Distant Allies: Diplomatic Relations between Portugal and Iran in the Reign of Shah Tahmasb

PORTUGAL, THE PERSIAN GULF AND SAFAVID PERSIA edited by Rudi MATTHEE and Jorge FLORES In association with the IRAN HERITAGE FOUNDATION and the FREER GALLERY OF ART & ARTHUR M. SACKLER GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION PEETERS 2011 CONTENTS CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MAPS AND FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII XI INTRODUCTION Rudi Matthee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 I. MAPPING THE TERRAIN: HISTORIOGRAPHY AND CARTOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . 1. The Eye of the Beholder: The Creation of a Portuguese Discourse on Safavid Iran João Teles e Cunha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. Mapping the Backyard of an Empire: Portuguese Cartographies of the Persian Littoral during the Safavid Period Zoltán Biedermann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 11 51 . . . . . . . . . 79 II. THE PORTUGUESE AND THE ISLANDS 3. Two Revenue Lists from Hormuz (1515, 1543) Willem Floor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 4. The Portuguese on Qeshm Daniel T. Potts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 5. Signal Defeat: The Portuguese Loss of Comorão in 1614 and its Political and Commercial Consequences E. K. Faridany . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 III. THE PORTUGUESE AND THE WIDER PERSIAN GULF . . . . 6. Portuguese-Ottoman Rivalry in the Persian Gulf in the Mid-Sixteenth Century: The Siege of Hormuz, 1552 Dejanirah Couto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7. Imperial Smackdown: The Portuguese Between Imamate and Caliphate in the Persian Gulf Giancarlo Casale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. Solving Rubik’s Cube: Hormuz and the Geopolitical Challenges of West Asia, c. 1592-1622 Jorge Flores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 145 177 191 VI CONTENTS IV. DIPLOMACY AND TRAVEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9. Distant Allies: Diplomatic Contacts between Portugal and Iran in the Reign of Shah Tahmasb, 1524-1576 Rudi Matthee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10. The Persian Ventures of Fr. António de Gouveia Rui Manuel Loureiro . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11. Giovan Battista and Gerolamo Vecchietti in Hormuz Michele Bernardini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12. The ‘Persian Gentlemen’ at the Spanish Court in the Early Seventeenth Century Enrique García Hernán . . . . . . . . . . . . 217 219 249 265 283 INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 DISTANT ALLIES: DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN IN THE REIGN OF SHAH TAHMASB, 1524-15761 Rudi MATTHEE Introduction Two assumptions inform the traditional view of the role the Safavids played in the Persian Gulf and their interaction with various European maritime powers active in the same body of water. The first is the notion that Safavid Iran was a Persian Gulf state with the aspiration as well as the ability to control the northern shores and extend its influence to the southern littoral and beyond by patrolling the waterway and projecting its maritime power into the Arabian Sea and toward the Indian Ocean. The second is the idea that ‘outside’ forces, first the Portuguese and later the English and the Dutch, controlled the Gulf at large as of the early sixteenth century. A corollary of this is the belief that these maritime nations wielded significant power on the Iranian mainland as well, and that this power was imperialist and hegemonic in nature and design, forming a phase in a long-term project aimed at controlling Iran and exploiting its natural resources. Both are staples of modern Iranian nationalism, often uncritically accepted and unthinkingly reproduced, not just by the general public but by many educated people as well, even some who specialize in the early modern period. The truth is that, until modern times, the Gulf was oriented towards India and the Arab world, by way of its large numbers of mostly Sunni Arabic-speakers and Hindu-Indians, its food, and especially its trade flows. Iran only became a Persian-Gulf state in the twentieth century. The Safavids had interests in the Persian Gulf, to be sure, but until the reign of Shah ‘Abbas I (r. 1587-1629) these were mostly of a tributary nature. Iranian rulers were concerned about rival powers in the Persian Gulf, but until long after the Safavid period their natural affinity and primary interests centered on the interior, where their principal resource 1 I would like to thank Jesus Cruz, Jorge Flores and especially João Teles e Cunha for assistance, comments, and suggestions. 220 RUDI MATTHEE base as well as their main enemies could be found. Emblematic of this orientation is the absence of an Iranian navy until the reign of Nader Shah in the eighteenth century, making it impossible for the Safavids to wield control over the waters of the Persian Gulf2. As for the Portuguese, they had a presence in the Persian Gulf from the moment they took Hormuz and turned it into their regional headquarters in the early sixteenth century. This presence included extensive commercial interests and knew a military aspect—according to a longstanding notion the Portuguese derived much of their might in the region from the fact that they were the first to make use of ships as platforms to fire artillery, and to employ and project naval power on a regular basis. But they never used this power to penetrate the land-based principalities and states of the Middle East, either because these were too strong or because, as in the case of the Persian Gulf, there was not enough potential gain to justify the enormous expense in manpower and treasure. Instead, they mostly skirted around the region. The Ottoman challenge made them withdraw from the Red Sea, and in the end they resolved to evade southwest Asia altogether, avoiding conflict and concentrating on other areas in Asia and in the Americas for territorial expansion and control3. Unbearably hot and rather poor, as well as religiously and sexually impenetrable, the Persian Gulf especially offered no foundations for the equivalent of a Goa or a Macao, Asian trading posts that later would become colonial settlements. As Willem Floor observes, the Portuguese did not get involved in Persian Gulf matters beyond necessity—as indeed no European power did until the early nineteenth century. They chose to focus on the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of Oman, and only extended their ambit when they were challenged by the Ottomans in the mid-sixteenth century. Nothing exemplifies the limits of their territorial ambitions as well as the fact that very few of the fortresses traditionally ascribed to the Portuguese were actually built from scratch by them—as opposed to rebuilt and renovated4. Unlike the 2 See the discussion in Xavier de Planhol, L’Islam et la mer. La mosquée et le matelot XIIe-XXe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2000), pp. 361-370. 3 Luís Filipe F. R. Thomaz, ‘Descobrimentos e evangelização. Da Cruzada à missão pacifica’, in Missionação Portuguesa e encontro de culturas. Actas do congresso internacional de história, 4 vols. (Braga: Universidade Católica Portuguesa, 1993), vol. 1, p. 123. 4 Willem Floor, The Persian Gulf: A Political and Economic History of Five Port Cities 1500-1730 (Washington D.C.: Mage Publishers, 2006), p. 231. Only three were built from scratch, Hormuz and the two main fortresses of Masqat. DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 221 maritime nations who came after them, the English and the Dutch, the Portuguese never even sought to establish a permanent commercial presence in Iran’s interior. As João Teles e Cunha points out elsewhere in this collection, they tellingly showed little interest in producing accurate and up-to-date maps of inland Iran. In so far as they operated beyond the coast, it was in the form of scattered missionary activities and incidental diplomatic missions or as private individuals traveling or trading. Ousted from Hormuz by a combined Anglo-Iranian naval force in 1622 and defeated by the Omani Arabs, the Portuguese by the mid-seventeenth century were a spent force in the Persian Gulf basin, hanging on to little more than Kong, the Iranian port which had become their regional trade factory and where they acquired customs rights in 16305. It is thus not surprising that relations between the Portuguese and Safavid Iran—as distinct from relations between Portugal and the Persian Gulf—were limited and of a peculiar nature, based on mutual interest rather than dominated by a hegemonic European power. Iran, for one, profited from shipping facilities and relied on the Portuguese—and later on the English and the Dutch—for military assistance against rebellious coastal principalities and its Arabs neighbors. The two countries maintained contacts but these were far less dense and intense than one might imagine, at least until the most expansive of the Safavid rulers, Shah ‘Abbas I, turned his attention to the Gulf and incorporated much of its littoral and the islands of Hormuz and Bahrain into his realm. Logistics played an important role here. Distances were great—far greater than between Europe and the Ottoman Empire and, in terms of traveling time via the maritime route, even greater than between Europe and India6. Consequently, coordinated, sequential action was difficult to achieve, leaving a huge gap between intent and outcome, desire and achievement. Europeans knew little about Iran in the sixteenth century, a time before the availability of reliable cartography of anything but the See Floor, The Persian Gulf, pp. 429 et seq. Since the sixteenth century, the Portuguese used the overland route whenever there was a need for speedy communication between Goa and Lisbon, and even between Hormuz and Lisbon. See Anthony Disney, ‘The Gulf Route from India to Portugal in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”: Couriers, Traders and Image-makers’, in id., The Portuguese in India and Other Studies, 1500-1700 (Farham: Ashgate, 2009); and id., ‘The Development during the Reign of João III of Communications between the Estado da Índia and Portugal via the Middle East’, in D. João III e o Império. Actas do Congresso Internacional comemorativo do seu nascimento, eds. Roberto Carneiro and Artur Teodoro de Matos (Lisbon: Universidade Católica Portuguesa-CEPCEP / Universidade Nova de Lisboa-CHAM, 2004), pp. 593-600. 