The famous A’Famosa was built soon after the Portuguese captured Malacca in the year 1511. Bringing the meaning of ‘The Famous’, the Portuguese used forced labor to build the city that serves as a temporary camp to repel the attacks of the Malays. It took five months to build, many of the forced laborers used to build the city died as a result of hot weather and food shortages.
The construction of Kota A Famosa under the direction of Alfonso de Albuquerque became a symbol of the resistance of the people of Melaka at that time to force them to build a defensive city once they took control of the city of Melaka. The city was later destroyed by the British on 10 August 1807.
Little do people know that the material used to build this iconic historical monument of this city is by using stone mosques and also the tomb of the Malays. This is evidenced by the particular discovery of a letter from a man named Giovanni da Empoli (1483-1517) to his father in Italy. Giovanni da Empoli was a merchant who at the age of a dozen had left Lisbon according to the navy of Alfonso de Albuquerque traveling to Southeast Asia (April 6, 1503). Born in Florence, he has the ability to speak many languages. Early 16th century. Portugal actively expanded its influence by conquering maritime routes to Southeast Asia conquered Goa in 1510 and Melaka in 1511.
Being in Melaka for six months since 28 June 1511, Giovanni and the other crew were forced to engage in the conquest under Alfonso despite having no background as a soldier. Throughout his adventures, Giovanni has written two letters to his father in Florence who are 10 years away. In the letter, he recounts the events he witnessed himself during the year 1511.
Among the contents of the letter revealed:
“We prepared a stone [fort] that we built by renovating the houses of the ‘Moors’, their mosques and other buildings.
We built it up with great difficulty by bearing the stones on our backs, and each of us became a manual laborer, a builder and a stonemason.
The situation is very difficult: We built the city with our weapons under the scorching sun that is hard to describe. The only food available is rice (…)
No one escaped a terrible fever, in which the corpse lay in the captain’s residence for two or three days (…)
I fell ill from October, and for fifty days I had a severe and prolonged fever until I lost my mind”.
Sources: Facebook Melaka In Fact, Medievalists.net.