jân-i Farangî în banâ’i, ‘may this building be an obstacle to the exaltation and fierceness of the Franks’ (that is, the Portuguese). The sentence is quite illustrative of the intentions that lay beneath the construction, but the date, 947 AH, that is, 1540 AD, is not compatible with the governorship of our Khudâvand Khân, for it was only during the minority of Ahmad Shâh II (r. 1553–61) that the partition of the realm among the nobles took place; the region of Broach, Baroda, Surat and Nazarbâr escheated then into the hands of ‘Imâdu-l-Mulk, brother-in-law of our Khudâvand Khân, who imparted him the government of Surat. The fortification of the city is, therefore, certainly due to a former bearer of the title Khudâvand Khân, who cannot be the Habshi namesake who had been vizier of Sultân Muzaffar II (r. 1511–26), as al-Badaoni ⁸¹ states, for this one had been made prisoner by the Moguls in 1535, whereupon he took service with Humâyûn. Thus, the builder was most probably Khudâvand Çafar Salmânî, father of Khudâvand Khân Rajab, who, before being appointed governor of Diu, had received the government of Rander and Surat together with his title, in that very year of 947 A. H.

It was only c. 1560 that our Khodâvand Khân, threatened by Chingîz Khân, lord of Broach and steady foe of the Portuguese, approached the latter: he dressed in their own way and said that one can be saved in the Christian religion as well as in Islam. This gave the Jesuits vain hopes of his next conversion. ⁸² Anyway, he was short after murdered, as we shall see below.

It appears that in Gujarat, as the ruling class was almost exclusively Suniite, the opposition between different ethnic groups within it was not so systematic as in the sultanates of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar. Consequently, though the Habshis appear to be, as elsewhere, stoutly hostile towards the Portuguese, the propensity of Shiites to approach them and to seek their support in internecine struggles cannot be observed here. Ethnic quarrels became sharp only at the twilight of the sultanate as an independent state, that is after the murder of Mahmûd III (r. 1537–53); but even then they reflect a confusing pattern, often bewildering for the historian, the only distinctive feature being the rift between Gujarati and foreign noblemen.

Diogo do Couto ⁸³ mentions, somewhat confusedly, these feuds, which the Portuguese used to obtain the cession of Daman; nevertheless, the Habshi garrison of the place refused to surrender, and the Portuguese viceroy, Dom Constantino de Bragança, had to conquer it in 1559. Fishing in those troubled waters, the Portuguese also tried, but in vain, to take hold of Surat. Apparently the cession of Daman was decided by Madre Maluco (that is, ‘Imâdu-l-Mulk Allân Turkî), the chieftain who ruled the region, in return for a help of 500 men-at-arms. Nevertheless, it was at least tacitly accepted by Itimitecão (I’timad Khân), a Hindu converted to Islam who upon the murder of Mahmûd III had become the éminence grise of the country, assuming the tutorage of the young Ahmad III (r. 1553–61) and the regency in his name. ⁸⁴ With his customary tendency towards the anecdotal, Couto says that he was finally moved by the gift of a rabbit, an animal apparently brought from Europe by the Portuguese, that, unlike the hare, was rare in Gujarat. He also records that two years later I’timad Khân, finding the young sultan insufficiently docile, murdered him and replaced him by Muzaffar III (r. 1561–72). However, de facto, the noblemen had already shared among them the realm ⁸⁵ and were constantly fighting each other, till Akbar, to whom one of the parties had appealed, decided to use such an opportunity to conquer the country (1572).

As always, António Pinto Pereira ⁸⁶ has a deeper insight, and provides some details on the social forces that lay behind the struggle between individuals. He notes, for example that Chinghîz Khân, lord of the region of Broach, who was of Rûmî descent, furthered by the tumultuous Timurid Mirzâs, who were of Mongol origin, recruited an army of gente branca (‘white people’, that is, Iranians, Rûmîs, etc.), with which he discomfited I‘timad Khân and the two Habshi captains who supported him.

The Portuguese chronicler gives these captains the names of Iusarcão and Lurcão; the first name corresponds to Jhujhâr Khân, which agrees with the Mirat-i Sikandari, ⁸⁷ whilst the second may represent Ulugh Khân, captain of 1500 Habshis and patron of the chronicler ‘Abdul-l-Lâh Hâjji ad-Dabir, who consecrates him several pages of his work. Nonetheless, according to the Mirat-i Sikandari the other Habshi captain of I‘timad Khân defeated by Chingîz Khân was Alif Khân; its author even notes that Chinghîz Khân, who hated both, had given the names of Jhujhâr Khân and Alif Khân to his two dogs.

