52 H. Beveridge —Observations on General Maclagan’s paper. [No. 1, 
The chronology is important, for it seems to show that the mission 
of Acqnaviva and his companions was doomed to failure from the first, 
as it is evident that they arrived too late. 
Akbar had already made himself Pope, so to speak, and it was not 
likely that he would abandon his position as Mujtahid and sit at the 
feet of a young Feringhi Padre. The anachronism is not the only error 
in Abul Fazl’s account. He misrepresents the story of the proposed 
ordeal by fire, and represents Acquaviva as doing the very foolish thing 
of challenging the Muhammadan doctors to enter a fire. We know 
both from Badayuni, and from the Jesuits that the proposal came from 
a Muhammadan. In all probability it was, as the Jesuits stated, not 
a bond fide proposal. Badayuni tells us that it came from Shaikh Qutbu- 
d-dln of Jaleswar in the district of Agra. Evidently this is the Shaikh 
Qutbu of Jaleswar mentioned in the Akbarnama III. 309 Bib. Ind. ed. 
There we are told that he was found out to be a cheat, and worthless 
outwardly and inwardly. This leads us to suppose that Blochmann is 
right in translating Badayunl’s word kharabi as meaning that he was 
a wicked man, and that Mr. Lowe is wrong in taking it to mean that 
he was only intoxicated with Divine love. Badayuni, I think, meant 
to say that he was a drunken fanatic, and just such a person as a friend 
of S. Jamal Bakhtiyarl was likely to be, for Jamal was notorious for 
his drunken habits, and was only tolerated by Akbar because his sister 
was one of the favourites of the harem. 
Akbar’s first introduction to the Portuguese was in the 17th year 
of his reign when he was engaged in besieging the fort of Surat. Abul 
Fazl’s account of the matter III. 27, is that the Portuguese had been 
invited by the besieged to take over the fortress, but that when they 
found Akbar was too strong, they pretended that they had come on an 
embassy to him (See Elliot, YI. 42). It is likely enough that the 
Portuguese came with two objects in view. They had been invited by 
the besieged, just as they had been invited by Bahadur Shah forty 
years before, and they probably thought that they would be able to 
repeat their success and to acquire Surat as they had acquired Diu. 
But they were also prepared to act as ambassadors to Akbar and took a 
quantity of presents with them. Akbar, according to Abul Fazl, received 
them graciously and asked them many questions about the productions 
of Portugal, and the customs of the Europeans. It seemed as if he did 
this from a desire for knowledge, but he had another motive, namely, 
a wish to tame and civilise this savage race (guroh-i-wahshi) ! 
India on 13th September 1578, but probably there were no facilities at Goa for 
learning Persian. As we have seen he left Goa for Fathpur via Surat on 17th 
November 1579. Acquaviva was canonised by the late Pope in 1893. 
