Sebastien Manrique

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Fray Sebastien Manrique (Portuguese: Sebastião Manrique; c. 1590–1669) was a Portuguese Augustinian missionary and traveler. He spent about sixteen years visiting the East, from 1628 to 1643. In 1653, he published Itinerario de las Missiones Orientales del P. Manrique in Rome, a detailed record of his journeys.

His travels began in India, where he went from Cochin to Bengal (1628–29) and stayed in Hoogly for several months. He spent about five years in Arakan (present-day Rakhine, Myanmar), describing the royal court and its people, noting a mix of Buddhist, Muslim, and animist ideas. He then went to Goa and planned to sail to Japan, but Portuguese authorities stopped him in Manila and Macao. He eventually returned to India, and later traveled overland back to Europe through Kandahar, Baghdad, and Damascus. He left India in 1641 and reached home in July 1643.

Manrique’s Itinerario is one of the few Western accounts of Arakan before the 19th century. He was murdered in 1669 in London by his Portuguese servant.

See also:
- Biryani — Manrique’s account is one of the earliest known references to the dish.