Chingîz Khân is often mentioned in Portuguese chronicles, since, alongside with the Nizâm Shâh, the ‘Âdil Shâh, the Zamorin and some other potentates, backed by the Sublime Porte and by Venice, he had adhered to the Muslim League that had been created after the victory of Talikota (1565) to drive out the Portuguese from the Indian Ocean, as we have seen in the first part of this study. ⁸⁸ In perfect concordance with the Mirat-i Sikandari, ⁸⁹ Pinto Pereira explains that in 1567 Chingîz Khân was planning to murder the two Habshi captains of I‘timad Khân during a polo game; however, they succeeded in being quicker and killed him. Most of his goods escheated then to Actearmaluco, that is, Ikhtiyâru-l-Mulk Gujarâtî or Ikhtiyâru-l-Mulk Sultânî, a local captain faithful to I‘mad Khân.

In this case, consequently, the alignment of forces roughly reproduces that observed in Ahmadnagar and Bijapur: natives and Habshis on one side, the other foreigners or gente branca on the other, the main difference being that the core of the latter group was in Gujarat mainly formed by Turks, rather than Persians. To depict these quarrels in black and white would, however, be an error, since quite often fealties were changing, and the evolving picture therefore tended to become more complex. A good sample for it is given by Couto, who notes that amid the generalized turmoil, the father of Chingîz Khân, the aforesaid Madre Maluco or ‘Imâdu-l-Mulk, a Turk and former mameluke of Mahmûd Shâh III, whose forces were commanded by a Persian, Mustafâ Kermânî (later titled ‘Âdil Khân), had been killed by his brother-in-law, our well-known Khudâvand Khân, also of Turkish stock, who had been instigated to do so by the Portuguese captain Dom Diogo de Noronha. Khudâvand Khân was murdered two years later, on account of his fellow countryman Chingîz Khân, by Rostomocan (that is, Rustam Khân), a Charkis or Circassian, and Bisiliscan (that is, Bijli Khân), a Habshi. Seven years later, Chingîz Khân met with the same fate. ⁹⁰

After the conquest of Gujarat by the Moguls we continue to see important positions in the hands of Khurasânî captains, who often led their own policy, not always coincident with that of the empire. In 1582, Fr Antonio Monserrate ⁹¹ attributed them the hostilities against the Portuguese in Daman, relating their insubordination to Akbar with the uprisings that were taking place at the same time especially in Bengal. Among those who ‘did not obey well’ he quotes Xaebqhan, captain of Ahmadabad, that is, Shihâb Khân, a Seid from Nishapur, ⁹² and Cutubdican (Qutbu-d-Dîn Khân), captain of Broach; ⁹³ the latter, also mentioned by Diogo do Couto, ⁹⁴ was from Ghazni and therefore probably a Pathan. Both are depicted as suspected of wishing to join Amiqhan, described as pretender to the throne of Gujarat. In fact, Amin Khân Ghuri ⁹⁵ was master of the sarkâr of Junâgarh, which the Moguls only could tame in 1590; he was not exactly a pretender to the throne, but rather a supporter of the fugitive Sultan Muzzaffar III, son of Mahmud II, who resisted Akbar until his capture and suicide in 1593. ⁹⁶ The Maâthir-ul-Umara explains the failure of Qutbu-d-Dîn and Shihâb Khân in suppressing the rebellion rather as the result of the deceitfulness of the subjects of the latter and of the negligence of the former, but it cannot be excluded that, as claimed by the Jesuits, ⁹⁷ they to a certain extent connived at the rebellion, which explained why the Padeshâh apparently viewed with a favourable eye that the Portuguese waged a war at them.

To the captains that, more or less on their own, led a hostile policy towards the Portuguese, there should yet be added Caliche Mahamede or Calichecan, that is, Qulij Muhammad Khân Andijânî, ⁹⁸ lord of Surat, whose career is summarized by Couto. ⁹⁹ He says that he was of casta chacuthou, that is, Chaghatai, which is confirmed by Indo-Persian sources; he gives his three brothers the names of Chancalono (?), Mahamed Sultão (Muhammad Sultân) and Jancaliscou (probably a misprint for Jancalis Can, whose equivalence, however, we are unable to guess). He descended from a family of servants to the Timurids, native of Andijân, in Farghâna, and was a liegeman of Akbar and a fervent Sunnite. Perhaps he harassed the Portuguese for religious rather than political reasons; anyhow, the latter, by the agency of the Jesuits who were established at the court of Fatehpur Sikri, tried to obtain from Akbar his revocation. ¹⁰⁰ At any rate, being of Turkish breed, his case is of a lesser interest for our scope.

The Case of Bengal

The information on Bengal provided by the Portuguese sources is much scarcer. The reason is that Bengal, and the coasts of the Bay of Bengal in general, were chiefly frequented by Portuguese interlopers and adventurers, nay pirates, who left no records and whatever we find are only scattered references in the chronicles. There were only sporadic official expeditions, for diplomatic and commercial purposes; quite often, they were sabotaged by the Portuguese merchants already settled in the country, who were always suspicious with regard to the competition of the state with their trades, and therefore normally tried to keep it at bay to preserve their own free space. ¹⁰¹

In his short description of the country, Castanheda ¹⁰² registers the presence of many foreigners, such as, Persians, Khurasânîs, Rûmîs and Habshîs, who had come as merchants before settling as residents. As regards Khurasânîs, his testimony agrees with that of Ibn Battûta, ¹⁰³ who, two centuries earlier, stated that they disliked this shady (muzlima) region, but nonetheless, because of its riches, frequented it, saying: duzakh ast, pur-i ne’mat, ‘it is a hell, but full of delights’. In fact, owing to economic and social conditions that we cannot discuss here, there were numerous merchants, and living costs were amazingly cheap. The Moroccan traveller noted it, proving his statement with a list of prices of different goods; one and a half centuries later, one of the first Portuguese accounts of the country, ¹⁰⁴ which Castanheda ¹⁰⁵ repeats almost verbatim, does the same.

