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SALill OZBARAX
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placed the reservation that such vessels and merchants should not sail
through the ‘cstroito do incqua’, i.c., into the Red Sea, and not to
Sofala and the adjacent shore of East Africa. There was also a clause
limiting the use and practice of arms among the Mourox of Hormuz,
the Muslim population resident there.0
Tho Portuguese, in the years which followed these events, did not
find it difficult to maintain control over Hormuz. In 1526 a movement >
of resistance against them, embracing Kalhat and Hormuz itself, was
suppressed without much, trouble. The revolt had arisen from the
exactions of Diogo de Mello, then governor of the Portuguese fortress
.VI
at Hormuz. Three years later, in 1629, the Portuguese imprisoned the
guazil of Hormuz, the Rft’is Sharaf al-Din, who had been manipulating 3
the young prince of Hormuz, Muhammad Shah, to his own ends and

in a manner hostile to tho interests of Portugal.10 £
It was in 1529 that the Portuguese intervened for the first time, in IS
•X
the affairs of Basra. A certain Rashid ibn Megamis was in control of
Basra under a loose dependence of the Shah of Persia. Against him
stood “el Rey de Gizaira,”11 the Arab chieftain who dominated the 1
region of Jezayir. This chieftain had demanded tribute from Basra. %
Rashid rejected this demand and appealed for aid to the Portuguese %
at Hormuz. Christavao de Mendoza, the governor of Hormuz, sent i*
Belchior do Sousa Tavares to Basra with two brigantines (barganlijs)
v
and a force of forty soldiers (homens de peleja).12 Belchior de Sousa :•
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brought to an end the hostilities between Basra and the Jezayir. The
Arabs from Jezayir surrendered to Basra two forts which had fallen
to them earlier and also undertook to give an annual tribute to Basra.
The Portuguese asked Rashid to hand over to them seven fustalz then -
-

• Botelho, op.cit., pp. 79ff.
10 R. S. Whiteway, The Rise of the Portuguese Power in India, (London, 1967), -i‘
pp. 222-223. /
11 The term Gizaira and also Gizares derive perhaps from tho term Jezayir,
tho name applied hero to the area around Kuma whore the river Tigris and *5
Euphrates flow together. j
li ** L
. . . chogou de Bas<?ora Belchior de Sousa Tavarez, quo o capitao Chriato-
*
vao de Mendo<?a tinha la mandado com dous bargantijs, e queranta homens do
peleja a requeriraento de AJi Mogamex Rey dAquella cidade, para o ajudar a
j
defender d'El Rey de Gizaira seu vizinho .. .** (Barroe, Dec. IV, Liv. Ill, p. 331)
11 Fustor-i.o., a type of oared ship, small and light (cf. H. Leit&o o J. V. Lo­ 1
pes, Diciondrio da Linguagem de Marinha Antiga e Actual, (Lisboa, 1963), p.*217
On other uses of the word fusta see Kahane and Tiotze, The Lingula Franca in the
J
Levant, (Urbana, 1958), p. 235.
$
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