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Originally Posted by Ibrahiim al Balooshi
... The Portuguese were ejected in 1650 from Muscat and persued down the African coast as far as Mozambique and harrassed all over the Indian Ocean in Goa etc etc. Contrary to what people may think, they in fact, used Indian mercenaries as their soldiers on the ground and on their ships... Even a large Portuguese battleship had few Portuguese on board other than "the executives". Religiously they were somewhat biggotted and in no way shape or form would they have entertained an Islamic sword with an Islamic hilt in their arsenals... and in the same way the troopers were not muslims...but hindu. When the Portuguese sacked Sohar for example they slaughtered most of the inhabitants (including the Jewish community) They had a very huge bee in their bonnet about other religions in those days ! ...
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Salaams Ibrahiim
I would be too lazy to revue to the chronicles of the period to erase my strongest doubts raised by your sources quotations that (all) Portuguese battleships sailing in those waters were in general massively handled by Indian mercenaries except for a few “executives” aboard.
I will therefore make a bypass and, concentrating on the weapons business, could you tell on what sources or evidence you stirrup, to conclude that Portuguese would not entertain Islamic (or Hindu) weapons based on religious prejudice.
Not being a scholar or close to it, i have come across through time with more than one written episode in that, being a determined weapon of special attributes or circumstantially convenient, in no way would the Portuguese reject it. I wouldn’t recall what would be the behavior of other cultures and their creeds in similar circumstances, but this however is not the issue here.
BTW, i find the “bigot” adjective a bit less diplomatic , but i don’t think the Portuguese of such period will read you.
Without going too deep into the chronicles, we know that:
… As early as the reconquest period (XII-XIII century), Portuguese (Christians) admired the crossbow used by the North African Moors, a light easy loading weapon, although with a lower penetration power, the “Kaous Alaarab”, and adopted it for their own use.
…The fact that one of the most used swords by their local adversaries in Asian lands, the talwar, was rejected, is written in the chronicles that, on one hand, the Portuguese had a greater confidence in their own weapons (pass the presumption) and, on the other, for the extensively discussed reason that Indian swords had handles/grips too small to be handled by Europeans.
… When it comes to artillery, we come to the same situation. I have the privilege to have appreciated in loco a magnificent cannon in the Lisbon Military Museum. Such fire mouth, re-baptized by the Portuguese “The Shot of Diu”, is a bronze basilisk from the XVI century, with a 23 cms caliber, a length of 6,11 mts and a 20 tons weight. It was made for the Sultan Bahâdur Xâh of Gujarat. It has such a rather fascinating inscription engraved on it that, once translated by a local erudite friar, has escaped to be molten for the forging of a monument to the King Dom José I (1750-77).
This cannon, built in 1533, was captured and brought to Portugal in 1538 and placed in the Lisbon Royal castle. Later in the kingdom of Dom João IV (1640-56) was transferred to the tower of São Julião da Barra, a strategic defense post of the Lisbon estuary. This to say that, for certain, such charismatic weapon would see immediate destruction instead of its persisting utility, if religious prejudice towards the use of other cultures was so overwhelming to Portuguese.
I hope you don't mind my coming in with an empirical approach to this little part of your comprehensive treatises.
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