In these conditions commerce throve. One merchandise more appreciated by Persian merchants were the eunuchs, who were employed in the guard of harems and palaces, and also as commercial agents of their masters. Most of them were bought from their parents, but some were kidnapped from Hindu villages, and then castrated and sold in the ports of Bengal, at 20 or 30 pardaos or pagodas each. ¹⁰⁶ In the Portuguese records, references to capados do Bengala, ‘eunuchs from Bengal’ are abundant, and we know that some of them attained important positions abroad, as is the case of a Bengali eunuch who was a kind of prime minister in the Mon kingdom of Pegu.

Many other commodities were available, such as, rice, sugar, candied ginger and unwrought cotton. It appears nonetheless that the main exports of the country were, as in Gujarat, the fabrics. Bengali muslins were sold in Khurasân, Persia, Turkey, etc.; ¹⁰⁷ conversely at the table of the magnates of the country, guests were served dried fruits from Iran as an exquisite delicacy. ¹⁰⁸

We know that among the foreign settlers some played an important role as religious teachers. Some, such as, Shaikh Sharafu-d-Dîn Abû Tawwâma, initiator of the Islamic school of Sunârgâon, ¹⁰⁹ were of Khurasânî origin; but the Portuguese authors, who in general, were not interested in Islam, do not provide details on them, only noting that mullahs were quite influential in the country. ¹¹⁰ Conversely, they dwell on mercenaries, emphasizing the presence of numerous Habshis, which was very visible, since they had recently succeeded in seizing power and keeping it for six years (1486–93), and that of Arabs, who had replaced them on the throne (1493–537). ¹¹¹ Portuguese sources do not record the existence of Khurasânî soldiers, which can be a sign that their migration had already ceased. From the second quarter of the sixteenth century, they increasingly note the presence of Portuguese mercenaries.

It is well known that Bengal had, since ancient times, a strong maritime tradition, and kept many commercial ties with Southeast Asia, especially with the ports of North Sumatra ¹¹² and Malacca. Apparently it acted as a relay in the communications between inland Asia and the Malay world. Probably, most of the Iranian and Khurasânî merchants and soldiers found in Southeast Asian countries, as we shall see hereinafter, came from their motherland to Bengal, and embarked from there to their final destination, though other could have come through Gujarati ports.

Iranians in Southeast Asia

In Southeast Asia, the Iranian presence is chiefly visible in the Islamic states of the Malay world, where they appeared not only as merchants or soldiers, but also as religious and cultural teachers. It is anyway significant that Malay language has adopted Persian words to denote ‘merchant’ as well as ‘soldier’, respectively, saudagar and laskar or lasykar.

In the Buddhist kingdoms of the Indo-Chinese Peninsula there was a certain suspicion towards Muslims, and even when they were accepted as merchants they were not allowed to carry weapons. ¹¹³ In spite of his thoroughness, Tomé Pires ¹¹⁴ only records the presence of an Iranian merchant colony in Siam. This was the embryo of the community which later, under the reign of Narai (1675–88), would become quite important. ¹¹⁵ Nevertheless, we would be inclined to say that at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Persians had already played an important role in the intercourse of Siam with western countries; this would explain why, since the very Diary of the First Voyage of Vasco da Gama (1497–9), ¹¹⁶ the kingdom is quite often called in Portuguese Xarnau or Sornau, an adaptation of a Persian name, two interpretations of which are possible: it transcribes either Shar-i Nâv, ‘city of the ship’ or ‘city of the river’, alluding to the fluvial habitat of a significant part of its population, or Shahr-i now, ‘new city’, denoting its new capital, Ayuthia, built in the middle of the fourteenth century, and thence, by synecdoche, the whole realm. It has also been advanced that it could plainly be a translation of the name of Lopburi, in Pali Navapura, that is, ‘new city’; but this seems less probable, for in certain Portuguese texts, that describe it as ‘the city where the King abides’, it is undoubtedly Ayuthia that is being referred to.

Fernão Mendes Pinto ¹¹⁷ mentions the presence of Khurasânî mercenaries in China and Burma, alongside Gizares from Persia. In fact, though many times subdued by the Persian rulers, the Gizares were not Iranians but Arabs, who lived on the islands of the Shatt-al-‘Arab, the common delta of Tigre and Euphrates. The region is normally called in Portuguese sources Gizaira or Terra Gizera, probably from the Arabic jazâ’ir, ‘islands’, plural of jazîra, ‘island’. Anyway, given the author’s propensity for exaggeration and embellishment of reality, we do not know how much credit must be given to his information. He even pretends to have met a son of Shâh Tahmâsp of Persia (r. 1524–78) ¹¹⁸ in China, what is hardly credible.

