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Some Early Travels in Arabia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

C. F. Beckingham
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Extract

There are a number of journeys made, or alleged to have been made, in Arabia between the middle of the fifteenth and the middle of the seventeenth century of which there is no mention, or at least no adequate account, in Hogarth's Penetration of Arabia or in R. H. Kiernan's Unveiling of Arabia. Many of these omissions are due to the little use they made of the Portuguese historians.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 81 , Issue 3-4 , October 1949 , pp. 155 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1949

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References

page 155 note 1 How little may be judged from Hogarth's reference to Dom João de Castro as “pilot of the Governor of Goa”. The only important Portuguese authority he used was the Commentaries of Albuquerque, of which the Hakluyt Society had published a translation. The histories of the Portuguese in the East to which he refers are the relatively unimportant works of Maffei and Lafitau. The former has a certain value since the papers to which Maffei had access included a part of Castanheda's history now lost except for a few extracts copied for Maffei himself and preserved in the archives of the Society of Jesus. Lafitau is worthless as an original authority.

Of the travellers considered here only two, Covilhã and da Quadra, are mentioned by Hogarth and Kiernan, who say nothing of the former's journey to Mecca and evidently did not know the most reliable account of da Quadra's adventures.

page 155 note 2 Printed in Harrisse, H., Jean et Sébastien Cabot, 1882, pp. 324–6Google Scholar. It was first published in the Milan, Annuario Scientifico for 1865Google Scholar.

page 155 note 3 H. Harrisse, op. cit., p. 43.

page 155 note 4 Harrisse, H., John Cabot, the Discoverer of North America, and Sebastian his Son, 1896, p. 38Google Scholar.

page 156 note 1 Williamson, J. A., The Voyages of the, Cabots, 1929, p. 144Google Scholar.

page 156 note 2 Williamson, J. A., The Voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot (Historical Associaion Pamphlet, No. 106), 1937, p. 8Google Scholar.

page 156 note 3 The Encydopædia says that he visited Mecca “during one of his trading voyages to the Eastern Mediterranean”, which is mere conjecture, and adds irresponsibly that Mecca was “then the greatest mart in the world for the exchange of the goods of the East for those of the West”.

page 157 note 1 Alvares, F., Verdadeira Informaçam das Terras do Preste Joam das Indias, pt. i, cap. 103, 1540 and 1889Google Scholar. A translation by Lord Stanley of Alderley was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1881.

page 158 note 1 Castanheda's account of Covilhã, liv. I, cap. 1, is evidently taken from Alvares and adds nothing. Barros, dec. I liv. III cap. 5, uses a phrase which implies that he obtained some information from Alvares personally as well as from his book, “do qual Francisco Alvares, e assi de hum tratado, que elle fez da viagem desta embaixada, que levou D. Rodrigo, soubemos estas, e outras cousas daquellas partes.” He does not mention the journey to Mecca and Medina. Correa in his opening chapter gives a hopelessly confused account, according to which Covilhã and Paiva went from Egypt with a pilgrim caravan to Mecca, where they separated, Covilhã going to Ethiopia and Paiva to India. Later, in his third chapter on the Governor Lopo Vaz de Sampayo, there is a very different version. In this Covilhã goes by caravan from Egypt to Ormuz, makes his way to India, sails from Goa to the Red Sea, visits Mecca, and goes to Ethiopia by way of Egypt. Correa is in general notoriously unreliable about events which preceded his own arrival in India and what he says about Covilhã cannot be believed when he is contradicted by Alvares.

page 158 note 2 Barros, dec. II liv. viii cap. 1: Couto, dec. IV liv. v cap. 3: Castanheda, liv. IV cap. xii: Correa, “Lopo Soares,” cap. 9.

page 158 note 3 First published in 1860. The Hakluyt Society has now made it accessible in a readable, scholarly, and carefully edited translation by Mr. Malcolm Letts.

page 159 note 1 He mentions that the monks of St. Catherine's had not received a visit from a Latin Christian pilgrim for the past ten years. It must have been nearly ten years since Covilhã had gone to Sinai.

page 161 note 1 Rutter, Eldon, The Holy Cities of Arabia, 1928, vol. i, p. 252Google Scholar.

page 161 note 2 Ibid., vol. i, p. 219.

page 161 note 3 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 207.

page 161 note 4 Burton, , Pilgrimage to Al Madinah and Meccah, 1855, ch. 16Google Scholar.

page 162 note 1 Barros, dee. II liv. i cap. 3.

page 163 note 1 Mr. Letts has included a note, for which he is not responsible, in which this alphabet is described as a “badly written set of Greek uncials” and as apparently including one or two Russian letters. It is, in fact, a reasonably correct version of the Coptic alphabet, except that a form of Z in reverse has been included as an additional letter.

page 163 note 2 Iyās, Ibn, ed. Bibliotheca Islamica, Tl. iii, p. 392Google Scholar.

