The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c16.95

v4.c16.95

The position of the Jesuit mission was now most embarrassing. Akbar’s intermittent interest in the Christian faith had no effect on his hostility to the Portuguese. A small town near Damān had been ceded to them in 1575 by Gulbadan Begam, in order to ensure their protection on her voyage to Mecca, but on her return Akbar ordered his officers in Gujarāt to recover the town, and they attacked the Portuguese in Damān, but were repulsed with considerable loss. Shortly afterwards a party of young men who had landed for purposes of sport from the Portuguese ships near Surat was attacked, and nine of them were captured and put to death on refusing to apostatise to Islām. Their heads were sent to Akbar, as the priests learned, and when the governor of Surat came to court for the *Naurūz* he told them the whole story. Father Monserrate remonstrated with Akbar, who falsely denied that he had seen the heads and hypocritically expressed his regret at the occurrences at Damān and Sūrat. He issued public orders to the governor of Broach to desist from attacking the Portuguese, but sent secret instructions for the capture of Diu. A quantity of arms was smuggled into the fortress in bales of cotton, and the imperial officers requested the governor, Pedro de Menezes, to allow their troops passage through Portuguese territory. He was aware of their design, but acceded to their request, and even allowed them to enter the fortress, where the sight of the Portuguese troops standing to arms and ready to resist any act of aggression so alarmed them that they hastily left and withdrew their troops from Portuguese territory. Akbar was bitterly disappointed by the failure of the scheme and repeatedly asked the priests who were in command at Diu, but they, at the time, suspected nothing. The authorities at Goa so resented Akbar’s perfidy that the Provincial of the Society of Jesus recalled the mission from his court. Akbar divined the reason for its recall, and swore to Father Monserrate that he had not been implicated in the hostile acts on the western coast. The Provincial’s letter had left the priests some discretion, and it was decided that Rodolfo Acquaviva should remain at court, while the other two returned to Goa with Sayyid Muzaffar, Akbar’s envoy, who bore a letter to Philip II of Spain and Portugal. This letter, written by Abu-’l-Fazl, bears the date corresponding to 14 April, 1582, and the mission must have left the court about that time.