Persians, Pilgrims and Portuguese The Travails of Masulipatnam Shipping in The Western Indian Ocean 1590-1665 PDF

Persians, Pilgrims and Portuguese: The Travails of Masulipatnam Shipping in the Western Indian
Ocean, 1590-1665
Author(s): Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3, Special Issue: Asian Studies in Honour of Professor
Charles Boxer (1988), pp. 503-530
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/312594
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Modern Asian Studies 22, 3 (1988), pp. 503-530. Printed in Great Britain.
Persians,PilgrimsandPortuguese:TheTravails
of Masulipatnam Indian
Shippingin theWestern
Ocean, I59g0-665
SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM
Delhi Schoolof Economics
I. The Beginnings, 1590-1605
The Coromandel port of Masulipatnam, at the northern extremity of

the Krishna delta, rose to prominence as a major centre of maritime
trade in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Its growing import-
ance after about 1570 is explicable in terms of two sets of events: first,
the consolidation of the Sultanate of Golkonda under Ibrahim Qutb
Shah (t. I550-I 58o), and second, the rise within the Bay of Bengal of a
network of ports with a distinctly anti-Portuguese character, including
the Sumatran centre of Aceh, the ports of lower Burma, of Arakan, as
well as Masulipatnam itself. Round about 1550, Masulipatnam was no
more than a supplier of textiles on the coastal network to the great port
of Pulicat further south, but by the early I58os its links with Pegu and
Aceh had grown considerably, causing not a little alarm in the upper
echelons of the administration of the Portuguese EstadodaIndiaat Goa.
The 'Moors' who owned and operated ships out of Masulipatnam did
so without the benefit of cartazesfrom the Portuguese captains either at
Sao Tome or at any other neighbouring port, and while developing an
intense trade within the Bay of Bengal, strictly avoided the Portuguese-
controlled entrepot at Melaka.' There seemed little the Portuguese
Estado could do about the rise of this network;as in the case of Aceh, it
appeared that the occasional Portuguese raiding fleet that anchored off
' The rise of Masulipatnam is discussed at length in my paper 'Masulipatao e o
desenvolvimento do sistema comercial do Golfo de Bengala, I570-I600', Portugaleo
Oriente,forthcoming, Lisbon. I would stress that Melaka was not a trading partner of
Masulipatnam, contrary to what is asserted in W. H. Moreland, Indiaat theDeathof
Akbar (London I920), pp. I97-8.
0026-749X/88/ $5.00 + .oo ? I988 Cambridge University Press

503
504 SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM
the port was no more than a minor nuisance, and in the engagements
that ensued, the Portuguese frequently had the worst of it, sub-
sequently negotiating to recover prisoners lodged at Masulipatnam or
at the court in Golkonda.2 However, by about 1590, the tenor of the
relationship between the viceregal administration at Goa and the court
at Golkonda had begun to show signs of change.
The Golkonda Sultanate, founded by Quli Qutb Shah (r. c. 512-
1543), a distant descendant of the Turkoman Qara-Quvinlu dynasty
of Iran, had emerged from the disintegration of the older Bahmani
Sultanate, that had from the mid-fourteenth century controlled much
of the Deccan.3 Up to the mid-sixteenth century, the newly-formed
Sultanate of Golkonda struggled for its existence, and asJ. F. Richards
puts it, was even in the I 54os 'a fragile conquest state, and not a stable
polity'.4 The situation changed considerably in the reign of Ibrahim
Qutb Shah, who, while promoting the politics of compromise with
Telugu Nayakas,simultaneously set about encouraging the migration
into the Sultanate of Persian elements, particularly drawn from the
Sayyid clans resident in the neighbourhood of Isfahan. It is generally
agreed among historians that the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
century saw a substantial flight from their homeland of such Persians,
who were encouraged to settle down in both Bijapur and Golkonda,
subsequently.finding their way to the polities across the Bay of Bengal,
to a limited extent Arakan, and far more conspicuously to the Thai
kingdom of Ayutthaya.5 In both Golkonda and Bijapur, the late
sixteenth century saw the emergence of the Persians as one of the three
major factions in court politics and administration, the other two being
2
For example, see the letter from the viceroy D. Duarte de Meneses to the King,
dated 14 March 1585, in J. H. da Cunha Rivara (ed.), ArchivoPortuguez-Oriental, 6
Fascicules in 9 volumes (Goa, 1857-I876), Fascicule V (3), Document 664, pp. 1092-3.
The policy of raiding Masulipatnam shipping is perfectly articulated circaI 58 in the
'Livro das Cidades e Fortalezas .. .', published by F. P. Mendes da Luz, in the Boletim
da Bibliotecada Universidade de Coimbra,vol. XXI, 1953, pp. 123-4.
3 On the rise of the Golkonda
Sultanate, the best accounts are those of H. K.
Sherwani, Historyof the QutbShahi Dynasty(New Delhi, I974), and J. F. Richards,
MughalAdministration in Golconda(Oxford, I975), ch. i. This replaces somewhat older
but still useful accounts such as A. M. Siddiqi, Historyof Golconda(Hyderabad, 1956).
4 Richards, MughalAdministration, p. o.
5 On
Bijapur, see the excellent account by Richard M. Eaton, TheSufisof Bijapur
(Princeton, I978); on Ayutthaya, see, interalia,Jean Aubin, 'Les Persans au Siam sous
le regne de Narai [I656-i688]', Mare Luso-Indicum,IV, pp. 95-126. The Islamic
element in the politics of Arakan is as yet imperfectly explored; however, see M. S.
Collis, 'The City of Golden Mrauk-u',Journalof theBurmaResearch Society,vol. XII (3),
1923, pp. 244-56, and Idemand San Shwe Bu, 'Arakan's Place in the Civilisation of the
Bay', Journal of the Burma ResearchSociety, vol. XV (I), 1925, pp. 34-52.
PERSIANS, PILGRIMS AND PORTUGUESE 505
the Dakhnis (or local converts) and the Habshis (or Abyssinian
Muslims).
Whether or not because these Persians were 'by their very nature
traders' (as a Dutchman was later to put it),6 they quickly became
associated in both these Deccan Sultanates with not only administra-
tion but maritime trade. So in Bijapur, the community was closely
associated with Dabhol, the principal port there in the early seven-
teenth century, and in Golkonda, with Masulipatnam. Thus, the posts
of havaldar, or governor of the port of Masulipatnam, of shahbandar,as
well as of sar-samtu, or governor of the Mustafanagar region under
which Masulipatnam fell, were largely the preserve of Persians in the
first half of the seventeenth century. These officials, as well as other
Persians resident at Masulipatnam, Bagnagar (the new capital con-
structed by Sultan Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah in the I59os),
Kondapalli, and other towns, figure in the records as the principal
shipowners of the port of Masulipatnam at the turn of the seventeenth
century.
The consolidation of the power of the Sultanate in the reign of
Ibrahim Qutb Shah, implied by its spreading control over fertile
agricultural land to the northeast and south, saw the growing prestige
of its ruler as well. By the late I58os, under the reign of Ibrahim's
successor, Muhammad Quli, it was decided to send every year a large
ship from Masulipatnam to the Red Sea, which would fly the Sultan's
flag. These ships, constructed at the Godavari yard ofNarsapur Pettai,
were frequently of 600 tons burthen, if not larger still. They were
to perform three roles: first, of exploiting the Middle Eastern market for
north Coromandel textiles, while at the same time enabling gold and
silver to be imported directly from the Red Sea ports; second, of
permitting the Sultan to have alms distributed annually in his name at
Mecca; and third, of ensuring the easy passage not only of pilgrims on
the Hajj, but of immigrants from the Middle East to Golkonda. There
was a problem, though, for while Masulipatnam shipping might sail
the waters of the Bay of Bengal without the benefit of Portuguese
cartazes, the Arabian Sea (as well as the waters around Sri Lanka) were
far more prone to risk. Thus, in the late I58os, negotiations commenced
between Goa and Golkonda, resulting in an agreement by which the
Sultan was to despatch a ship laden with 300 khandis of rice to a
Portuguese fortress, first described as one of those in Sri Lanka, and
"(Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague (henceforth AR), Letters of the Heren XVII,
VOC. 317, letter to the Governor-General and Council at Batavia, dated 14 October
I65I.
subsequently as Melaka. In return, he was-like the Sultan of