At any rate, it is in the Malay world that the Iranian presence is stronger. Directly or through Gujarat, where they embarked for Southeast Asia, the Persians had played an important role in the Islamization of Sumatra and, thereupon, of Java. The first Islamic state of the archipelago was the sultanate of Samudra-Pasai, on the northernmost tip of Sumatra, founded in the last decade of the thirteenth century, and already visited and described by Marco Polo. The fact that Malay Islam has Persian rather than Arabic origins facilitated the commercial intercourse as well as the cultural relations. Modern Malay literature begins precisely with the translation of Persian works, such as, the Hikayat Amir Hamza and the Hikayat Muhammad Hanafiah. ¹¹⁹ It appears that Persian influences prevailed over Arabic till the middle of the seventeenth century. This was mainly due to the action of a man of Arab origin but born in Rander or Raner, in Gujarat, Nuru-d-Dîn ar-Raniri, a fervent Sunnite who tried to lead the Malays towards what he considered to be orthodox Islam, and is considered the father of the Malay juridical and theological literature. ¹²⁰

The Suma Oriental ¹²¹ of Tomé Pires provides us not only with a good picture of the situation in the archipelago during the first quarter of the sixteenth century, but also with an outline of its previous history. Though Pasai retained its role as the main cultural centre of the region for a long time, at least from the mid-fifteenth century its most celebrated mart was Malacca, which enjoyed an enviable position upon the strait thenceforth named after it. The city was founded in 1403 by a Javanese parameswara or ‘principal lord’, who rebelled against his suzerain. It was his son and successor that in 1414, after three years of reign, fastened the ties with Pasai and converted into Islam, taking the name of Iskandar Syâh. ¹²² It goes without saying that the use of the particle syah (shâh) is an evident trace of Persian influence; it continued being used by subsequent rulers, even after Muzzafar Syah (r. 1446–57) changed his title of raja to that of sultan. The conversion of Iskandar Syah allowed him to establish closer relations with the western countries; it was then that, according to Tomé Pires, ‘many rich merchants, Persians, Bengalis and Arabs, left Pasai to settle in Malacca’. With them ‘there came many maulanas and cacizes, ¹²³ scholars of the sect of Mahound’, which naturally accelerated the Islamization of the mob.

Tomé Pires ¹²⁴ also notes that sultan Mansur Syah (r. 1459–77), whose liberal economic policy had attracted many foreign merchants to Malacca, used to take as concubines the most beautiful of the daughters of Persian and Keling (i.e., Tamil) merchants; he converted them to Islam (which among Persians was seldom necessary) and then gave them in marriage to the mandarins of the kingdom. This practice facilitated the cross-breeding of different races and communities as well as the rooting of foreigners in the country, also since in Malacca the adat or customary law, which in many aspects prevailed over sharî‘a, authorized marriages between persons of any religion. ¹²⁵

On the eve of the Portuguese conquest, in 1511, Malacca was frequented by many merchants from the West, such as, Persians, Rûmîs, Turks, Turkomans, Armenians, Georgians, Gujaratis, etc.; and because a direct voyage was often impossible due to the monsoons, they used to gather in the ports of Gujarat, where they formed convoys, which set sail for Malacca in March. On an average four large vessels assembled there every year. Some merchants left resident factors in Malacca. ¹²⁶

When in 1509 the first Portuguese expedition, under the command of Diogo Lopes de Sequeira, reached Malacca they found that the merchants from the negeri atas angin or ‘windward countries’, that is, western regions, were numerous: there were 4000 of them including Gujaratis, Persians, Arabs and Bengalis, with most of them quite rich. Fearing the competition of the Portuguese, they alerted the sultan about the danger, suggesting him to mount an ambush to catch them. They succeeded in winning over the bendahara, a kind of prime minister of the sultanate. According to Castanheda, ¹²⁷ it was a Persian lady, who ran an inn in the city, where a certain Duarte Fernandes was lodged, who in turn was a tailor of Jewish origin and who could speak Persian, who warned him; thus, most of the Portuguese, duly alerted could escape in time.

Besides the merchants, there also were in Malacca Persians who served in the sultan’s army as mercenaries. Possibly, they mainly dwelt in the suburb called Hilir (lit. ‘downstream’), at the south-east of the city, which is often called in Portuguese texts Colascar ¹²⁸ —a name that apparently represents a transcription of the Persian kû lashkar, ‘quarter of the soldiers, military quarter’.

