Mendez Pinto

Properties2
tagsperson, traveller, writer, portuguese, colonial
aliasesFernão Mendes Pinto, Pinto, Mendes Pinto, Mendoza Pinto

13 min read

Mendez Pinto — more properly Fernão Mendes Pinto (c. 1509–1583) — was a Portuguese adventurer whose Peregrinacam (published posthumously 1614; French translation Les Voyages adventureux 1628) is the principal European source for the Atjeh-Aru war of 1539, and thus for the first sustained picture of the Atjehnese sultanate in its expansionist phase. Pinto arrived at Malacca in 1539 in the suite of the new governor Pero de Faria, and within months had been dispatched on two missions that brought him to the very theatre of Atjeh’s war against the Sumatran east-coast polities: first to the west-coast “gold-lands” of Batu and Ophir in support of a ruler hard-pressed by Atjeh, and then, in October 1539, to Aru itself, where he was an eyewitness to the preparations for, and the early days of, the Atjehsche fleet’s descent on the kingdom of Aroe.

Mission to the Sumatran west coast (1539)

On his arrival at Malacca, Pinto was chosen by Pero de Faria to sail for the west coast of Sumatra in response to a request for aid from the “king of Batu” — the islands off Ophir long identified with the gold of Solomon’s temple. The request was accompanied, Pinto reports, by a rich gift of kamfer and kajoe garoe (eaglewood), and by an offer to recognise the King of Portugal as suzerain in exchange for protection and free trade. The Sultan of Atjeh, Pinto notes, had begun to use his recent conversion to Islam as a pretext for raiding his neighbours, “to bring them to submission and the new faith by fire and sword”; the King of Batu’s appeal was thus a direct response to Atjehnese pressure.

Pinto sailed across the Strait of Malacca to a roadstead he calls Surotilau (which De Roo de la Faille decodes as Soera-sakti-lawoe-kir, a “veiled” name for the roadstead of Malajoer in Aroe), then northward along the Sumatran coast past Pedir to a place he calls Minhatoley — read by De Roo de la Faille as mina-ng-k-a da-toe Olèh-leh, the territory of the dotoe or clan-chief of Olèh-leh, an Atjeh-chief marking the start of the Suratte-passage around the corner of Sumatra. Pinto was then brought before the bandahara — the “governor of the realm” — to whom he delivered the governor of Malacca’s letter and gifts, on the pretext of scouting how the city of Atjeh might best be damaged. A force of 15,000 men with 40 elephants and twelve pieces of light artillery — three of them, Pinto says, bearing the arms of France taken from a French ship captured in 1526 — was assembled at Turban (read as Batoe-poer-wa-boewana) for a march against the Atjehers. The expedition had some early success, but on the arrival of Atjehnese reinforcements the Panaju forces withdrew. The king, Pinto notes, had grasped that no military aid against Atjeh was to be expected from Portugal — and yet “the danger of Atjeh for Malaka was as much to be feared as he had experienced: three of his sons were already dead, his land destroyed”.

Mission to Aroe and the Atjeh-Aru war (October 1539)

Barely a month after returning from the west-coast mission, Pinto was again dispatched, this time to Aroe, whose king in turn had asked Pero de Faria for help against Atjeh: a great fleet was on its way. On 5 October 1539 Pinto embarked; the run to Aroe, by way of the Nine Islands off Perak and across the Strait, was uneventful. The Aroe-bay pilot, asked the name of the place, answered Paneticano — a name so strange that Pinto wrote it down as best he could. De Roo de la Faille decodes it as Roe-pang moes-tika-noe-sa, the veiled name of the white-magic islet of Kampi.

The radja of Aroe received Pinto’s embassy with joy — Portuguese aid seemed at hand — and even presented him to his wife, “something which very rarely took place”. He had but 6,000 men under arms; Atjeh was approaching with a fleet of some 130 vessels. As Pinto observed, the loss of Aroe would be a heavy blow to Malacca, for “it was the station by which Atjeh was able to command the Strait of Malacca and to deny Portuguese ships and other traders the passage to Sunda, the Moluccas and China, and to enjoy for itself all the advantages of that trade”. Three days later the Atjehsche fleet arrived under the command of Alleredin Mahomet, the sultan’s brother-in-law, “Gouverneur du Royaume de Baarros”. Pinto, asked when he wished to leave, begged to depart at once — and the radja parted from him with golden arm-bracelets and thanks for the munitions and weapons received.

