Previous Year Question

The correct answer is the Gujarat Sultan Bahadur Shah. He ruled Gujarat approximately from 1526 to 1537 CE. During his reign, the Mughal emperor Humayun was expanding towards Gujarat on the one hand, while the Portuguese were attempting to increase their influence over Gujarat's maritime trade and the strategically important port of Diu on the other.

In 1535 CE, Humayun's invasion placed Bahadur Shah in a difficult position and he retreated towards Diu. Under this political pressure, he entered into an agreement with the Portuguese governor Nuno da Cunha on 25 October 1535. The Portuguese agreed to assist him against his enemies by land and sea; in return, they received permission to construct a fortress at Diu and were granted a site for it in the harbour.

An exceptionally useful contemporary European source is Gaspar Correia. He was personally present at Diu in 1535–36, when Nuno da Cunha obtained Bahadur Shah's permission to construct the Portuguese fortress. Correia later recorded Portuguese activities in India in his Lendas da Índia. Thus, the event of 1535 is supported not merely by later textbooks but also by the testimony of a writer who was actually present at Diu at the time.

Within the Persian historiographical tradition of Gujarat, Sikandar ibn Muhammad Manjhu's Mirat-i-Sikandari is another important older source. It is not a contemporary account of the event—it was composed approximately in 1611–13 CE—but it incorporated material from earlier Gujarat histories that are now lost and preserved the historical tradition concerning Bahadur Shah and the Portuguese conflict.