_ 146 _ because Antonio Mendes will give your Lordship more information about it and all the affairs of this land. Since I have been here, I have written two or three time of Your Lordship about Bahrain, and how Rafis Mamude holds that it belongs to him by law and inheritance, and that for the past four or five years he has not paid the King of Ormuz the five thousand pardaos which he is obliged to pay him each year. When Bernardim de Sousa went there all the money had been put into the fortress before he arrived, and they were prepared to defend it. Not only did he mistrust Bernaldim de Sousa, but he would not let Ra’is Nor al-Din, the son of Ra’is Sharafa, enter the fortress either, although they told him that they were only going to EI Katiff. Where the Guazil of this city and his kinsmen wrote to him, the most he and was to take a cabaya which the King sent him out of the fortress, and when he had put it on, he asked Bernaldim de Sousa to enter the fortress with ten or twelve men, although he had three or four hundred inside. Not only do the Portuguese think this is a bad sign, but the Moors themselves do. The King talks to me every day about Bahrain, that I have not ordered Ra’is Mamude to come here, and why do I make him pay what he should, and why I do not order Bahrain to be captured instead of
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTg0NzAy