In 1441 ’Abd ur-Razzak, who had been sent to India by Shah Rukh on an embassy to Calicut, visited Bijanagar, whose ruins may still be seen on the banks of the Tumbhadra. He has given us a full and amusing account of what he saw, bursting forth into poetry on the ugliness of the natives:— “I have loved a moon-faced beauty, But I cannot fall in love with every black woman.”[256] He was present at the great review held during the festival of Mahanawi, when “the number of people and the huge elephants resembled the green sea and the myriads which will appear on the Plains of the Resurrection.” Not an allusion is made to firearms, although he notices the naphtha-throwers mounted on elephants.[257] Ferishta tells us that in the year 887 A.H. (A.D. 1482), Mahmoud Shah Begurra of Gujarat, hearing that Cambay was likely to be raided by the pirates of Bulsar, collected a fleet containing “a force of gunners, musketeers, and archers,” and defeated them. On this passage General Briggs remarks: “This is the first mention of artillery and musketry in the Gujarat history. They were probably introduced by the Arabs and Turks from the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.”[258] The firearms that came from the Persian Gulf must have been few and far between. Writing in 1549, a Jesuit says: “The Persians use no bombards or arms of this kind.”[259] There is no mention of the Bulsar expedition in the “History of Gujarat,” by Ali Muhammad Khan, translated by Mr. J. Bird. The _Mirat-i Sikandari_, a history of Gujarat translated by Sir E. C. Bayley, speaks of an attack made by Mahmoud on certain pirates as early as 878 A.H. (A.D. 1473), but neither Bulsar nor firearms are mentioned. We are told, however, that during a previous expedition in the same year against the island of Sankhodhar, the infidels (Hindus) “resisted bravely and kept up a sustained discharge of arrows and muskets” (pp. 198-9). Ferishta relates that during the siege of Champanir, 1484, a shell (_hookah_) fell on the Rajah’s palace; but he does not state how it was discharged, nor whether it was explosive or incendiary.[260] On landing at Calicut in 1498, Vasco da Gama and his followers were led through the streets with tomtoms beating, and from time to time an _espingarda_, or musket, was fired off.[261] The town seems to have possessed only one of these weapons. At least, the soldiers of the guard who mounted over Gama after he had been arrested were not armed with espingardas, but with swords, daggers, and bows,[262] and no mention is made of there being any cannon in the town. In 1502 a sea-fight took place in these waters between a Portuguese man-of-war and a Moorish (Arab) ship, during which the Arab bore down on the Portuguese, “pouring in her shot, and then made away.”[263] The original says: “Una nube de flechas sobre nuestra gente y algunas balas;” _i.e._ a cloud of arrows and some balls.[264] These balls were undoubtedly cannon balls.