Bijapur-to receive cartazes for his ships bound for Jiddah and
Mocha.7
Almost immediately thereafter, the Sultan began to use evasive
diplomatic tactics. In I59I, Philip of Spain writes to his viceroy at Goa
with the complaint that 'the King of Masulipatnam, after taking some
cartazes that were given him last year, has decided not to give the three
hundred khandis of rice', and going on to advise the viceroy that in
future, 'the cartazes should carry a declaration that they would not be
valid if he would not hand over the rice'.8 This injunction seems to have
had little effect on the Sultan's court, and in the mid-i59os a Portu-
guese punitive fleet was despatched to intercept shipping between
Masulipatnam and Pegu. The failure of this expedition, leading to the
capture of several of its members, caused a resumption of negotiations
in I595.9 After a prolonged exchange of embassies, links were again
broken off two years later, only to be resumed in 1598 with the sending
of a Portuguese ambassador, Francisco Ferreira de Almeida, to
Golkonda, in order to ratify an agreement reached earlier at Goa. This
envoy soon wrote back to his superiors, however, declaring that
'progress in the court is bound to be sluggish at least while the ships
that have been sent to Mecca make their voyage'; apprehending danger
to his own life, he fled to Goa overlanndshortly thereafter.?0 It was only
in I6oo that a final form of agreement was reached; the Estado agreed
to maintain a captain at Masulipatnam not only to issue cartazes for
Red Sea bound ships but to keep a sharp eye on the renegades who were
to be found at Masulipatnam and Bagnagar in fair numbers. Of those
who held this short-lived position, we know of only one, Henrique
Raposo. 1
7 Letter from Philip of Spain to the viceroy at Goa, dated 6 February 1589, in Cunha
Rivara (ed.), ArchivoPortuguez-Oriental, Fascicule III, Document 59. For the text of one
such cartaz-granted to the Sultan of Bijapur-seeJ. F. Judice Biker (ed.), Colecciode
Tratadose ConcertosdePazes, vol. I (Lisbon, I88I), pp. I81-2.
8 Letter from
Philip of Spain to the viceroy at Goa, dated 12January 591, published
in Cunha Rivara (ed.), ArchivoPortuguez-Oriental, III, Document 76, Clause XXIII.
9 Letters from
Philip of Spain to the viceroy, dated I8 February I595, 2 January
1596, and 12 February I597, in Cunha Rivara (ed.), Archivo Portuguez-Oriental, III,
Documents I62 (XX), 204, and 243. For a description of an earlier raid on shipping
from Masulipatnam to Pegu, see Diogo do Couto, Da Asia, Decada Decima, edicao
Livraria Sam Carlos (Lisbon, I974), Parte I, pp. I4-15, 74-83. The importance of
shipping from Masulipatnam to Pegu is best brought out in an anonymous relation
from the 1590S, for which see BibliotecaPublicaeArquivoDistrital,Evora, C6dice C 111/2-
17, fls I83-I87v.
10HistoricalArchives,Panaji, Goa (henceforth HAG), Moncoes do Reino 2B, fls
490-90v.
1 On
Henrique Raposo, see ArquivoNacionalda Torredo Tombo,Lisbon (henceforth
PERSIANS, PILGRIMS AND PORTUGUESE 5o7
At the turn of the seventeenth century, maritime links between the
Bay of Bengal and the western Indian Ocean were highly limited. If one
excludes Aceh and Melaka, which in reality formed the cusp between
the three trading regions of the Bay of Bengal, the western Indian
Ocean and maritime South-East Asia, other links were far less, whether
in number or volume of traffic, than what had obtained a century
earlier (that is c. 500) or what was to obtain a century later (in about
I700). In around I600, then, there existed a limited and erratic traffic
between Syriam and Martaban and the Red Sea, a strong coastal
trading link from Hughli and Chittagong to Cochin, and the coastal
cafila from Coromandel to the west coast. Other than this, trade routes
that traversed the two regions-of the Bay of Bengal and the western
Indian Ocean-were limited in the extreme, and links such as those
between Surat and the Bengal ports, or between Coromandel and
Persia were conspicuous by their absence. In such a general context,
the link between Masulipatnam and Jiddah was an exception to the
prevailing rule, linking the heart of the Bay of Bengal to the Red Sea.
Since, as V. M. Godinho has pointed out,12 the link between the
Persian Gulf and the Red Sea both through the caravan and coastal
trade was particularly strong in this period, this also ensured a certain
access to the Persian market. Despite this, however, a good deal of the
trade in textiles and indigo from northern Coromandel to Persia was
carried on another, more complex, route. Goods were taken overland
via Haidarabad either to Bijapur, and thence to Dabhol and Chaul, or
to Surat, from where they were carried on maritime routes to the
Persian Gulf.
II. A Phase of Unease, 1605-1632
In April I605, the yacht Delft of the Dutch Verenigde Oost-Indische

Compagnie (or VOC) arrived from Aceh at Masulipatnam. The Dutch
factors being favourably received, the ship returned again early in the
summer of the following year, and in October I 606, on the third visit of
the Delft to the port, the Dutch received a royalfarman,13 formalizing
ANTT), Manuscritos da Livraria, no. I I9, fl. I8. Another reference to the captain at
Masulipatnam in about I600 is to be found in a Jesuit account of Sao Tome de
Meliapor, for which see British Museum (Manuscript Room), London (henceforth
BM), Additional Manuscript 9853, fl. 28v.
12 See V. M. Godinho, Os Descobrimentose a EconomiaMundial, 2nd edition, 4 Volumes
(Lisbon, 1981-84), vol. III, p. 133.
13 The text
ofthisfarman is summarized in H. Terpstra, De Vestigingvan de Nederlanders
aan de Kust van Koromandel(Groningen, 19 11), p. 42; also see Tapan Raychaudhuri,Jan
their status as traders in Masulipatnam in particular as well as

Golkonda in general. Two Dutch factories were set up, the first at
Masuliptanam itself, the second at Peddapalli (or Nizamapatnam)
further south, and with this the pendulum of Goa-Golkonda relations
again swung to the other extreme. In a strongly worded letter, Philip of
Spain urged his viceroy in I607 to 'carry on ... against the said king [of
Golkonda] all the war possible, striving to undo the said factories and
to impede the Dutch in their commerce, which is so prejudicial'.'4 It
was scarcely possible to mount a frontal attack, however, and the
Estado's authorities could do no more than seek an optimal combina-
tion of the occasional ambush or raid, together with negotiation. The
negotiations were carried on by means of a friar, Bartolomeu Dias, who
represented the Bishop of Sao Tome, D. Frei Sebastiao de Sao Pedro, at
the Golkonda court,15 and in his endeavours Frei Bartolomeu was
aided inadvertently by the heavy-handedness of the Dutch, who in
their indiscriminate capture of all vessels suspected to be Portuguese-
owned, failed to note that several Masulipatnam merchants, and even
the havaldar himself, cooperated with private Portuguese and mestifo
traders in commercial ventures. For a few years, then, in the period
when Wemmer van Berchem was in charge of the VOC's Coromandel
enterprise, it appears that the decision to let the Dutch settle at the port
(which effectively implied a decision on the part of the Golkonda
authorities to enter into hostile relations with the Estado da India)
might be reversed.16 This was not to be, however, as it soon became
clear that the Dutch and the English (who had arrived on Coromandel
in 1611) were in a far stronger position in the general vicinity of the
port, and had a far greater capacity to inflict damage than did the
Estado in the context of Masulipatnam's trade. The issue was sealed
with the ill-fated and clumsy expedition of Ruy Dias de Sampaio in
i6i6, which after attacking and burning several villages in the
Motupalli region was eventually decimated by Golkonda forces in an
ambush. In the succeeding decade, Portuguese officialdom could do
little more than conjure up grand schemes of a fleet that would, by
Companyin Coromandel i605-169o: A Studyin the Interrelations

of EuropeanCommerce and
TraditionalEconomies(The Hague, I962), p. 6.
14
Letter from Philip of Spain to the viceroy, dated Io December 1607, in R. A. de
Bulhao Pato (ed.), DocumentosRemettidos daIndia,Tomo I (Lisbon, I880), Document 55,
pp. 144-5-
15
HAG, Mono6es do Reino nos. 9-1 (single volume), fls I83-4; also see Ant6nio
Bocarro, DicadaXIII da Historiada India,2 vols (Lisbon, 1876), vol. II, pp. 620-2.
16 L. C. D. van Dijk, ZesJaren LJithet Leven van Wemmervan Berchem (Amsterdam,
I858), pp. 22-4, 36-7; Raychaudhuri,Jan Company,pp. 24-7.
means of successive attacks at Ujangselang, the Irrawaddy delta and
Masulipatnam, reduce the last-named port to a fraction of its pros-
perity.17 Nothing of this magnitude could be put into practice, of
course.
With the withdrawal of the Portuguese captain in the early years of
the seventeenth century, and the arrival of the Dutch at Masulipatnam,
the Golkonda authorities soon made it clear to the latter that what had
earlier been the responsibility of the Estado da India had now fallen to
their lot. Where earlier the ships from Masulipatnam to Jiddah had
sailed with Portuguese cartazes, now it would be the VOC's business to
ensure their protection.'8 Further, early in the decade I6Io-I620,
VOC factors were even pressurized by the Masulipatnam governor to
contribute to the construction of a new ship on that route, while the
subject of opening direct trade links between Masulipatnam and the
Persian Gulf was broached, though not brought to any conclusion. In
the decade I6I-1I620, the Sultan's annual ship to the Red Sea was
observed by both Dutch and English with interest. In contrast to other
shipping from Masulipatnam, whether to Aceh, Pegu or the Malay
Peninsula, which left in September or early October, to return in
March and April following,19 the Sultan's ship, carrying a ballast of
rice on his account, to be distributed as alms at Mecca, left only in early
January. Though not as large as the Mughal pilgrim ships, it presented
a similar aspect: crowded with numerous pilgrims, and their small
bundles of merchandise with which they hoped to finance their voyage.
The departure of the ship was an annual occasion, and the Dutchman
Pieter Willemszoon 'Floris' noted in 1614 how on the days preceding its
departure, no boats were to be had to load or unload goods, all of them
being employed in the service of this ship.20
Despite the somewhat weak position of the Dutch in respect of the
western Indian Ocean, nothing untoward actually occurred with the
Masulipatnam ships to the Red Sea for several years after the incident
17 On
Ruy Dias de Sampaio's flotilla and its activities, see Bocarro, DicadaXIII, vol.
i, p. I62, vol. II, pp. 620-2; also AR, Overgekomen Brieven en Papieren (henceforth
OB), VOC. Io6i, fls 198, 20I; VOC. o065,fls 72-72v. On the plan to reduce
Masulipatnam by raiding its shipping, BibliotecaNacionaldeLisboa,Fundo Geral, MS.
628, fls 15-19v.
18
Terpstra, De Vestiging, pp. 54-5; AR, OB, VOC. 1055 (loose papers), various
letters, eg. van Wesick to Bantam, I5June I6io.
19For a
summary description of arrivals and departures at Masulipatnam, see
William Methwold's relation in W. H. Moreland (ed.), Relationsof Golcondain theEarly
I7th Century(London, 1931), pp. 36-9.
2) W. H. Moreland (ed.), PeterFloris-His Voyageto theEast Indiesin the 'Globe',16ii-
1615 (London, 1934), pp. 113-16.
of Ruy Dias de Sampaio's expedition. The first problems arose in 62I,

