_ 191 _ that city nor ever considered doing so. In addition to the great harvest they are gathering in the country, some live in the royal hospital and have charge of it, and some also live in a fortress called Bandar, on the mainland of Persia opposite Ormuz. At Muscat, on the coast of Arabia near Ormuz, they have a convent and a parish church where they have made many Christians, and their number grows each day with hard work, and at great risk to the Fathers who live there. As well as many other converts they have made among Persians and other nations living and trading there, as well as native Moors, they converted and baptized three eminent persons: Dom Jeronimo Joete, the grandson of Turun Shah, the King of Ormuz, Dom Afonso Nur al-Din and Dona Felipa Morada, children of Reis Nur al-Din, the late quazil of Ormuz. As the Order has always wanted these Fathers of Ormuz to enter Persia and open the way there, it was arranged that there should be public lessons in the Persian language in the convent at Ormuz so that all the friars could learn it. There are already many who can read and write it reasonably well, and they have lessons in reading the books of that nation, which the other Orders do not have because they do not live in those parts.
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