Bento de Goes - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Bento de Góis was a Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

Jesuit Brother, Missionary

Missionary

A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...

and explorer. His name is commonly given in English as Bento de Goes or Bento de Goës; in the past, it has also been Anglicized as Benedict Goës.

He is mainly remembered as the first known European to travel overland from India to China, via Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

and the Pamirs. Inspired by controversies among the Jesuits as to whether the Cathay

Cathay

Cathay is the Anglicized version of "Catai" and an alternative name for China in English. It originates from the word Khitan, the name of a nomadic people who founded the Liao Dynasty which ruled much of Northern China from 907 to 1125, and who had a state of their own centered around today's...

of Marco Polo

Marco Polo

Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...

's stories is the same country as China, his expedition
conclusively proved that the two countries are one and the same, and, according to Henry Yule

Henry Yule

Sir Henry Yule was a Scottish Orientalist.He was born at Inveresk, Scotland, near Edinburgh, the son of Major William Yule , translator of the Apothegms of Ali. Henry Yule was educated at Edinburgh, Addiscombe, and Chatham, and joined the Bengal Engineers in 1840...

, made "Cathay... finally disappear from view, leaving China only in the mouths and minds of men".

Early life

Góis went to India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

as a soldier in the Portuguese army. In Goa

Goa

Goa , a former Portuguese colony, is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located in South West India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its...

he entered the Society of Jesus

Society of Jesus

The Society of Jesus is a Catholic male religious order that follows the teachings of the Catholic Church. The members are called Jesuits, and are also known colloquially as "God's Army" and as "The Company," these being references to founder Ignatius of Loyola's military background and a...

as a lay brother (in 1584), offering himself to work for the Mughal Mission. As such, in 1595, he accompanied Jerome Xavier

Jerome Xavier

Jerome Xavier, born Jerónimo de Ezpeleta y Goñi , was a Spanish Jesuit missionary in to the Mughal court of Akbar, , and his son Jahangir, ,...

and Manuel Pinheiro to Lahore

Lahore

Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...

. For the third time Emperor Akbar had requested that Jesuits be sent to his court. Goes returned to Goa

Goa

in 1601. According to Matteo Ricci

Matteo Ricci

Matteo Ricci, SJ was an Italian Jesuit priest, and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China Mission, as it existed in the 17th-18th centuries. His current title is Servant of God....

, these experiences allowed Góis to become fluent in Persian language

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

, and a good knowledge of "Saracen" (i.e., Muslim) customs.

The riddle of Cathay

Góis is best remembered for his long exploratory journey through Central Asia, under the garb of an Armenian merchant, in search of the Kingdom of Cathay

Cathay

. Generated by accounts made by Marco Polo

Marco Polo

, and later by the claims of Ruy Gonzales de Clavijo

Ruy Gonzáles de Clavijo

Ruy González de Clavijo was a Castilian traveller and writer. In 1403-05 Clavijo was the ambassador of Henry III of Castile to the court of Timur, founder and ruler of the Timurid Empire...

,
reports had been circulating in Europe for over three centuries of the existence of a Christian kingdom in the midst of Muslim nations. After the Jesuit missionaries

Jesuit China missions

The history of the missions of the Jesuits in China is part of the history of relations between China and the Western world. The missionary efforts and other work of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, between the 16th and 17th century played a significant role in continuing the transmission of...

, led by Matteo Ricci

Matteo Ricci

Matteo Ricci, SJ was an Italian Jesuit priest, and one of the founding figures of the Jesuit China Mission, as it existed in the 17th-18th centuries. His current title is Servant of God....

, had spent over 15 years in south China and finally reached Beijing in 1598, they came to strongly suspect that China is Cathay; this belief was strengthened by the fact that all "Saracen" (i.e., Central Asian Muslim) travelers whom Ricci and his companions met in China told them that they are in Cathay.

The Jesuit leadership in Goa had been informed by letters from Jesuits in China

Jesuit China missions

that China is Cathay (but that there were no Christians there at the time). At the same time, the Jesuits stationed at the Mughal

Mughal Empire

The Mughal Empire ,‎ or Mogul Empire in traditional English usage, was an imperial power from the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Timurids...

court (in particular Jerome Xavier

Jerome Xavier

Jerome Xavier, born Jerónimo de Ezpeleta y Goñi , was a Spanish Jesuit missionary in to the Mughal court of Akbar, , and his son Jahangir, ,...

himself) were told by visiting merchants that one could reach Cathay via Kashgar

Kashgar

Kashgar or Kashi is an oasis city with approximately 350,000 residents in the western part of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Kashgar is the administrative centre of Kashgar Prefecture which has an area of 162,000 km² and a population of approximately...

