Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/172

124 THE POKTUGUESE POLICY IN THE EAST over the custom house, " in tributes and vassalage to the King our Lord in silver, gold, and seed pearls, to the value of the land sixty thousand xerafins." All Christian renegades are to be handed over to the cap- tain of the Portuguese fortress, and no Moslems shall carry arms in Ormuz save the attendants on the king and town magistrate. Any other Moor wearing arms " shall on the second offence be flogged, and on the third be put to death." Moslems are to pay duty on all merchandise, Portuguese are to be exempt. The Mos- lems are to maintain a chief of police who should be a Christian and " twenty Christian men who walked with him." Six years later a heavy fine was laid on Ormuz for the death of the Portuguese magistrate, and the customs revenue was allotted until payment should be realized. In 1540 a custom house and certain rev- enues were formally made over to the Portuguese, sub- ject to allowances to the Ormuz court " in payment of tributes," says the King of Ormuz not without pa- thos, " which I am obliged to pay." While the entrance to the Persian Gulf thus passed completely under the Portuguese, it also marked the western limits of their shore-power on the Indo-Egyp- tian route. Their attempts to seize the mouth of the Eed Sea failed. In 1513 Albuquerque, after a bloody siege of Aden, was repulsed with slaughter, and could only cannonade the town and burn the ships in the harbour. The brave Arabs had no intention of yielding their stronghold, from which they could swoop down on the Red Sea passage, to Christian, Egyptian, or