page 164 note 1 This is consistent with the date given by the MSS. for his departure from Damascus, i.e. 13th March, 1498, which Mr. Letts is forced to alter to 1499.

page 164 note 2 It is convenient to mention here the alleged journey of a fellow countryman of v. Harff, Emanuel Örttel, of Augsburg. He and his companion went to Mecca from Cairo in 1561 and spent eight days there without molestation. They were struck by the similarity of the Ka'ba to the Colosseum, which does not inspire confidence in their veracity. See Röhricht, R. and Meisner, H., Deutsche Pilgerreisen nach dem Heiligen Lande, 1880, p. 532Google Scholar.

page 166 note 1 Couto, dec. X liv. vii cap. 15, 16.

page 166 note 2 Ibid., dec. VI liv. vi cap. 1.

page 166 note 3 de Andrade, J. Freyre, Vida de D. João de Castro, 1651, liv. IVGoogle Scholar.

page 166 note 4 Couto, dec. X liv. vii cap. 17. Couto considered that this water was as miraculous as that provided by God for the Israelites “when passing through this same Arabia”.

page 167 note 1 There is a curious statement in the article “Shihr” in the Encyclopædia of Islam to the effect that the Portuguese occupied the whole coast from Aden to Muscat and held it for thirty-five years.

page 167 note 2 Barros, dec. II liv. iii cap. 2.

page 167 note 3 Couto, dec. X liv. i cap. 12.

page 167 note 4 Commentaries of Albuquerque, pt. IV cap. 9, and Barros, dec. II liv. viii cap. 3. The latter remarks that if all the others in the fleet had known Arabic they would have been less afraid of the difficulties of his journey than of the hardships they endured at Kamaran.

page 167 note 5 Couto, dec. X liv. i cap. 8.

page 168 note 1 Ibid., dec. X liv. i cap. 9. A slight textual emendation seems to me to be required at this point. The original reads: “em Caxem pera de alii partir pera o Reyno. Por via de Suez escreveo áquelle Rey, etc.” The full stop should surely follow “Suez” not “Reyno”.

page 168 note 2 Castanheda, liv. V cap. 32. Barros, dec. III liv. iv cap. 3.

page 168 note 3 Alvares, op. cit., pt. ii, cap. 3. Castanheda, liv. VII cap. 5.

page 169 note 1 Correa, “Martim Afonso de Sousa,” cap. 51.

page 169 note 2 Couto, dec. X liv. vii cap. 8.

page 169 note 3 Almeida, , Historia de Ethiopia a alta ou Abassia, liv. I, cap. 9Google Scholar.

page 170 note 1 Goes, , Chronica do Serenissimo Senhor Rei D. Emanuel, 1566, 67Google Scholar, pt. ii, cap. 20 pt. iv, cap. 54.

page 171 note 1 Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Pilot, p. 17, 1944.

page 171 note 2 Castanheda, liv. II cap. 117. Commentaries, pt, iv cap. 10.

page 171 note 3 Hogarth, D. G., The Penetration of Arabia, 1904, p. 64 nGoogle Scholar.

page 172 note 1 There is one inconsistency in Goes' own account. In one place he states, as Castanheda does, that da Quadra reached Ormuz when Lopo Soares was Governor of India, and in another, which agrees with a statement in the Commentaries that he was received there by Dom Garcia Coutinho. The latter held office under Diogo Lopes de Sequeira (1518–1521), successor of Lopo Soares. Da Quadra's pilgrimage is also mentioned by Afonso Mendes who speaks of him as “curiositate duetum”. (Mendes, , Expeditio Aethiopica, lib. IV cap. 8Google Scholar, in Beccari, C., Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores Occidentales inediti, vol. 9.)Google Scholar

page 172 note 2 Almeida, op. cit., liv. V cap. 1–6. Paez, , Historia de Ethiopia, liv. III cap. 15–21Google Scholar. Both Almeida and Paez are included in C. Beccari, Rerum Aethiopicarum Scriptores Occidentales Inediti. An account of this journey was first published in 1660 in an abridgment of Almeida's work by Balthasar Telles.

page 173 note 1 Strictly speaking, neither was Portuguese; Paez was Castilian, Montserrat Catalan.

page 174 note 1 T. J. Arnaud in Journal Asiatique, ser. 4, torn. 5.

page 174 note 2 'Aẓm, Nazīh Muaiyad al, Rila fi'l Biḥlād al 'Arabīya as Sa'īda, vol. ii, p. 105Google Scholar.

page 175 note 1 Mendes, op. cit., lib. IV cap. 18, 24.

page 175 note 2 Combaluzier, F., “Mathieu de Castro” (Revue d'Histoire ecclésiastique, tom. 39, no. 1), 1943, p. 136Google Scholar. Ghesquière, T., Mathieu de Castro (Bibliothèque de la Revue d'hitoire ecclésiastique, fasc. 20), 1937, p. 93Google Scholar.