"Dá vencido o Golfo": Portuguese manuscript poem in praise of the subjugation of the Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean

Moreira, Manuel de Sousa. Carta do grande Afonso de Albuquerque escrita a el-Rey D. Manoel.

€ 6,500.00

The imagined "letter" ("carta") of Afonso de Albuquerque (ca. 1453-1515) to the King of Portugal, in the verse of Manuel de Sousa Moreira (1648-1722), describing the Portuguese conqueror's military exploits at land and at sea. Afonso was a general, admiral, and the first European of the Renaissance to raid the Arabian Gulf; he was the driving force behind Portuguese colonization and empire building, which in turn began a scramble, among European polities, to build sea empires of their own. Afonso was named "head of the fleet of the Arabian and Persian sea" (Aubin) and sacked Muscat and Hormuz, spreading Portuguese influence and rule as far as Bahrain. He was also responsible for conquests in Goa and the beginning of the century-long and often forgotten Portuguese colonial rule in India. The poem, firmly aligned with Portuguese interests, celebrates Afonso's conquests, and directly references Afonso's time in the Red Sea and Gulf of Oman: "Dá vencido o Golfo, aonde / O mar da India, e da Ethiopia / Nos abismos do Oceano / Ou se occultao, ou se afogao" (f. 2).

Following the main text is a manuscript copy of "Carta de Ines de Castra", an imagined letter in verse from the perspective of the famous beheaded mistress of the king of Portugal, per legend crowned queen as a corpse, along with her epitaph, several sonnets, and a poem in Spanish, "Prometeo".

Two comparable manuscript copies of the Carta do Afonso de Albuquerque are held at the National Library of Portugal (COD.11449 and COD.12961).