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Persians were foiled in their efforts to take Basra in-
1624-1625, although otherwise the place would have
11 i fallen into their hands like a rotten apple after the
capture of Baghdad from the Turks. Indeed so
paralysing was the effect of the pressure exercised by
Ruy Freyre on coast-wise commerce in the Gulf, that
APPENDIX.
the Persians, despairing of effective aid from their
European friends, were compelled to give the Portu
guese a settlement at Kung, on the same terms as they The following brief descriptions of some Portuguese factories or
agencies in the Gulf during the period under review, are based on
had granted their victorious English allies a factory at
the accounts of them contained in Antonio Bocarro’s Livro do Estado
Gombrun eight years earlier. All this was due to the
da India Orimtaly written at Goa during the year 1634.
cardinal error of their not following up the capture Only a few of the more obscure places have been selected, as
of Ormuz in 1622 by an immediate attack on Muscat, voluminous accounts of the more celebrated ones, such as Ormuz,
which would then have fallen in all probability. As Muscat and Gombrun, are readily available in print in the works of
\t Linschoten, Pedro Teixeira, Pietro della Valle, Olearius and other
it was, Ruy Freyre made such use of the breathing
travellers, too numerous to mention here.
space afforded, that he was able to carry the war into
the enemy’s camp with a vengeance. A brave man
BASRA (Bassora).
■I struggling with adversity is always an exhilarating
Although the Portuguese frequented this place to some extent
sight, but Ruy Freyre and Nuno Alvarez Botelho were
during the sixteenth century, they did not resort there in large
more than that. They were bonny fighters worthy of numbers until after the fall of Ormuz, when Ruy Freyre tried to
any man’s steel; and it was indeed fortunate for ’ make it the chief entrep6t for the Gulf, as a counterpoise to Gombrun.
England that she was represented in the Gulf at this Basra was at this time governed by a Pasha who owed a nominal
allegiance to the Turkish government, but who was to all intents
time by men of the stamp of John Weddell and Edward '
and purposes independent. After the capture of Baghdad, the
.Monnox, who well and truly laid the foundations of
Pasha was hard pressed by the Persians, but this pressure was relieved
that supremacy which has lasted down to the present by the despatch of Dorn Gonsalo da Silyeira’s galliots in 1624, which
day. effectually checked the Persian invasion, as narrated in the text.
Navigation from Muscat to Basra was carried out in all seasons of
the year by coasting along the Persian littoral and making use of the
prevailing winds. The city was well fortified, and Bocarro estimates
the total population at some 15,000, in addition to the large Beduin
encampments in the neighbourhood. The Portuguese cajila or
convoy of merchant ships, that went from Muscat to Basra each
year, was usually escorted by only one man-of-war, as the English
and Dutch vessels did not come higher up the Gulf than Gombrun,
whilst the Portuguese galliots were considered to be more than a
match for such Nakhilu (Niquilla) pirates as might venture to attack
them. For their commercial voyages in the Gulf, the Portuguese
used chiefly small craft such as fustas or foists, terradasy Urranquins,
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