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xc INTRODUCTION.
INTRODUCTION. XCl
the publication of his works, consisting then of the
Chronicle of the Kings of Hormuz and the History of
III. the Kings of Persia to the time of the Arab invasion.
He accordingly obtained the necessary licence from the
TEIXEIRA’S BOOK.
authorities for this purpose; but then, as he tells us
in his Preface, yielding to the pressure of friends,
We have seen above that Teixeira, while residing in he transmuted his Kings of Persia from Portuguese
Hormuz, spent a considerable part of his time in the into Spanish,1 and added to it a second book in the same
acquisition of the Persian language, and in the translation language, bringing the history down to April, 1609.2 To
of the Chronicle of the Kings of Hormuz by Turin Shah1 this he appended his Kings of Hormuz,3 and, finally, an
and (in a very summarized form) of a portion of the account of his journeys, of which a summary has been
voluminous History of Persia by Mir Khwind.2 When given above.
he returned to Portugal in 1601, our traveller must have In 1610, Teixeira’s work was published, in the form of
brought these translations with him ; but worries in con a small octavo volume, with the following title-page :—
nection with business affairs, necessitating his return to “ Rclaciones de Pedro Teixeira d’el Origen Descendcncia
India, prevented him from giving the world the benefit of y Svccession de los Reyes de Persia, y de Harmuz,
his labours until several years later. But when he had y de vn Viage hccho por el mismo Avtor dende la India
settled down in the (then) Spanish city of Antwerp (some Oriental hasta Italia por tierra. En Amberes En casa de
time between 1605 and 1609), he turned his thoughts to Hieronymo Verdussen.4 M. DC. x. Con Priuilegio.” After
the title comes a six-page explanatory note, “ Al Lector.”
Then follow the two books of the Rclcicion de los Reyes de
1 As no copy of this work is known to be now in existence, it seems
probable that Teixeira had access to a unique manuscript preserved Persia (pp. 1-376), and a Breve Rclacion de los Provincias
among the royal archives in the palace at Tiirrinbrfgh : the same mas notables y qvc mas han dvrado en cl sennoria de la
document, no doubt, from which the Dominican monk, Gaspar da Cruz,
made his brief abstract a quarter of a century earlier. This precious
manuscript evidently perished in the shameful sack of Honnuz after
its capture by the combined Persian and English force in 1622. I have used the word “ transmuted,” because Teixeira’s Spanish
In one of his letters to me, Mr. Sinclair writes :—“ Considering the contains a number of Portuguese words. To some of these Mr.
absolute sack of Ormuz only a few years after Teixeira wrote, it is Sinclair refers in his footnotes ; and others he has noted on the
not likely that many MSS. survived of the king's library. He had margins of his copy of the Rclaciones. Instances of these in the
to leave his palace and take refuge in the fort, and probably saved Viage are charneca—in Port, “a dry waste,” but in Span. 14a pistachio
few books. There is an odd little passage in Pietro Della Valle's tree”; abobada-in Port, “vault”; vedar— in Port, “to pay” (with
xviith letter from Persia, dated ‘ Gombru,' 29th Nov., 1622, where he pitch); carranca=in Port, “cloudiness”; negassa (for ncgaca) = in
mentions that books plundered from Ormuz were sold about Persia Port. “ decoy.”
with other ‘loot' by the returning Persian soldiery, from whom a
captive Georgian queen bought a Latin breviary and a Portuguese 2 This date is prefixed to the name of Shdh Abbas at the end of the
‘confessionary,’ and gave them to Pietro. If the MS. escaped in this list of the kings of Persia.
way it may yet be in Shiraz or thereabouts, but I think the odds are i 3 Which, apparently (though Teixeira does not say so), was also
against it.” turned from Portuguese into Spanish.
2 The manuscript of this work, Teixeira says, he purchased. Had 1 Regarding whom, and other members of this famous family of
he been able to buy a copy of the Hormuz Chronicle, it would probably Antwerp booksellers, see F. OlthofTs De Boekdrukkcrs . . . in
now be in one of the libraries of Europe. Antwerpen (Antw., iSyi), pp. 102-107.