5 6 222 RUDI MATTHEE coastal area and the publication of the great travelogues, all of which had to wait until the next century7. In Vienna people had no idea about the nature and the length of the voyage between Lisbon and Hormuz and onward to the mainland, or that traveling the maritime route was regulated and restricted by the monsoon. In the first half of the sixteenthcentury Portugal, no one was available to serve as a Persian interpreter. (Later, there were people working in Lisbon’s Casa da Índia who knew Persian)8. Iranians, in turn, were not well informed about Europe, in part because they thought the history and societies of non-Muslim lands little relevant. Indeed, no Persian-language sources from the Safavid period offer any substantive information about relations with the Portuguese. Even their conquest of Hormuz and their ouster from the island more than a century later left little trace in the Safavid chronicles beyond a few poems9. In so far as they existed—and contrary to common perceptions—early contacts also tended to be friendly, centering on a shared fear of Ottoman aggression and expansionism. The early reign of Shah Isma‘il saw a series of exchanges between Iran and various European nations, including Portugal, whose rulers witnessed with excitement the rise of a new Muslim dispensation led by a charismatic ruler who was rumored to have Christian inclinations and who soon became involved in a deadly struggle against the Ottomans. Following his humiliating defeat at Chalderan in 1514, Isma‘il withdrew from the international arena. Albuquerque, 7 For the development of cartography, see Dejanirah Couto, Jean-Louis BacquéGrammont and Mahmoud Taleghani, eds; Zoltán Biedermann, coordinator, Atlas historique du golfe Persique (XVIe-XVIIIe siècles)/Historical Atlas of the Persian Gulf (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries)/Atlas-e tarikhi-ye Khalij- e Fars (Qarn-e shansdehom-qarn-e hezhdehom) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006). The first substantive European travelogues about Iran were those of Adam Olearius, with a first version published in German in 1647, translated into Dutch in 1651 and into French in 1656 and, in an enlarged version in 1659, from which an English translation was made in 1662; and Pietro della Valle, published in 1658 in Italian, in a French translation in 1662-64, in Dutch in 1664-65, and in English in 1664. See John Emerson, ‘Ex Oriente Lux: Some European Sources on the Economic Structure of Persia between about 1630 and 1690’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1969) pp. 40-47; Elio Brancaforte, Visions of Persia. Mapping the Travels of Adam Olearius (Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 2003) pp. 64-66; and Pietro della Valle, The Travels of Pietro della Valle in India, ed. and trans. Edward Grey (London: Hakluyt Society, 1892), pp. xxxix-xli. 8 Diogo Barbosa Machado, Memorias para a historia de Portugal, que comprehendem o governo del Rey D. Sebastião, 4 vols. (Lisbon: Joseph Antonio da Sylva, 1736-1751, 1737), vol. 2, p. 50. 9 Mohammad Baqer Vosuqi and ‘Abd al-Rasul Kheirandish (eds.), Jangnameh-ye Qeshm va Jarun-nameh (Tehran: Miras-e Maktub, 1384/2005). DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 223 unaware of the outcome of Chalderan, in 1515 dispatched Fernão Gomes de Lemos to Isma’il with instructions to conclude an offensive alliance with the shah against the Mamluks. In an effort to resume diplomatic contacts with the Safavids, the Portuguese in late 1523 sent a last embassy to Tabriz, that of Baltasar Pessoa, but the shah died in 1524, shortly after its arrival, and Iran was plunged into turmoil, thus rendering ineffective any contact until the days of Shah ‘Abbas I. It is the period in between, and particularly the long reign of Shah Tahmasb (1524-1576), that remains murky, and it is this period that is explored in the present essay. Known as an insular ruler and pious to the point of bigotry, Shah Tahmasb enjoys the reputation of having been little interested in relations with the outside world. Yet he had good reasons to put out feelers to the Christian powers of Europe, for after the Ottomans failed to take Vienna in 1529, they turned their attention eastward and invaded his territory three times in the 1530s and 1540s. As will be seen, Portugal played a minor role in the ensuing interaction. Whereas in the seventeenth century, beginning with Shah ‘Abbas, relations between Iran and the Portuguese became hostile, for much of the sixteenth century the two countries operated from the same interests, centering on a desire to neutralize and counteract the ambitions of the Ottoman Empire. Motives and Objectives In their dealings with Safavid Iran, the Portuguese were motivated by two objectives. Their principal concern was stability of the kind that would enable them to maximize revenue from the Persian Gulf trade. Geopolitical interests played a role as well, and religious motives were a not negligible part of these. Their aim in this regard, Zoltán Biedermann argues, was of a “political and symbolic character, mixed with a hint of religious intention”. The formation of a Christian-Shi‘ite alliance against the Ottomans provided the leitmotiv here10. The roots of this desire go back to the consternation the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 caused among the leaders of Christendom, and the subsequent initiatives various European nations, including Portugal, took in response. King Afonso V (r. 1432-1481) reacted positively to the appeals of Pope Calixtus III to mount a Christian response to the catastrophic loss. 10 Zoltán Biedermann, ‘Portuguese Diplomacy in Asia in the Sixteenth Century: A preliminary Overview’, Itinerario 29:2 (2005), p. 25. 224 RUDI MATTHEE The collective reaction did not result in a Crusade, however, and Portugal used its preparations against the Turks in an operation against Morocco, taking Qasr al-Saghir in 1458. Its marginal status in the concert of European nations at the time made the country’s contribution to the crusading ventures in general meager. In the European Crusader imagination the Portuguese played a minor role at best, one that fell far short of the country’s pretensions, ranking, as Aubin puts it, at the level of Scotland or Denmark11. This became clear in 1480, when the Ottomans mounted a direct challenge to the heart of Christianity by landing at Otranto in Apulia, at the heel of Italy’s boot. In response, Pope Sixtus IV called for a crusade. Portugal heeded the call by sending a small flotilla of twenty vessels. Yet rather than contributing anything to the liberation of Otranto in September of the next year, this expedition became known mainly for the leisurely jaunt it undertook along various Mediterranean ports of call. During the remainder of the fifteenth century, Portuguese antiOttoman activities were largely confined to the eastern Mediterranean, where they responded to requests for assistance by the Hospitalers against Turkish piracy12. The accession of King Manuel in 1495 saw an upsurge of Portuguese interest in crusading ventures. Manuel was motivated, more than by territorial expansionism, by a life-long desire to spread Christianity and to combat Islam13. Most notably, he showed great enthusiasm for the idea of organizing a crusade against the Turks in the Mediterranean. When Venice made peace with Istanbul in 1503, effectively ending a three-year papal effort to create a unified Christian response to the Turks, Dom Manuel picked up the banner and launched a campaign for a crusade against Islam. Nothing ever came of these dreams, however. As had been true for the reaction to the fall of Otranto, the results were meager14. New avenues opened up with the Portuguese arrival in the Persian Gulf in the early years of the sixteenth century, following the establishment of the Estado da Índia in 1505. Afonso de Albuquerque briefly Jean Aubin, ‘Le Portugal dans l’Europe des années 1500’, in id., Le latin et l’astrolabe, 3 vols. (Lisbon and Paris: Commission Nationale pour les Commémorations des Découvertes Portugaises and Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 1996-2006), vol. 2: Recherches sur le Portugal de la Renaissance, son expansion en Asie et les relations internationales, p. 45. 12 Jean Aubin, ‘Lisbonne contre le Turc’, in id., Le latin et l’astrolabe, vol. 3: Études inédites sur le règne de D. Manuel, pp. 123-124, 126. 13 Ibid.; Robert Findlay, ‘Crisis and Crusade in the Mediterranean: Venice, Portugal, and the Cape Route to India (1498-1509)’, Studi Veneziani 28 (1994), pp. 72-77. 14 Findlay, ‘Crisis and Crusade’, p. 71; Aubin, ‘Lisbonne contre le Turc’, pp. 144-148. 11 DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 225 took Hormuz in 1507 and definitively claimed the island for the Portuguese in 1515. The importance of commercial ties between Basra and Hormuz created long-term interests for the Portuguese in the western end of the Persian Gulf, prompting the dispatch of a first envoy, João de Meira, to Basra in 1517. In due time Ottoman pressure on Basra made the Portuguese natural allies of the rulers of that port. As of the 1530s, Basra’s rulers frequently invoked Portuguese assistance against Istanbul as well as against rival local and regional powers. Their conquest of Egypt in 1517 brought the Red Sea into the purview of the Ottomans, enabling them to extend their sway southward along its shores and, eventually, to edge the Portuguese out of the Red Sea basin. It took them two decades to accomplish this, initially using the abandoned Mamluk fleet anchored off Jiddah. Having built their own navy in the early 1530s, they went on to launch an attack against the Portuguese fortress of Diu in 1538 and, the siege having failed, they took Aden during the return voyage to Suez15. The Safavids, meanwhile, had their own reasons to reach out to Portugal. The initiative for contacts between the two states in the early years of the Safavid regime seems to have originated in Iran. Shah Isma‘il in 1510 dispatched an envoy to the court of Bijapur in south India, who was accompanied by an emissary sent by the local vizier of Hormuz. Acting on his personal initiative, he offered the Portuguese governor of India, Afonso de Albuquerque, vaguely worded military cooperation against the Egyptian Mamluks, by then Portugal’s archenemy in the Middle East and in the western Indian Ocean16. Further diplomatic contacts are recorded in 1513 and 1515, following Isma‘il’s humiliating defeat against the Ottomans at Chalderan in 1514, when Isma‘il sought to enlist Portuguese assistance for his plans to take Bahrain and Qatif17. 