The Third Siege of Diu was a siege of the
Portuguese India
The State of India ( pt, Estado da Índia), also referred as the Portuguese State of India (''Estado Português da Índia'', EPI) or simply Portuguese India (), was a state of the Portuguese Empire founded six years after the discovery of a se ...
n city of
Diu by the
Gujarat Sultanate in 1546. It ended with a major Portuguese victory.
Background
At the beginning of the 16th century, the Muslim Sultanate of Gujarat was the principal seapower in India. Gujarat fought the Portuguese fleets in collaboration with the
Mamluks. The Portuguese were defeated by a combined Mamluk-Gujarati fleet in 1508, which was in turn destroyed by a Portuguese fleet in the
Battle of Diu (1509)
The Battle of Diu was a naval battle fought on 3 February 1509 in the Arabian Sea, in the port of Diu, India, between the Portuguese Empire and a joint fleet of the Sultan of Gujarat, the Mamlûk Burji Sultanate of Egypt, and the Zamorin ...
. By 1536, the Portuguese had gained complete control of Diu, while Gujarat was under attack from the
Mughals.
In 1538, the
Ottomans
The Ottoman Turks ( tr, Osmanlı Türkleri), were the Turkic founding and sociopolitically the most dominant ethnic group of the Ottoman Empire ( 1299/1302–1922).
Reliable information about the early history of Ottoman Turks remains scarce, ...
, who had taken over
Egypt (1517) and
Aden
Aden ( ar, عدن ' Yemeni: ) is a city, and since 2015, the temporary capital of Yemen, near the eastern approach to the Red Sea (the Gulf of Aden), some east of the strait Bab-el-Mandeb. Its population is approximately 800,000 people. ...
(1538), joined hands with the Gujarat Sultanate to launch an anti-Portuguese offensive. They
besieged Diu in 1538, but had to retreat.
The siege
After the failed siege of 1538, the Gujarati General Khadjar Safar besieged Diu again in an attempt to recapture the island. The siege lasted seven months from 20 April 1546 to 10 November 1546, during which João de Mascarenhas defended Diu.
The siege ended when a Portuguese fleet under Governor
João de Castro arrived and routed the attackers.
Khadjar Safar and his son Muharram Rumi Khan (who were probably of Albanian origin) were both killed during the siege.
See also
*
Siege of Diu
*
Siege of Diu (1531)
*
Catarina Lopes
*
Isabel Madeira
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Second Siege of Diu
Diu 2
History of Daman and Diu
Gujarat Sultanate
1546 in India
Conflicts in 1546
16th century in Portuguese India