, and that there were plenty of Christians in Cathay, which convinced Xavier that Cathay is, in fact, the Kingdom of Prester John

Prester John

The legends of Prester John were popular in Europe from the 12th through the 17th centuries, and told of a Christian patriarch and king said to rule over a Christian nation lost amidst the Muslims and pagans in the Orient. Written accounts of this kingdom are variegated collections of medieval...

, rather than the Ming China

Ming Dynasty

The Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...

.

In retrospect, the Central Asian Muslim informants' idea of the Ming China being a heavily Christian country may be explained by numerous similarities between Christian and Buddhist ecclesiastical rituals - from having sumptuous statuary and ecclesiastical robes to Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...

- which would make the two religions appear externally similar to a Muslim merchant.

After some amount of communications between Xavier, the order's superiors in Goa (Nicolo Pimenta (Niccolò Pimenta), the Father Visitor, was in charge there), and the authorities in Europe, it was decided to send an expedition overland from India to the Cathay about which visitors to the Mughals' Agra

Agra

Agra a.k.a. Akbarabad is a city on the banks of the river Yamuna in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India, west of state capital, Lucknow and south from national capital New Delhi. With a population of 1,686,976 , it is one of the most populous cities in Uttar Pradesh and the 19th most...

had told the Jesuits, to find out what that country really was. Góis was chosen as the most suitable person for this expedition, as a man of courage and good judgment, well familiar with the region's language and customs. Akbar approved of the plans as well; he issued Góis with letters of safe conduct to be used during the part of the trip within the Mughal Empire, and provided partial funding for the expedition.

Góis goes to Cathay

Bento Góis left Agra

Agra

for Lahore

Lahore

in late 1602 or early 1603 (sources differ), and in February 1603 he left Lahore with the annual caravan

Camel train

A camel train is a series of camels carrying goods or passengers in a group as part of a regular or semi-regular service between two points. Although they rarely travelled faster than the walking speed of a man, camels' ability to handle harsh conditions made camel trains a vital part of...

bound for Kashgar

Kashgar

ia's capital Yarkand. His cover identity was that of an Armenian merchant with a somewhat unlikely name Abdullah Isái. He was accompanied by two Greeks, chosen by Xavier: a priest named Leo Grimano (who only traveled with Bento until Kabul

Kabul

Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...

) and a merchant named Demetrios, who also separated from Bento in Kabul, but later rejoined him in Yarkand. Instead of the four servants given to him in Agra, in Lahore he hired a real Armenian residing in that city, named Isaac. Isaac went along with Góis until the very end.

Traveling via Peshawar

Peshawar

Peshawar is the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the administrative center and central economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan....

, the caravan reached Kabul

Kabul

Kabul , spelt Caubul in some classic literatures, is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan. It is also the capital of the Kabul Province, located in the eastern section of Afghanistan...

, where the caravan members spent several months. While in Kabul, Góis met "Agahanem", the sister of the ruler of Kashgaria, who was also the mother of the current ruler of Hotan. She was returning to her homeland from a Hajj

Hajj

The Hajj is the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is one of the largest pilgrimages in the world, and is the fifth pillar of Islam, a religious duty that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so...

to Mecca, and had run out of money. The Jesuit lent her some funds, which she later repaid with quality jade

Jade

Jade is an ornamental stone.The term jade is applied to two different metamorphic rocks that are made up of different silicate minerals:...

.

From another traveler he met, Góis learned about the existence of "a city called Capperstam, into which no Mahomedan is allowed to enter" (according to Henry Yule

Henry Yule

, a reference to the region of Kafiristan

Kafiristan

Kāfiristān or Kāfirstān was a historic name of Nurestan , a province in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, prior to 1896. This historic region lies on, and mainly comprises, basins of the rivers Alingar, Pech , Landai Sin, and Kunar, and the intervening mountain ranges...

), and got a taste of Kafir wine, which he found quite similar to the European product.

From Kabul, Bento Góis and Isaac went north, crossing the Hindu Kush

Hindu Kush

The Hindu Kush is an mountain range that stretches between central Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. The highest point in the Hindu Kush is Tirich Mir in the Chitral region of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.It is the westernmost extension of the Pamir Mountains, the Karakoram Range, and is a...

. Having left the domain of the Moghuls, and entered the territory under the authority (at least nominal) of the Khan of Samarcand, Ferghana, and Bukhara

Khanate of Bukhara

Khanate of Bukhara was a significant state in Central Asia from the second quarter of 16th century to the late–18th century. Bukhara became the capital of the short-lived Shaybanid empire during the reign of Ubaydallah Khan . The khanate reached its greatest extent and influence under its...

, they made a stop in Taloqan

Taloqan

Tāloqān is the capital of Takhar Province, in northern Afghanistan. It is located in the Taluqan District. The population was estimated as 196,400 in 2006.-History:The old city to the west on the riverside was described by Marco Polo in 1275 CE as:...