when the Sultan's ship on the Red Sea run was captured at Tuticorin
while outward-bound, by Simao de Melo Pereira, Captain-Major of
the escort fleet sent annually to Cape Comorin from Goa. This ship was
on its way toJiddah, and Dutch notices talk of a rich booty. However,
none of this reached the Estado's coffers, as Simao de Melo declared
that most of the merchants on board the ship fled with their goods; even
the sale of the ship, described as a weakly armed 'Moorish nau', fetched
no more than a nominal sum for the Royal Treasury of Portugal.21 If
this description corresponds to reality, and was not a distortion
produced to facilitate the understatement of the ship's sale value, one
may conclude that the Sultan had a great deal of confidence in Dutch
ability to protect his shipping. Indeed, a second capture followed soon
after, in I625, on the same run, although on this occasion the ship was
captured near Dabhol. By now, the Sultan Abdullah Qutb Shah
appeared to have lost all patience, and sent a stern message to the VOC
factors, declaring that since it was on their account that he had broken
off with the Estado, it was their duty to ensure that his shipping was
protected in future.22 From then on, it became customary for these
ships, which left in January to return in September, to carry Dutch
pilots and gunners aboard them, with the English and Danes, too,
supplying men on the odd occasion.
III. The Persian Trade and the 1630s Crisis
Already in the early years of the seventeenth century, there existed a

market for north Coromandel textiles in Persia. As we have noted, this
was fed in one of two ways: either through the overland trade from
Masulipatnam to Dabhol and Surat, and carriage over water from
there, or via the Masulipatnam-Red Sea shipping, with goods being
transhipped for Persia at the Red Sea ports. To this one could add a
third minor trickle, that of the Coromandel qafila to Goa, and thence to
Ormuz.23 However, given that all of these methods were somewhat
tedious, with additional transport costs doubtless cutting into the
21 See A. da Silva
Rego (ed.), Documentos
Remettidosda India (New Series), vol. VII
(Lisbon, I975), documents 278 and 305. Also see AR, OB, VOC. 1073, fls I66-9.
22
Ar, OB, VOC. I095, fls 53v-54v.
23
On the overland trade to Chaul, Dabhol etc., see Moreland (ed.), Relationsof
Golconda,pp. 79-80; on the carriage of Coromandel textiles to Persia and the Red Sea
via Surat, see for example the cargo lists of the ships Ganj-i-Sawai,and Salabij(?), AR,
OB, VOC. I166, fls 797-806.
PERSIANS, PILGRIMS AND PORTUGUESE 51 I
margin of profit, several of the powerful Persian merchants of

