In collaboration with my colleague Josep "Perched on the network " We have prepared the following article. Pedro Páez Jaramillo was a English Jesuit missionary of the seventeenth century. It was the first European to set foot on land south of the Arabian peninsula, written mention the existence of coffee and also the first to reach the mythical source of the Blue Nile. In this first article detailing the brutal path she did with the father Antoni de Montserrat for land south of the Arabian peninsula. Pedro Páez
Olmeda was born in the Onion, today Olmeda de las Fuentes, within a good family, received a good education and at 18 he entered the Society of Jesus. In April 1588 he embarked in Lisbon with other Jesuits in the ship "Santo Tomas" to Goa, a major Portuguese colonies in India.
in Goa and Father Pedro Páez Antoni de Montserrat was chosen to go to Ethiopia with a clear goal, the Ethiopian monarch trying to leave the Christian Orthodox church and embraced the Catholic. So on February 2 the two Iberian Jesuits would embark on a journey worth taking it to the big screen.
View Travel (I) Pedro Páez in a larger map
a few days of travel and because of a severe storm were to stop at the Elephanta Island, thence followed Baçaim north of Bombay where he had a Portuguese fort.
Diu continued until they found the father Luis de Mendoza, disguised themselves as merchants there Armenians and crossed illegally to the Gulf of Oman Muscat.
Montserrat and Paez, Muscat left to go to the island of Hormuz where they thought would be easier to sail to Africa in several weeks Hormuz were possibly of malaria patients, and finally departed on December 6, 1589 on a ship that addresses Zeiler, a small town on the coast of Somalia in Africa.
December 25 the ship was attacked by pirates who are demanding a ransom and on January 1, 1590, were caught in a terrible storm that broke the mast of the boat, stranded on the rocks of the second Al-Sawda the islands of Kuria Muria in the Arabian Peninsula. After a week could sail on another ship but were caught soon after by Turkish vessels, they tore their turbans, were recognized as Europeans and were taken prisoner. Here begin a terrible saga of the southern lands of the Arabian peninsula.
In Dhofar, Páez and Montserrat were interrogated and accused of being spies, they decided to bring them Xafer Sheikh who lived in the terrible and hitherto unknown to Europeans Hadramaut desert, to that end they embarked and followed the coast to Ras Fartak from which would continue the hard walk through the desert. Hand Tied
put them behind a camel ride, experiencing sunburn in the skin, also suffered very thirsty and gave them little food, after a few days and to avoid dying, his father set him up to Montserrat the back of a camel, but the father was not as misericordes Páez and had to continue walking.
crossed the terrible way Hadramaut desert to reach the city of Tarim where they were greeted with insults and stones.
passed by the city of Al-Qatna, where the prince welcomed them and invited them to take Cahua, drink boiled water with a fruit called Bun. Although it is not anything you can demonstrate, at the time Pedro Páez and Antoni de Montserrat were probably the first Europeans to taste the drink we now call coffee. What is certain is were the first Europeans to write about it.
In Marib, Paez told that the ruins of ancient fortresses, which are abundant in the place belonged to the realm of the legendary Queen of Sheba. Marib never again be visited by no Europeans until 1870.
A short distance from Al-Qatna Haynes in the city were locked up for four months, until the prisoners were charged to low presence of Turkish who lived in Yemen's capital Sana'a.
the way to Sana'a had to cross the Rub'al Khali desert. This is one of the largest sand deserts in the world, occupying most of the southern third of the Arabian peninsula. Its Arabic name means "the empty room." Taking advantage of the captive, Paez continued his studies in Arabic, Hebrew and Chinese. Montserrat on the other hand ended his book in which he recounts his previous trips to the court of Grand Mogul.
early September, 1596 were given to a Turkish merchant to serve as galley slaves for several months.
The Turkish merchant that brought them to shore finally took pity on them, took them out of the galley and took them to his house in Moka. After a year in the city, attended Felipe II orders the viceroy of India, Matias de Albuquerque, to be paid a ransom of one thousand crowns for the two prisoners, and finally being released, and then returned to Diu to Goa where they arrived in December 1596.
exhausted their health because of the great hardships of captivity, Antoni de Montserrat died in 1599. Páez younger and stronger to try again come to Ethiopia, but that's another adventure that will explain in a future article.
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Literature: Jorge Sanchez, a traveler from Hospitalet (Barcelona), traveled alone to Ethiopia in 1993 and explored for two months the places visited by Pedro Páez. In his book my trip around Africa, published in 1994 by the Madrid Editorial Tierra del Fuego, he devotes several pages.
Literature: The writer and traveler Javier Reverte Pedro Páez discovered in one of his trips and has revealed in his book God, the devil and adventure.
Sources: Wikipedia
