Abstract:

The Portuguese conquerred Hormuz, the strategic island at the entrance of the Persian Gulf by the second time in 1515. Thus they were able to control these waters. But as they didn’t posses the port of Aden they couldn’t success to impede the commerce both in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The Ottomans had established in the Suez a naval base in 1525 in order to secure the navigation in the Red Sea as well as to fight against Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. Piri Reis, a famous captain and cartographer, was appointed to the admiralty of the Suez armada in 1547. The aim of this appointment was to achieve to oppress the upheaval of the Arabs of Aden who had revolted and declared independance. And only an experienced captain like Piri Reis could put Aden again under the Ottoman domination where the rebels were ready to accept the Portuguese protectorate. In fact Piri Reis after a succesfull expedition he took Aden in 1549. After this success, Suleiman the Magnificent gave him the mission of conquering the Hormuz island. First he should go with his armada to Basra, after embarking there 15.000 soldiers and adding the other ships to his armada, he might take the island with a speedy operation. But before reaching to Basra he should avoid to awaken the suspicion of the Portuguese. Nevertheless, Piri Reis did not wait to reach to Basra and laid the siege on Hormuz with his own armada. But the Portuguese garrison at the fortress was well prepareted, so resisted the siege for a long time. And Piri Reis as he did not succeed to take the fortress, he decided to sail to Basra. When he arrived there, Kubad Pahsa, the governor of that place, received him coldly and not helped him to find rowers for his galleys. Under this situation he left Basra with three galleys with the goal of reaching to Suez and he crossed the Hormuz Strait in a stormy night without being seen by the enemy. As soon as he arrived Egypt, was arrested and beheaded by the order of the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. In this study, by using the Turkish and Portuguese sources, we tried to shed light on what had really happened during the Piri Reis’s Hormuz expedition, as well as finding out the main reason of his execution. The main Portuguese source that I used is the chronicles of Diogo do Couto. As other Portuguese historians generally repeated his writings I only reflected the opinions of a few of them that I thought different

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