Masulipatnam were interested in developing a direct link. Tentative
moves were made in the decade I6io to 1620, but nothing came of
them. The move was strongly revived, however, late in the I620S. The
I62os had been an unusually prosperous decade for trade at
Masulipatnam. Overseas shipping from the port, directed principally
within the Bay of Bengal to destinations such as Mrauk-u, Aceh, the
ports of Pegu, and Mergui-Tenasserim expanded in the decade. Of
these, the trade to lower Burma was a particular strength, with its value
in 1627 estimated at around 300,000 pagodas (or 1,350,000 Dutch
florins), a sum which considerably exceeded the entire Dutch export bill
from Coromandel in that year.24 Masulipatnam shipping in the epoch
was owned-as we have already observed-largely by Persians. These
included such traders as Mir Qasim and Mir Muhammad Murad, as
also Mir Kamal-al-din Haji Jamal, and Mulla Muhammad Taqi
Taqrishi, governor of Masulipatnam in 1627-28, and subsequently
Sar-i-Khail of the Sultanate until his death inI63I.25 These Persians,
who were as politically powerful as they were monied, were intensely
disliked by the European factors at Masulipatnam in the period, and
this has subsequently coloured the view of uncritical modern-day
historians. Pieter Gilliesz van Ravesteyn, writing between 1615 and
1620, was to describe them as 'a nation exceedingly haughty and self-
regarding, beyond all other Indian nations',26 while other Dutch
factors speak constantly of their treachery and deceit. Yet, given the
level of tensions prevalent at Masulipatnam in the period, one could
expect little else than such a hostile picture.
Of the substantial shipowners, the only one who might be described
as fairly close to the Dutch and English factors at any time was Mir
Kamal-al-din. References to him occur from the early years of the
Dutch presence onward, as an overland trader, courtier, substantial
shipowning merchant, and sometime administrator of parts of the
Krishna and Godavari delta areas. From the mid-I62os in particular,
this merchant becomes increasingly conspicuous in the changing
configuration of Masulipatnam and Golkonda elite politics. For almost
two decades, up to his death in 1624, the most powerful figure at
Golkonda had been the MirJumla, Nawab Allami Fatimi Mir Muham-
24 The value of the trade to
Pegu is estimated by a Dutch factor at Coromandel, AR,
OB, VOC. 1095, fl. 64.
25
The best detailed account of Golkonda politics in the period is that ofJagadish
Narayan Sarkar, The Life ofMirJumla, the GeneralofAurangzeb, 2nd edition (New Delhi,
I979), pp. i-I8.
26Moreland
(ed.), Relations, pp. 78- 9.
51 2 SANJAY SUBRAHMANYAM
mad Mumin. Soon after his death, the Sultan Muhammad Qutb Shah
died as well, and there followed a succession struggle, as a consequence
of which the twelve-year-old Abdullah Qutb Shah was made Sultan,
under the protection of his mother, Hayat Bakshi Begum. There then
followed a decade of turmoil and manoeuvring at the court, and during
an early phase of this, Kamal-al-din threw his weight behind Mansur
Khan Habshi. Although the move appeared to be a sound one at first,
as Mansur Khan's star rose, it was eventually to prove a miscalcula-
tion. With Mansur Khan appointed Sar-i-Khail, we read in October
1627 in the letters of the Dutch factors at Masulipatnam, 'Mier
Comaldij is having a great ship made for the king at Narsapur, which
he intends to send to Mocha within two months'.27 Within the space of
a half-year, however, the fortunes of both Mansur Khan and his
associate Kamal-al-din plummeted. The Masulipatnam Dagh-Register
notes early in I628: 'On the first of March, a farman and order came
from Golkonda for the Moorish governor, that he should take Mier
Comaldij, a Moorish inhabitant, in apprehension, and deprive him of
his governorship of Narsapur and other nearby villages'.28 It was
charged that the merchant had undertaken to build four or five ships for
the Sultan, but underpaid the workmen, embezzling 20,000 to 30,000
pagodas in the process. It turned out, however, that underlying the
arrest was a political reversal: Mansur Khan had been killed on charge
of treason, and all his associates were under a shadow.
By the middle of 1628, however, Kamal-al-din was again back in
favour and prosecuting trade with renewed vigour. The question of
opening trade with the Persian Gulf was now very much in the air; with
Ormuz no longer in Portuguese hands, and Bandar Abbas perceived as
a favourable port in which to trade, it appeared only a matter of time
before such a link was forged, given the size of the market. InJune I634,
a Dutch factor at Bandar Abbas estimated the Persian market for
Masulipatnam and Golkonda textiles at in the region of 270,000
Mughal rupees, yielding a profit between 20% and 40% in the net for
the 86,600 pieces.29 The first person to take a positive step in this
direction was Muhammad Taqi, in May 1628. In an extended inter-
27
AR, OB, VOC. I094, fl. 99v. 'De Mier Comaldijn laet een groot schip voor den
Coninck in Narsapour maecken, dat van meeninge is binnen twee maenden naer
Mocha te versenden'.
28
'Dagh-Register Masulipatam', AR, OB, VOC. 1095, fls 7IV-72. The death of
Mansur Khan and its circumstances are mentioned in AR, OB, VOC. I095, fls 47, 77.
29 For this
estimate, which contains a detailed breakdown by category of textile, see
H. Dunlop (ed.), Bronnentot de Geschiedenisder Oost-lndische Compagniein Perzie, 1611-1638
(The Hague, 1930), pp. 490-3.
PERSIANS, PILGRIMS AND PORTUGUESE 5I3
view, he asked Dutch factors to provide either freight-services, or at
least protection for local shipping to Persia. The Dutch temporized,
stating that they would need concurrence from Batavia, and the matter
was thus put off for over three years.30 By the early I63os, however, the
economic and political situation had begun to change radically, and it
was in this changed ambience that the Masulipatnam-Bandar Abbas
link was inaugurated.
The problems arose from a curious shift in the annual weather cycle,
that lasted almost a decade, beginning in the late i62os. The first
manifestations were severe storms that damaged not only Asian
shipping but also that of the Danish Company; there was at least one
substantial ship lost on the Masulipatnam-Pegu run.31 With a low
level of rainfall in 1631, followed by unusually heavy downpours
between July and September I632, inland transportation around
Masulipatnam, and the qafilas to Haidarabad were brought to a halt.
This was followed by a poor harvest in late 1632, compounded by a
cyclone that destroyed the standing crop late in I633. By the summer of
I634, the prices of cotton were fixed at a level roughly 75% above
normal, and in September of that year, paddy prices were some 150%
above the pre-crisis level. This situation continued as late as 1637, with
periodic price falls-prompted by the prospect of a good harvest-
succeeded by steep increases when production failed to meet expec-
tations, as happened in January 1636. By I635, the incidence of
banditry had increased alarmingly, and with repeated robberies
between Masulipatnam and Haidarabad, merchants approached the
Sultan, even offering to finance a protective-cum-expeditionary force.
Elsewhere, at the head of the Krishna delta, in the neighbourhood of
Nagulvancha and Nandigama, we are told inJune 1635 that 'the land is
completely in revolt, and on account of the fighting all is destroyed and
the country a wilderness'.32 This partial collapse of the agrarian
economy had rather important implications for the Persians, who,
particularly in the eastern part of the Sultanate, were responsible for
revenue-collection. With remissions hard to obtain from higher auth-
ority, several of these merchants found themselves faced with a severe
30 AR, OB, VOC. I095, fl. 74.
31 These storms are mentioned in AR, OB, VOC. I
096, fls 147-8; VOC. I oo, fls 68-
9. The loss of the ship to Pegu is referred to in AR, OB, VOC. 1096, fls I47-8. The ship
belonged to Mir Muhammad Murad and had 460 men on board.
32 The evidence on weather
changes is from AR, OB, VOC. I 09, VOC. I I 3, VOC.
I1117 (numerous references). That on prices is from AR, OB, VOC. I I 13, VOC. I 117,
VOC. I I 9 and VOC. I I22. The remark on the Nagulvancha region is from AR, OB,
VOC. 117, fl. 665v.
liquidity crisis. Thus, the early i63os see a sharp fall in Masulipatnam
shipping, while correspondingly traders based elsewhere on the Bay of
Bengal littoral, whose fortunes were not linked to those of the sub-
continental agrarian economy, expanded their participation. In a
situation, then, when the tide appeared to be turning against
Masulipatnam's trader-politicos, the new link to Persia was a welcome
relief.
The first Asian mechant to send a ship from Masulipatnam to
Bandar Abbas was a figure familiar to us by now: Mir Kamal-al-din.
His continuing ability to raise capital and construct vessels dis-
concerted Dutch factors at Masulipatnam, who in January I630 had
declared in a letter to Pulicat, 'Mier Comaldij is ... ruined through and
through, and lies now in the dust, with little hope of ever being able to
stand up again'.33 The Dutch were annoyed, too, by his growing
closeness with their rivals, the English and the Danes, but had no one
but themselves to blame for this; having captured a ship of the Persian
in I629 and held it to ransom until their grievances against
Masulipatnam authorities were looked into, they naturally found the
aging merchant alienated from the VOC.34 In July I632, the Dutch
factors were summoned to the banksal (or customs-house) and read a
letter that had just arrived from the Golkonda court. This stated that
the Sultan had recently received permission from the Shah of Persia at
Isfahan to send a ship there, and that hence, Mir Kamal-al-din's vessel
Mansuri was to make the voyage. The Dutch were asked to provide a
pilot, gunners and some crew and had little option in the matter but to
cooperate.35
As a commercial venture, the Mansuri's voyage was evidently a
failure. The English Company's Surat Council, faced with the problem
of idle shipping-the result of the Gujarat famine of that year, and the
consequent decline in textile procurement-had decided to take a hand
too in the Masulipatnam-Persia trade. The ships Mary and Exchange
were hence sent to the Golkonda port, where they took on over 300
bales of textiles and other freight goods belonging to Masulipatnam
merchants, departing for Bandar Abbas inJuly 1632. This left Kamal-
33
Masulipatnam to Pulicat, 14 January 1630, AR, OB, VOC. I 00, fl. 84. 'Mier
Comaldijnis oockdoorgeruijneert,leydtnu heel int voetsantmet weynichaparentie
van wederomop te staen'.
34 The
ship of Kamal-al-dinthatwas capturedin April I629was on its returnfrom
Aceh. For details, see AR, OB, VOC. 1098, fl. 489; VOC. I Ioo00,fls. 63-4. For a general
accountof the circumstancesof the capture,W. Foster(ed.), TheEnglishFactories
in
India, 13 Vols (Oxford, 1906-1927), EFI [1624- 29], pp. 339-42, 346, passim.
35
AR, OB, VOC. I 109, f. 283.
PERSIANS, PILGRIMS AND PORTUGUESE 5I5
al-din little by way of cargo on his ship, but the voyage had to be made
anyway, since it was intended to bring back a Persian ambassador to
Golkonda, without his having to set foot in the Mughal empire.36
The poor return from this voyage seems not to have deterred Kamal-
al-din, since in the following year he sent not one but two ships, with
pressure once again being exerted on the VOC for aid. The ships left in
early I634, but only one returned to Masulipatnam, the other-
following an English account-was blown up offOrmuz in March I634
on firing a salute with her cannon. A more graphic Dutch version has it
that 'on coming in sight of Ormuz [she] wanted to fire a salute, but the
cannon burst, so that the magazine caught fire, the ship sank and
everything was finished; over six hundred men, both Moors and slaves
whom the ship had on board were killed and only one person saved'.37
Among the dead were the Dutch and Danish crewmen lent Kamal-al-
din by the two Companies. More surprisingly, even the other ship
failed to make a commercial success of its voyage. Though it is reported
to have arrived at Bandar Abbas in March I634 with over 400 bales of
diverse textiles, 600 bales of Bengal sugar, one hundred bales of
turmeric, one thousand bales of gum-lac and one hundred and twenty
bales tobacco-scarcely a poor cargo-we note that on its return to
Masulipatnam, it is reported to have brought back very little of any
worth. Discouraged by this, and possibly by the English competition on
the freight-trade, Kamal-al-din desisted in the following year from
pursuing the Persia trade, and concentrated instead on a cooperative
venture with the Danes to Makassar.38
In November 1635, we find two ships again being fitted out for
Bandar Abbas. The one belonged to Shaikh Malik Muhammad, the
other to Mir Kamal-al-din, who, after a long career as merchant and
political personage at Golkonda had decided to return to Persia in the
twilight years of his life. It was reported that he intended to go to
36
On the Mary and Exchange, see EFI [163o-33], p. 236. A summary list of freight-
goods aboard these ships is available from AR, OB, VOC. I 109, fls 276v-77. The
disappointing cargo on Mir Kamal-al-din's ship is mentioned in AR, OB, VOC. I IO9,
fl. 305v.
37
For the English account of the incident, EFI [1634-37], p. 9; for the Dutch version,
AR, OB, VOC. I I3, fl. 319.
38
The lading of Kamal-al-din's ship is described in a list of arrivals at Gombroon in
Dunlop (ed.), Bronnen, p. 474. Kamal-al-din's participation in the Makassar trade can
be gathered from AR, OB, VOC. 109, fls. 283, 304. In fact, the Danish President
Roland Crapp6 in the early i63os borrowed a ship of Kamal-al-din's to send to
Makassar. Thus,'. . sal hij [Crappe] een nieuw schip van Miercamaldij (dat gemelten
Moor voordesen meende naer Atchijn te seynden) vooruijt binnen I a I2 daeghen naer
Maccasser stieren', AR, OB, VOC. I 09, fls. 282v-83.
Bandar Abbas, 'whether hee is permitted by the King of Gulcondah to

