Cite
MLA
“Siege of the Portuguese fort at Calicut.” Hindu History, 2026, https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/siege-of-calicut-1526/. Accessed .
APA
Hindu History. (2026). Siege of the Portuguese fort at Calicut. Retrieved , from https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/siege-of-calicut-1526/
The Portuguese gave up the fort; it was evacuated and blown up in early 1526.
01A fort in the Zamorin’s city
From 1500 the Zamorins fought the Portuguese for control of the pepper trade of Malabar. In 1513, after years of war, a Zamorin agreed to let them build a fort at Calicut. It never sat easily. The Mappila merchants who carried Calicut’s trade to the Red Sea suffered under Portuguese passes, and by 1524–25 fighting had begun again along the coast. The Zamorin’s Nair troops closed round the fort, which the Portuguese had meant as a watch on the port and its ships.
02Abandoned and blown up
The garrison under Dom João de Lima held out for months, short of food and under steady attack. Governor Henrique de Meneses came down from Goa with a relief fleet, but judged the fort not worth the cost of holding inside a hostile city. Early in 1526 the garrison was taken off by sea and the fort was mined and destroyed. Gaspar Correia, who was in India at the time, describes the evacuation in his Lendas da Índia.
Calicut was cleared of a Portuguese fort, and the Zamorins kept their capital free of one until the war ended; the Portuguese turned instead to Chaliyam, a few miles south.
