Page 57 - Journal of Asian History_Neat

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to the Red Sea.57 'Hie Portuguese under D. Luis dc Almeida failed in
their pursuit of the Ottomans hut turned now to attack on the nau-
laques'* who, by reason of their piracy, had been the cause of much
damage and destruction. D. Luis destroyed some towns and burned
many terrada-s on the co-sla dos A aut<iqu&s."

CONCLUSION

When the Ottoman Turks arrived at the head of the Persian Gulf
they found the Portuguese well established at Hormuz, the key point
and the centre of seaborne traffic from India. Their naval campaigns
directed against this point and also against Bahrayn were unsuccessful
-the Portuguese seamanship was superior to Turkish. But the districts
of Basra and Lahsa did come to direct Ottoman control. Thus they
controlled the overland traffic to and from Aleppo, and encouraged the
flow of trade via the Persian Gulf. It would be superfluous to adduce
here evidence to demonstrate the revival of spice trade during the
middle decades of the sixteenth century.100 But it should be noted, as
clearly shown by Professor Magalhaes-Godinho,101 that the commerce
through the Gulf, unlike that in the Red Sea, was not very much
affected either by the Portuguese intervention or by the local piracy
during the sixteenth century. Towards the end of the century it was
more flourishing. This was not without some degree of influence on the
Turkish authorities in the beylerbeylifc of Basra.

•7 Couto, Dec. X, Liv. I, pp. 86£f.
•* Of the Naulaques it is written in the Suma Oriental of Toml Pires, (London,
Hakluyt Society, 1944), I, p. 31 that “Most of them are Pirates and go in light
boats. They are archers, and as many as two hundred put to sea and rob . . .
sometimes they get aa far as Ormuz and enter the Btraits in their marauding, r
that i3 what they live on.“ P. Toixeira (The Travels of Pedro Teixeira, ed. W. F.
Sinclair, London, Hakluyt Society, 1902, p. 21) calls them Arabs who dwell on
the Persian shore. M. L. Dames (ed.), The Book of Duarte Barbosa, (London,
Hakluyt Society, 1918), I, p. 87 states that they were Balochi. On the Baluchis
boo The Cambridge History of Iran, I, (ed. W. B. Fisher), (Cambridge, 1968), p.
1414.
•• Couto, Dec. X, Liv. I, p. 99.
I#t See, for example, F. Braudel. La Miditerranle el le Monde Mlditerranten
d l%£poque de Philippe II (revised and enlarged edition, Paris, 1966), I,
pp. 493ff;
C. R. Boxer, “A Note on Portuguese Reactions . . pp. 415-428.
m L'Economic de VEmpire Poriugais . . ., pp. 764ff.

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