pass (after great solicitation of himself and friends) that hee may visitt
the toombe of a certaine Prophet unto which he is much devoted.'39
This pilgrimage, doubtless to the dargahof some Sufipir, proved to be a
disaster. In March 1636 we find Kamal-al-din at Dabhol, having lost
his ship, and sending urgent messages to the English at Surat for help to
proceed to Persia. The English Council, bearing in mind this request,
and the fact that its author was 'an auntient Persian named Mier
Camaldyne whome some of us are knowne almost twentye years to
have been a powerfull and most constant friend to our whole nation in
Mesulapatam',40 sent a frigate Francisto ferry him (for a price) to
Persia. Further misadventures ensued, as the Franciswas turned back
at Jask in the face of a storm, and returned to Chaul, where the
septuagenarian Kamal-al-din fell down the stairs of his hired house,
'bruising himself most vilely'. A quarrel now commenced at Surat
between the English and Mirza-ul-Zaman, the mutasaddiof the port,
who insisted that Kamal-al-din be made to come to Surat and pay
customs-duties there. Finally, in September I636, the English ship Kit
was sent to fetch him from Chaul, and he was lodged at Surat in a
section of the English factory.4' There we find him in November of the
same year, endeavouring to absent himself each time the mutasaddi
visited. As mysteriously, he disappears from all records from this date,
and may be presumed to have either died or returned to Persia. In
September I636, in the last reference to him in the VOC records, we
find the Dutch factors (whose memories were rather short where past
differences were concerned) declaring: 'Mier Camaldij, who during a
long period had saved us from many difficulties, is in Persia, so that
now there is no one on whom we can really depend'.42
IV. Muhammad Sayyid and the Westward Trade, 1638-54
While the focus in the early I63os was on the Persian trade, the trafficto
Jiddah and the Red Sea was at a low ebb. On at least one occasion in the
39 Surat to the Company, 6th March 1636, EFI [i634-36], pp. 137-8.
40
Instruction to the Captain of the Francis,4 March I636, EFI [1634-36], p. 175.
41 Andrew Warden, Captain of the Francis,at Chaul to Surat, 20 April I636, EFI
[1634-36], pp. 195-6. Also see pp. I87-8, and finally, the diary of William Methwold at
Surat, EFI [1634-36], p. 3I0.
42
AR, OB, VOC. I19,I fl. I 147, 25 September i636. 'Mier Comaldij die ons langen
tijt van veel onlusten heeft westen te bevrijden is naer Persia soo dat bij naer nu niemant
hebben daerop ons met fundament verlaten connen,
late I62os, the Sultan's ship had returned from Mocha having sold
nothing, on account, it was said, of wars in the Red Sea between the
Arabs and Turks. In the I63os, we find that the Sultan, too, had put his
weight firmly behind the Persian Gulf trade, and we find that Kamal-
al-din's ships were sent 'in the name of the King of Golkonda',
doubtless receiving privileges on that account.43 The Persian Gulf
vessels now carried the pilgrims to Mecca on some occasions, when no
ships were sent to the Red Sea; the Queen Mother at Golkonda, who
wished to make the Hajj pilgrimage, had to make it on one of the vessels
bound for Bandar Abbas. The ships were of varying sizes: the one
blown up off Ormuz in the incident of I634 was of no more than 300
tons burthen, but its companion in the same year was considerably
larger.44 This latter was referred to as the 'Great Ship of Mir Kamal-al-
din', and on his disappearance in 1636 was acquired by Shaikh Malik
Muhammad, who despatched it to the Persian Gulf in early 1638.
By the late I630s, the profile of the shipowning community at
Masulipatnam looked vastly different from the picture we have drawn
of the earlier decade. The crisis of the early i63os had taken a toll; of the
Persians mentioned earlier, neither Mir Qasim, Mir Murad nor
Muhammad Taqi remained. The other major figure-Mir Kamal-al-
din-had faded away too, although his case was rather different.
Instead, we find Masulipatnam shipping-particularly that to the
western Indian Ocean-dominated by the prepossessing figure of Mir
Muhammad Sayyid Ardestani. Little is known of the early life of
Muhammad Sayyid, beyond the fact that he was born in an indigent
Sayyid family from the neighbourhood of Isfahan in around 1590, and
that he arrived in about I630 in Golkonda as a horse-trader.45 There-
after, he became a diamond merchant and in the early I63os success-
fully farmed the diamond mines at Kolluru under an assumed name.
As late as 1635, he was still merely a sillahdar in the revenue depart-
ment. However, by assiduously cultivating the Mir Jumla, Shaikh
Muhammad-ibn Khatun, he found himself appointed havaldar of
Masulipatnam in 1636. From this point, there was no looking back for
him. The following year finds him emerging as governor at Kondapalli,
a major fortress-town some miles inland from Masulipatnam, and in
June I637, he emerges as Sar-i-Khail, and third most powerful man in
the kingdom after the aging MirJumla (whom he soon sidelined for all
intents and purposes) and the Sultan himself.
43 See AR, OB, VOC. 1109, fl. 305v.
44AR, OB, VOC. I I3, fl. 319; EFI [634-36], p. 9.
45 On Muhammad
Sayyid's early career,J. N. Sarkar, TheLifeof MirJumla,pp. I-3,
passim.
In June I636, after becoming governor of Masulipatnam, Muham-

mad Sayyid approached the Dutch with a request. He wanted them to
send a ship from Masulipatnam to Bandar Abbas with his goods, as
well as those of other merchants, on freight. The Dutch, characteristi-
cally, temporized, and pointed out, too, that the English were better
able to provide this service, since their newly-signed agreement with
the Estado da India freed their shipping of all danger in the western
Indian Ocean.46 The matter thus remained unresolved, although a few
months later, the Dutch did permit Muhammad Sayyid some freight-
space aboard the ship Rotterdamto Persia. Relations did not remain
cordial for long, though.47 The Dutch factory at Peddapalli, south of
Masulipatnam, became the scene of conflict, and Muhammad Sayyid
threatened to expel the Dutch from there, saying (according to VOC
factors) that 'in place of us, he would obtain free trade privileges for the
Portuguese'.48 After a stormy interview with a Dutch factor, Claes
Cornelisz, the VOC factory was attacked, and one of the Company's
Indian servants captured and maimed. When, later that year, the
Persian was summoned to Golkonda, the Dutch heaved a sigh of relief,
believing that the complaints they had lodged against him through the
Persian ambassador at Golkonda had been acted upon. It was to their
great consternation that they heard, months later, that Muhammad
Sayyid had been elevated to Sar-i-Khail.49
The Dutch had to be realistic, and soon came to an accommodation.
Thus, early in January I639, Muhammad Sayyid decided to send a
ship that he had had newly constructed to Persia, and the VOC lent
him twelve mariners, a steersman, and five cannon to place on board,
while the English and Danes contributed three pieces each.50 The Sar-
i-Khail's annual shipping to Persia continued in the following years.
On occasion, his ship was joined by another, owned by Shaikh Malik
Muhammad, whose participation in the trade we have noted from the
mid-I63os. Arrivals at Bandar Abbas in I64o-41, for example,
included one ship owned by each, with Muhammad Sayyid's ship
referred to indifferently as the ship of the 'King of Masulipatnam' and
of the 'Sercheyl', indicating that as in the case of Mir Kamal-al-din, he,
too, enjoyed royal protection. A glance at the cargoes of these two ships,
4AR, OB, VOC. I I 19, fls I I 5-16, Masulipatnam to Batavia, 2 July 1636.
47 AR, OB, VOC. 1I 19, fls I39-40, Masulipatnam to Batavia, 25 September 1636.
48 AR, OB, VOC. I19, fl. 1140, '. . dat in plaets van ons vrij geleyde voor de
Portugesen wilden procureren . . .'
49AR, OB, VOC. I I I9, fls I 58-9, fls I I6-3, 167-9. Also VOC. I 122, fl. 613.
50
AR, OB, VOC. I 30, fls I037-8, Masulipatnam to Batavia, 8 January I639.
both of which arrived at Bandar Abbas on the same day, 24 February
I641, reveals the Sar-i-Khail's to have been far the larger;it carried 800
packs of textiles, 500 packs of Bengal sugar, and 400 packs of north
Coromandel indigo among other goods, while the other ship seems to
have been-at a rough estimate -only one-third of its size.51 The
ships, particularly that of Muhammad Sayyid, enjoyed the protection
of Dutch, English and Danes, and frequently carried crewmen pro-
vided by all three Companies. There seems to have grown as a
consequence a sense of confidence that shipping to the western Indian
Ocean was not such a hazardous business after all, for despite the
occasional encounter with the Portuguese, there had passed nearly a
decade and a half (since 1625) without a single loss tofirangi piracy.
Muhammad Sayyid in particular had reason to be confident. From his
very first year as governor of Masulipatnam, we find him engaging in
trade with the Coromandel Portuguese, as well as to Sri Lanka, and we
have noted his threat to the Dutch that he would replace them with the
Portuguese if the need arose. There was thus an undercurrent in
Golkonda policy towards the Estado da India that was at variance with
the 'official line'.
We have noted that from van Berchem's time on, the Sultanate's
official attitude was that the Dutch had replaced the Portuguese, and
that they were in fact responsible for any damage caused to Golkonda
shipping by the latter. From the late I62oS, though, several prominent
Golkonda merchants and politicos had traded clandestinely with the
Portuguese.52This was certainly true of Mansur Khan Habshi, and
possibly of Kamal-al-din as well. Muhammad Sayyid was, however,
the most astute at playing the Portuguese card, and from the late I63os
had begun to supply the Portuguese fortresses in Sri Lanka with rice,
obtaining cinnamon and elephants in exchange. This he did knowing
full well that the Dutch dared not interferewith his shipping, and once
he began the process, other Masulipatnam merchants began to trade
there too. It is almost certain that from this time, the Sari-i-Khail
entered into business relations with D. Felipe Mascarenhas, Captain-
General of Portuguese Ceylon, supplying the latter with jewels, not
only Golkonda diamonds, but the rubies of Pegu that he acquired as a
result of his trade there.53
51
AR, OB, VOC. I 135, fls 669-70, Shipping List for Gombroon, I640-41.
52
See AR, OB, VOC. Ioo00,fls 61-2, 65-70.
53
ANTT, Documentos Remettidos da India, no. 56, fl. 209v, letter from D. Felipe
Mascarenhas to D. Joao IV, Io January I646; for earlier references to Muhammad
Sayyid's trade with private Portuguese, see AR, OB, VOC. i I i9, fl. 140-3.
In effect, then, Muhammad Sayyid's western Indian Ocean ship-

