_ 515 _ and left him with few men. The King was wounded and left, and thus they took him out and Basra was taken. Once Basra was captured by the Turks, they made it into a province and [caveat] of the kingdom, with a Pasha as governor with four or five thousand Turks and a Commander for the sea and a Treasury officer and a captain of cavalry, and they fortified the town, especially the mouth of the estuary, where they had a mosque of which they made a bastion of a fort, with many guns. From all these particulars given above it can be gathered how possible it is to capture Basra, since it is so powerful and has help so close at hand. We Christians know how powerful the Turk is, for the princes of Christendom cannot win an inch of ground from him, and nothing he takes can be regained from him as it can from us, having less strength. Hence it is not possible to attack Basra, and we cannot capture any part of it, even if we count on help from the King of Persia which I do not think he will give. Basra is in Arabia, where he has no possessions or trade, and in his own country, the Turks win towns every day in these directions lack spirit. If they now feel enmity towards the Turks, it is because they have taken Basra, and they would do the same to us if they saw us capture it.
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