15 Dejanirah Silva Couto, ‘L’expédition portugaise à Bassora en 1551’, Académie des Inscriptions & Belles Lettres (Comptes rendus des séances de l’année 2002), pp. 475478; Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), offers a vigorous argument for an early, sustained and purposeful Ottoman thrust toward the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. 16 Brás de Albuquerque, Comentários do Grande Afonso de Albuquerque, capitão geral que foi das Índias Orientais, ed. Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 1973), book II, chap. xxiii; João de Barros, Décadas da Ásia (rpt. [Lisbon, 1777-1788], Lisbon: Livraria S. Carlos, 1973-1975), II/5-3; Gaspar Correia, Lendas da Índia, ed. M. Lopes de Almeida, 4 vols. (Porto: Lello & Irmão, 1975), vol. II, p. 67. 17 Cartas de Afonso de Albuquerque seguidas de documentos que as elucidam, eds. R. A. de Bulhão Pato and H. L. de Mendonça, 7 vols. (Lisbon: Academia Real das Sciencias, 1884-1935), vol. 2, pp. 233-250, 25-52. 226 RUDI MATTHEE Each time the Safavid ruler paid lip service to Portuguese suggestions for a joint campaign designed to take on the Ottomans, liberate Jerusalem and defeat the Mamluks. Yet, no serious action was undertaken. Isma‘il must have been convinced that an anti-Ottoman Portuguese-Iranian alliance was not a feasible option. The Safavid ruler received proof of that in 1515, when he sent a small force to Hormuz to ask for Portuguese assistance to ship them to Bahrain, in order to conquer the island, and then proceed to neighbouring al-Hasa. Albuquerque’s nephew, Pêro de Albuquerque, dismissed the request because he had no instructions from Goa. Besides, Portuguese politics in Asia had changed abruptly with the demise of Albuquerque in 1515, and were only retaken by King D. Manuel on the closing years of his reign18. In the process the shah established a pattern in Iranian-Portuguese relations by sending missions to the Portuguese viceroy in India or to the governor of the Estado da Índia in Goa who had powers to sign treaties, rather than to Lisbon19. At the same time, real Safavid concerns and demands, then and later, were all practical and concrete, revolving around claims to the payment of revenue, requests for shipping facilities, attempts to circumvent an economic blockade imposed on Iran by the Turks, and, especially after Chalderan, the solicitation of military assistance in the form of ordnance and artillery specialists20. The two decades after the Portuguese seizure of Hormuz were marked by several important developments and challenges. Most importantly, the enthronement in 1520 of Sultan Süleyman prefigured a continued Turkish drive into the Balkans and the eastern lands toward the Indian Ocean. In 1521, the Turkish army opened up the road into central Europe by taking the stronghold of Belgrade. Five years later the Ottoman troops routed the Hungarians at the Battle of Mohács, exposing Europe’s heart, and from there went on to lay siege to Vienna in 1529. When their attempt to take the city failed, the Ottomans made peace with the Habsburgs, next to turn their attention eastward. In 1534 they launched the first of what would be three expeditions against Iran, the so-called Floor, The Persian Gulf, p. 105. João Teles e Cunha, ‘Portugal. I: Relations with Persia in the Early Modern Age (1500-1750)’, Encyclopaedia Iranica (online, consulted March 10, 2010). 20 Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont, Les Ottomans, les Safavides et leurs voisins, Contributions à l’histoire des relations internationales dans l’Orient islamique de 1514 à 1524 (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, 1987), pp. 129 et seq. As the author points out, p. 135, Shah Isma‘il presented himself as important and powerful but in reality was caught up with the Ottomans and in Khorasan, and had no resources to spare for the Persian Gulf. The same author also notes, p. 136, that, after Chalderan, the Mamluks became potential allies of Shah Isma‘il. 18 19 DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 227 Campaign of the Two Iraqs, during which they took Tabriz and penetrated Safavid territory as far as Soltaniyeh. In the same year they (nominally) added Mesopotamia to their territory by seizing Baghdad21. The Mughamis rulers of Basra and the chieftains of the hinterland, including Huwayza on the border with Iran, (formally) submitted to Ottoman control. All this heightened the territorial threat the Ottomans posed to Iran. It also laid the basis for further Ottoman expansionism into the Persian Gulf in competition with the Portuguese. Contacts under Shah Tahmasb If these developments lent urgency to Western European attempts to combat the Ottomans, for the time being Iran played an insignificant role in any proposed joint action. Shah Tahmasb, who succeeded Isma‘il after the latter’s untimely death in 1524, initially was hardly in a position to play a prominent role on the international stage. The new ruler spent the first decade of his rule quelling tribal revolts and establishing his personal control. For the longest time Safavid interest in Persian Gulf was as limited as their ability to direct any serious resources to the south. Iran’s contacts with the Portuguese thus were limited as well, mostly confined to issues of tribute, with desultory suggestions for joint action against the Ottomans22. Nor were the Portuguese in a position to take any serious initiatives given the problems they faced in this period. These had less to do with the fact that the Ottomans in this period posed a major challenge to the western Mediterranean world—for this was mostly a Spanish problem— than with internal issues. The years 1521-1549 were difficult ones for the Portuguese crown. Between 1526 and 1555 King João III (r. 15211557) lost sixteen sons and brothers and sisters, thus weakening the prospect of succession and royal marriage alliances, and constituting a major preoccupation. The period was also marked by a decrease in population and dwindling state income, a function of poor state organization and overspending. The Inquisition, which made its entry under the king’s auspices, meanwhile led to an exodus of merchants and a loss of social flexibility and versatility. The Portuguese in this period nevertheless took several initiatives to confront the Ottoman threat, which began to 21 For this campaign, see Walter Posch, ‘Die osmanische Feldzug in die beiden ‘Iraq (940-942/1534-1535)’ (Magisterarbeit, University of Vienna, 1992). 22 Floor, The Persian Gulf, p. 128. 228 RUDI MATTHEE loom large in their writings as of 152723. In 1535, Lisbon sent a strong fleet to assist Emperor Charles V in his attack on Tunis, which a year earlier had been taken by the well known admiral Kheyr al-Din Barbarossa. This initiative was a response to direct threats to Portuguese interests in the western Mediterranean, including the safety of their coasts. In various parts of the western Indian Ocean basin, meanwhile, including the Persian Gulf, the Portuguese were not without success either in this period. In the 1530s they took the Indian coastal area of Gujarat and they also came to dominate the Sea of Ceylon. They further scuttled Ottoman forays into the western Indian Ocean by defeating their fleet at Diu in 1537-1538 and in 1546, and at Hormuz in 1554. Yet, aside from their preoccupation with Hormuz, Portuguese direct involvement in the Persian Gulf remained limited. How little they interacted with Iran at this point is illustrated by the fact that decades into the reign of Shah Tahmasb Portuguese sources still refer to the Safavid realm as the ‘country of Xequesmael’24. The most concrete form of joint action with the Iranians in this period was of a circumscribed and concrete nature: In 1539 they assisted the Safavids in subduing the rebellious port of Reyshahr by blockading it from the sea. It took two expeditions to accomplish this, and the Portuguese took part in these ventures only because its recalcitrant ruler threatened their trade with Basra25. Only as of the late 1530s, following the consolidation of Tahmasb’s domestic power, were the Iranians in a position to resume diplomatic activity oriented toward Europe. Tahmasb soon proved to be a clever strategist who was perfectly willing to do business with Western powers. In 15401541 an otherwise unknown Safavid envoy went to Hormuz to ask its Portuguese governor to collaborate with the Iranians in reclaiming Basra and Bahrain26. A year later an Iranian delegate visited Goa, requesting the payment of tribute27. Quite a few envoys, most of them little known, also appear to have been exchanged between Safavid Iran and various European nations in this period. Thus in 1540 reports spoke of two Safavid embassies having visited Emperor Charles V in the previous few years, one of whom had first visited Portugal. In the same year the Venetian envoy Michele Membré returned to Venice after a long stay at the Safavid court carrying letters from Shah Tahmasb to Doge Andrea Gritti28. In 1541 the shah sent 23 24 25 26 27 Couto, ‘L’expédition portugaise à Bassora’, p. 481, n. Floor, The Persian Gulf, p. 129. Ibid., pp. 128-130. Couto, ‘L’expédition portugaise à Bassora’, p. 157. Ibid., p. 129. DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 229 an Armenian to Cyprus to find out about the peace that Venice had concluded with the Ottomans the year before29. All this flies in face of the traditional image of Shah Tahmasb as a ruler of strict religious beliefs averse to seeking and maintaining ties with Christian powers30. The second half of the 1540s witnessed two more important developments. One occurred in 1546 in the form of the Ottoman incorporation of Basra. Having established nominal control over most of Iraq, the Ottomans now spread their influence beyond Basra into all of southern Iraq and all the way to Qatif and al-Hasa, which they took in 1550. This convinced the Portuguese that war with the Ottomans would be inevitable31. War did ensue but hostilities alternated with peace proposals, based on a growing realization on the part of the Portuguese that they would not be able to play any role of importance in the Red Sea. This awareness was matched by an Ottoman realization of the limits of their influence in the Persian Gulf. In 1547 the Ottoman governor of Basra approached the Portuguese in Hormuz with a proposal for a lasting peace based on a cessation of Portuguese attacks on Muslim ships in exchange for being able to engage in free trade under Ottoman auspices, arguing that that both parties would benefit from such an arrangement. Extensive debate took place in Portuguese circles about the desirability of acceding to this proposal. In the end Lisbon, keen to have sole access to the trade of Basra, rejected the suggestion on political grounds. Denied access to Basra, the Portuguese nevertheless continued to engage in semi-clandestine trade with that port32. Yet the stage was set for military confrontation. In 1551 Antão de Noronha led an expedition against Qatif, which the year before had been taken by the Ottomans. The following year saw a (failed) Ottoman attack against Hormuz, led by the renowned admiral Piri Reis33. After more than a decade of war, the two parties signed a series of truces in 156334. Michele Membré, Mission to the Lord Sophy of Persia (1539-1542), trans. and ed. A. H. Morton (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1993). Andrea Gritti had died by the time the letters were drafted. 