Gaspar da Gama

Biography

Gaspar da Gama appears under the names Gaspar da Gama or Gaspar of the Indies in chronicles by Gaspar Correia, Fernão Lopes de Castanheda, Jerónimo Osório, Damião de Góis, and Álvaro Velho, though Indians knew him as Mahmet. Correia claimed he was a Castillan named Alonso Perez. Some sources confuse him with Gaspar de Lemos, a sailor in the fleet that discovered Brazil, and others call him Gaspar de Almeida due to his friendship with Francisco de Almeida, 1st Viceroy of India. Multiple versions of his life before meeting Vasco da Gama exist, some sourced from Gaspar himself, who may have hidden inconvenient facts. According to his own account, he became a Jewish traveller, went to Jerusalem and then Alexandria, where he was taken prisoner and sold as a slave in India, later securing his freedom in the service of the ruler of Goa. Correia states that when found by the Portuguese, Gaspar was Captain of the fleet of Yusuf Adil Shah, Sultan of Bijapur and Arab governor of Goa. Damião de Góis says Gaspar was a Jew born in Poznań, Poland, who did not speak Spanish but the Venetian language used in European commercial centers in the East. The historian João de Barros reported that Gaspar informed him his parents were from Bosna (or Posner, i.e., Poznań) in Poland, migrating to Jerusalem and then Alexandria, where Gaspar was born. The Israeli journalist Elias Lipiner considered Barros's version most faithful, suggesting Gaspar was born in Alexandria around 1458 and followed Jewish Radhanite trade routes to India as a young merchant. Other historians, such as Arnold Wiznitzer, think he was born in Granada or circa 1440 in Bosnia (possibly confusion with Poznań).