ping enjoyed the protection of all the European maritime powers.
Other shipowners, not so astute or perhaps not so well connected, did
not enjoy this privilege, as was discovered in September 1640. On the
st of September that year, the Portuguese garrison at Colombo awoke
to find off-shore a large 'nao mourisca', which had apparently been
driven shorewards by a storm the previous night.54 The Captain-
General D. Antonio Mascarenhas sent a toneunder one Luis Correa to
enquire to whom the ship belonged; when the boat approached, it
recognized the passengers of the nau as 'Moors', and enquired of some
Danes who were at the prow (whom the Portuguese mistook for
Dutchmen) what the matter was. An account of the incident by the
Portuguese factor at Colombo has it that 'on their [the Danes'] asking
them who they were, the said Luis Correa replied Portuguese, to which
those in the nau responded: "What! Are there still Portuguese in
Ceylon?", and fired two shots at them.'55 The Portuguese boat then
returned ashore and reported that the nau was stuck fast in a sand bank
and had no means of escape. This realization dawned, too, on those
aboard the ship, for they raised a white flag the following day, and on
two boats being sent out to them, the nakhuda, the karani (or scrivener)
and one other person came ashore. It was now discovered that the ship
belonged to Masulipatnam, and was on its way home from the Red Sea,
and that-unluckily for those on board-it carried no Portuguese
cartaz. By all accounts, this ship (which probably belonged to Shaikh
Malik Muhammad) had an enormously rich lading, and estimates
place the value of the cargo at over I,ooo,ooopardaus. This may well be
an exaggeration, of course, but it must be noted that the ship was large,
carried a good-sized complement of passengers, and most of its cargo
was minted gold from Mocha, rendering the estimate mentioned above
within the realms of possibility.
54There are numerous referencesin
Portuguese documentation to this incident. See,
for example, ANTT, Doc. Rem. da India, no. 40, fl. 24; HAG, Conselho da Fazenda, no.
5 [I637-43], fl. I24V, fl. I74. The most detailed, however, is an enquiry into the
proceeds of the capture, ArquivoHistdricoUltramarino, Lisbon (henceforthAHU), Caixas
da India, no. 20 [New Number 344], Document 131, in 4 folio books. Book I is of I2
folio pages, Book II of 14 folios, Book III of 22 folios, and Book IV of 8 pages. Also see
AHU, Caixa 20, Document 139 for a later reference,as also ANTT, Doc. Rem. da India,
no. 6I, fls 73, 74.
5' AHU, Caixa 20, Document 131, Book III, fl. 2v. '... e chegando perto della
reconheceo ser de mouros, e chegando mais perto, vio na proa huns dinamarcas, que
lhe parecerao ser olandezes, e preguntando Ihe quem er5o Ihe dice o dito Luis Correa
portuguezes, ao que os da nao respondeo (sic) que ainda em Ceilao avia portuguezes e
Ihe atiraram duas bercadas .. .'; the value of the cargo is estimated in one place at
[Book I, fl. 6v], and later at over 950,000 pardaus [Book I, fl. 9v-Io].
I,20o,ooo000patacas
PERSIANS, PILGRIMS AND PORTUGUESE 52I
References to the affair of this nau-one of the major scandals of the

I64os in Portuguese India-litter the documentation of the period.
While the 'saudagares' on board were taken into custody, the cargo of
the ship remained unaccounted for in the main, and charges and
counter-charges were exchanged on who had in fact stolen it. One
version had it that D. Antonio Mascarenhas, with the connivance of his
brother D. Felipe, had stolen it, and subsequently used his power and
prestige to pin the blame on others. It was even asserted that the karani
had been killed on his orders, and his register stolen, so that the total
value of the cargo would be untraceable. The official version was that
much of the looting was done by Diogo Mendes de Brito, at the time
Vedorda Fazenda of Ceylon, in conspiracy with Antonio de Mota Galvao
and Francisco de Melo da Silva, the former Captain-Major of a fleet
stationed at Colombo, the latter scrivener attached to Diogo Mendes.
It was charged that in the first instance, large sections of the cargo were
taken out under cover of night in small boats to the houses of the
conspirators, that still more was stolen once what remained was
transported to a customs warehouse on shore, and that finally, when
the goods were sold in public auction, the process was so stage-
managed that one of Diogo Mendes's hangers-on purchased two large
pearls worth 5,000 to 6,ooo pardaus for the princely sum of 30 xerafins.
The returns to the Estado's coffers from the capture were thus a mere
50,000 pardaus, and the real value of the cargo put at twenty times that
amount.
The prosecution of Diogo Mendes took an immensely long time. To
begin with, he produced forged certificates, and thus had justice
delayed. Sentence was finally passed only in I649, and confirmed on
the gth of November that year, with the accused condemned to 'exile for
life at Monomotapa, and a fine of 40,000 pardaus to the Royal
Treasury'. This had little effective meaning, since Diogo Mendes-
apprehending a severe sentence in the offing-had fled the Troncode Goa
for the Adil Shah's territories in November I647. Justice had to rest
content with sentencing one Bernardo Mendes (a Canarim who had
forged some papers to aid the accused) to 'seven years serving in the
Casa de Polvora ... with lashings and proclamation through the public
streets'.56 There was one other minor repercussion of the incident of the
nao de Meca. On board the ship were found two young Persian girls
(mocas), who were taken in hand by Miguel Rangel, Bishop of Cochin,
and converted to Christianity. Thereafter, they were lodged at a
56
The sentence passed on Bernardo Mendes 'da terra' is to be found in AHU, Caixa
20, Document 131, Book IV, fl. 6v, and is dated 29 May I646.
convent in Goa where, in the early I640s, they caught the attention of
the Conde de Aveiras, viceroy of the Estado. Among the papers of the
Conselhoda Fazenda at Goa in I644, one encounters a proposal tabled by
the viceroy, that he take the two girls back with him to Lisbon, to
present them to the King D. Joao IV. One need scarcely add that the
proposal was approved unanimously.57
The ambience of the decade-and-a-half from I640 to about I655, at
the end of which Muhammad Sayyid left Golkonda tojoin the service of
the Mughal prince Aurangzeb, was particularly suited to a person of
his peculiar talents and set of interests. In essence, he had two interests:
a military-political career, and the pursuit of trade. A pure trader
would have found it difficult to survive in the overseas trading world of
the Coromandel in the I64os, with the VOC clamping down severely
on Asian shipping to many parts of South-East Asia and the Bay of
Bengal following on the Dutch capture of Melaka.58 Yet, given
Muhammad Sayyid's political strength, which grew still further when
he was appointed Mir Jumla and Nawab of Golkonda's southern
territories in I643, the Dutch could ill afford to refuse him cartazes, or
even seize his shipping that sailed without the benefit of a pass. In the
same period, the MirJumla continued to evince a remarkable ability to
run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, maintaining close
connections with the Estado da India's authorities. An Augustinian
friar, Francisco Ribeiro, sent as ambassador to Golkonda in I641,
carried explicit instructions from the viceroy to deal with no one but
Muhammad Sayyid, or in his absence, with his son Muhammad
Amin.59 Later in the i64os, the viceroy was to write to Lisbon: 'The
good relations that Your Majesty has been informed exist with the
King of Golkonda are born solely of a certain courtier of his [i.e. the Mir
Jumla], whom I have been dealing with from Ceylon, almost in secret
from the same King'.60 On account of his astute handling of the
situation, Muhammad Sayyid had by I65O a fleet of ten ships, the
largest of which was an 800 ton nau, constructed at Narsapur in the late
I630s. This ship was probably the one on which the Frenchman Jean-
57 HAG, Conselho da Fazenda [1643-47], no. 6, fls 44-44v.

58For a discussion of the
problems faced by Asian traders in this period, see
Raychaudhuri, Jan Company,pp. 122-5; also S. Arasaratnam, 'Some Notes on the
Dutch in Malacca and the Indo-Malayan Trade',JournalofSouth-EastAsianHistory,vol.
X, no. 3, I969, pp. 325-46.
59
HAG, Regimentos e Instrucoes no. 4, [1640-46], fls II-iiv. Also see HAG,
Conselho da Fazenda [1637-43], fl. I7IV, on the same embassy, as also ANTT, Doc.
Rem. da India, no. 56, fl. 79:
60 ANTT, Doc. Rem. da
India, no. 56, fl. 209V.
Baptiste Tavernier sailed from Bandar Abbas to Masulipatnam in
May 1652, and on which he noted the presence of over a hundred
Persian and Armenian merchants, and five Dutchmen (a pilot, his
assistant, and three gunners) besides fifty-five Persian horses.61
Yet, for all the power and prestige and the accumulated diplomatic
skills he brought to Masulipatnam's West Asian shipping connection,
Muhammad Sayyid was still unable to bring to it the quality of stability
and safety. A particularly distressing incident was that of I647, after
which he wrote a long letter to the viceroy at Goa, D. Felipe Mascaren-
has, still his friend and close mercantile associate. The letter, full of
what were at the time termed 'Moorish compliments' by the Dutch and
English, acknowledged the receipt of ten cartazes as well as of sixteen
horses from D. Felipe, but went on to complain that 'two ships that left
from Goa for the Kingdom of Portugal encountered on the way a ship of
mine, which they took and robbed', this despite it having a Portuguese
cartaz.62 The incident involved the galleon Sacramentoand the nau
Atalaya commanded by Luis de Miranda Henriques, which left Goa for
Lisbon early in I647, and on the way encountered Muhammad
Sayyid's ship in the Arabian Sea. A detailed account by the nakhuda
Darvez Muhammad, preserved in a Portuguese translation, tells us
that his ship was fired on by the Portuguese armada, whereupon he
stopped to parley, and to present his cartaz. However, Luis de Miranda
sent a party to board the Masulipatnam ship, and had all the principal
merchants taken off it on to the Portuguese vessel. When the nakhuda
protested, Luis de Miranda reportedly told him that 'God had granted
him this occasion, and that he would kill me [the nakhuda] and take all
the goods'. By now, the Masulipatnam merchants were in a panic, and
pleaded with the Captain-Major to respect a pass that had been issued
by his own viceroy, to which the Portuguese replied that 'he had been
for three years in the lands of India and that the viceroy had granted
him nothing, and that he was going to Portugal and that God had
granted him that he would find this ship on the way.'63 The incident
61 On the fleet owned
by Muhammad Sayyid circa I650, seeJosephJ. Brennig, 'The
Textile Trade of Northern Coromandel in the seventeenth Century: A Study of a Pre-
modern Asian Export Industry', unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Wisconsin, Madison I975 [University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan], pp. 32-4.
Also see, on Tavernier's voyage, V. Ball and W. Crooke (trans. and ed.), Travelsin India
by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Baron ofAubonne, 2 vols, reprint (New Delhi, 1977), vol. I,
pp. 203-7.
62 ANTT, Doc. Rem. da
India, no. 57, fls 46I-62v.
:3 ANTT, Doc. Rem. da India, no. 57, fls 466-66v, 'Treslado da carta de Darves
Mamede nacoda da nao do dito mirzamalaque mir mamede saide que Ihe escreveo com
as novas da tomada da dita nao .. .'.
took a further ugly turn when Luis de Miranda failed to find any
substantial quantity of precious stones on board the Masulipatnam
vessel, from which he concluded that the nakhuda and other merchants
had secreted it away. Protestations to the effect that textiles were the
normal cargo on this route were to no avail. The Captain-Major
ordered Darvez Muhammad to kneel at the prow and ordered him
beheaded, a fate from which he was saved only by the timely interven-
tion of a Portuguese priest. Finally, Luis de Miranda had him scourged,
and when he failed to gain any information on the question of the
jewels, had him dropped into a hold, breaking an arm and a leg. The
nakhuda finally escaped to his vessel with his life, with the Portuguese
decamping with one hundred bales of the choicest textiles, worth 499
tomanis (or I7, 465 xerafins), and the pilot of the Masulipatnam vessel.
It is of some satisfaction to note that it did the Captain-Major little
good, since on proceeding on his homeward journey, the two Port-
uguese vessels were wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope, and Luis de
Miranda was not among the survivors.64
V. The Last Phase, 1655-65
The undisputed sway held by Mir Muhammad Sayyid over shipping at