29 Rudolf Neck, ‘Diplomatische Beziehungen zum Vorderen Orient unter Karl V’, Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 5 (1952), pp. 73-75; Barbara von Palombini, Bündiswerben Abendländischer Mächte um Persien 1453-1600 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1986), p. 82. 30 Neck, ‘Diplomatische Beziehungen’, pp. 71-72. 31 Floor, The Persian Gulf, p. 163. 32 Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, pp. 79-80. 33 See Dejanirah Couto ‘Portuguese-Ottoman Rivalry in the Persian Gulf in the MidSixteenth Century: The Siege of Hormuz, 1552’, in this volume. 34 Salih Özbaran, The Ottoman Response to European Expansion. Studies on OttomanPortuguese Relations in the Indian Ocean and the Ottoman Administration in the Arab Lands during the Sixteenth Century (Istanbul: ISIS, 1994), pp. 129-140. 28 230 RUDI MATTHEE The second development was the outbreak of a new war between the Safavids and the Ottomans in 1547, which would continue until the two parties signed the Peace of Amasya in 1555. In February 1547 the news broke that Shah Tahmasb had taken the field with 80,000 horses. In response, the Ottomans, fearing that the Habsburgs might divert them from their preoccupation and engagement with the Iranians, first agreed to a five to six-year peace with Archduke Ferdinand, arranged by the Flemish envoy Gerard Veltwyck, and then moved eastward with an army of reportedly 200,000 men. The next few years the two parties would be engaged in fighting in eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan35. Neither development led to a major Portuguese or Safavid initiative for joint anti-Ottoman action—much less any concrete follow-up activities. The most important Lusitanian initiative in this period was of a religious nature. King João III gave up on the missionary quest involving the search for Prester John, which had been an important impetus for the overseas policy of his forebears, most notably King Manuel I36. Instead, a religious motivation of a different kind came to prevail in the policy of the Portuguese Crown, inspired by the Counter Reformation37. In 1548 a first group of Portuguese Jesuits arrived in Hormuz, sent there from Goa by the Padroado Régio, the administration of ecclesiastical affairs that operated under royal auspices. (The king paid the wages of the clergy, and erected and maintained churches, seminars and monasteries.) They set up a mission and set out to make conversions among the local population. Yet its presence proved to be short-lived and never extended to the Iranian mainland. Faced with an inhospitable climate and numerous other problems, among them the habitual difficulty of converting Muslims, the Jesuits left the island after two decades38. Kenneth Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571, 4 vols. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976-1984), vol. 3, p. 483; and various letters in Srecko M. Dzaja and Günter Weiss, eds., Austro-Turcica 1541-1552. Diplomatische Akten des habsburgischen Gesandtschaftsverkehrs mit der Hohen Pforte im Zeitalters Süleymans des Prächtigen (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1995), pp. 267 et seq. 36 João Paulo Oliveira e Costa, ‘O império português em meados do século XVI’, Anais de história além-mar 3 (2002), pp. 87-122. By then Prester John had already been identified with the Christian king of Abyssinia, who was assisted by the Portuguese in the 1540’s during Gram’s invasion from the north. In the 1540s, if not before, Goa and Lisbon had come to realize that Ethiopia’s Prester John lacked the power to mount a significant attack on the southern flank of the Ottomans. 37 Biedermann, ‘Portuguese Diplomacy in Asia’, p. 20. 38 Seventeenth-century missionary ventures included Portuguese Augustinians, but the activities of most later missionaries—including the Jesuits—operating in Iran took place under other religious and political jurisdictions—most notably those of the Propaganda 35 DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 231 The Portuguese, fearing an attack, first on Bahrain, and then on Hormuz, in 1547 did decide to contact Shah Tahmasb for cooperative action. The following year, 1548, the captain of Hormuz, Manuel de Lima, was working on an anti-Ottoman alliance between Arabs, the shah and the rulers of Basra39. And in a letter addressed to the crown from late 1549, Cosme Anes emphasized the importance of a friendship treaty with Shah Tahmasb for the Portuguese40. A further Portuguese response to the Ottoman threat came in 1550 when the viceroy of India sent an embassy led by Henrique de Macedo to Iran. Little is known about the man and his mission41. We do know that Macedo visited Tabriz in the summer of 1550 and that Shah Tahmasb received him while residing in Qazvin. Several Iranian chroniclers refer to the mission, albeit in a manner that is as brief as it is uninformative, to the effect that Macedo meant to persuade the shah to join forces against the Ottomans and that Tahmasb agreed to this proposal42. The limited documentation also tells us that the visit was marked by tensions, arising over allegations that the Portuguese in the person of Mestre Gaspar (Caspar) Barzaeus, a Dutch Jesuit who in 1548 had been sent from Goa to Hormuz by Francis Xavier to spearhead the aforementioned Jesuit mission on the island, had forcibly converted a woman, the wife of one Zeyd from Hormuz, who was one of the shah’s envoys to India, to Christianity43. All this is mentioned in Fide, established in Rome in 1622, of the French Société des Missions Étrangères, founded in 1658, and of the crowns of France and Poland. 39 Georg Schurhammer, SI, Die Zeitgenössischen Quellen zur Geschichte Portugiesisch-Asiens und seiner Nachbarländer (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1962), p. 239 [no. 3646]; also in Walter Posch, Der Fall Alkâs Mîrzâ und der Persienfeldzug von 1548-1549 (Würzburg: Tectum Verlag, 2000), pp. 88, 351. 40 Schurhammer, SI, Franz Xavier, sein Leben und seine Zeit, Bd. II, Asien, vol. 2, Indien und Indonesien (1547-1549) (Freiburg: Herder Verlag, 1971), p. 371; in Posch, Der Fall Alkâs Mîrzâ, p. 199. 41 The person himself is rather obscure. He may be Henrique de Macedo Salvago, son of Fernão de Macedo, who served on a mission to Tunis, and later on one to India. See Barros, Décadas da Ásia, IV/2-11. Yet the fourth book of Barros only goes up to the 1530s, and the work was only finished and published in the seventeenth century by another author, the royal cosmographer and chronicler João Baptista Lavanha, which puts the identification in doubt. Thanks to João Teles e Cunha for bringing this to my attention. 42 See, for example Qazi Ahmad Tatavi and Asef Khan Qazvini, Tarikh-e Alfi. Tarikh-e Iran va keshvarha-ye hamsayeh dar salha-ye 850-984, ed. Sayyed ‘Ali Al-e Davud (Tehran: Entesharat-e Kolbeh, 1378/1999), p. 549. Also see the references in Floor, The Persian Gulf, p. 175, fn. 207. 43 Henrique de Macedo to Mestre Gaspar, Tabriz, 23 August 1550, in Documentação para história das missões do Padroado Português do Oriente, ed. António da Silva Rego, 12 vols. (Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1947-1958), vol. 4, pp. 515-516. 232 RUDI MATTHEE two letters that have survived44. The first, dating from 23 August 1550, was written by Macedo from Shiraz and addressed to Barzaeus45. In it Macedo refers to the governor of Shiraz, ‘Abrem Cão’, Ibrahim Khan Zu’l-Qadr, who had asked him to write a letter to Barzaeus and to the Portuguese captain of Hormuz about Zeyd’s wife, who came from Chaul and who converted to Christianity in Hormuz46. Zeyd had complained to Shah Tahmasb about the Portuguese for not just converting his wife but taking ca. 5,000 pardaus from him. Zeyd also accused the Portuguese of having slept with her in ‘a house [in Hormuz] where wine was sold’. Shah Tahmasb, the letter continues, was very angry about this incident and asked members of his council to tell Macedo to write both to Hormuz and Goa about this. Macedo and his companions—consisting of nineteen persons, Christians and Portuguese-held slaves—would remain captives in Shiraz until the arrival of the woman. Additionally, the shah was planning to attack Hormuz, if need be. The reply from Barzaeus to Macedo, written on Hormuz on 24 October 1550, is mainly interesting for criticizing Shah Tahmasb for his presumptive ‘divine’ nature, and for informing Macedo that one of the mosques on Hormuz had already been closed (it was later reopened), with the argument that Hormuz was Portuguese. The author also mentions that prominent (Sunni) residents of Hormuz were planning to cede the island to the Turks but that, once discovered by the Portuguese, these same people had claimed to have been members of the ‘shah’s sect’ all along. All this refers to the brazen activities Barzaeus had been undertaking in Hormuz, agitating to have resident Jews expelled and mosques destroyed, which had created a great deal of friction47. The Macedo embassy does not seem to have been all that important, at least not to the Iranians, since according to Persian sources it was dismissed after a few days48. Yet the issues it had been called to account for would be raised again at a later date, as will be seen below. Mean44 Lisbon, Biblioteca da Ajuda, Jesuítas na Ásia, 49-IV-50, #177, ff. 44 et seq. Thanks to Dejanirah Couto for sending me copies. 