Several Portuguese sources ¹²⁹ record the presence of Khurasânî, Persian, Rûmî, Turkish and Javanese mercenaries in a host of some 20,000 men with which the sultan tried to resist the Portuguese conquest in 1511. The Khurasânîs, Rûmîs and Turks took to the party of the bendahara, who was supported by the Gujarati colony and urged the sultan not to accept the heavy conditions of peace that had been proposed by Afonso de Albuquerque, ¹³⁰ whereas the Chinese and the Tamil residents preferred an agreement and the Javanese kept cautious neutrality. They made, so, a common front with the western merchants, those who had the most to fear from the Portuguese involvement in the trade between Southeast Asia and the ports of the Arabian Sea. After the fall of the city they followed the sultan, who alongside his faithful and some 20,000 refugees took shelter in Pagoh and later on the island of Bintan, where he built a new capital. ¹³¹

While the Persian mercenaries vanished from the city after the Portuguese conquest, the traders continued frequenting the port. Some of them dwelt there permanently. Such is the case of Khwâja Ibrâhîm, who demanded from Afonso de Albuquerque the office of teménggong (chief of the police and prisons), more or less equivalent to that of a kotwal in India. Albuquerque diplomatically declined, knowing that he was related by friendship, and perhaps also by blood, to Utama Diraja, a powerful Javanese suspect of the Portuguese, against whom he indeed plotted a little later ¹³² The office was therefore bestowed upon a Muslim merchant from Luzon, Aregimuteraja (Arya...Diraja?), who became the head of all the Islamic communities of Malacca, including the small Persian colony.

We have, however, the impression that the Persian presence in Malacca gradually faded during the sixteenth century. The reason was probably the policy of monopoly of the spice trade put in practice by the Portuguese. Indeed, the regimento (rules) for the Malacca custom house, promulgated in 1543, ¹³³ forbade the captains of the place to deny safe-conducts to the merchants who intended to navigate to Bengal, Pegu, China, etc., with the exception of Turkish, Persians, Jews and Greek Christians, who were a priori suspected of intending to convey spices to the Levant. On the other hand, in Malacca the Portuguese especially favoured the Hindu merchants from the Coromandel, who were often associated with the commercial ventures of the Crown. Probably the Persians began to prefer other ports. At least we know that some of them had settled in Banten, the main port of Sunda, in West Java, for in 1616 an engraving of a Dutch travelogue to the East Indies, printed at Oppenheim by Théodore de Bry, represents, among the three most significant types of this city, ‘a Persian merchant from Khorassan, a jeweler who knows well the gemstones’. ¹³⁴

It is, nonetheless, convenient to remember that most of the Iranian merchants found in Sumatra and Java had not come through Malacca; on the contrary, in many ports their presence is attested long before its foundation. Such is particularly the case of Barus or Panchur (for the Arab geographers, Fançûr) on the western coast of Sumatra, the main centre of commerce of camphor and benzoin; the place was frequented by Iranians probably since the ninth century, as evidenced by many archaeological findings. ¹³⁵ In subsequent times, Barus lost much of its importance, partly because Sumatra camphor, found in the trunks of Dryobalanops aromatica, Gaertner f., Dipterocarpaceae, began to lose competition and therefore the market to Chinese camphor, extracted by distillation from the Cinnamomum camphora (L.), J. Presl., Lauraceae, which was cheaper. However, about 1515 Tomé Pires ¹³⁶ testifies that Persians, as well as Gujaratis, Arabs, Kelings and Bengalis, continued to anchor there. They certainly went there to lade camphor, benzoin and other local products, rather than merely being on a relay journey to Java ports, since the old trade route along the Sumatra West coast and then through the Sunda straits had been abandoned, owing to the development of Malacca, which had attracted all the traffic on the opposite side of the island. However, we ignore whether besides the passing traders there continued to exist a resident Iranian colony.

Pasai also suffered severely from the competition of Malacca, but there the Portuguese geographer clear attests the survival of a permanent Persian trading community, besides small Arab, Turk, Rûmî, Gujarati, Keling, Malay, Javanese and Siamese colonies.

In Java, Persians had played an important role in the Islamization of the Pasisir, ¹³⁷ or northern littoral, where since the fifteenth century a heterogeneous bourgeoisie had appropriated economic and thereupon political power. Tomé Pires ¹³⁸ expressively depicts this process of diffusion of Islam, which is quite different from that observed in North India:

At the time when there were heathens [i.e., Hindus] along the sea coast of Java, many merchants used to come, Persians, Arabs, Gujaratis, Bengalis, Malays and other nationalities, there being many Moors among them. They began to trade in the country and to grow rich. They succeeded in the way of making mosques, and moolahs came from outside, so that they came in such growing numbers that the sons of these said Moors were already Javanese and rich, for they had been in these parts for about seventy years. In some places the heathen Javanese lords themselves turned Mohammedan, and these moolahs and the merchant Moors took possession of these places. Others had a way of fortifying the places where they lived, and the Moors took people of their own who sailed in their junks and killed the Javanese lords, and made themselves lords; and in this way they made themselves masters of the sea coast and took over trade and power in Java.

These lords or patihs are not Javanese of long standing in the country, but they are descended from Chinese, from Persians and from Kelings, and from the nations we have already mentioned. However, brought up among the bragging Javanese, and still more on account of the riches they have inherited from their antecessors, these men made themselves more important in Javanese nobility and state than those of the hinterland; and each of them is reverenced in his land as though he were something much greater.

