_ 91 _ I made many searching enquiries of learned men and knowledgeable old Moors, especially one named Khwaja Sa’al-Din, who was blind. He was one hundred and twenty-three years old and was already a grown man in the time of Afonso de Albuquerque, and he died when I was in Ormuz in 1589, when D. João Pereira, now Conde de Feira, was Captain. I found that none of the blind men in the three towers still standing, but in a ruinous condition, had been king, but they were brothers and cousins, with sons of Maqs’ud Shah and Shihabuddin and Salgur Shah and Shah-Vays, of the four brothers and cousins with sons Turun Shah, who all reigned one after the other, because it was the custom for those kings, when they succeeded, to blind brothers, cousins and kinsmen who might claim the throne. They blinded them with a metal bar taken from a blazing fire and passed before their eyes, the force of which extinguished sight while the eye-balls remaining clear and intact, which was done to ensure that they were not feared. A blind mean could not succeed, as João del Barros says, in so short time. Afonso de Albuquerque found them all alive and found in Goa that two of these blind men were still remembered but some governors had neglected them
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