Also known as Gaspar da India, he was born circa 1450 in Poznań. It was probably due to persecutions of Jews that he once left Poznań, together with his parents. Initially, he settled in Alexandria but then, in 1470–1480, he set off via Persia to India where he was to stay for long years, under the name of Mehmet, in the Goa area.
As the famous Vasco da Gama’s expedition arrived on 23rd September 1498 in the Angediva island on India’s western coast (south of Goa), he shifted into the Portuguese service and sailed for Lisbon. Once there, he got baptised and assumed the name Gaspar, his godfather Vasco da Gama bequeathing him the new surname. In 1500, he took part in Pedro Alvarez Cabral’s and Bartolomeo Diaz’s expedition to India; however, the crew’s vessels, pushed off by the Equatorial Current, eventually reached the vicinity of what is now Porto Seguro in the Brazilian state of Bahia.
Cabral named the land they discovered Terra de Santa Cruz, extending the Portuguese domain to it. This is why Gaspar da Gama can be acknowledged to have been a co-discoverer of Brazil. He was knighted by King Manuel I. He was back in Portugal in 1510, but nothing is known of his later activity whatsoever.
