[fernando]

The description of Sohar in Orientalist Eduardo Kol de Carvalho's work is an extract of the XXVI chapter that preceds the one narrating Albuquerque's departure from Sohar along the coast to Orfação, which comes resumed in post #94. The actual author of the written work, Bras de Albuquerque (1501-1581), 'natural' son of Afonso de Albuquerque, has compiled the letters his father sent the King and himself and wrote his 'Comentarios'.
His description of Sohar is rather detailed; that the people in the place would be more than six thousand, plus some fifty on horse, most of those covered with steel, from which fell a sort of iron scales, in a manner of roofs covered by tiles, which are so strong that a crossbow bolt couldn't trespass them, an the horses foreheads were protected in the same manner. The saddles were Turkic, of high cantle, and the stirrups were also of Turkic fashion. The major part are archers, some carry lances and Turkic maces. ... the land is of large porpotions, with tillages of wheat, corn, barley and there is great cattle stocks and horse breeding ... etc. etc.
En passant, Bras de Albuquerque made part of the escort that conveyed Infanta Beatriz (King Dom Manuel's daughter) to Italy for her wedding with Carlos III de Saboia, in which fleet sailed the nau Santa Catarina de Monte Sinai, precisely the one shown in post #83.

Hereunder ...

First: Muscat inhabitants bathing.

Second; Persian people from the Kingdom of Ormuz.

... watercolours in a Portuguese Codice kept in the Casanatense Library, composed of a set of 75 illustrations produced in the XVI century, probably the earliest known; work of a Portuguese unidentified author who has travelled to the Orient,
(As demonstrated by Georg Otto Schurhammer)

... and a portrait of Afonso de Albuquerque included in Bras de Albuquerque's first edition of his Comentarios do Grande Afonso de Albuquerque (1576).


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