Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, commonly known as
Murat Reis the Younger (c. 1570 – c. 1641), was a
in Morocco who
to Islam after being captured by a Moorish state in 1618. He began serving as a pirate, one of the most famous of the 17th-century "
". Together with other
, he helped establish the independent
at the city of that name, serving as the first President and Grand Admiral. He also served as Governor of
.
| Military service | |
|---|
| Personal details | |
|---|
| Governor of Oualidia | |
|---|
| Governor of Salé (ceremonial) | |
|---|
| Grand Admiral of Salé | |
|---|
| Jan Janszoon | |
|---|
| |
In office
1619–1627 | |
In office
1623–1627 | |
| Appointed by | Sultan
|
|---|
In office
1640–1641 | |
| Appointed by | Sultan
|
|---|
| Born | Jan Janszoon van Salee / Van Haarlem
c. 1570
,
|
|---|
| Died | 1641 or later
|
|---|
| Nationality | Dutch, Moroccan |
|---|
| Children | Lysbeth Janszoon van Haarlem,
, Abraham Janszoon van Salee, Philip Janszoon van Salee, Cornelis Janszoon van Salee |
|---|
| Occupation | Admiral |
|---|
| Allegiance |
|
|---|
| Rank | Grand Admiral (
) |
|---|
Early life
Jan Janszoon van Haerlem was born in
in 1575, which was in
, then a province ruled by the
. The
between Dutch rebels and the
under King Philip II had started seven years before his birth; it lasted all his life. Little is known of his early life. He married Soutgen Cave in 1595 and had two children with her, Edward and Lysbeth.
After her death, around 1600 he married or had a union with Margarita, a
woman in
. They had four sons together: Abraham, Anthony, Phillip, and Cornelis.
went on to be one of the first European settlers of
.
Privateering
In 1600, Jan Janszoon began as a Dutch
sailing from his home port of
, working for the state with letters of marque to harass Spanish shipping during the Eighty Years' War. Janszoon overstepped the boundaries of his letters and found his way to the semi-independent port states of the
of north Africa, whence he could attack ships of every foreign state: when he attacked a Spanish ship, he flew the Dutch flag; when he attacked any other, he became an Ottoman Captain and flew the red half-moon of the Turks or the flag of any of various other Mediterranean principalities. During this period, he had abandoned his Dutch family.
Capture by Barbary corsairs
plan for a
, first built by the Barbary pirates around the 16th century, many scholars believe the
was extensively used by Jan Janszoon. The ship could sail with a large crew of 75 and was armed with 24
.
Janszoon was captured in 1618 at
(one of the
) by
and taken to
as a captive. There he "turned Turk", or
. Some historians speculate that the conversion was forced.
Janszoon himself, however, tried very hard to convert his fellow Europeans who were Christian to become Muslim and was a passionate Muslim missionary.
The Ottoman Turks maintained a precarious measure of influence on behalf of their
by openly encouraging the
to advance themselves through piracy against the European powers, which long resented the Ottoman Empire. After Janszoon's conversion to
and the ways of his captors, he sailed with the famous corsair Sulayman Rais, also known as Slemen Reis. (He was a Dutchman named
,
whom Janszoon had known before his capture and who,
had chosen to convert to Islam). They were accompanied by
.[
] But, because
had concluded peace with several European nations, it was no longer a suitable port from which to sell captured ships or their cargo. So, after Sulayman Rais was killed by a cannonball in 1619, Janszoon moved to the ancient port of
and began operating from it as a
corsair.
Republic of Salé
in the 1600s
Main article:
In 1619,
declared the port to be an independent republic free from the Sultan. They set up a government that consisted of 14 pirate leaders and elected Janszoon as their President. He would also serve as the Grand Admiral, known as Murat Reis, of their navy.
The Salé fleet totaled about eighteen ships, all small because of the very shallow harbor entrance.
After an unsuccessful siege of the city, the Sultan of Morocco acknowledged its semi-autonomy. Contrary to popular belief that Sultan
had reclaimed sovereignty over Salé and appointed Janszoon the Governor in 1624, the Sultan acknowledged Janszoon's election as president by formally appointing him as his ceremonial governor.
The walls of
and
, by
, 1640.