After Pinto’s departure the end came quickly. The radja held out bravely at first, but treason by an Atjeh-bribed Cacis opened the gates; the radja fell, panic followed, and the kingdom was lost. The Queen, on hearing of her husband’s death, made a sortie against the plunderers, was driven back, and fled to a place called minha cumbaa — read by De Roo de la Faille as minjak sembawa, the white earth-oil of Aroe — and from there sailed to Malacca for help. The governor received her with honour but could give no armed aid; she then withdrew to Bentan and sought help from Djohor. The Sultan of Johor married her, fell upon the Atjehers at Aroe, and retook the place — though Aroe was finally lost for good, and “with the realm of the Djao — as the Portuguese wrote Jaoa — it was done forever”.

Reliability and the bedekte taal problem

Pinto’s Peregrinacam has long had a reputation — captured in the punning Portuguese epigram Fernão, Mendes? Minto! (“Fernão, are you lying? I lie!”) — for tall tales. De Roo de la Faille, however, defends him on the specific ground that Pinto faithfully recorded what he was told, and that what he was told was itself often in the bedekte taal — the veiled language — of Malay and Javanese discourse, which foreign listeners were systematically misled by. Pinto’s Paneticano, Surotilau, Minhatoley, Batorrendan, Turban, minha cumbaa, and the eaquesseitan joke of his Malay pilot are, in this reading, not Pinto’s inventions but Malay riddles faithfully transcribed, and only to be unmasked by a wangsalan-aware reader.

Significance for AcehWiki

For AcehWiki, Pinto’s importance is unmatched among European sources for the early sixteenth century. He is the only European eyewitness to the Atjeh-Aroe War (1539), the only writer to give the name of Alleredin Mahomet as the Atjehnese commander, and the only one to record the size and composition of the Atjehsche vloot in this campaign. His account, filtered through De Roo de la Faille’s bedekte taal lens, also fixes the political geography of the Atjehnese sphere in 1539 — including its designs on the Straits of Malacca and its enmity with both the west-coast Minangkabau world and the east-coast Aroe-Pasej complex.

See Also

Source

Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java, by P. de Roo de la Faille (Den Haag: Maart 1954), chapter “Mendez Pinto op Sumatra”, pp. 7-17. Pinto’s text is cited in the seventeenth-century French translation: Les Voyages adventureux de F.M.P. (1628).

Mendez Pinto — more properly Fernão Mendes Pinto (c. 1509–1583) — was a Portuguese adventurer whose Peregrinacam (published posthumously 1614; French translation Les Voyages adventureux 1628) is the principal European source for the Atjeh-Aru war of 1539, and thus for the first sustained picture of the Atjehnese sultanate in its expansionist phase. Pinto arrived at Malacca in 1539 in the suite of the new governor Pero de Faria, and within months had been dispatched on two missions that brought him to the very theatre of Atjeh’s war against the Sumatran east-coast polities: first to the west-coast “gold-lands” of Batu and Ophir in support of a ruler hard-pressed by Atjeh, and then, in October 1539, to Aru itself, where he was an eyewitness to the preparations for, and the early days of, the Atjehsche fleet’s descent on the kingdom of Aroe.

Mission to the Sumatran west coast (1539)

On his arrival at Malacca, Pinto was chosen by Pero de Faria to sail for the west coast of Sumatra in response to a request for aid from the “king of Batu” — the islands off Ophir long identified with the gold of Solomon’s temple. The request was accompanied, Pinto reports, by a rich gift of kamfer and kajoe garoe (eaglewood), and by an offer to recognise the King of Portugal as suzerain in exchange for protection and free trade. The Sultan of Atjeh, Pinto notes, had begun to use his recent conversion to Islam as a pretext for raiding his neighbours, “to bring them to submission and the new faith by fire and sword”; the King of Batu’s appeal was thus a direct response to Atjehnese pressure.

Pinto sailed across the Strait of Malacca to a roadstead he calls Surotilau (which De Roo de la Faille decodes as Soera-sakti-lawoe-kir, a “veiled” name for the roadstead of Malajoer in Aroe), then northward along the Sumatran coast past Pedir to a place he calls Minhatoley — read by De Roo de la Faille as mina-ng-k-a da-toe Olèh-leh, the territory of the dotoe or clan-chief of Olèh-leh, an Atjeh-chief marking the start of the Suratte-passage around the corner of Sumatra. Pinto was then brought before the bandahara — the “governor of the realm” — to whom he delivered the governor of Malacca’s letter and gifts, on the pretext of scouting how the city of Atjeh might best be damaged. A force of 15,000 men with 40 elephants and twelve pieces of light artillery — three of them, Pinto says, bearing the arms of France taken from a French ship captured in 1526 — was assembled at Turban (read as Batoe-poer-wa-boewana) for a march against the Atjehers. The expedition had some early success, but on the arrival of Atjehnese reinforcements the Panaju forces withdrew. The king, Pinto notes, had grasped that no military aid against Atjeh was to be expected from Portugal — and yet “the danger of Atjeh for Malaka was as much to be feared as he had experienced: three of his sons were already dead, his land destroyed”.

