against well-known Moros of that region and those from Samatra, Java, and Bornei, who were aided by Turks, Mamelukes, Moors from Tunez [Tunis], and Moors who were driven away from Granada at the time of the Catholic kings. In a battle against Alfonso de Albuquerque[1] were seven hundred Mamelukes, three hundred Turks, and a thousand Moors from Tunez and Granada—sent there by the Sultan of Egipto [Egypt] before the Turks had defeated him. They peopled and filled these islands. Every year Turks come to Samatra and likewise to Borney; in Maluco and in Ternate these Turks are gathered against your Majesty, and have caused a great number of Christians who were instructed in the Catholic faith to apostatize. Moreover the king of that place is allied with the English heretics, and the Moros have inflicted terrible martyrdoms upon the Christians of these regions. The care with which the Turks have always offered help, both past and present, and that showed by the sultan at the time of Pope Julius the Second, is well known, and can be verified in the history by the said bishop of Algarve, book 4, folio 122. The sultan wrote to the pope, complaining of the said kings Don Manuel and the Catholic Don Fernando—saying that the Moors whom the latter had driven away from Granada and Castilla had gone to Egipto to complain; and that
- ↑ Afonso de Albuquerque (born in 1453, died in 1515) was perhaps the most celebrated among the Portuguese conquerors of India; he was the second viceroy of the Portuguese possessions there, and founded its capital, Goa. From his letters and reports to King Manoel of Portugal a book was compiled by his son Afonso, entitled Commentarios do Grande Afonso Dalbuquerque (Lisboa, 1557); see also W. D. Birch's English translation, Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque (Hakluyt Society, London, nos. 53, 55, 62, 69, of first series). Therein may be found a history of the events mentioned in our text.
