Page 63 - History of Portuguese in the Gulf_Neat

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160 APPENDIX A.
Masaud, having slain his brother, possessed himself of the
realm.1 He was warlike and bold, but so cruel and ill-conditioned
that he presently found himself abhorred of all men, in fear of
whose hatred he slew many, both gentle and simple; and the
most and the best betook themselves to Amir Bahadin Ayaz Sey-
fin. This man had been a slave of the late King Nocerat, who
had such trust in him as to make him wazir of Kalayat, the
Arabian port mentioned above. He now, feeling for the troubles
and miseries of Harmuz, raised a force, with which he passed the
Persian Gulf, attacked Amir Masaud, and beat him in fight.
Masaud fled to Kcrmon, and thence to Syrion,2 where he died
many years afterwards, having reigned but three.
Mir Bahadin Ayaz Seyfin, the former slave of Mir Seyfadin
Nocerat, having beaten Masaud, possessed the kingdom, and
proceeded to reduce it to order, but not without further opposi­
tion. For two brothers of the exiled Masaud, Mir Turkon X;i and
Mir Saliuk, corresponded with him, plotting his restoration. Ayaz
heard of this, seized and beheaded them, after which he had a
little more peace.3 But in the year 700 of the Moors, which fell
in 1302 A.D., there came out of Turkeslam great hordes of'Turks,
daughter or step-daughter of her name, but it is quite as likely that
there is some mistake, and that the mother is the lady meant here.
“ Masaud,” in modern scientific transliteration, is MasAud, a trisyllable. pursued the warships of the King of Islam, which had approached
!• 1 Yule thinks that it was on his return journey (probably in 1492;
that Marco Polo visited Hormuz ; and that therefore by “ Ruomedan
Ahomet,” the name he gives to the then reigning sovereign, is meant
Masaud,and not Ruknuddln Mahmud, as might be easily inferred. It
is quite possible that Masaud had several names in addition to the
*i single one that Teixeira records, and that it was by these that he was
IP known to Marco Polo.—D. F.
2 This stands for SirjAn, an alternative name of KermAn, the capital
of the province (see Yule’s Marco Polo, vol. i, p. 92); Royal As.
Soc. fount., N. S., vol. xiii, p. 492).
5 Hammer-Purgstall (Geschichtc der Ilchatie, bd. ii, p. 50) says, on
$ •
T the authority of Abdul WassAf:—“ Hormus was, under the rule of
:: the Salghur Atabegs of Fars, a governorship of the latter’s ; after the
V fall of this famous dynasty Mahmud Kalhati, the governor of Hormus,
took possession of the island for himself. His son Nussret put to
i.
death his brother Rokneddin Mesud, and the latter’s wife. Melik
Behaeddin Ajas, one of her Mameluks, raised an army to avenge the
death of his mistress. He was assisted by Dschelaleddin Sijurghut-
! Shah’s dates to be very precise. It will be evident, as we go on, that
misch, the ruler of Kerman ; but Behaeddin fled to the island of
Kisch, where the mufti Dschemaleddin of Fars received him with
open arms, and granted him from the Crown revenues twelve thousand
pieces of gold yearly for the maintenance of the army. After he had
' defeated Mesud, he proceeded to the islands of Larek and Dscherun,
and levied more than two hundred tomAns in gold and silver and rich
i stuffs, went to Hormus, and caused state prayers to be offered in the
name of Fachreddin Ahmed ben Ibrahim Et-thaibi. The mufti
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KINGS OF HORMUZ. 161
and conquered many lands in Persia.1 They attacked the king­
dom of Kermon, and next that of Harmuz, and wasted it all; and
well if the mischief had stopped at that. For the wealth that
they had found in those lands induced them to return so often,
that the Harmuzis, unable to withstand such troubles, made up
their minds to abandon their lands, and so they did.2
The Isle of Queixome, or Broct, lies along the Persian coast,
parted from it by a narrow sound. It is five-and-twenty leagues
long, and from two to three wide.2 Ayaz ordered the Harmuzis
to cross into this isle, and they obeyed him willingly; bringing
with them all that remained to them, saved from the force and
Dschemaleddin of Schiras, who has already been referred to above as
the farmer-general of Ears, betook himself to Hormus, where dissen­
sions arose between him and Fachreddin, the lord of the island,
which had to be decided by arms. Behaeddin Ajas proved himself
not ungrateful towards his former benefactor, and after the latter had
een defeated in an engagement with Fachreddin, Behaeddin facili­
tated his flight from the island. In the following year [the date
“ 1 5 July 1296” is given in the margin], when Dschemaleddin acquired
the farm-general of Fars and all the coasts and islands appertaining
thereto, he went at the head of an army to Hormus, with the
mandate that Bahaeddin should vacate the island. Rukneddin Mesud
had won to his interest the King of Islam, i.e., the mufti farmer-general,
and he supported this demand with an army. Behaeddin Ajas
the island, with his, defeated them, landed on the island of Kis or
Kisch, and sacked it; the King of Islam (Dschemaleddin) was uneasy
over the consequences of his loss by land and sea, especially because
the time of the monsoon was at hand, in which the ships from the
Indian coast, which is called Maaber, i.e., the West, should arrive.
He therefore sent to Behaeddin Ajas, and by his means concluded a
treaty with Fachreddin et-Thaibi.” Yule, who justly terms the above
account “frightfully confused,” has attempted to explain some of the
statements therein, and I would refer the reader to his note on the
subject (Marco Polo, vol. i, p. 125 ; see also vol. ii, p. 316 n).—d. f.
1 These invaders were certainly subjects of the Mongol “ Ilkhan”
dynasty, of which GhazAn KhAn and, after him, his brother Uljaitu
(sons of Arghun, son of Abaka, son of HalAku, son of Tuli, son of
Chinghiz) were the heads at that time. Thuran Shah and Teixeira
are probably right in calling them “Turks.” For, though the dynasty
was Mongol, most of the tribes attached to it were Turkish. It is
not unnatural that they should have been some time about working
their way down to the hot south coast. But we cannot assume Thuran
the Mongol raids should be spread over several years previous to
a.h. 700, A.D. 1302, and that that was the date of the settlement of
“ Harmuz,” consequent on the raids (vide Yule’s Marco Polo, s. v.
“ Ormuz”). [In his Kings of Persia Teixeira says nothing of any
Turkish invasion in A.D. 1302.—D. F.]
3 It will be seen that the abandonment was not total.
1 See p. 19, supra.—D. F.
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