Under Janszoon's leadership, business in Salé thrived. The main sources of income of this republic remained piracy and its by-trades, shipping and dealing in stolen property. Historians have noted Janszoon's intelligence and bravery, which were expressed in his leadership ability. He was forced to find an assistant to keep up, resulting in the hiring of a fellow countryman from The Netherlands, Mathys van Bostel Oosterlinck, who would serve as his Vice-Admiral.
Janszoon had become very wealthy from his income as pirate admiral, payments for anchorage and other harbor dues, and the brokerage of stolen goods. The political climate in Salé worsened toward the end of 1627, so Janszoon quietly moved his family and his entire operation back to semi-independent Algiers.
Plea from his Dutch family
Janszoon became bored by his new official duties from time to time and again sail away on a pirate adventure. In 1622, Janszoon and his crews sailed into the
with no particular plan but to try their luck there. When they ran low on supplies, they docked at the port of
,
, under the Moroccan flag, claiming diplomatic privileges from his official role as Admiral of Morocco (a very loose term in the environment of North African politics). The Dutch authorities could not deny the two ships access to Veere because, at the time, several peace treaties and trade agreements existed between the Sultan of Morocco and the
. During Janszoon's anchorage there, the Dutch authorities brought his Dutch first wife and children to the port to try to persuade him to give up piracy. Such strategies utterly failed with the men.
Janszoon and his crews left port with many new Dutch volunteers, despite a Dutch prohibition of piracy.
Diplomacy
Dutch captives
While in Morocco, Janszoon worked to secure release of Dutch captives from other pirates and prevent their being sold into slavery.
Franco-Moroccan Treaty of 1631
Knowledgeable of several languages, while in Algiers he contributed to the establishment of the
between
and Sultan
.
Notable raids
was captured by Murat Reis the Younger
Lundy
In 1627 Janszoon captured the island of
in the
and held it for five years, using it as a base for raiding expeditions.
Iceland
In 1627, Janszoon used a
"slave" (most likely a crew member captured on a Danish ship taken as a pirate prize) to pilot him and his men to
. There they raided the fishing village of
. Their takings were meagre, some salted fish and a few hides, but they also captured twelve Icelanders and three Danes who happened to be in the village. When they were leaving Grindavík, they managed to trick and capture a Danish merchant ship that was passing by means of flying a false flag.[
]
The ships sailed to
, seat of the Danish governor of Iceland, to raid but were unable to make a landing – it is said they were thwarted by cannon fire from the local fortifications (
Bessastaðaskans) and a quickly mustered group of
from the
.
They decided to sail home to Salé, where they sold their captives as slaves.
Two corsair ships from Algiers, possibly connected to Janszoon's raid, came to Iceland on July 4 and plundered there. Then they sailed to Vestmannaeyjar off the southern coast and raided there for three days. Those events are collectively known in Iceland as
Tyrkjaránið (the
), as the Barbary states were nominally a part of the Ottoman Empire.
Accounts by enslaved Icelanders who spent time on the corsair ships claimed that the conditions for women and children were normal, in that they were permitted to move throughout the ship, except to the quarter deck. The pirates were seen giving extra food to the children from their own private stashes. A woman who gave birth on board a ship was treated with dignity, being afforded privacy and clothing by the pirates. The men were put in the hold of the ships and had their chains removed once the ships were far enough from land. Despite popular claims about treatment of captives, Icelander accounts do not mention that slaves were raped on the voyage itself,
however,
, one of the few captives to later return to Iceland, was sold into sex slavery as a concubine.
Sack of Baltimore, Ireland
Having sailed for two months and with little to show for the voyage, Janszoon turned to a captive taken on the voyage, a
named John Hackett, for information on where a profitable raid could be made. The Protestant residents of Baltimore, a small town in
, Ireland, were resented by the Roman Catholic native Irish because they were
from the O'Driscoll clan. Hackett directed Janszoon to this town and away from his own. Janszoon
on June 20, 1631, seizing little property but taking 108 captives, whom he sold as slaves in North Africa. Janszoon was said to have released the Irish and taken only English captives. Shortly after the sack, Hackett was arrested and hanged for his crime. "Here was not a single Christian who was not weeping and who was not full of sadness at the sight of so many honest maidens and so many good women abandoned to the brutality of these barbarians".
Only two of the villagers ever returned to their homeland.