("Talhan") in today's northern Afghanistan

Afghanistan

. The area was in turmoil, with the "Calcia" people, "blond... like the Belgians" being in rebellion against the Bukharan rulers. Having passed through the land of the Calcia rebels with only minor losses, Bento's caravan continued eastward, on dangerous roads across the Pamirs. Neither Henry Yule

Henry Yule

in 1866, nor C. Wessels in 1924 were able to identify most of the place names mentioned by Góis, but mentioned that this was probably the only published account of a European crossing the region between the expedition of Marco Polo

Marco Polo

and the 19th century. The caravan reached Yarkand ("Hiarchan") in November 1603.
Yarkand had been the capital of Kashgaria (westerm Tarim Basin

Tarim Basin

The Tarim Basin is a large endorheic basin occupying an area of about . It is located in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China's far west. Its northern boundary is the Tian Shan mountain range and its southern is the Kunlun Mountains on the northern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The...

) since the days of Abu Bakr Khan

Mirza Abu Bakr Dughlat

Mirza Abu Bakr Dughlat was a ruler in eastern Central Asia, an amir of the Dughlat tribe. In the middle of the fifteenth century, in 1465, he founded in Western Kashgaria a kingdom based at Yarkand, a fragment of Moghulistan. It included Khotan and Kashgar; he took Kashgar in 1480...

(ca. 1500).
Bento and Isaac spent a year there, waiting for the formation and departure of a caravan to Cathay. They knew that every few years a caravan like this would leave Yarkand, composed primarily of local merchants, carrying jade to the capital of Cathay (i.e., Beijing) under the guise of "tribute" to the Ming Emperor

Ming Dynasty

from various Central Asian rulers. According to the custom, the emperor would choose the best jade for himself, generously reimbursing the Kashgarians, and the rest of the jade they would be allowed to sell to Beijing merchants. During this time, Bento also made a side trip to Hotan, where his earlier loan to the principality's Queen Mother was generously rewarded with jade.

The Jesuit impressed the Yarkand-based ruler of Kashgaria Muhammad Sultan (r. 1592-1609), a descendant of Sultan Said Khan

Sultan Said Khan

Sultan Said Khan ruled the state of Yarkand in Uyghurstan/Eastern Turkestan from September, 1514, to July, 1533. He was born in 1487 in Moghulistan and was a direct descendant of the first Moghul Khan, Tughlugh Timur, who had founded the state of Moghulistan in 1348...

and a murid
Murid
Murid is a Sufi term meaning 'committed one' from the root meaning "willpower" or "self-esteem". It refers to a person who is committed to a Murshid in a Tariqa of Sufism. Also known as a Salik , a murid is an initiate into the mystic philosophy of Sufism. When the Talib makes a pledge to a...

of Khoja Ishaq,
with a gift of a mechanical watch, and obtained from him a document for entry into the "Kingdom of Cialis" further east, which was ruled by Muhammad's son.

The jade-laden "tribute" caravan left Yarkand in November 1604. They made a stop in Aksu, Xinjiang, which was still within Kashgarian Kingdom, and had Muhammad Sultan's 12-year-old nephew as its nominal ruler. The Jesuit befriended the boy with some sweets and a performance of a European dance, and his mother, with a variety of small gifts.
The caravan then crossed the "desert of Caracathai", or "the Black Land of the Cathayans" which, as Bento learned, was so named after the "Cathayans [who] had lived there for a long time

Kara-Khitan Khanate

The Kara-Khitan Khanate, or Western Liao was a Khitan empire in Central Asia. The dynasty was founded by Yelü Dashi, who led the remnants of the Liao Dynasty to Central Asia after fleeing from the Jurchen conquest of their homeland in North and Northeast of modern day China...

". The next major stop was the small, but strongly fortified city of Cialis, where the travelers spent three months, as the caravan's chief waited for more merchants to join. Although it follows from the geography of the route (between Kucha

Kucha

Kuchaor Kuche Uyghur , Chinese Simplified: 库车; Traditional: 庫車; pinyin Kùchē; also romanized as Qiuzi, Qiuci, Chiu-tzu, Kiu-che, Kuei-tzu from the traditional Chinese forms 屈支屈茨; 龜玆; 龟兹, 丘玆, also Po ; Sanskrit: Kueina, Standard Tibetan: Kutsahiyui was an ancient Buddhist kingdom...

and Turpan) that Cialis had to be located somewhere within today's Bayin'gholin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture

Bayin'gholin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture

Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture , short for Bayingol is an autonomous prefecture of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest autonomous prefecture of China with an area of 462,700 km²...

, its identity has been a subject of speculation among later historians.
Some thought that it's the city known to us as Korla

Korla

-Economy:Korla has long been the biggest centre in the region after Karashahr itself, having abundant water and extensive farmlands, as well as controlling the main routes to the south and west of Karashahr. Due to the discovery of oil in the Taklamakan Desert, Korla is now both more populous and...

