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THE DIOCESE OF GOA:

THE PORTUGUESE IN EAST AFRICA

1.1 The Red Sea and Ethiopia

Through further exploratory and trading voyages Portugal gained more information about the Indian Ocean seaboard which was dotted with ports making up a vast and thriving Arab Muslim commercial network. Vasco da Gama employed a Muslim pilot in his Indian Ocean explorations, but Portuguese national feeling towards Muslims was instinctively hostile, remembering Arab occupation of their country, and was ready to use the “advancement of Christianity” as a cover for getting rich quickly by plundering the Muslim ports.

After initial Portuguese action against Kilwa and Mombasa, Afonso de Albuquerque took over the fleet in 1506 and attacked Arab shipping, turning the Indian Ocean into a Portuguese lake. In 1507 the Portuguese took Soqotra, and island inhabited by Christians off the horn of Africa,^[1] Hormûz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, and on the Arabian side of the gulf, uâr and Muscat in `Umân. In 1510 they took Goa in India and made it a base for operations in Africa and the Far East. In 1513 they took Karaman, an island at the entrance to the Red Sea. The Red Sea attracted the Portuguese because it was the trade route to Egypt. They took the port of Massawa on the Eritrean coast, but found navigation in the Red Sea difficult because of winds from the northwest from April to July. Ocean caravels were unsuitable, and the galleys thaat were needed did not come. Albuquerque’s dying counsel to Don Manuel in 1517 was “Close very securely the doors of the Strait,” but this advice on the security of the Red Sea was disregarded.

In the meantime some Franciscans and other Italian visitors had been coming to Ethiopia in a steady stream through Egypt since around 1440. In 1450 Zâr’a-Ya’iqob even sent an embassy to Alfonso of Aragon (ruler of Naples and Sicily) which visited Pope Nicholas V. The popes hoped to draw Ethiopia into the union declared at the Council of Florence (1439) with other eastern Churches, but nothing was effected. King João II of Portugal sent Afonso de Paiva and Pero da Covilham overland to Ethiopia in 1487; the first died in Cairo and the second reached Ethiopia in 1494. The queen Illénî (Helen) saw the danger Ethiopia was in because of its isolation and encirclement by hostile Muslim powers and around 1511 sent an Armenian named Matthew to King Manuel to secure an alliance with Portugal. He arrived in Lisbon in 1514 and was sent back with Duarte Galvão and Francisco Álvares. The embassy arrived in Ethiopia in 1520, but Queen Illénî had retired and the king, Libnä-Dingil, had just defeated Sultan Muammad of Adal who was invading Ethiopia from the east. King Libnä-Dingil would not accept Matthew nor the Portuguese, and after waiting six years they left, taking Säga Zâb as ambassador to Portugal.

The next event was the great devastation of Ethiopia beginning in 1531 by the imâm Amad ibn-Ibrâhîm al-Ghâzî, known to the Ethiopians as Amad Grañ (“the left-handed”). He first gained control of the Muslim areas of Harar and Somalia, southeast of Ethiopia, and then prepared his followers for a jihâd against Ethiopia. The Ottoman government of Egypt supplied him with firearms in order to counter the Portuguese in the Red Sea. The Spanish too, at Zailâ, supplied the Muslims with arms to counteract the Portuguese.

Within a short time Amad overran nearly the whole of Ethiopia, driving the king from one mountain refuge to another. The Muslim occupation lasted only from 1531 to 1543, but the amount of destruction in this short time “can only be estimated in terms of centuries.”^[2] Churches were pulled down, their riches plundered, their books and paintings burnt, and the clergy massacred. The people turned to Islam in droves; “hardly one in ten retained his religion.”^[3] Some were allowed to keep their Christianity and pay the jizya, but most were given the choice only of death or becoming Muslim, and any who put up resistance were massacred.

Final disaster was averted only by the intervention of the Portuguese, to whom the Ethiopians appealed for help. In 1542 Cristovão da Gama led 400 men into Ethiopia. After fourteen months of successful campaigning Cristovão and 250 of his men were killed in a battle against Amad and the Turkish reinforcements sent to help him. Fifty of the surviving Portuguese thought all was lost and returned to Massawa. The remaining 100 regrouped with King Gäladéwos (1540-59) and attacked and killed Amad in his camp in 1543. With his death Amad’s troops dispersed. Ethiopia was free, but never the same again.

As soon as the war was over a massive and irresistible wave of pagan Galla immigrated from the west, covering the southern and as yet unassimilated provinces of Ethiopia. They also overran Harar to the east, causing all Muslim power southwest of Ethiopia to disintegrate. In the north, however, the Turks continued their harassment, and in 1557 captured Massawa and all the other Red Sea ports. Yet by the end of the 16th century, as the Ottoman Empire began to decline, the Turks withdrew from the Eritrean shores.

The Portuguese who had rescued Ethiopia hoped to maintain a continuing influence there. Their presence was welcome at first, but very soon resented. The Ethiopian ambassador in Lisbon, Säga Zâb, was asked to write a book about Ethiopian beliefs. he did, and it was translated int Latin as Fides, religion moresque Aethiopum (Louvain, 1540). The Inquisition detected 41 “errors” in it and put it on the index of forbidden books. The Ethiopians were then officially considered heretics who had to be converted.

A Jesuit mission was sent by St. Ignatius Loyola which was unsuccessful. A later mission, led by the Jesuit Pero Paez, arrived in 1603 and succeeded not only in introducing printing and other European inventions and skills, but also in effecting the long desired union with the Pope. There was not much difficulty in accepting the Pope, a vague and almost mythical figure a full year’s journey away, but Pero’s successor Afonso Mendes SJ, who came in 1626, set about reordaining Ethiopian clergy, rebaptizing the people, and Latinizing all the Church customs. A revolt ensued, and the Emperor Susenyos was forced to declare a return to the traditional ways. In 1634 relations were broken with Portugal, the Jesuits were expelled, and the Ethiopians sought the help of Muslim powers to keep the Portuguese out. For 100 years the Portuguese had searched for the legendary Prester John, for 100 years they tried to convert him, then separated in failure.^[4]

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^[1]In the 13th century Marco Polo asserted that Soqotra was inhabited by Christian people. Juan Augur says that Martin Fernandez de Figueroa conquered the island from a Christian people who were originally form Fataque, a land of Arabia (Documentos, III, 627). St. Francis Xavier describes the “St. Thomas Christians” of this island in 1542 (Freeman-Grenville, 1975, 135-7).