Masulipatnam until his departure in 1655 was, as we have noted, the
result of his ability to combine elite politics and diplomacy with
mercantile activity. In the phase of his dominance, however, it has been
pointed out that the Persian mercantile community was debilitated;
where earlier there had existed a nucleus of several prosperous ship-
owners, together with occasional participants, the period from the late
i63os on found the mercantile fortunes of the port highly dependent on
64
For the list of goods pilfered and their value, see ANTT, Doc. Rem. da India, no.
57, fl. 463, 'Rol da fazenda q o capitao das duas navas de portugal tomou .. .'. On the
shipwreck of the galleon Sacramento and the nau Atalaya,see ANTT, Doc. Rem. da India,
no. 6I, fls 14-20. The death of Luis de Miranda Henriques finds mention in ANTT,
Doc. Rem. da India, no. 6I, fl. 60-6i. '... e porque Luis de Miranda (por quem se
aguardava para esta queixa se pode verificar, e compor) he falecido . . .'. The same
document also contains mention of a decision to compensate Muhammad Sayyid by
giving him 50 quintaisof Ceylonese Cinnamon, and two elephants 'de dentes'.
Two further points require mention. First, while the Atalayais mentioned in the
document 'Armadas da India' (BM, Additional Manuscript 20902, fls 15I-5 IV.), there
is no mention of the galleon Sacramento. Second, Luis de Miranda Henriques in this
incident ought not to be confused with his namesake who was captain of Diu in the mid-
i66os, and governor of the Estado together with Ant6nio de Melo de Castro and
Manuel Corte Real from I668. He could scarcely have held the post if he died in the
shipwreck of I647.
a single figure. It was only natural that such a fragile structure should
feel the departure of its most important participant, and it is no surprise
to encounter in the period 1655 to I685 the penetration by private
European shipowners into the port. In the I68os, these shipowners-
with English private traders and English Company servants in their
private capacity being of particular importance-had come to domi-
nate Asian shipowners at Masulipatnam. For the first half of the i68os,
when detailed records on shipping at Masulipatnam are available to
us,65 three facts emerge clearly. First, that Asian shipping based at
Masulipatnam no longer plies the Red Sea and Persian Gulf routes.
Second, that this role had been taken over in part by Company
shipping, and in part by English private shipping. Third, that the
decline is in Asian shipping on this route and not necessarily in Asian
trade;the ships of Robert Freeman, as well as of the English Company
continue to carry 750 to 900 packs of textiles each as freight to Persia on
behalf of Asian traders.66 In this section, we propose to examine the
change that is observed in the period I655 to 1680.
There are at least three possible, though not mutually exclusive,
explanations. The first would relate the withdrawal of Asian shipping
from Masulipatnam to West Asia with a general decline in the Asian
trade at the port, consequent upon the establishment by the VOC of a
factory at Haidarabad in I661. The second mode of explanation would
relate the cessation of Asian shipping from Masulipatnam to the
western Indian Ocean with the fall from grace of the Persian com-
munity in Golkonda in general, and Masulipatnam in particular. The
third line of argument is that by the mid-i 66os, it had become clear to
Asian shipowners at Masulipatnam that independent navigation in the
western Indian Ocean was far too perilous, and that it was hence safer
to trade in that region by freighting space aboard English Company or
private shipping.
Turning to the first explanation, mooted over a decade ago byJoseph
5 The shipping lists of the I68os are as follows, all taken from the series AR, OB:
1681-82: VOC. 1378, fls 2083v-2089.
I682-83: VOC. I405, fls I356-59.
I683-84: VOC I405, fls 8I1-I3v.
I684-85: VOC. 1414, fls 568-7 Iv.
I685-86: VOC. I423, fls 8i6-I8V.
In the case of I682-83, we can cross-check these with the English Company's
Masulipatam Consultation Book of 1682-83, Records of Fort St George Series (Madras,
I916).
66 On Freeman's
ship to Persia, which left Masulipatnam on 23 February 1684, see
AR, OB, VOC. I405, fls i8i I-I3v. Also see the other shipping lists cited above for
further details.
J. Brennig, we see that its fundamental parallels are with the situation
in Bengal after 1717, when the grant of a farman by the Mughal
Emperor Farrukhsiyar freeing the English Company's inland trade
enabled the English to gain control over much of external trade.67The
parallel argument is raised in respect of the VOC factory at
Haidarabad, since the Dutch-it is argued-could use the fact that
they could move goods inland free of tolls to undercut their Asian rivals
on the Masulipatnam-Haidarabad route. The problem with the pic-
ture outlined above is the following: what one observes in the case of
Masulipatnam is after all not so much a displacement of Asian trade by
other trade, but of Asian shippingby other shipping. If Asian traders
could not sell the goods they imported into Masulipatnam on account
of Dutch competition, this was scarcely a reason for them to continue
trading but withdraw from shipping.
The second explanation delineated above appears to carry more
weight. We have observed that during the first half of the seventeenth
century, as well as in the late sixteenth century, the Persian element
dominated not only Golkonda politics but trade and shipowning at
Masulipatnam. The first substantial blow to these merchants was the
prolonged agrarian crisis of the i63os, which, as we have argued, saw
them losing ground to Asian shipowners based at other ports. The
structure that emerged thereaftersaw the overwhelming dominance of
a single figure-Mir Muhammad Sayyid Ardestani-and after his
departure in the mid-i65os, the position of the Persians became
somewhat unsure.
It is generally agreed that by the early I67Os, a shift in the factional
politics at Golkonda sees the rise of a new set of administrators,
represented by Telugu Brahmins such as Akkanna and Madanna.68It
is perhaps not adequately recognized, however, that the principal
group displaced as a result were not the Afghans, Habshis or Dakhnis,
whose power in Golkonda had anyway been limited, but the Persians.
The displacement of the Persian element, and the rise of the Brahmin
administrators occurred at a rapid rate in the reign of Abul Hasan
Qutb Shah [I672-87], signalled for example by the replacement of the
MirJumla Sayyid Muzaffar by Madanna. One may speculate whether
the displacement of the Persian element in Golkonda politics con-
67
Brennig, 'The Textile Trade', pp. 36-8. On the Bengal case, see S. Bhattacharya,
The East India Companyand the Economyof Bengalfrom 1704 to I720 (London, 1954), and
Peter J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century
(Oxford, 1976).
68
Brennig, Ibid., pp. 182-8; Richards, Mughal Administration, pp. 38-44.
tributed to their increasing interest in the Thai kingdom of Ayutthaya
in the period, but it is clear that the Persian immigrant no longer found
himself welcome at Masulipatnam. Thus, the Persian chronicler of the
Safina-i-Sulaimani,who vents his spleen on Abul Hasan, declaring: 'He
was ... without intelligence, learning or any sense of honor. He
possessed no experience in affairs of state, neither was he endowed with
the benefits of natural wit and good sense . . . Being senseless and by
nature a gullible fool, Abul-Hasan made a Hindu infidel his favorite
and gave him the post of prime minister and adviser'.69 It is remarkable
that by the early I68os, a mere ten years after the new regime of
Madanna had taken over, little remained of consequence among the
Persian shipowning community at Masulipatnam. Some had moved to
the ports of Bengal, and only a few like Mir Fakruddin continued to ply
their trade to Pegu and Aceh. This, I would argue, was a factor of some
importance in the decline of the link to West Asia.
This brings us to the third and final point, of the insecurity that
continued to plague the shipping from Masulipatnam to the Red Sea
and the Persian Gulf, and its role in the decision to freight space on
board English private and Company vessels, rather than risk
independent ventures. I should begin by pointing out that the last
evidence we have of Asian shipping on these two navigational lines
dates to the mid-I66os. This was a period of deteriorating relations
betwen the Sultanate ofGolkonda and the Portuguese Estado da India,
centring around the Coromandel settlement of Sao Tome de Meliapor.
In the late I63os, Golkonda and Bijapur forces had launched a thrust
southwards, and while the latter had come to control the Coromandel
seaboard around Porto Novo, the former acquired possession of the
lands around the Dutch castle at Pulicat and the fortified Portuguese
settlement at Sao Tome. The conquest of these lands was complete by
the late I64os, but neither centre was threatened except briefly, the
Portuguese in particular being secure under the protection of Muham-
mad Sayyid, who had been designated Nawab of the new conquests of
Golkonda. As is well known, the I65os saw a revival in Luso-Dutch
hostilities in the area after a brief interruption in the I64os. Towards
the end of the I65os, the Dutch captured Nagapattinam, the other
fortified outpost of the Estado da India on Coromandel, but the
conquest of Sao Tome remained for the time being in abeyance. In the
early i66os, though, the Dutch made plans to attack the settlement,
claiming that it would otherwise be handed over to the English together
69John O'Kane (ed. and trans.), The Ship of Sulaiman (London, I972), pp. 234-40,
'The Case of Abul-Hasan and the Fall of Haidarabad'.
with Bombay.70 Since the Portuguese no longer had Muhammad