Beyond Java, the presence of Persian merchants in old days remains doubtful. Indeed, the cloves from the Moluccas were known and appreciated in the West since the Roman period, and the maces and nutmegs from Banda islands had been in favour since the Abbassid period; it appears, nevertheless, that they were chiefly commercialized in Java, where Western merchants bought them. This is apparently the reason why most of the Arab geographers of the Middle Ages suppose that these spices were grown in Java and, more often than not, ignore the islands that lie east of Java. Some, such as, Ibn Khurradâdhbih (820–826 and 885–912), loosely mention the existence of more islands, but without giving names. Even Ibn Battûta (1304–77) appears to think—like Marco Polo—that cloves were grown in Java. The first known writer to mention, still confusedly, the islands of Banda is Niccolo de’ Conti (c. 1419–44); in the Arab geographic literature the name of the Moluccas (Maluku) only appears, c. 1488, in the Rutter of Malacca of Ibn Mâjid, and that of Banda in 1511, in the work of Sulaymân bin-Ahmad al-Mahrî. It appears therefore that prior to the fifteenth century Persian and Arab sailors had not yet frequented the islands of Eastern Indonesia. ¹³⁹

There were, however, Persian pilots well acquainted with the sea road between Malacca and the Moluccas: in 1511 a Persian nâkhodâ, Khwâja Ismâ‘îl Kermânî, who worked for the rich Hindu merchant of Malacca Naina Chatu, ¹⁴⁰ led to the Banda islands and the Moluccas a ship that had been fitted out in partnership between the latter and Rui de Araújo, the first Portuguese factor of Malacca. Due to the wind regime, it was quite difficult to visit both archipelagos in a single voyage; the fact that he succeeded in doing so and reached Ternate, in the heart of the Moluccas—whereas the Portuguese fleet of António de Abreu, who departed a few days later, failed and could not go beyond Banda and Ambon—apparently shows that he knew the route well. ¹⁴¹

It is interesting to note, with Tomé Pires, ¹⁴² that Persia was probably the largest consumer of cloves in the world; accordingly, in 1537 Andrés de Urdanieta, a Spaniard who reached the Moluccas with the fleet of Magellan, in a report to the Emperor, Charles V, reckoned that about one half of the cloves produced in the archipelago reached Hormuz, at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, whence it was distributed throughout Iran and adjacent countries. ¹⁴³ This renders it probable that other Persian merchants, besides the aforesaid Khwâja Ismâ‘îl, used to frequent the Moluccas, though certainly most of them contented themselves with purchasing cloves, mace and nutmeg at Malacca.

At any rate, nowhere do we meet with references to Iranians permanently settled in the country.

The Persians in East Africa

In East Africa, the Persian presence was apparently in decline when the Portuguese entered the scene, but few records of those times are extant. João de Barros is, once more, the author who makes the most detailed account, based on a chronicle of the kingdom of Kilwa, written in Arabic but now lost, which he summarized. ¹⁴⁴ He notes the founding of Mogadishu and Brava by Zaidis, a branch of Shiites nowadays prevailing in Yemen; nonetheless, they rather came from Laça (that is, al-Hasâ, on the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf), fleeing religious persecution. He also records the foundation of Kilwa, around the year 400 of the Hegira, by a certain ‘Alî, son of a certain Sultân Husain who ruled in Shiraz. Because of religious dissensions, the Zaidi meanwhile departed to the mainland, becoming Bedouin. Later on, Kilwa came to impose its suzerainty over coastal cities, ensuring the lion’s share of the trade in gold, ivory and slaves that Africa exported to Asia. From these port cities, Muslims were able to expand their mercantile network southwards, up to Mozambique and Sofala, and even to enter the hinterland by the Zambezi Valley and take hold of the gold trade of Monomotapa or Zimbabwe. They also settled in the Comores Archipelago and in some ports of northern Madagascar.

However, presumably for technical difficulties, their sailing southward never went farther than the Cape Correntes, some 70 miles beyond Sofala, just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. This information already appears in a description of the East coast of Africa, written around 1518. Other available sources, including archaeology, confirm Barros, especially about the Persian origin of part of the population of the sultanates of the Swahili coast and about the relationship between their migration and the hostility of the Abbasids against the Qarmats. ¹⁴⁵

However, when the Portuguese arrived in the area, although Persian merchants had continued to frequent the ports, what remained was just a memory of the Persian culture because different communities had already merged, under the umbrella of a rather Arab culture. About 1515 Duarte Barbosa ¹⁴⁶ remarks that in the cities of the East African coast—even in Kilwa, where the Shirâzî dynasty remained in power—people only spoke Arabic and the local tongue (probably Swahili). Apparently, Arabic was used as a religious and cultural language while Swahili was only employed for oral use, mainly as a vehicular language for commerce. Insofar as we know the earliest texts written in Swahili date from 1711 and are kept in the archives of Goa.