45 Documenta Indica, ed. Joseph Wicki, 18 vols. (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 1948-1988), vol. 1, pp. 595-698. 46 Ibrahim Khan was one in a long line of Zu’l Qadr rulers of Shiraz. He ruled the province from, 946/1539-40 and was removed from his post by Shah Tahmasb in 962/1554. See Budaq Monshi Qazvini, Javaher al-akhbar, ed. Mohsen Bahramnezhad (Tehran: Miras-e Maktub, 1379/2000), pp. 191, 212. 47 As Gavetas da Torre de Tombo, 12 vols. (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1960-1977), vol. V, p. 39; Rego, Documentação, vol. 4, pp. 469-470. 48 Floor, The Persian Gulf, p. 175. DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 233 while, although the shah proposed a joint attack on Qatif, none materialized. Kütügkoglu surmises that Tahmasb may have been reluctant to conclude a treaty with Christian powers49. It is more likely that, as Floor suggests, the Iranian confrontation with the Ottomans, which was concentrated in the northwestern border areas, reduced their interest and their ability to be actively involved in the affairs of the Persian Gulf50. The same lack of logistical means is likely to have been the reason why the Portuguese got off so lightly following the conversion incident in Hormuz. Tahmasb had no military force let alone a navy to threaten them. He also badly needed Hormuz to export silk since the route to the West was interrupted by the war with the Ottomans, so that the Portuguese could blockade Iranian maritime exports to India, thus curbing the shah’s revenue. Approaches from Istanbul In 1553 Charles V, fearing an Iranian-Ottoman armistice, attempted to intensify the conflict with Portuguese assistance. This did not have any tangible results, though, and when in 1555 Iran concluded the Treaty of Amasya with the Turks, all hope seemed to be lost for any Iranian willingness for joint action with the Christian powers. No serious attempts to reactivate proposals for an alliance were made until after the death of Emperor Charles in September of 1558. The Peace of Amasya, meanwhile, prevented an all-out war between the Iranians and the Turks for some twenty years, even if it did little to end hostilities or at least the threat of renewed hostilities between the two parties. Within a year it was clear that the shah was determined to continue his campaigns against Georgia, which had fallen under Ottoman influence, and that he had decided not to acknowledge the treaty since the Ottomans did not allow Iranian merchants to engage in commerce in their territory. In 1557, as the Safavid army staged more raids into Georgia, an Iranian envoy went to Istanbul to Posch, Der Fall Alkâs Mîrzâ, p. 448. Floor, The Persian Gulf, p. 175. 51 Josef Zontar, ‘Michael Cernovic, Geheimagent Ferdinand I. und Maximilian II, und seinen Berichterstattung’, Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs 24 (1971), p. 195. This continued hostility raises doubts about the treaty of Amasya as the culmination of a form of diplomacy that was designed to stabilize borders and that reflected the transition of the Safavid state from “frontier state to empire.” See Colin Mitchell, ‘The Sword and the Pen: Diplomacy in Early Safavid Iran, 1501-1555’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 2002), p. 371. 49 50 234 RUDI MATTHEE reconfirm the treaty, but the Ottomans dismissed Safavid requests and suggestions, among them the plea to abstain from assisting the Georgians51. This unnamed envoy and, after he had left the Ottoman capital, an undercover Iranian agent who stayed behind in Istanbul under the pretense of being a rug merchant, would play an important role in the exchange of information and the budding plans to forge a EuropeanIranian alliance that would follow—with preparations that were to center on Istanbul for the next few years. Their interlocutor was Michael Cernovic (Michele Cernovichio), a versatile figure of Greek-Dalmatian ancestry with a gift for languages—he knew Turkish, Slavonic, Albanian, Arabic and ‘a little bit of Persian’52—who served as dragoman for the Venetians. He also doubled up as Archduke Maximilian’s secret agent in Istanbul, alongside the official Austrian envoy, the well-known Ogier Busbecq. Having arrived in the Ottoman capital in the summer of 1556, Cernovic would remain in the Ottoman capital on and off, with stints in Adrianople, for a few years, during which time he established excellent relations with high Ottoman officials53. Cernovic in all likelihood is the one who originally suggested including Iran in the program that he presented around the idea of combating the Turks54. In a series of conversations about the position of the European powers and the chances of peace and war, the Iranian envoy asked Cernovic about the prospects for peace, showing a cautious inclination to engage with the European powers. Cernovic sounded these Iranian agents out on the chance that Iran might be willing to conclude an alliance with the Christian powers. In the context of these conversations the suggestion was made to include Portugal. This idea seems to have come up as part of a question about the best way to reach Iran, the answer to which was that only Iranians really would be able to cross the border since all others risked execution. A more secure route would be the maritime one, via Portugal55. 52 Giorgio Rota, Under Two Lions. On the Knowledge of Persia in the Republic of Venice (ca. 1450-1797) (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2009), p. 50. Also see Claudia Römer, ‘Das Schicksal von Jovanka Cernovic (1563-1566)’, in Sabine Prätor (ed.), Frauen, Bilder und Gelehrte. Studien zu Gesellschaft und Künsten im Osmanischen Reich, 2 vols. (Istanbul: Simurg, 2002), vol. 1, pp. 139-157. 53 Having spent a second stint in the Ottomans capital, in 1563 he would finally be unmasked as a spy for the Habsburg crown. See Michel Lesure, ‘Michel Cernovic “explorator secretus” à Constantinople (1556-1563),’ Turcica 15 (1983), p. 127. 54 Ibid., p. 131, arguing that Aubin is mistaken in assuming that the idea was first proposed by a Safavid envoy. See Jean Aubin, ‘Per viam portugalensem. Autour d’un projet diplomatique de Maximilen II’, Mare Luso-Indicum 4 (1980), pp. 45-88. 55 Zontar, ‘Michael Cernovic’, pp. 171-173, 195-197; Lesure, ‘Michel Cernovic’, p. 136. DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 235 In January 1559 the Ottomans agreed to a peace treaty with the Austrians. This move was complicated and the Ottomans were made to feel vulnerable by the escape of Prince Bayazid, Sultan Süleyman’s son, to Iran and the common cause he made with the Safavids. If the Ottoman sultan felt that his son’s defection might cause the Austrians to reconsider their willingness to conclude a peace accord with him—and to engage in a rapprochement with Iran—he was right; In the fall of 1559, the Spanish King Felipe II urged his uncle, the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand, not to make peace with the Ottomans but to create an alliance with Shah Tahmasb via Portugal. The idea was to incite the Safavids to start a war against the Ottomans. In early 1560 a new Safavid envoy arrived in Istanbul to discuss the Bayazid case. Cernovic again acted as the contact person. In discussions with the envoy as well as with other agents who arrived from Iran the next year concerning the policy of the Christian powers vis-à-vis the Ottomans, the Venetian sought to reinforce the impression among Iran’s ruling elite about Christian successes against the Turks by asserting that the Holy Roman emperor would not conclude a peace deal with Istanbul and that Shah Tahmasb should send a mission to his master. In 1561 he wrote that a joint initiative of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire would be welcomed by the shah. In the following winter Shah Tahmasb is said to have sent a nephew of the envoy who had earlier been Cernovic’s interlocutor, with the intent of formulating a more concrete anti-Ottoman plan. Emperor Ferdinand, taken by this idea, immediately suggested that another Iranian envoy be sent with proper credentials so that an ‘honorable entente and a perpetual league or at least one limited to a number of years’ might be concluded. The Safavid envoy suggested that any emissary to be sent to Iran should take the maritime route via Portugal since none of the overland routes could be counted on for security56. The pope and the Spanish king, meanwhile, were involved in initiatives of their own. Elected in 1559, Pope Pius IV rekindled the idea of a crusade against the Ottomans. In the summer of 1561, as part of a plan to incite Iran’s ruler to wage war against the Turks, he sounded out Portugal’s ambassador at the Holy See, Lourenço Pires de Távora, about the possibility of having the Portuguese king act as an intermediary in signing a pact with the Safavid ruler. Pires de Távora, though welcoming the idea of a closer relationship with Iran to keep the Ottomans at bay, 56 Zontar, ‘Michael Cernovic’, pp. 206-207; Aubin, ‘Per viam portugalensem’; Lesure, ‘Michel Cernovic’, p. 143. 