ABSTRACT
Among the many Portuguese adventurers who went to the East in the sixteenth century, no one has caused as much controversy as Fernão Mendes Pinto (1509?–83).1 Following his return to Portugal after twenty-one years in the East, he wrote his Peregrinaçam in 227 chapters in which he describes his adventures, the first and only work of its kind.2 It covers all his travels from the day he left for Lisbon in 1521 and departed for the East in 1537 aged about 28 until he returned in 1558 aged about 50. He wrote it as a legacy for his children, and only for them, as he says in the first chapter,3 but since it was printed 30 years after his death (1614), it has become a document that has never ceased to fascinate and intrigue the general reader and historian alike.4