In the last years of the sixteenth century, another author, the Black Friar João dos Santos, ¹⁴⁷ still notes the prevalence of Shiites among local Muslims, ‘who followed the interpretation of Mohammedan law by Ali, which deviates very much from the sect of Turks, who follow Omar’ and look upon them as heretics. By ‘Omar’s interpretation of Mohammedan law’, as the author explains, the hanefite madhhab is meant.

Besides the presence of Persian merchants in the ports of East Africa and Madagascar, there were also Persian mercenaries in the hosts of certain Muslim chieftains; at least a Portuguese source, the chronicle of Gaspar Correia, ¹⁴⁸ notes that there were about 600 Arab and Persian men-of-war in the troops of the imam Ahmad bin Ibrâhîm al-Ghâzî, styled Grañ, ‘the left-hander’, ¹⁴⁹ who in 1526, at the head of a horde of some 3000 Somalis, invaded Ethiopia, which only could resist the invasion with the support of a Portuguese force.

Persian Culture around the Indian Ocean

Since the conquest of northern India by the Turkish–Afghan hordes of Muhammad Ghûrî at the end of the twelfth century, the Persian language and culture, played a capital role in Hindustan and tended therefore to spread around the ocean whose centre is occupied by India. The prestige of Persia in the eyes of Portuguese authors most probably came both from the idealized image of the ancient Persian Empire in the Greek and Latin letters and from the awareness of its dominant position.

Tomé Pires ¹⁵⁰ compares the role played in Asia by the Persian court to that of Paris in Europe:

The people of Tabriz and Shiraz are like those of Paris, France: they are domestic, handsome men and courtiers; but above all the women of Shiraz are praised for their beauty, their fairness of skin, their discretion and the neatness of their dress, so that the Moors say that Mohammed would never go to the province of Shiraz lest he should like it so much that he would never go to Paradise when he died. (…) The Persians are horsemen, with arms of every kind beautifully adorned, and with swords of good workmanship. They are men of our colour, form and feature. There is no doubt that those who wear the red cap are more like Portuguese than like people from anywhere else.

And João de Barros, ¹⁵¹ explains, in fairly expressive words, that most of the nobility titles used in India were of Persian origin:

The Persians, as the most politic of all the Eastern peoples (with the sole exception of those of China), imparted to the Moors their neighbours several honour denotations …

We must however note that the Portuguese arrived in India when the ideas and tastes of the Renaissance were just beginning to enter their country. Thus, even the most educated people who came to India were members of the gentry or of the middle nobility, whose education was rather courteous and oral; in general, they lacked literary education and were not very interested in letters and philosophy, limiting their observations to geography, ethnography, commerce, plants and animals, in short, to visible things. If several Portuguese quickly learned to speak Persian, and some even to read and write it, we find no instances of people interested in Persian culture in literature. The only exception is the chronicler and humanist João de Barros, who, as we have already seen, translated and summarized some Persian chronicles; however, the full text of his translations, as well as the manuscripts he used, did not reach us, only the summaries included in his chronicle survive.

In the second half of the sixteenth century, the Jesuits began to take an interest in Hinduism, even if only to refute it, and translated some Hindu texts, starting with the XIIIth song of the Bhagavadgitâ, translated into Portuguese c. 1560. ¹⁵² However, insofar as we know, they did not translate any Persian text into Portuguese or Latin. They have only bequeathed us a trilingual vocabulary of Portuguese, Hindustani and Persian, and a basic Persian grammar written in Latin, Rudimenta Linguæ Persicae, which are kept at the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Its author was, most likely, Fr Jerome Xavier, nephew of St Francis Xavier. ¹⁵³

Nevertheless, there are several indirect testimonies of the diffusion of Persian language and culture. One of the most curious is that of António Pinto Pereira, ¹⁵⁴ who narrates that during the siege of Chaul in 1571, the Portuguese succeeded in ousting the men of the Nizâm Shâh from several houses that they had occupied near the Portuguese fortress. They found there

…many weapons, ammunitions, bombs, pots of gunpowder, an artillery piece in bronze, clothings, house ware and books of entertainment written in Persian, and other signs of politeness, whereby it was known that the people who had been driven from there were clean persons and of price.

The cultural influence of Persia stretched beyond the limits of Muslim India. It was noteworthy, for instance in the Hindu Kingdom of Vijayanagar, whose sovereigns bore the title of ‘Sultan among Hindu kings’. ¹⁵⁵ In their court people dressed in Persian style, and the civil art, though not the religious one, followed the Indo-Persian canons, as the first Portuguese visitors who left us a travelogue, Domingos Páez and Fernão Núnez, ¹⁵⁶ did not fail to note.

Thanks to the cultural hegemony of the sultanate of Delhi, Persian spread as a diplomatic and vehicular language throughout India and Southeast Asia, to such an extent that the Portuguese humanist and chronicler Damião de Goes ¹⁵⁷ (1502–74) appears to think that along the Indian Ocean shores only two languages, Arabian and Persian, were used:

In all those regions, although they be vast, from the Arabian Gulf [i.e., Red Sea] to the Gangetic Gulf [i. e., Bay of Bengal], there are only two idioms, namely Arabian and Persian; if one knows them well, can easily travel throughout all those provinces.