236 RUDI MATTHEE kept the absence of any real relations between his country and Safavid Iran concealed from his interlocutors. Closer relations with Iran are not likely to have been high on the agenda of the Portuguese elite, who at this point were involved in an internal power struggle over the regency of the infant Dom Sebastião (r. 1557-1578) between his grand-mother, the Queen-Dowager Catherine and his great-uncle, the Infant-Cardinal D. Henrique, and nothing came off this contact.57 It was Felipe II in fact who in early 1562 chose an envoy by the name of Sir Richard Shelley, an English cleric and member of the Maltese Order who had lived in Istanbul for several years and who previously had conducted several diplomatic missions for the English Crown. This plan, too, had a Portuguese angle in that it involved Dom Sebastião, or rather his grandmother, who served as the regent until 156858. King Felipe first sent Shelley to Lisbon to see if Portugal would be willing to join the effort, to ask its rulers to apprise the Portuguese authorities in India of Shelley’s mission, to get the diplomat in touch with people who were knowledgeable about the Orient, and to furnish Shelley with a Persian-speaking interpreter. Armed with recommendations from the Portuguese king, Shelley was then to visit the Emperor in Vienna who would send him on to Poland and Muscovy—whence access to Iran had been facilitated with the Russian seizure of Kazan and Astrakhan in 1552 and 1554 respectively. His return voyage was to take place via Hormuz.59 The Shelley mission did not have any success either. In 1562, the year of his dispatch, there was a change in the political direction of Portugal with the reunion of the Cortes (Parliament) in Lisbon, which led to the replacement of Queen Catherine by Cardinal Henrique, and the shift of imperial outlook from India and the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic (Brazil, West African Coast and Morocco). As for Shelley, he and his men never got beyond Vienna, for in August 1562 the Austrian emperor and the 57 Francisco de Sales Loureiro, ‘O enquadramento europeu de uma embaixada portuguesa à Pérsia’, Arquivos do Centro Cultural Português 11 (1977), p. 492; Aubin, ‘Per viam portugalensem’, pp. 48-50. The standard work for this period and theme is by Maria do Rosário de Sampaio Themudo Barata de Azevedo Cruz, As regências na menoridade de D. Sebastião. Elementos para uma história estrutural, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda, 1992). 58 Machado, Memorias para a historia de Portugal, vol. 2, p. 43. 59 Aubin, ‘Per viam portugalensem’, pp. 50-51. Letters from Maximilian, June 1562, to Sebastião and to Catherina, and from Sebastião to Philip II and to Shah Tahmasb, in Machado, Memorias, vol. 2, pp. 44-46. 60 Aubin, ‘Per viam portugalensem’, pp. 51-52. DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 237 Ottoman sultan signed an armistice that, barring Ferdinand’s death, was meant to be valid for eight years60. This lull in interest in Iran on the part of the European powers was of short duration; it ended with the premature death of Emperor Ferdinand in the summer of 1564. By the summer of the following year the threat of a new Ottoman campaign into Hungary gave new life to plans to include Iran in an alliance, plans that gained popularity in the bellicose entourage of the new Holy Roman emperor, Maximilian II. In the years that followed the interest in the formation of a Holy League took on a new urgency at the Catholic courts of Europe, what with Turkish attacks on Venetian possessions in the eastern Mediterranean, their siege of Malta in 1565, and their claim on the island of Cyprus. Turkish aggression against Malta and the threat this posed to Italy prompted Pope Pius IV to call for the formation of a new Holy League. His death later that same year did nothing to halt the endeavour, for his successor, Pius V, who became known for his religious zeal, worked even harder to bring about an anti-Ottoman alliance. Both Portugal and Iran were included in these designs, and again it was Venetian envoys dispatched to the Iberian Peninsula who were instrumental in establishing contacts with Lisbon61. This time the idea of a maritime route was envisaged. Two envoys were to go to Iran, one of them returning with a possible counter emissary sent by the shah, and the Portuguese king was asked to dispatch his own agent as well. The proposal to Shah Tahmasb would involve a treaty of eternal friendship, and the message to be conveyed to him was that the Austrians and the Spaniards intended to attack the Ottoman Empire in the spring of 1566 by way of an overland expedition as well as from the sea. If the shah agreed to be included in this venture, he would receive a war subvention the height of which was to be discussed. Dispatching a mission to Iran was not a foregone conclusion, though. Intra-European strategic maneuvering threw up obstacles to the plan. The same outbreak of new hostilities in Hungary that had inspired the idea of approaching the Safavids prompted Europe’s rulers to hedge their bets. They realized that peace with the Turks might be a possibility, and decided that reaching out to Iran should not get in the way of such an eventuality. Archduke Ferdinand II, who was to lead the campaign against the Turks in the same year, agreed, arguing that if no peace could 61 Julieta Teixeira Marques de Oliveira, Veneza e Portugal no século XVI: Subsídios para a sua história (Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 2000), p. 74. 238 RUDI MATTHEE be made with Istanbul, it would be necessary to set up Iran against the Turks and incite Spain to naval warfare against them in the Mediterranean. Both Emperor Maximilian and Felipe II came round to the idea that it would be necessary to hold off on sending an embassy to Iran until it was clear whether their position vis-à-vis the Turks should be a defensive or an offensive one62. Still, in March 1566 Jacob Drapper, a merchant from Pera, was appointed envoy to Iran with the task of collecting intelligence about the military strength of the Safavids, to find out what made the Iranian ruler so reluctant to wage war against the Ottomans, and to see what could be done to change his mind. Drapper also was to assure Shah Tahmasb that the European powers would not conclude a separate peace with the Ottomans. He left for Spain armed with many letters and instructions. In late 1566 the Spanish king asked his ambassador in Lisbon, Alonso de Tovar, for information about the voyage to Iran. The latter sent a detailed report the following January, with information about the length of the voyage, the language in which the requisite documents were to be drafted, and the nature of the gifts that should accompany an envoy. Drapper’s departure from Lisbon was envisaged for the spring of 1567—the time of the departure of the annual Portuguese fleet to Goa. The Portuguese had come round to the idea as well, agreeing to send their own envoy with the same fleet63. In the end it was all futile. King Felipe’s instructions arrived after the fleet had left. The Portuguese proved to be little forthcoming, despite the fact that, by this time, the Ottomans had launched a campaign into Hungary. Their own direct quarrel with the Ottomans in the Persian Gulf had been violent and prolonged, but open hostilities had come to an end with the truce the two parties had concluded in 1563. Drapper, meanwhile, never made it to Lisbon or, for that matter, to Vienna, where he was to have gone first, for he fell ill in Italy64. Cernovic was next persuaded to replace Drapper as emissary to Iran. Yet Maximilian hardly considered this a priority, judging by the fact that the original promise of a subvention had already been dropped in the instructions for Drapper, and in light of the meager presents Cernovic was to carry with him to Iran65. This probably reflected the poor information 62 For an analysis of the complicated Austro-Turkish relations at the time, see Paula Sutter Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 119-134. 63 Zontar, ‘Michael Cernovic’, p. 219; Aubin, ‘Per viam portugalensem’, pp. 55-63. 64 Luis Gil Fernández, El Imperio luso-español y la Persia safávida, vol. 1, 1582-1605 (Madrid: Fundación Universitaria Española, 2006), pp. 59-61; Aubin, ‘Per viam portugalensem’, pp. 63-64. 65 Aubin, ‘Per viam portugalensem’, pp. 63-64. DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 239 that the Austrians had about the intentions of Sultan Süleyman and the strategy of his armed forces66. Süleyman’s death in 1566 anyhow did not change anything, for his successor Selim II (r. 1566-1574) initially showed little inclination to make peace, and rumours circulated about a large fleet being assembled in Istanbul against Spain. Still, the instructions for Cernovic were different: they no longer contained a clause to the effect that the empire and the king of Spain would never conclude peace with the Porte without including Iran, and that they would always be ready to attack the Turks if the shah felt threatened by them. Instead there was a vaguely worded intention of ‘mutual and sincere’ friendship. The reason for this change was that, meanwhile, the prospects of peace with the Ottomans had become tangible. Maximilian was loath to compromise any change for such a peace by antagonizing the Ottomans with overly friendly overtures to Iran—something that the Venetians would surely apprize the Ottomans about. The Ottomans might conclude a quick peace with the Iranians and return their forces to Hungary. The decision was thus made to adjourn the project, yet to keep asking the Portuguese to make contact with the shah. If circumstances were to change, a channel would thus be open to resume contacts67. The Austrian emperor called upon King Felipe II to assist him, but the latter let it be known that he would only send an envoy after having consulted with the king of Portugal and after having secured an interpreter in the Persian language. The embassy in question would have to be sent via Poland and Muscovy, returning via Hormuz68. When we consider the wider geopolitical context and in particular the strategic position and circumstances of the Portuguese in this period, it becomes clear why nothing ever came of any of these initiatives. They ran counter to more fundamental Portuguese interests. The Portuguese feared the Ottomans and their expansionism, to be sure. In the early 1550s the Porte’s reach extended all the way to the western Mediterranean, where the Turks meddled in the governmental affairs of Morocco and seemed to be on the verge of forging a passage to the Atlantic. All this created great unease in Portugal and convinced its leadership of the need to find ways to make the east be able to defend itself against the Ottomans69. For this, see Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II, p. 127. Aubin, ‘Per viam portugalensem’, pp. 69-71. 68 Maria do Rosário de Sampaio Themudo Barata de Azevedo Cruz, ‘A Questão de Baçorá na menoridade de D. Sebastião (1557-1568). A perspectiva das informações colhidas na India e as iniciativas de governo’, Revista da Faculdade de Letras, 3rd ser., 6 (1986), pp. 54-55. 