Portuguese sea captain Alfonso de
Albuquerque was a short man with a long beard. For convenience’ sake he kept
his beard tied in a knot. In good company, Albuquerque was known for his wit. But
the Arabs of the Persian Gulf saw little of the captain’s humor. In 1506 the Portuguese
crown handed Albuquerque a job he didn’t want: forging a trade route around Africa
and Arabia, to India. His mandate called for setting up way stations in the Arabian
Sea and the Gulf that Portuguese ships could call upon on trade voyages between
Indonesia and Europe.
At the time, Arabs of the lower Gulf knew
little or nothing of Europe. When the billowing sails of Albuquerque’s
five-ship flotilla appeared on the horizon, it was the first major European
arrival in the lands that formed the UAE. The pioneering Portuguese had the
unique privilege of introducing the Gulf Arabs to European civilization. No matter
what he did, Albuquerque’s actions would be remembered for centuries as the
behavior of Europeans and Christians.
Albuquerque made the impression a lasting one.
Rounding Africa and reaching Arabia, the mariner destroyed every Arab vessel he
saw. When Omanis refused him permission to land, he sacked their towns. When Albuquerque’s
fleet arrived in Khor Fakkan – his first stop in what is now the UAE – crowds gathered
on the beach, beating drums and shouting. Horsemen galloped up and down the shore,
and spectators climbed atop the town’s wall and the hill behind, to catch their
first glimpses of the European visitors.
Albuquerque and his men peered at the
spectacle from their decks. They decided Khor Fakkan’s raucous reception wasn’t
submissive enough. The Portuguese waded ashore, unsheathed their swords, and
began hacking off noses and ears, bayoneting men, capturing or killing women
and children, and putting the torch to every one of Khor Fakkan’s handsome
houses, with their lemon and orange trees and horse stables.
The Portuguese made sure the next century
in the Gulf wasn’t a pleasant one for Arabs who had the misfortune of meeting
them. Albuquerque’s compatriot, the great mariner Vasco da Gama, burned a ship
crammed with hundreds of Muslims pilgrims bound for Mecca.
While the Arabs of the remote Gulf knew
nothing of these warlike Iberians, the Portuguese, like their Spaniard cousins,
had plenty of experience with Arabs. Just over a decade before their arrival in
Khor Fakkan, the Portuguese and Spanish had put an end to seven hundred years
of Muslim rule of their homelands. When Granada fell in 1492, the last Arab-governed
city in Europe had been captured and the Reconquest was complete. Now the Iberians
were in a mood to conquer and colonize. They viewed Arabs and Muslim
civilization as heathen enemies. They killed thousands. If a town didn’t hand
over its harbor, ships, and forts, the entire population risked death or
mutilation.
Historians like Abu Dhabi-based Frauke
Heard-Bey believe the unnecessarily cruel Portuguese occupation soured Arabs on
Westerners in general and Christianity in particular. “The memory of the
indiscriminate killing of women, children and the old, and the mutilations
inflicted on their prisoners by the Portuguese became engraved in the minds of
Arabs living anywhere between the Red Sea and the Persian coast, and were
remembered as the deeds of Christians,” she writes.
The Portuguese showed little staying power.
In 1631, after defeats by the surging navies of the Dutch and British, the
Portuguese began to fade away. They anchored off Ras Al-Khaimah and fought
running battles with the Arabs, and built a shot-lived fort. Soon they were
gone.
Beyond memories of their cruelty, the Portuguese
legacy is minimal. A few crumbling forts and rusty cannon remain, as well as a
handful of Portuguese words that still cling to the patois of the remote
villages in Oman’s Musandam Peninsula, at the Strait of Hormuz.
When the British arrived in earnest two
hundred years later, they were unwelcome. In the Arab view, there was no reason
that one Christian power would act less barbarically than another.
KRANE, Jim, "Dubai. The story of the world's fastest city", London, 2010.
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