Medieval Chaul Under the Nizam Shahs

Portuguese Mercenary Networks in Seventeenth-Century India: An Experiment in Global Microhistory and its Archive

“…This urban area on the north bank at the mouth of the Kundalika River was divided into two distinct centers separated by groves of palms and other fruit trees, Upper Chaul, which looked to the hinterland and belonged to the Nizam Shahi sultanate, and Lower Chaul (Revdanda), which was nearer to the sea and under Portuguese control. 26 Once they came before the inquisitors in Goa, runaways crafted narratives about their life in Muslim lands which confirmed the stereotype of the renegade. The way in which they resorted to fictional elements is reminiscent of the pardon tales of murderers studied by Natalie Zemon Davis for sixteenth-century France.27 Those who returned from the Deccan were expected to make a confession according to an interpretative scheme in order to be absolved and reconciled with the Church.…”