The God Culture: 100 Lies About the Philippines: Lie #15: Magellan Thought the Philippines Was Ophir and the Lequios Islands

Welcome back to 100 lies The God Culture teaches about the Philippines. Today's lie once again concerns the identification of the Lequios Islands. Timothy Jay Schwab claims that Ferdinand Magellan thought the Philippines were both the Lequios Islands and Ophir. But as with all of his other claims we shall see this is a lie. 

This lie is based on a single sentence in Charles Nowell's introduction to his book Magellan's Voyage Around the World: Three Contemporary Accounts.

The Lequios of Luzon: Key to Finding Ophir and Chryse. Clue #52 

12:44 Now continues. This is the key. Magellan's version substitutes for Barbosa's Lequios, Lucoes, the words Tarsis and Ofir. The biblical Tarshish and Ophir associated with Solomon. This is from Barbosa's journal while in Malaysia. While there Magellin found out where Ophir was and it was not Malaysia. There is no overcoming this for any land and there is no debate, period. Magellan found Ophir. Done

The conclusion here, that Magellan found Ophir and Tarshish because he subsititued those names for Lequios, and it is Lequios not Lucoes, absolutely does not follow. Let us not forget that Columbus thought he found Japan. It should also not be forgotten from the previous articles that the Lequios Islands are not the Philippines. Tome Pires differentiates between the Lucoes and Lequios islands.  Ferdinand Pinto was shipwrecked in the Lequios Islands and located them at 29 North Latitude. Magellan died in the Philippines and his ships never made it north to the Lequios Islands. So, everything Tim has just said is proven by those few facts to be a complete and total fabrication.

Nevertheless it will be necessary to dig a little deeper on this matter which is why this subject of the Lequios Islands has covered several articles. Tim writes the following in his book The Search for King Solomon's Treasure:

The Search for King Solomon's Treasure, pg. 37

Magellan, who also explored under Portugal in Malaysia before embarking on his voyage to return to Southeast Asia for the Spanish crown, is recorded by author Charles E. Nowell as rewriting a portion of his copy of Barbosa’s journal. In regards to the inhabitants of the Philippines, the Lequios, he substitutes “Tarsis” and “Ofir” or Tarshish and Ophir. He knew where he was headed and he knew Malaysia did not meet the criteria for Ophir or Chryse though close in proximity, it was East of the Malay Peninsula which he found in the Philippines.

“Magellan’s version substitutes for Barbosa’s “Lequios” the words “Tarsis” and “Ofir” “...the Biblical Tarshish and Ophir associated with Solomon...” – Charles E. Nowell [148]

Nowell's source for this information is an article in the Bulletin de la Societé Belge de Geographie from 1907. Let's take a look at exactly what this article says. I have translated it from the French. 

https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=gS4yAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA435&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Barbosa's report, written before 1516, summarizes the knowledge acquired at this time in Portugal, about India and Oceania; the author is led there to speak of the Lequios, at the end of his description of the South Asian kingdoms and islands, a description all the more precious as it comes from an intelligent traveler, who has actually visited most of the places he cited; wanting to end this general overview with some information on the countries not yet discovered, he could not help reproducing certain half-fantastic, half-authentic notions which circulated at that time about the countries and archipelagos of the Ptolemaic Magnus Sinus.

Barbosa's book summarizes all the knowledge the Portuguese had about the East and ends with a description of the Lequios Islands. It should be noted this book was written before the Lequios Islands were discovered by the Portuguese in 1517 so the knowledge Barbosa had of them was based on hearsay. I will discuss this book in a future article. 

In the General Archive of the Indies in Seville, we found in a bundle of the Patronato which contains one of the rare documents from the hand of Magellan, from the year 1519, a document which has the title "List of places, islands and main ports from the Cape of Good Hope to the Lequios, which are not yet discovered, besides other information that we have in Portugal."