(today, the capital of the prefecture),
while others opined for Karashar, some 50 km farther to the northeast.

It was in Cialis that Bento's caravan met with another caravan, returning from Beijing to Kashgaria. As the luck would have it, during their stay in Beijing - "Cambalu", in (Italianized) Turkic - the Kashgarians had resided at the same facility for accommodating foreign visitors where Matteo Ricci, the first Jesuit to reach the Chinese capital, had been detained for a while. The returning Kashgarians told Bento Góis what they knew about this new, unusual species of visitors to China, and even showed him a piece of scrap paper with something written in Portuguese, apparently dropped by one of the Jesuits, which they had picked as a souvenir to show to their friends back home. Góis was overjoyed, now pretty sure that the China Jesuits had been right identifying Marco Polo

Marco Polo

's Cathay as China, and Cambalu

Khanbaliq

Khanbaliq or Dadu refers to a city which is now Beijing, the current capital of the People's Republic of China...

as Beijing.

Stuck in Suzhou

Via Turpan and Hami, Bento's caravan arrived to the Chinese border at Jiayuguan, and soon obtained the permission to
cross the Great Wall

Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built originally to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire against intrusions by various nomadic groups...

and to proceed to Suzhou

Suzhou District

The Suzhou District is an administrative district in Gansu, the People's Republic of China. It is one of 17 districts of Gansu.Suzhou District is part of the Jiuquan prefecture, and the seat of the prefecture government. Therefore, less-detailed modern maps typically mark Suzhou's location...

(now, Jiuquan

Jiuquan

- Suzhou town :The administrative center of the "prefecture-level city" of Jiuquan is the "District" of Suzhou , which occupies 3,386 square km in the eastern part of Jiuquan "prefecture-level city", and had a population of 340,000 as of 2002....

City center) - the first city within the Ming Empire

Ming Dynasty

, which they entered near the end of 1605. After three years and 4,000 miles of arduous travel, Bento and Isaac weren't doing too bad - they had 13 horses, five hired servants, and two boys that Bento had redeemed out of slavery. They carried plenty of precious jade with them, and, most importantly, both travelers were in good health. But here his luck ran out. The Ming Empire had fairly restrictive rules for foreigners' entry into the country, and it would take many months before the Central Asian merchants/"ambassadors" would be allowed to proceed into the interior of the country. In the meantime, Bento and Isaac, virtually imprisoned in the border city, had to spend their assets to feed themselves at the exorbitant prices prevailing there. De Góis wrote a letter to the Jesuits in Beijing asking them to find a way to get him out of Suzhou, but it wasn't delivered, as he did not know the address of his colleagues in Beijing, and apparently could not even ask anyone to have the letter addressed in Chinese. On their end, the Beijing Jesuits (informed about de Góis expedition by his Goa

Goa

superiors) were making inquiries about him from people coming from the west, but could not learn anything either, since they did not know his "Armenian" name, or maybe just were asking wrong people.

Bento's second letter, sent around the Easter time of 1606, made it to Beijing in mid-November. Despite the winter weather, Ricci promptly sent a Chinese Jesuit Lay Brother, named Giovanni Fernandes to his rescue.

Despite inclement weather and the theft of many of his supply by his servant in Xi'an

Xi'an

Xi'an is the capital of the Shaanxi province, and a sub-provincial city in the People's Republic of China. One of the oldest cities in China, with more than 3,100 years of history, the city was known as Chang'an before the Ming Dynasty...

, Fernandes made it to Suzhou in late March, 1607 - and found Bento sick, and almost at the point of death. (Ricci says that he may have been poisoned.) The intrepid traveler died 11 days after Fernandes' arrival, and the other members of his caravan, pursuant to their "diabolical custom

Tontine

A tontine is an investment scheme for raising capital, devised in the 17th century and relatively widespread in the 18th and 19th. It combines features of a group annuity and a lottery. Each subscriber pays an agreed sum into the fund, and thereafter receives an annuity. As members die, their...

", divided his property among themselves.

It took several months of legal efforts for Giovanni and Isaac to recover some of Bento's property and papers from his former caravan mates. Unfortunately, his travel journal - which he was said to have kept meticulously - had been destroyed by the "Saracen" caravan people, supposedly because it also contained records of the amounts of funds some of them owed to him. Therefore, our records of his expedition are very sketchy, based primarily on the several surviving letters (several sent back to India, and the last one, to Ricci), and on information obtained by Ricci from Isaac and Giovanni.

Isaac and Giovanni buried Bento in as Christian manner as it was possible under the circumstances, and went to Beijing. After being debriefed by Ricci during a month's stay in Beijing, Isaac returned to India via Macau

Macau

Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...

and the Strait of Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

, not without some more adventures on the way.

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