THE FORT OF SURAT ERECTED BY AKBAR 263 to throw every obstacle in the way, by firing cannon from their ships, but all without effect. That expert engineer laid the foundations of one side within the sea; dug a deep ditch round the two sides which faced the land, and built the walls with stones and burnt bricks. The wall was thirty-five yards long. The breadth of the four walls was fifteen yards, and their height twenty yards, and the breadth of the ditch was twenty yards. All the stones, the joints, and interstices were fastened together with iron clamps and made firm with molten lead. The battlements and em- brasures were lofty, and so beautiful that every one was astonished at beholding them. On the bastions, which projected into the sea, was erected a gallery (ghurfa), which the Firingis, especially the Portuguese, profess to say is an invention of their own. When the Mussul- mans began to erect this chaukandi (turret), the Firin- gis exerted every kind of opposition to obstruct it; and when they found they could not prevail by force, they offered large sums of money to prevent its being built; but Khudawand Khan, through the regard which he bore to his own religion, sternly refused, and plied the work till it was finished, in contemptuous defiance of the Christians/ EUROPEANS AT AKBAR'S COURT In his well-known work, Akbar Ndmah, Abu-1-Fazl, the learned historian of Akbar's court, refers several times to the European Christians, and one of the earli- est of these references is in connection with the siege