Mission to Aroe and the Atjeh-Aru war (October 1539)

Barely a month after returning from the west-coast mission, Pinto was again dispatched, this time to Aroe, whose king in turn had asked Pero de Faria for help against Atjeh: a great fleet was on its way. On 5 October 1539 Pinto embarked; the run to Aroe, by way of the Nine Islands off Perak and across the Strait, was uneventful. The Aroe-bay pilot, asked the name of the place, answered Paneticano — a name so strange that Pinto wrote it down as best he could. De Roo de la Faille decodes it as Roe-pang moes-tika-noe-sa, the veiled name of the white-magic islet of Kampi.

The radja of Aroe received Pinto’s embassy with joy — Portuguese aid seemed at hand — and even presented him to his wife, “something which very rarely took place”. He had but 6,000 men under arms; Atjeh was approaching with a fleet of some 130 vessels. As Pinto observed, the loss of Aroe would be a heavy blow to Malacca, for “it was the station by which Atjeh was able to command the Strait of Malacca and to deny Portuguese ships and other traders the passage to Sunda, the Moluccas and China, and to enjoy for itself all the advantages of that trade”. Three days later the Atjehsche fleet arrived under the command of Alleredin Mahomet, the sultan’s brother-in-law, “Gouverneur du Royaume de Baarros”. Pinto, asked when he wished to leave, begged to depart at once — and the radja parted from him with golden arm-bracelets and thanks for the munitions and weapons received.

After Pinto’s departure the end came quickly. The radja held out bravely at first, but treason by an Atjeh-bribed Cacis opened the gates; the radja fell, panic followed, and the kingdom was lost. The Queen, on hearing of her husband’s death, made a sortie against the plunderers, was driven back, and fled to a place called minha cumbaa — read by De Roo de la Faille as minjak sembawa, the white earth-oil of Aroe — and from there sailed to Malacca for help. The governor received her with honour but could give no armed aid; she then withdrew to Bentan and sought help from Djohor. The Sultan of Johor married her, fell upon the Atjehers at Aroe, and retook the place — though Aroe was finally lost for good, and “with the realm of the Djao — as the Portuguese wrote Jaoa — it was done forever”.

Reliability and the bedekte taal problem

Pinto’s Peregrinacam has long had a reputation — captured in the punning Portuguese epigram Fernão, Mendes? Minto! (“Fernão, are you lying? I lie!”) — for tall tales. De Roo de la Faille, however, defends him on the specific ground that Pinto faithfully recorded what he was told, and that what he was told was itself often in the bedekte taal — the veiled language — of Malay and Javanese discourse, which foreign listeners were systematically misled by. Pinto’s Paneticano, Surotilau, Minhatoley, Batorrendan, Turban, minha cumbaa, and the eaquesseitan joke of his Malay pilot are, in this reading, not Pinto’s inventions but Malay riddles faithfully transcribed, and only to be unmasked by a wangsalan-aware reader.

Significance for AcehWiki

For AcehWiki, Pinto’s importance is unmatched among European sources for the early sixteenth century. He is the only European eyewitness to the Atjeh-Aroe War (1539), the only writer to give the name of Alleredin Mahomet as the Atjehnese commander, and the only one to record the size and composition of the Atjehsche vloot in this campaign. His account, filtered through De Roo de la Faille’s bedekte taal lens, also fixes the political geography of the Atjehnese sphere in 1539 — including its designs on the Straits of Malacca and its enmity with both the west-coast Minangkabau world and the east-coast Aroe-Pasej complex.

See Also

Source

Historische Curiositeiten uit Malajoe en Java, by P. de Roo de la Faille (Den Haag: Maart 1954), chapter “Mendez Pinto op Sumatra”, pp. 7-17. Pinto’s text is cited in the seventeenth-century French translation: Les Voyages adventureux de F.M.P. (1628).

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