CIVIL HISTORY AND 



.is prayers ; they implore the Divine favour on his 

 descendants, who are held in gi'eat honour, and enjoy 

 the title of sheik. Such is the oriental history of 

 the founding of Mocha. When the Portuguese^ 

 under Don Alphonso Albuquerque, first visited it in 

 1513, it was with the intention of uniting themselves 

 to the Abyssinian Christians against their common 

 enemy the INIoslems; but they returned without 

 deriving any advantage from the attempt. In 1538, 

 it seems to have been a place of little importance, 

 probably under a Turkish governor; as Solyman 

 Pasha, who commanded the Eg^^ptian fleet, men- 

 tioned it as a castle where he stopped on returning 

 from his disgraceful expedition against Diu. 



In the beginning of the seventeenth century, when 

 the Red Sea was first visited by the English under 

 Captain Alexander Sharpey of the Ascension (1609), 

 Mocha had become the grand mart for the trade be- 

 tween India and Egypt. The Turkish governor was 

 courteous and liberal, and allowed the foreigners to 

 traffic without injury ; but the succeeding pasha was 

 a man of a very different character, as Admiral Sir 

 Henry Middleton, who was sent by the East India 

 Company on a trading voyage the following year, 

 experienced to his cost. The treacherous Turks 

 not only assaulted the strangers in the town, but 

 made an attack on their ships in the harbour. The 

 gallant commander and part of the crew "were 

 manacled like so many slaves;" Sir Henry was 

 threatened with the loss of his head for daring to 

 set his polluted foot on the soil where the city of 

 their holy Prophet stood^ and consigned to a dun- 

 geon, where " he had a hard floor for his bed, a great 

 stone for his pillow, and good store of rats and mice 

 to keep him company." After lying in captivity for 

 some time, he was conveyed a prisoner to Sanaa, 

 Avhich he describes as something bigger than Bris- 

 tol ; but by the interposition of certain friends he 