Raids in the Mediterranean Sea
Murat Reis chose to make large profits by raiding Mediterranean islands such as the
,
,
, and the southern coast of
. He often sold most of his merchandise in
, where he befriended the
. He is known to have sailed the
. He fought the Venetians near the coasts of
and
with a corsair crew consisting of
,
,
,
and elite
.
Capture by Knights of Malta
in
,
In 1635, near the
coast, Murat Reis was outnumbered and surprised by a sudden attack. He and many of his men were captured by the
. He was imprisoned in the island's notorious dark
. He was mistreated and
, and suffered ill health due to his time in the dungeon. In 1640 he barely escaped after a massive Corsair attack, which was carefully planned by the
of
in order to rescue their fellow sailors and Corsairs. He was greatly honored and praised upon his return in Morocco and the nearby
.
Escape and return to Morocco
After Janzsoon returned to Morocco in 1640, he was appointed as Governor of the great fortress of
, near
. He resided at the Castle of Maladia. In December 1640, a ship arrived with a new Dutch consul, who brought Lysbeth Janszoon van Haarlem, Janszoon's daughter by his Dutch wife, to visit her father. When Lysbeth arrived, Janszoon "was seated in great pomp on a carpet, with silk cushions, the servants all around him".
She saw that Murat Reis had become a feeble, old man. Lysbeth stayed with her father until August 1641, when she returned to Holland. Little is known of Janszoon thereafter; he likely retired at last from both public life and piracy. The date of his death remains unknown.
Marriages and issue
In 1596, by an unknown Dutch woman, Janszoon's first child was born, Lysbeth Janszoon van Haarlem.
After becoming a privateer, Janszoon met an unknown woman in
, who he would marry. The identity of this woman is historically vague, but the consensus is that she was of multi-ethnic background, considered "Moorish" in Spain. Historians have claimed her to be nothing more than a concubine, others claim she was a Muslim
who worked for a Christian noble family, and other claims have been made that she was a "Moorish princess."
Through this marriage, Janszoon had four children: Abraham Janszoon van Salee (b.1602), Philip Janszoon van Salee (b. 1604),
(b.1607), and Cornelis Janszoon van Salee (b. 1608).
It is speculated that Janszoon married for a third time to the daughter of
Moulay Ziden in 1624.
Popular culture
In 2009, a play based on Janszoon's life as a pirate, "Jan Janszoon, de blonde Arabier", written by
toured The Netherlands.
"Bad Grandpa: The Ballad of Murad the Captain" is a children's poem about Janszoon published in 2007.
Names
Janszoon was also known as
Murat Reis the Younger. His Dutch names are also given as
Jan Jansen and
Jan Jansz; his adopted name as
Morat Rais,
Murat Rais,
Morat;
Little John Ward,
John Barber,
Captain John,
Caid Morato were some of his pirate names. "The Hairdresser" was a nickname of Janszoon.
See also
Notes
-
Karg and Spaite (2007): 36
-
, Pirate Utopias, p. 96, Retrieved 29 Sept 2009.
-
Stephen Snelders,
, p. 24, After his conversion, Jansz. proselytized actively for his new faith, trying to convert Christian slaves...
-
, Zeerovery, Retrieved 29 Sept 2009.
-
"Murad Reis", p. 36
-
, Pirate Utopias, p. 97, Retrieved 30 September 2009.
-
"Murad Rais", p.98
-
"Murad Rais", p. 98
-
"Murad Rais", p.99
- ^
2011-10-01 at the
, Michael A. Shoemaker. PCEZ. Accessed 9 september 2011
-
(2008).
. Osprey Publishing. pp. 90–91.
. Retrieved 2011-04-29.
-
Vilhjálmur Þ. Gíslason, Bessastaðir: Þættir úr sögu höfuðbóls. Akureyri. 1947.
-
2014-01-06 at the
-
"Murad Rais", p. 129
-
Ekin, Des (2006). The Stolen Village. OBrien. p. 177.
.
-
"Murad Rais", p. 121, 129
-
"Murad Rais", p.140
-
, Pirate Utopias, p. 206, Retrieved 29 sept 2009.
-
, 8 Weekly, Retrieved 30 sept 2009.
-
, Jim Billiter. Accessed 9 September 2011
References
- Karg, Barb, Arjean Spaite. 2007. The everything pirates book.
-
. 1995, 2003. Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs and European Renegadoes. Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia.
External links
