Tomé Pires

Tomé Pires (c. 1468 — c. 1524/1540) was a Portuguese apothecary, colonial administrator, and diplomat. Quotes about ‘At the time when there were heathens along the sea coast of Java, many merchants used to come, Parsees, Arabs, Gujaratees, Bengalees, Malays and other nationalities, there being many Moors among them. They began to trade in the country and to grow rich. They succeeded in way of [sic]making mosques, and mollahs came from outside, so that they came in such growing numbers that the sons of these said Moors were already Javanese and rich, for they had been in these parts for about seventy years. In some places the heathen Javanese lords themselves turned Mohammedan, and these mollahs and merchant Moors took possession of these places. Others had a way of fortifying the places where they lived, and they killed the Javanese lords and made themselves lords; and in this way they made themselves masters of the sea coast and took over trade and power in Java . . .’ Pires, Suma Oriental, I, p. 182. The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires: An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to Japan, writ- ten in Malacca and India in 1512–1515, 2 Volumes (New Delhi, 1990). also quote din Al-Hind-The-Making-of-the-Indo-Islamic-World-Volume-III-Indo-Islamic-Society-14th-15th-Centuries External links Category:1468 births Category:Politicians from Portugal Category:Ambassadors Category:Diplomats of Portugal