Sayyid to protect them, Golkonda forces decided to pre-empt the
Dutch, and laid siege to it early in 1662, with Sao Tome falling to the
general Neknam Khan on I May. Reprisal from the Estado da India
was slow to come, but come it did. In I665, a Masulipatnam vessel of
the Sultan was captured by the Portuguese nau Sao Pedro de Alcadntara
while on its way to Persia, and taken to Goa, where-as an English
account of the incident has it-'they doe not use the Moores that were
in her soe civilly as they might doe'.71 The Portuguese viceroy deman-
ded that Sao Tome be restituted to them, stating that only then would
he free this ship, adding that 'what was taken from the settlers [of Sao
Tome] amounted to a great number of naus, and until this is not
restituted, I too will not release this one, nor can others from Golkonda
navigate without fear of equal successes'.72 The ensuing negotiations
on the question lasted into 1667. Two Golkonda ambassadors were
received at Goa, and although it seemed to the English (who found
themselves mediating between the two parties) that an accommodation
would be reached, the matter was not settled.
As if this were not enough, a further blow fell on Masulipatnam
shippers in the same year of I665. According to English records, 'A
Messulapatamjounck, that wintered in the Red Sea, was sailing to her
port, and off Cape Faelix shee mett with this English vessail coming
into the Straights, which gave them chace, fireing guns upon her'.73
The Golkonda vessel first made for the shore, and then lowered sails,
but when a boat was sent to her, some of the merchants on board
panicked and fired at the boat, so that the other ship then 'presently
waighed and came up with her, powering broadsides into her'. By then,
however, most of those on board the Masulipatnam ship had fled to
land, so that the pirate vessel then sacked what was left on board and
sank the Golkonda vessel. As for the saudagareson shore, 'they were
70
The Agent and Council at Madras to the Surat President and Council, 7 April
1662, EFI [1661-64], p. 147. Also see P. S. S. Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos do Conselhodo
Estado,vol. IV, [1659-95] (Goa, 1956), Document 25, dated 4January 1662, pp. 79-80,
passim.
/
Masulipatnam factors to Bengal, I6 July 1666, EFI [1665-67], p. 234. Also
Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos,Documents 58, 59, 68, 77, pp. I58-6I, I77, I92.
72
HAG, Livros de Reis Vizinhos, no. 2, fl. 45, Letter from Viceroy Ant6nio de Melo
de Castro to the English Agent at Madras. '. .. tao bem restituir a dita cidade de Sao
Thome Repondoa no estado em q estava, e o mais q se tomou aos Moradores, q monta
muitas naos, a emquanto isto se nao faz nem eu hei de largar esta, nem as de Golconda
hao de navegar sem o risco de igual sucessos'. For details of the negotiations, see the
same volume, fls 46-46v; EFI [1665-67], pp. 234, 248.
73 Surat to
Bombay, I6July I666, EFI [1665-67], pp. I63-4.
afterwards plundered againe by the natives of the country, that tooke
away that little that they had saved, and at last escaped with their
lives'. The first rumour that swept the Red Sea ports was that the pirate
was the English interloping ship Love, which was in Arabian waters
about that time. It subsequently emerged that the attack had been
carried out by a Swedish ship Falcon, which in I665 also attacked the
Mughal pilgrim vessel Ilahi in the area. Since the master of the vessel
(subsequently sold at Goa to the Estado's authorities) was a Dutchman
Huybert Hugo, we find reports in 1667 that 'the Dutch factory at
Masulipatam was besieged by the Moors, to revenge the loss of many of
their people of good quality in a ship coming from Mecca, which ran
aground to save herself from a vessel displaying French colours, but
believed to have been really Dutch.'74
Putting oneself in the shoes of the Masulipatnam shipowner then, to
continue to navigate to the western Indian Ocean under such circum-
stances must indeed have appeared foolhardy, and little worth the
returns. Such a risk could only have been taken by a merchant of
stature, who could perhaps negotiate an independent understanding
with all parties, not only guaranteeing himself the protection of the
Companies but grace from the Estado's wrath. With the decline of
Masulipatnam's Persians, there was no one who could play this role,
and hence the merchants of the port had to be content with freighting
space aboard one or the other European vessel.
VI. Conclusion
Early on in this essay, it was noted that the Masulipatnam-Red Sea

link when it was inaugurated constituted one of the few trading
connections that traversed what appeared to be two quasi-autonomous
trading regions, the Bay of Bengal and the western Indian Ocean. By
the late I66os, when the link was extinguished-at least for Asian
shipowners-the two areas had emerged far better integrated. Regular
shipping existed between Persia and Surat, and Madras, between
Surat and the ports of Bengal, and along numerous other such routes.
The two maritime regions were no longer quasi-autonomous.
74 Letter from the English consul at Aleppo, 22nd August 1667, EFI [1665-67], pp.
33 -2. Also see the letter from the President and Council at Surat to the Company, Ist
January I666, EFI [1665-67], pp. 31-2, and a later letter from Surat to Masulipatnam,
p. 164. There are other references to the Swedish ship in the same volume pp. 36, 66, 85,
passim. For details of the subsequent adventures of this vessel and its eventual sale at
Goa, Pissurlencar (ed.), Assentos, IV, Documents 5I, 52, pp. 149-51.
Various conclusions might be drawn from this brief history of ours.

One could point, for example, to the fact that the Estado da India,
though not the force of the 159os, still cast a long shadow in the western
Indian Ocean in the i66os. One could note, too, that what eventually
precipitated the withdrawal of Asian shipowners from this line was not
the superior economic organization of their rivals, but their inability to
withstand the use of force in trade. Finally, one could underline the
interplay between elite political structures and long-distance maritime
trade, noting, however, the interpenetration of the worlds of merchant
and politico.75
The Persians ofGolkonda present us with a near unique example of a
group that comfortably traversed both these worlds, so that they can
neither be explained through the use of the concept of the trading
'diaspora' (which appears more appropriate in the case of the
Armenians) nor fit the archetype of the warrior, whose ethos moves him
to honour rather than profit, and to deeds on horseback rather than in
the bazaars of Masulipatnam or Isfahan. It might be useful to conclude
by juxtaposing two sets of remarks drawn from contemporary records,
the first from a letter by Muhammad Sayyid to D. Felipe Mascarenhas
in i647, the second a letter from the Directors of the VOC to their
Governor-General at Batavia in I65I.
'Your Excellency may credit [writes the Mir Jumla], that I am no

merchant... so that I do not send goods to Ceylon for the love of trade,
but since I am obliged to do so to serve Your Excellency'.76
In contrast, the Heren XVII write in 1651: 'It is not strange that the
Moors from around Masulipatan equip many ships to diverse quarters,
since the land is great and this nation are merchants by nature . . ..77
The reality, one supposes, lay in the grey area between these two. For-
rhetoric aside-more often than not, no real conflict was seen to exist
between serving Honour and serving Mammon.
75
The reference is in particular to Ashin Das Gupta, Indian Merchantsand theDecline of
Surat, 1700-1750 (Wiesbaden, I979). In Das Gupta's Surat, the worlds of merchant and
politico appear far more disjunct than on Coromandel.
76
ANTT, Doc. Rem. da India, no. 57, fls 46I-6Iv.
77
AR, Letters of the Heren XVII, VOC. 317, letter to the Governor-General and
Council at Batavia dated 14 October I65I.

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Persians, Pilgrims and Portuguese: The Travails of Masulipatnam Shipping in the Western Indian

Delhi Schoolof Economics

I. The Beginnings, 1590-1605

The Coromandel port of Masulipatnam, at the northern extremity of

0026-749X/88/ $5.00 + .oo ? I988 Cambridge University Press

subsequently as Melaka. In return, he was-like the Sultan of

II. A Phase of Unease, 1605-1632

In April I605, the yacht Delft of the Dutch Verenigde Oost-Indische

their status as traders in Masulipatnam in particular as well as

Companyin Coromandel i605-169o: A Studyin the Interrelations

of Ruy Dias de Sampaio's expedition. The first problems arose in 62I,

III. The Persian Trade and the 1630s Crisis

Already in the early years of the seventeenth century, there existed a

margin of profit, several of the powerful Persian merchants of

Bandar Abbas, 'whether hee is permitted by the King of Gulcondah to

IV. Muhammad Sayyid and the Westward Trade, 1638-54

In June I636, after becoming governor of Masulipatnam, Muham-

In effect, then, Muhammad Sayyid's western Indian Ocean ship-

References to the affair of this nau-one of the major scandals of the

57 HAG, Conselho da Fazenda [1643-47], no. 6, fls 44-44v.

V. The Last Phase, 1655-65

The undisputed sway held by Mir Muhammad Sayyid over shipping at

with Bombay.70 Since the Portuguese no longer had Muhammad

Early on in this essay, it was noted that the Masulipatnam-Red Sea

Various conclusions might be drawn from this brief history of ours.

'Your Excellency may credit [writes the Mir Jumla], that I am no

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