66 67 240 RUDI MATTHEE On the other hand, the Portuguese had reached the conclusion that they would not be able to control the Red Sea. Following their defeat at the battle of Cape Musandam in 1554, the Ottomans had come to realize that they, in turn, would not be able to compete with the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf. They thus sounded each other out about a possible truce. A suggestion to make peace with the Ottomans was first presented to King João III during the tenure of D. Pedro de Mascarenhas as viceroy of India, 1554-1555. The basha of Basra, nominally under Ottoman control since 1548, presented himself as mediator in this initiative, which was based on the notion that the Red Sea would be left to the Ottomans while the Persian Gulf would fall to the Portuguese. In spite of doubts about Turkish trustworthiness, the Viceroy of India, Dom Francisco Coutinho (r. 1561-1564) in 1562 sent the Italian Nicolau Pedro Coxino (Nicolai Pietro Cocino) to Istanbul as envoy with the task of finding out about the sultan’s intentions. He proposed that the Ottomans be allowed to open factories in Cambay, Dabhol and Calicut, and to engage in trade in India, paying tolls and taxes to the Portuguese, in exchange for which the latter would be permitted to maintain factors in Basra, Alexandria and Cairo, and to conduct commerce in the Red Sea70. More exchanges would follow, among them the dispatch of António Teixeira to Istanbul. In the end the sultan rejected the Portuguese proposals and reaffirmed his interest in playing a role in the Persian Gulf. The Ottomans were involved in the planning and funding of the anti-Portuguese attack in India and Malacca in 1570, and the sultan may have been waiting for the outcome to negotiate from a better position71. Yet this was not the end to Portugal’s involvement in Ottoman affairs. It did not take long for the next initiative to be launched. With the Ottomans capture of Cyprus on 28 March 1570 a new crisis erupted for European Christendom, and especially for Venice, with her exposed possessions and interests in Dalmatia and the eastern Mediterranean. The new danger posed by the Ottomans prompted Pope Pius V to propose a new anti-Turkish league, which would include Safavid Iran in addition to various European nations. The Venetians reacted in two ways. The Ottoman challenge made them resume direct contact with Iran. And they engaged in a strategy designed to include Iran in a larger European campaign directed against the Turks. Sigismondo Cavalli, the Venetian 69 Luís Filipe F. R. Thomaz, ‘A crise de 1565-1575 na história do Estado da Índia’, Mare Liberum 9 (1995), pp. 503-504. 70 Ibid., p. 484; Cruz, ‘A Questão de Baçorá’, pp. 58 et seq. 71 Cruz, ‘A Questão de Baçorá’, p. 61. DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 241 ambassador in Madrid at the time, alluded to this in his various dispatches. As of 1570, he began to refer to the possible participation of Portugal in this joint endeavour. His successor, Lurardo Donato, who took over in early 1570, participated in all the negotiations held by the various envoys from the Holy See at the court of Dom Sebastião concerning Portugal’s contribution to the anti-Ottoman League. The king, keen to spread the faith and combat the infidel, is reported to have reacted enthusiastically to the idea, despite the difficulties he faced at home, where the plague was raging in 156972. The league came into being, and following a decree of 4 May 1571, the Venetian Senate dispatched Antonio Tiepolo as extraordinary ambassador to Madrid to congratulate Felipe II with Anna of Austria, and as well as to urge the Catholic King to assist the League. Tiepolo’s mission was also meant to involve Dom Sebastião in the same alliance73. Portugal’s direct engagement was in the Mediterranean, but the king’s concern extended to the East as well, where he hoped to defend and spread Christianity. There was much talk in Spanish diplomatic circles about the role the many Portuguese in the border area might play in joining forces with the shah to stage a revolt against the Turks, and the important example Portugal would set by making contact with the Safavid ruler from India74. In a letter written on 26 January 1571, Tiepolo recounts how the Portuguese king had acceded to the request to join the League. He also writes that his masters had asked him to request the King to send an ambassador to Iran with the fleet that was due to leave in March, with the intent of urging the shah to join the League. This, he added, would be a most opportune time for the Iranians to throw in their lot with the venture, adding that cooperation should not be difficult to achieve in light of the nature of their faith and given the fact that their western borders were less well guarded, many [Turkish] soldiers having moved to Greece. Dom Sebastião added that he had ordered the Viceroy of India to attack the Turks as well with a major force, coming in through the Red Sea, offering the Iranians a large number of harquebus. He also told the king that it had come to his attention that great harm was being done to the Christian cause by way of the bullion traffic through Basra, where—according to his fanciful reporting—annually some 10,000 quintals Oliveira, Veneza e Portugal no século XVI, p. 75. Julieta Teixeira Marques de Oliveira, Fontes documentais de Veneza referentes a Portugal (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda and Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1997), pp. 17-18. 74 Oliveira, Veneza e Portugal, pp. 79-80. 72 73 242 RUDI MATTHEE of precious metal were brought in from China, in spite of the express prohibition by the Crown75. In a follow-up message Tiepolo reports how the Portuguese king had resolved to send an envoy to Iran from India, in order to notify the shah of the existence of the Holy League and its victories and to involve him in future endeavors. Tiepolo, while urging the Serenissima to dispatch letters to Iran in such a way that they could be conveyed with the Portuguese fleet, disagreed with the idea of sending an envoy from India or Hormuz, arguing that it would be essential to send one directly from Portugal since the shah would certainly have greater esteem for an emissary sent directly from Lisbon because of the prestige carried by someone representing the pope and Christianity76. In October of the same year, 1571, a combined Christian fleet routed the Ottomans at Lepanto. This victory breathed new life into the Christian crusading spirit, prompting Europe’s rulers to aim once more for the destruction of the Ottoman Empire by way of a grand coalition. A few months after the event, the Venetian ambassador in Lisbon informed his colleague in Madrid that Dom Sebastião was about to notify the Safavid shah of the Turkish defeat and to present it as an excellent opportunity for a joint attack on Ottoman territory. In late February, Felipe II wrote to his new ambassador in Lisbon, Don Juan de Borja, for information about the delegation that the Portuguese had sent to Shah Tahmasb and the message it had taken to Iran77. Pope Pius V, too, wrote a letter to Shah Tahmasb in which he spoke of the great importance of the recent victory for Europe as well as for Iran. He appointed Matias Furtado Bicudo, a Portuguese Jew turned Jesuit priest after converting, who worked for the Portuguese crown in the Mediterranean as a spy and who had previously served as an informant in Cairo, as envoy to the Safavid state, charging him with the task of conveying the letter to the shah. Bicudo declined, with the argument that someone of higher rank should be dispatched, and the pope thereupon commissioned the king of Portugal to take up the mandate with the shah78. Dom Sebastião next notified 75 Oliveira, Fontes documentais de Veneza, pp. 69-70. See also letters from King Sebastião to Venice, 24 and 31 January 1572, in Machado, Memorias, vol. 3, pp. 411-414. Ten thousand quintals would have equaled more than half a million kg. Aside from the absurdity of this number, China received gold rather than exporting it. 76 Oliveira, Fontes documentais de Veneza, p. 73; id., Veneza e Portugal, p. 85. 77 Gil Fernández, El Imperio luso-español, pp. 61-62. 78 Von Palombini, Bündniswerbe, pp. 98-99. In reality Bicudo may have withdrawn because of a lack of trustworthiness ascribed to his Jewish ancestry. For more about Bicudo, see Enrique García Hernán, ‘Persia en la acción conjunta del papado y la monarquía DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 243 the Papacy, the Venetians and the French of his intent to dispatch an envoy to Iran, and in early 1572 sent Miguel de Abreu de Lima, a Portuguese nobleman who had served many years in India, to exhort Shah Tahmasb to declare war on the Turks. The letters Abreu de Lima took with him contained news about the recent Christian victory at Lepanto and the death of more than 20,000 enemy troops in the battle. They also spoke of the Portuguese intent to join an anti-Ottoman alliance; and they urged the shah to take advantage of this occasion to contribute to the total destruction of his archenemy and thus to avenge all the insults he had suffered from the Turks as well as to recover the territory he had lost. The Spanish king sent a similar message to Lisbon to be carried with the same envoy, but it reached Lisbon on the day that the fleet carrying Abreu de Lima had set sail79. The mission took two years to reach its destination. The political prospects for the Estado da Índia in the early 1570s were not very bright, particularly in India, where its forces had been defeated in Chaliam (Kerala) by the Samorim of Calicut, and where Akbar was moving his forces to Gujarat, thus raising alarm in Goa about possible Mughal attack on Diu or Daman. We know that Miguel de Abreu de Lima wrote a letter to King Felipe II detailing the reasons behind his delay in reaching the shah80. We also know that Abreu de Lima arrived in the Persian Gulf in late 1574 and left Hormuz for the Iranian mainland on 26 February 1575. It is further known that he reached Qazvin where he was received in audience by Shah Tahmasb81. The Safavid chronicler Iskandar Beg Monshi, clearly referring to the Abreu de Lima mission, mentions the visit by a Portuguese envoy who came to see the shah in 982/1575, ‘with an impressive mission of fifty retainers’, adding that the envoy brought a number of rare items as presents for the shah, ‘the like of which has rarely been seen in the lands’. Iskandar Monshi further reports that the envoy fell out of favour at the court and was prevented from leaving until after the death of the shah and the accession of his successor, Shah Isma‘il II (r. 1576-1577), on account of ‘various acts that were contrary hispanica. Approximación a la actuación de la Compañía de Jesús (1549-1649)’, Hispania Sacra LXII 125 (2010), pp. 218-19. 