Fernão Mendes Pinto

Map of India showing Diu

On 11 March 1537, Pinto left Lisbon for India via Portuguese Mozambique. On 5 September that year, he arrived in Diu, a fortified island and town northwest of Bombay (Portuguese since 1535 but under siege by Suleiman the Magnificent).

Pinto joined a Portuguese reconnaissance mission to the Red Sea via Ethiopia. The mission was to deliver a message to Portuguese soldiers guarding Eleni of Ethiopia, the mother of "Prester John" (Emperor Dawit II of Ethiopia) in a mountain fortress. After leaving Massawa, the mission engaged three Turkish galleys in battle. The Portuguese ships were defeated and their crews taken to Mocha to be sold as slaves.

Pinto was sold to a Greek Muslim who was a cruel master. Pinto threatened suicide and was sold to a Jewish merchant for about thirty ducats' worth of dates. With the Jewish merchant, Pinto travelled the caravan route to Hormuz, a leading market town in the Persian Gulf. There, Pinto was freed by way of payment of three hundred ducats from the Portuguese crown. He was made captain of the Fortress of Hormuz and the Portuguese king's special magistrate for Indian affairs.

Soon after being freed, Pinto sailed on a Portuguese cargo ship to Goa. Against his will, Pinto was transferred en route to a naval fleet bound for the Mughal port city of Debal (modern Karachi) near Thatta. After enduring battles with Ottoman ships, Pinto reached Goa.

Malay Peninsula

From 1539, Pinto remained in Malacca under Pedro de Faria, the newly appointed captain of Malacca. Pinto was sent to establish diplomatic contacts, particularly with small kingdoms allied with the Portuguese against the Muslims of northern Sumatra. In 1569, he discovered an Ottoman fleet led by Kurtoğlu Hızır Reis in Aceh.

South China Sea

Following Pinto's mission to Sumatra, he was sent to Patani, on the eastern shore of the Malay peninsula. From there, Pinto made an unsuccessful delivery of merchandise to Siam. The goods were stolen by pirates who were then chased by Pinto and António de Faria. Pinto continued trading operations in the South China Sea, especially in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Pinto entered China from the Yellow Sea and raided a tomb of the Emperor of China. Pinto was shipwrecked, apprehended by the Chinese and sentenced to one year hard labour on the Great Wall of China. Before completing his sentence, Pinto was taken prisoner by invading Tatars. He became an agent of the Tartars and travelled with them to Cochinchina, the southernmost part of modern-day Cambodia and Vietnam. Pinto describes his encounter with a "pope-like" man, possibly the Dalai Lama, who had never heard of Europe. Pinto and two companions jumped ship to a Chinese pirate junk and were shipwrecked onto the Japanese island of Tanegashima, south of Kyūshū.

Japan

Peregrinação, Pinto's famous book

Japanese arquebus of the Edo era (teppo)

Memorial to St. Francis Xavier, Hirado, Nagasaki

Pinto claimed that his 1543 landing made him the first European to set foot in Japan. He also claimed to have introduced the arquebus to Japan. It is widely accepted now, however, that several Portuguese traders, including António Mota and Francisco Zeimoto, visited Japan a year earlier.[2] The firearm was reproduced and used in the Japanese civil wars. It was known as the tanegashima.

Pinto facilitated trade between the Portuguese and Japan. At one point, he was shipwrecked on the Ryukyu Islands. In 1549, Pinto left Kagoshima accompanied by a Japanese fugitive, Anjirō. He returned to Japan with Saint Francis Xavier, a Catholic missionary. In 1554, Pinto joined the Society of Jesus and donated a large sum of his trading wealth to the mission. In a letter, Ōtomo Yoshishige, daimyō of Bungo, offered his conversion and requested Pinto return to Japan. The letter arrived at the same time that Xavier's body was being displayed in Goa. Ōtomo did not convert at that time due to internal difficulties but did so later at the time Pinto was completing his autobiography. Between 1554 and 1556, Pinto returned to Japan with Xavier's successor. He became the Viceroy of Portuguese India's ambassador to the daimyo of Bungo on the island of Kyūshū. Despite Pinto's support of the Church in Japan, he left the Jesuits in 1557.

Pinto returned to Malacca and was then sent to Martaban. He arrived in the midst of a siege and took refuge in a Portuguese camp of mercenaries who had betrayed the Viceroy. Pinto similarly was betrayed by a mercenary, captured by the Burmese and placed under the charge of the king's treasurer who took him to the kingdom of Calaminham. Pinto fled to Goa.

On Pinto's return to Goa, Faria sent him to Bantam, Java, to buy pepper for sale to China. Once again, Pinto was shipwrecked. He may have resorted to cannibalism before submitting to slavery in order to secure passage out of the swampy Java shore. Pinto was bought by a Celebes merchant and resold to the King of Kalapa who returned him to Sunda.

Using borrowed money, Pinto bought passage to Siam where he encountered the King of Siam at war. Pinto's writings contribute to the historical record of the war.

On 22 September 1558, Pinto returned to Portugal. Fame preceded him in Western Europe due to one of his letters being published by the Society of Jesus in 1555. Pinto spent the years 1562 - 1566 in court looking for reward or compensation for his years of service to the Crown. He married Maria Correia Barreto with whom he had at least two daughters. In 1562, he purchased a farm in Pragal. Pinto died on 8 July 1583 at his farm.

Rebecca Catz. "Hispania". Fernão Mendes Pinto and His Peregrinação. Missing or empty |url= (help)