Rhinoceros taken to Spain and Portugal in the 16th century
Abada
(before 1577?1588), also known as
Bada
or
Ibada
, was the name given to a female
Indian rhinoceros
kept by the Portuguese kings
Sebastian I
and
Henry I
from 1577 to 1580 and by
Philip II of Spain
from about 1580 to 1588. She was the first
rhinoceros
seen in Europe since the one sent as a present from the King of Portugal,
Manuel I
, to
Pope Leo X
in 1515, who died in a shipwreck off the coast of Italy in early 1516, immortalised as
Durer's Rhinoceros
.
Abada
was probably meant as a general term for the rhinoceros, as it derives from the
Malay
word (
badak
) for the animal and may have been in use in
Spain
and
Portugal
from around 1530, but since this was the only example of the species in Europe it served as a proper name as well. According to the dictionary of the Real Academia Espanola, abada is an alternative word for rhinoceros.
[1]
In 1577, the rhinoceros arrived at the port of
Lisbon
intended for the menagerie of Sebastian I of Portugal, probably as a gift from the
viceroys
of
Portuguese India
. As a safety measure the horn was removed (this later grew back, but seems to have been removed on a regular basis).
Sebastian was succeeded by
Henry I
the following year. On the death of Henry in 1580,
Philip II of Spain
claimed the throne,
uniting
the Spanish and Portuguese crowns, and inherited the rhinoceros whom he transferred to the menagerie of
Casa de Campo
, close to
Madrid
. On 16 October 1583 Philip transferred Abada once again, this time to the menagerie of
El Escorial
. The transfer did not take place without incident: one of the keepers decided to refresh the animal by dousing her with buckets of water, but the sudden soaking startled her and, in panic, she knocked down all her attendants. At El Escorial, Abada was put on display to the public and shown to
the Japanese ambassadors
in November 1584.
Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza
mentions her in his book,
China
, in which he comments that the public were impressed by her thick hide and horn, and that there was speculation as to her being the
unicorn
of legend.
Philip used her to play a joke on the
Hieronymite
monks at El Escorial. In the autumn of 1584, he arranged first for an
Indian elephant
(whom he had also inherited from the Portuguese menagerie) to be driven up the steps and into the cells of the monks and the following week repeated the trick with the rhinoceros. While the elephant did not balk at the strange events, Abada was stubborn and complaining, grunted bad-temperedly, and refused to eat the food presented to her. At some point in her captivity she may have been blinded because the attendants had difficulty managing her and it was thought that this would make her less likely to attack them.
Abada appears to have died by 1588:
Juan de Arphe y Villafane
included a description and print of a rhinoceros in his manual of decoration published in 1585, based on observations of Abada, rather than
Durer's picture
, as it lacks the dorsal horn added by Durer; she was still alive in 1586 when her image was captured in an engraving by
Philippe Galle
, and was seen by
Pedro Paez
the following year, but there is no record of her after 1587.
A street in Madrid,
Calle de la Abada
[
es
]
, close to the
Puerta del Sol
bears the name. Local legend has it that it was named after a sixteenth-century incident in the area in which a rhinoceros on display during a fair held on land owned by the San Martin Monastery killed a young boy and escaped to run through the city for several days before being caught. The prior of San Martin, Fray Pedro de Guevara, had a cross erected in memory of the boy. Years later, when the priory sold the land for houses to be built, a street was given the name Abada.
[2]
[
circular reference
]
Notes
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edit
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References
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