The Siege of Diu occurred when an Ottoman imperial fleet attempted to capture the Indian city of Diu in 1538, then held by the Portuguese. It ended with a Portuguese victory. 16th century Turkish painting depicting the Ottoman fleet protecting shipping in the Gulf of Aden. The three peaks on the left symbolize Aden. In the […]
The Kingdom of Portugal emerged in the 12th century connected with the process concerning the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula. At the same time that all the territories occupied by the Moors were conquered southwards Portugal, originally a county and a part of one of the most ancient Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula – […]
Source: “Foundations of the Portuguese empire, 1415-1580, by Bailey Wallys Diffie, Boyd C. Shafer, George Davison Winius” Portuguese soldier in Benin, British Museum “The Portuguese had fought Muslims on and off during all their national history, but it was not until the conquest of Ceuta that they carried this rivalry into the islamic home territory in […]
The following text is from Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, PhD – in www.historyofislam.com. “The discovery of America and the circumnavigation of Africa were logical consequences of the religious-political rivalry between the Christian powers of Iberia and the Muslim powers of North Africa. As the Maghrib disintegrated, the Christian powers of Iberia, with the cooperation of the […]
The Battle of Diu sometimes referred as the Second Battle of Chaul was a naval battle fought on 3 February 1509 in the Arabian Sea, near the port of Diu, India, between the Portuguese Empire and a joint fleet of the Sultan of Gujarat, the Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, the Zamorin of Calicut with […]
The Paradesi Jews, also called “White Jews”, settled in the Cochin region in the 16th century and later, following the expulsion from Iberia due to forced conversion and religious persecution in Spain and then Portugal. Some went beyond that territory, including a few families who followed the Arab spice routes to southern India. Speaking Ladino […]
St. Francis CSI Church, in Fort Kochi (aka. Fort Cochin), originally built in 1503, is the oldest European church in India and has great historical significance as a mute witness to the European colonial struggle in the subcontinent. The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama died in Kochi in 1524 when he was on his third visit to […]
Of course, an armada could not just sail into an Indian city and expect to find enough supplies at hand in the city’s spice markets to load up five or ten large ships at once. Should it even try, it would likely provoke an instant scarcity and quickly drive up the prices of spices astronomically. […]
Portuguese India ships distinguished themselves from the ships of other navies (especially those of rival powers in the Indian Ocean) on two principal accounts: their seaworthiness (durability at sea) and their artillery. With a few exceptions (e.g. Flor de la Mar, Santa Catarina do Monte Sinai), Portuguese India naus were not typically built to last […]
The size of the armada varied, from enormous fleets of twenty-something ships, to small fleets of only four or five. This changed over time. In the first decade (1500–1510), when the Portuguese were establishing themselves in India, the armadas averaged around 15 ships per year. This declined to around 9–10 ships in 1510–1525. From 1526 […]