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Updated: June 27, 2025
17th of Zilhadge. Presented myself to his Excellency the Pasha Ismael, by whom I was received in a very nattering manner, and presented with a suit of his own habiliments.
Ismael spread this report through the town, learning which I made him an official visit demanding a rectification and examination of the child, which was found without a scratch.
As was the custom with Turkish commanders, all his harem accompanied him, and after travelling about from one territory to another, sometimes in pursuit of, and at others retreating before the enemy's forces, we were shut up in the fortress of Ismael, with orders to defend it to the last. I shall not weary your highness with a detail of what occurred.
The accumulated oppressions of Ismael Pasha had finally the usual effect on the Cretans, and they began to agitate for a petition to the Sultan, a procedure which time had shown to be absolutely useless as an appeal against the governor; and, while the agitation was in this embryonic condition, I decided to go back to Rome and get my wife and children.
After staying fourteen days there, we came to this place, Aleppo, on the 20th of this present month of May, where we have now been eight days, and in five or six days, with Gods help, we go from hence towards the Indies. Since my arrival at Tripoli, I have made diligent inquiry, both there and here, for the book of Cosmography of Abulfeda Ismael, but cannot hear of it.
The pleasure I felt at seeing these proofs of the humanity of the Pasha Ismael was diminished by seeing his safe-conduct disregarded by some of the Mogrebin soldiers, and particularly by the Greek and Frank domestics of the Proto Medico Bosari, who seized from the hands of these miserable creatures as many sheep and goats as they thought they had occasion for.
But Ismael did not live to enjoy the fruits of his success: being enamoured of a young Spanish captive, who had fallen, in the division of the spoils, to the share of one of his officers, the king so far forgot the laws of justice and honour as to possess himself by force of the beautiful slave.
One of the latest of its kings, therefore, Aben Ismael by name, disheartened by a foray which had laid waste the Vega, and conscious that the balance of warfare was against his kingdom, made a truce in 1457 with Henry IV., king of Castile and Leon, stipulating to pay him an annual tribute of twelve thousand doblas or pistoles of gold, and to liberate annually six hundred Christian captives, or in default of captives to give an equal number of Moors as hostages, all to be delivered at the city of Cordova.*
Ismael was cruel and dishonorable; he violated his given word and pledges without the slightest regard for his influence with the population. When, as at certain moments in the long struggle of which I am now beginning the history, I came in contact with the superior officers of the Sultan, I found a better sense of the policy of justice than obtained with the provincial functionaries.
I always liked a good fight in a good cause, and I had no hesitation in taking up the glove that Ismael threw down, and my defiance of all his petty hostile manoeuvres was immediately observed by the acute islanders and put down to my credit and exaltation in the popular opinion.
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