We did not find the author's name; on the back of the parchment we find with difficulty deciphering a few words (et no hic unum homum aassim in quo?) which vaguely recall Magellan's firm declaration at the end of the other piece "no one knows these geographical situations (of South America South and East Asia) as well as me!." The address is better read "Muy magn' Senior, por mandao suo— A suy Senora"; it seems to indicate that the piece was presented to the young king Charles, the future Charles 5th, through the intermediary of the president of the consul of the Indies, the bishop of Burgos, Juan de Fonseca, whose characteristic title was: "Su Senior.”

The author of the archive inventory assigns the document the date of 1520-1530, without examining whether there could be any direct relationship between the different pieces contained in the bundle, among others with the Magellan manuscript. Now, the anonymous memoir is nothing more than a fragment of the book of Oduarte Barbosa, relating to the Far East. The arrangement that the author has adopted in his description differs slightly from that which we have given above according to the edition of the "Book published by the Academy of Sciences of Lisbon:

Sumatra, Cumda. Java major, Java minor, Timor, Vandam, Meluq, China, Tarsis, Ofir.

The author of this article says they found an ANONYMOUS document amongst a bundle of other documents attributed to Magellan. The author of this article does not know for sure if the documents belonged to Magellan and he himself actually substituted Tarsis and Ofir for Lequios. However he believes that is a logical assumption.

From the fact that the manuscript is joined to the remarkable document of Magellan, it seems to us that we can draw the conclusion that the navigator presented to the king the rectified report of his friend Barbosa, the day before his departure for the Moluccas, accompanying it with the formal declaration relative to the astronomical determination of several points of the globe, of which the right of taking possession by Portugal had been disputed by Spain.

But take a look at the progression of lands. We start in Sumatra, pass Java, reach China, and then arrive at the Lequios islands. There is no possible way that is the Philippines when the whole progression goes north. This will be made abundantly clear when I discuss Barbosa's book.

Further on the author of this article writes:

It took more than half a century to see a non-Portuguese geographer, our Mercator, mark on a printed work the discovery of the Lequios in the year 1517. Barbosa and Magellan may very well have been informed of the results of the Perestrello's trip, but they probably ignored the details of Mascarenhas' expedition.

Mercator's 1569 map shows both the Lequios Islands and the Philippines.

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b7200344k/f9.item.zoom

 

See how the Lequios Islands are located near Japan? That's because, as the author of this article writes:

The greater number of geographers, following Pigafetta, ignored the islands of the Lequios, and only understood under this name the inhabitants of a part of the coast of China

The Lequios Islands were not unknown to the Portuguese who first encountered them in 1517 with the help of the Chinese. 

It was not until the second half of the sixteenth century that the configuration of these islands began to be defined, thanks to a better knowledge of the Lusitanian cartography of eastern Asia; Portugal had therefore succeeded in keeping secret the results of its discoveries, accomplished since 1517, the year in which the Lequios had been recognized by Jorge de Mascarenhas with the help of Chinese pilots;

Given all that information there is absolutely no way Magellan could have thought that the Philippines was the Lequios Islands. From Barbosa's account he would have known beyond doubt that the Lequios Islands lay to the north between China and Japan. 

As for Barbosa and Magellan identifying the Lequios Islands with Ophir and Tarshish the author of this article discusses at length the search for Ophir and concludes:

The confusion of Ophir with the Lequios islands, by Barbosa and Magellan, constitutes only one more episode in the long series of hypotheses, concerning the existence of the country of gold of the Bible, hypotheses based on rumors more or less waves of unknown lands. 

It was just another hypothesis based on rumor. It's unsurprising that Timothy Jay Schwab did not seek out this article and quote from it to make his case because, as we have seen, he is a very poor researcher. The fact is no one in the 1500's or today knows the location of Ophir. India and the Malaysian Peninsula are the likely candidates as ancient Greek and Roman knowledge of the world went no further than the Malaysian Peninsula. As for Magellan's substituting Tarsis and Ofir for Lequios, we have seen that is based not on fact but a logical guess rather than hard and definitive documentation. Based on all available information Magellan also would have known that the Lequios Islands were much further to the north than the Philippines. So all in all it's simply a lie that Magellan thought the Philippines were the Lequios Islands as well as Ophir.