Muntakhab al-tawarikh 11: Reduction of the fort of Surat, in defiance of the Portuguese infidels.

11

[Text, vol. ii. p. 146.] One day in the year 980, the King went to look at the fort of Surat, and gave orders to repair the portions that had been battered and destroyed. During his inspection he saw the large mortars, which had been despatched with a powerful fleet and army by Sulaiman Sultan, the Turkish Emperor, to assist in capturing the harbours of Gujarat, and had been left on the sea-shore, covered with rust, because Sulaiman Aga, the admiral, had abandoned the enterprise through meeting with some obstacle. There they remained, until Khudawand Khan was had them carried into the fort of Surat, at the time it was building. The few which remained had been taken to Junagarh by the Governor. The King inspected them, and gave orders that some of them, which were not wanted there, should be sent to Agra.
The reason assigned for Khudawand Khan's building the fort of Surat is, that the Firingis used to oppress the Musulmans in every kind of manner, devastating the country, and tormenting God's servants. At the time of laying the foundations of the fort, they tried to throw every obstacle in the way, by firing cannon from their ships, but all without effect.
That expert engineer laid the foundations of one side within the sea, dug a deep ditch round the two sides which faced the land, and built the walls with stones and burnt bricks. The wall was thirty-five yards long. The breadth of the four walls was fifteen yards, and their height twenty yards, and the breadth of the ditch was twenty yards. All the stones, the joints and interstices were fastened together with iron clamps, and made firm with molten lead. The battlements and embrasures are lofty, and so beautiful that every one was astonished at beholding them. On the bastions, which projected into the sea, was erected a gallery (ghurfa), which the Firingis, especially the Portuguese, profess to say is an invention of their own. When the Musulmans began to erect this chaukandi, the Firingis exerted every kind of opposition to obstruct it; and when they found they could not prevail by force, they offered large sums of money to prevent its being built: but Khudawand Khan, through the regard which he bore to his own religion, sternly refused, and plied the work till it was finished, in contemptuous defiance of the Christians.