From the first decade of the sixteenth century onwards we find many cases of Portuguese men who learnt Persian and acted as interpreters to the Portuguese authorities. ¹⁵⁸ Jews and New Christians (converted Jews) appear to have been the most skilful. We have already come across the new Christian Duarte Fernandes, who in 1509 alerted Diogo Lopes de Sequeira about the snare that was being mounted against his men. Another converted Jew, Alexandre de Ataíde, formerly called Joseph, served Afonso de Albuquerque as interpreter for Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Gujarati and Canarese. Some thirty years later it was again a Jew, Khwâja Abraham, who acted as dragoman or official interpreter of the Estado da Índia for the Persian language. It was apparently he who signed the treaty of 1546 with the ‘Âdil Shâh of Bijapur about Miyã ‘Ali Khân; ¹⁵⁹ he reappears in 1561 in Daman, besides Diogo Pereira, serving as interpreters in the interview of their friend Khudâvand Khân, governor of Surat, with the Jesuit Fr Marcos Prancudo, who, knowing that his parents were Christians, wanted to convert him to Christianity; ¹⁶⁰ in 1575 he accompanied till Portugal the ambassador of the ‘Âdil Shâh, Zâhir Beg, who was received at Sintra by the Portuguese King, Dom Sebastião; ¹⁶¹ a little later, sent by the Portuguese viceroy, he wandered in Deccan, trying to establish a general alliance to save the sultanate of Ahmadnagar from the Moguls; and in 1582 he signed with the ambassadors of the ‘Âdil Shâh, Abdul Melique (‘Abdu-l-Malik) and Coge Fartadim (Khwâja Farhadu-d-Dîn), a treaty of peace and friendship between Bijapur and the Portuguese. ¹⁶²

Other Portuguese used their knowledge of Persian for less noble purposes: Castanheda ¹⁶³ mentions a certain António Faleiro, às vezes chatim e outras lascarim, that is, ‘sometimes merchant, sometimes mercenary’, who spoke Arabic, Persian and other languages and used this knowledge to cheat two Persian merchants who had sailed, with Portuguese safe-conducts, from Diu to Hormuz with a cargo of cotton fabrics worth 6000 pardaos or pagodas, and took hold of the consignment.

During 1521–22, it was to an anonymous interpreter of Persian and Arabic that we owe the relation of the first Portuguese embassy to Bengal; ¹⁶⁴ in Pegu, which the expedition visited after that, his talents were not so useful, but even there he found some people speaking Persian and Arabic with whom he could communicate. Other interpreters for Persian language were Simão Ferreira, who stepped in the treaty of 1571 with Bijapur, ¹⁶⁵ Baltasar Pacheco, who took part in those of 1575, 1576 and 1582 ¹⁶⁶ , not to speak of Khwâja Pîr Qulî, with whom we have dealt above.

Persian was also used as a diplomatic language in the Burmese kingdom of Arakan, contiguous with Bengal. The letter of 1518 of King Minyaza (r. 1501–23) to the Portuguese sovereign, ¹⁶⁷ though only preserved in the Portuguese version, appears, from its style, to have originally been written in Persian. Later on, the Arakan monarchs adopted a Muslim name, for external use, besides their normal Burmese name reserved for internal use; and minted coins with inscriptions in Persian. This practice reveals a desire for integration with the commercial world of the Indian Ocean, where Persian culture prevailed. ¹⁶⁸

The Jesuits also used Persian in their efforts to root Catholicism in the Mogul court and, if possible, to convert the Padeshâh. At first, as we have seen, they used the services of Fr Francisco Henriques, who was of Persian origin; then they began to study the language, which some of them, such as, Fr Rodolfo Acquaviva, learnt quite quickly. ¹⁶⁹ As we have also seen, at the Jesuit college they were motivated to cultivate the language, ¹⁷⁰ and in 1579 the Mogul ambassador who had gone to Goa was quite surprised to be received in the college with dances and songs in Persian. ¹⁷¹ In 1582, Father Rodolfo Acquaviva ¹⁷² even proposed the creation of a seminary of Persian language for Muslim students and another of Hindustani language (which probably means Hindi) for the Hindus to the provincial Jesuits in Goa but the suggestion was not put into practice.

Conclusion

Although the Portuguese sources do not provide us with substantially new information on the Persian presence around the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth century, they complete the Indo-Muslim chronicles, adding either chronological precisions or new data on some characters and events, which are poorly documented in local sources. Without the help of Persian sources they are, however, often difficult to interpret correctly. A more systematic perusal of these, which is beyond our endeavours, would certainly clarify several points that we had to leave out.

In the seventeenth century, we begin to dispose of Dutch and English sources, richer and more systematic than the Portuguese, but it is quite possible that the Portuguese records, which are still almost entirely unedited, afford us some pleasant surprises. We hope that the elements we have collected here can serve as a starting point for those who want to push forward their research, either gleaning more facts or venturing into the field of the interpretations that we dared not enter.