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Striking map of the region centered on Saudi Arabia and the Indian Ocean. The map was intended to illustrate the Dutch Translation of the official accounts of Nuno Da Cunha. Nuno da Cunha was a governor of the Portuguese possessions in India from 1528 to 1538. He was the son of the famous Portuguese navigator, admiral and ambassador to Pope Leo X, Tristão da Cunha, and Tristão's wife Antónia Pais. Nuno da Cunha fought in battles at Oja and Brava, and at the capture of Panane, under the viceroy Francisco de Almeida. Named by João III ninth governor of Portuguese possessions in India, he served from April 1528 to 1538. On his passage to Goa, he subdued the pirates at Mombassa who had been harassing the coast of Mozambique. Nuno's brothers Pero Vaz da Cunha and Simão da Cunha were expected to serve under him as second and third in command, a form of nepotism that was expected in the Portuguese Estado da Índia. However, they died on the voyage, and Nuno was forced to rely upon local networks of clientage in Goa during his long rule. In 1529, Nuno sent an expedition that sacked and burned the city of Damão on the Arabian Sea at the mouth of the Damão River, about 100 miles north of Mumbai in the Muslim state of Gujarat. Forces under his control captured Baxay (now Vasai, often mistaken for Basra in Iraq) from the Muslim ruler of Gujarat, Bahadur Shah, on January 20, 1533. The next year, renamed Bassein, the city became the capital of the Portuguese province of the North, and the great citadel of black basalt, still standing, was begun. (It was completed in 1548). Forced to return to Portugal as a result of court intrigues, he was shipwrecked at the Cape of Good Hope and drowned.
Pieter van der Aa (1659-1733) was a Dutch mapmaker and publisher who printed pirated editions of foreign bestsellers and illustrated books, but is best known for his voluminous output of maps and atlases. Van der Aa was born to a German stonecutter from Holstein. Interestingly, all three van der Aa sons came to be involved in the printing business. Hildebrand was a copper engraver and Boudewyn was a printer.
![A New Map of Turkey In Asia, Divided into its Provinces . . . 1801 [Cyprus]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/71232.jpg)