79 Gil Fernández, El Imperio luso-español, pp. 64-66. 80 See Maria Augusta Lima Cruz, D. Sebastião (Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores, 2006), pp. 219-220, quoting the letter dated 25 December 1575, Valladolid, Archivo General de Simancas, Estado, legajo 392, doc. 191 81 Angelo Michele Piemontese, ‘La diplomazia di Gregorio XIII e la lettera del Re di Persia a Sisto V’, Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae 14 (2007), pp. 373-375; Gil Fernández, El Imperio luso-español, pp. 57 et seq. 244 RUDI MATTHEE to the Muslim faith’ and their ‘improper behavior in mosques’82. Another Safavid chronicler, Hasan Beg Rumlu, is more specific in his account of the same episode. Rumlu blames the discomfiture of the Portuguese envoy on previously committed incivilities, including the ‘destruction of mosques’ and the burning of the ‘glorious text’, i.e. the Koran, suggesting that the poor treatment of Abreu de Lima was linked to the affronts suffered by the inhabitants of Hormuz at the hands of the Jesuits some twenty-five years earlier83. A Portuguese source confirms this reading while offering what may have been real reason why, after initially being received cordially at the Safavid court, Abreu de Lima and his men were spurned and mistreated. The authors, João de Barros and Domingo Espinta, presented a statement to the Spanish consul in Venice which indicates that Shah Tahmasb rejected the suggestions made by the Portuguese and refused to see Abreu de Lima after the initial audience with the argument that he had been living in peace with the Ottomans for some twenty years. But the same source also suggests that the poor treatment was related to the presents brought by the Portuguese—gold, jewels, money and other items valued at 16,000 ducats, as the text puts it—and implicates Shah Tahmasb’s nephew who, given the shah’s advanced age, acted as host for the Portuguese envoy. The nephew is said to have expressed his astonishment that such a great king as was the king of Portugal only sent his king—whose power was ‘so great that it reached the skies’—a relatively small present, estimated to be worth 2,000 ducats less than the items he had received in return84. Asked to return the difference, Abreu de Lima responded that he did not have such an amount of money. The Iranians next examined his belongings and, not finding gold or money, took his and his entourage’s horses as well as his silverware, and sold both for whatever was offered. Presumably still short, Abreu de Lima is said to have received assistance from Armenian Christians who paid for him with the understanding that they would be repaid in Hormuz. This explains why ‘taking into account his 82 Eskandar Beg Monshi, History of Shah ‘Abbas the Great (Tarikh-e ‘Alamara-ye ‘Abbasi, trans. Roger M. Savory, 3 vols. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1978), vol. 1, pp. 193-194. 83 Hasan Bik Rumlu, Ahsan al-tavarikh, ed. ‘Abd al-Hoseyn Nava’i (Tehran: Entesharat-e Babak, 1357/1978), p. 592. 84 The ‘nephew’ may in reality have been Heydar Mirza, the shah’s third son, who in the last years of the ruler’s life substituted for him. For the institutionalized nature of gift-giving, including the assessment of the value of gifts in Safavid Iran, see Rudi Matthee, ‘Gifts and Gift-Giving, Safavid Period’, Encyclopaedia Iranica 10 (New York: Bibliotheca Persica, 2001), pp. 609-614. DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 245 ambassadorship to Xá Tamas, and the hardships he underwent [in Iran], and the expense made during his voyage’, Miguel de Abreu de Lima was rewarded with the captainship of the fortress of Bassein in India in 158085. The clearest suggestion that the ill treatment of the people of Hormuz at the hand of Portuguese missionaries had not been forgotten comes from Barros’s claim that the Iranians even attempted to kill him and his entourage, and that one of his men apostatized out of fear, because the Portuguese had ‘burned the books from the mosque in Hormuz’. The ambassador is said to have replied to this charge that this had been done in revenge for the destruction by the people of Hormuz of a wooden cross held in the church. Asked why a mosque was torched and vandalized for a piece of wood, he retorted that all Christians had been redeemed by that piece of wood86. Once again, it was all in vain, and not just because the Iranians proved unwilling to break their accord with the Porte. The unity of purpose that had made the victory at Lepanto possible dissolved soon after the victorious outcome, and Venetian-Spanish relations deteriorated rapidly in its wake87. Two years before Abreu de Lima reached Qazvin, on 7 March 1573, Venice and the Ottomans had signed a peace accord88. The Holy League was dissolved and for years to come no new diplomatic initiatives were undertaken. New overtures would only be initiated at the time of the unification of Spain and Portugal in 1580, when an Augustinian friar by the name of Simão de Morais visited the court of Shah Mohammad Khodabandeh, and a serious resumption of contacts between Iran and Christian Europe had to wait until after the accession and consolidation of power by Shah ‘Abbas I in 1588, at which point Spain would take the lead. Conclusion Several points stand out in the state-to-state diplomatic interaction between Portugal and Iran in the sixteenth century and in particular during the reign of Shah Tahmasb. The first is a convergence of interests around the Ottoman challenge. Iran and Portugal both felt threatened by 85 Registo da Casa da Índia, ed. Luciano Ribeiro, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, 1954), vol. I, §919, pp. 214-215. 86 Gil Fernández, El Imperio luso-español, pp. 67-68. 87 Michael J. Levin, Agents of Empire: Spanish Ambassadors in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005), p. 34. 88 Oliveira, Veneza e Portugal, pp. 85-86, 355. 246 RUDI MATTHEE Ottoman maritime and land-based expansionism. The result is that, unlike the situation in the first half of the seventeenth century, when Safavid-Portuguese relations were generally hostile, the two countries until about 1600 were natural allies. The second is the intermittent nature of diplomatic exchange, a function of the relative remoteness of Iran, the time it took Shah Tahmasb to overcome tribal challenges and consolidate his power base, and the fact that not the Persian Gulf but western India was the epicenter of Portuguese interests in the East. Beyond its early discoveries, the small country on the edge of Europe contributed but little to the recurrent attempts to formulate a unified Christian response to the Ottoman threat. Marginal to European power politics, and of relevance as much because its fleet provided passage to India as for the military assistance it might provide, Portugal mostly pursued its own interests, with the military means the country could muster, and taking into account objectives set by Lisbon and Goa. At times when the Portuguese felt that their interests were at stake, they confronted the Ottomans alone. A third feature is that shared interests were overshadowed by larger, divergent ones, having to do with the fact that both states had exceedingly complex relations that played out in the Persian Gulf, in the Mediterranean, in the mountains of eastern Anatolia and the lowlands of Iraq. In so far as contacts did not concern Hormuz, involving issues of trade and tribute, the Portuguese hardly had an independent policy, and were in fact a mere appendage to the larger Catholic nations of Europe, most notably Austria and Spain. Hence the many combined initiatives that centered on Istanbul. Initiatives and projects also aimed at the pursuit of maximum advantage without disturbing the prevailing balance of power. A fourth characteristic springs from the dictum that diplomacy in the early modern period served to make contact and, in the case of monarchies, to establish friendship between rulers rather than to avert crises or to prevent (or incite) war89. The European powers were hardly serious in forging an alliance under the banner of the cross. As Finlay puts it, ‘No Christian prince was ever opposed to a crusade—only to the prospect of actually going on one’90. They were even less serious about including Iran in such an alliance. As Palombini argues, Europe’s interest in Iran was derivative. The various Christian nations were mostly 89 For this, see Stefan Halikowski-Smith, ‘Portuguese Diplomatic Embassies in Asia and Africa’, Portuguese Studies 22 (2006), p. 133. 90 Finlay, ‘Crisis and Crusade’, p. 77. DIPLOMATIC CONTACTS BETWEEN PORTUGAL AND IRAN 247 interested in having the shah take up arms against the Ottomans so as to keep the latter busy by deflecting their attention from the Western front91. Amity with Iran was easily sacrificed, for in the absence of an Iranian navy, bad relations with the country scarcely had repercussions for trade, and, unlike the Ottomans, the Safavids posed no military threat to Europe. The Iranians had their own reasons to be reluctant alliance builders. They, too, looked at Europe and assistance from Christian nations primarily through the prism of their relations with the Ottomans. The Safavids must have been convinced long before Shah ‘Abbas came to that realization, that the Europeans were all talk and empty promises. The Iranians were concerned about the Ottomans, but they also realized that they had to live with them. Like all other subsequent Safavid monarchs, Shah Tahmasb was far less aggressive vis-à-vis the Ottomans than the Ottomans were vis-à-vis Iran. He kept up the rhetoric but at no point does he seem to have been serious about joining forces with Western powers. Bacqué-Grammont’s characterization of relations under Shah Isma‘il as little more than a ‘diplomatic exchange of good reciprocal intentions’ is apt for the later period as well92. It is telling, finally, that perceived religious insults overshadowed the two most visible diplomatic Portuguese missions to Iran during the reign of Shah Tahmasb. 91 92 Palombini, Bündniswerbe, pp. 82-83. Bacqué-Grammont, Les Ottomans, les Safavides, p. 130.