History of Aurangzib, Based on Original Sources v3.c39.s6.8

v3.c39.s6.8

With the Powers of Africa, Aurangzib had very slight connection. A Sayyid of Barbary (Maghrib) who served at the temple of Kaba in Mecca, sent him a complimentary letter in 1665. But in May 1683 Sayyid Ahmad, the brother of the ruler of Barbary, came to India and was presented with Rs. 5,000. The official history records that in March 1665, Siddi Kamil presented himself before the Emperor with a letter from the king of Abyssinia, and that he was given conge next month. This "Ethiopian embassy" is the subject of a dispute between Bernier and Manucci, the former maintaining that they were genuine envoys robbed of their all by Shivaji at Surat, and the latter holding them to be sharpers who tried to repair their bankrupt fortunes by posing as ambassadors and playing upon Aurangzib's well-known zeal for spreading Islam. Though the king of Abyssinia was a Christian, his envoys produced a letter in which he begged money from Aurangzib for repairing a mosque which had been built in Abyssinia over the remains of a Muslim missionary from Mecca but pulled down by the Portuguese.* Manucci regards the letter as forged and the requests contained in it as "a thing incredible" and decides "simply from it that this embassy was fictitious."