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Hello,
I am doing some informal research into Portuguese colonial forts along the
coast of India north of Vasai, and I have become interested in the links
between these forts and other Portuguese forts established at or shortly before
the Indian ones in Morocco and Portugal.
It appears (perhaps not entirely surprisingly) that the Portuguese used a set
of fairly standard designs that adapted over time, and that some of these forts
are strikingly similar.
I am trying to use this evolution in design of key features to see if I can
date and sequence the various parts of the forts in India, which are not as
well documented as those in Portugal or Morocco.
I have been looking at Castro Marim in particular which has considerable
commonality with Safim in Morocco and Shirgaon in India.
While trying to draw illustrations to explain these common features, I tried to
compare measurements from the Duarte de Armas plan of the Castelo drawn in
around 1509-10 with the dimensions that I can measure on Google Earth.
I am finding that the fort as drawn and dimensioned in Duarte de Armas appears
to be very close to twice the size as the actual fort built on the ground.
I am wondering if this means that the plan in Duarte de Armas was a design for
a fort that it had been intended to build on this site, rather than of a fort
that the surveyor had actually visited and measured after it had been built.
Did the bureaucrats perhaps decide to build it smaller, perhaps through
budgetary constraints?
Or have I just misunderstood Portuguese Medieval measurements?
In Andre Teixeira's book Fortalezas Estado Portugues da India, in figure 72
there is a copy of the plan from Duarte de Armas for Catro Marim.
It has what appear to be dimensions on it that read something like this
"24b.2p" between two towers. On page 213 Teixeira gives a braca as being 220cm
(2.2m) and a palmo at 22cm.
I think this should give me a length of 53.24m. When I measure the same wall on
Google Earth I get 27m, which is very close to half the dimension on the
drawing.
Is there anybody in this list who has experience or knowledge on Portuguese
measurements, or who can point me to studies into these fascinating maps and
drawings?
Regards
Nick Balmer
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