Jan Janszoon

Jan Janszoon
Grand Admiral of Salé
In office 1619–1627
Governor of Salé (ceremonial)
In office 1623–1627
Appointed by	Sultan Zidan Abu Maali
Governor of Oualidia
In office 1640–1641
Appointed by	Sultan Mohammed esh Sheikh es Seghir
Personal details
Born	Jan Janszoon van Salee / Van Haarlem c. 1570 Haarlem, County of Holland
Died	1641 or later Morocco
Nationality	Dutch, Moroccan
Children	Lysbeth Janszoon van Haarlem, Anthony Janszoon van Salee, Abraham Janszoon van Salee, Philip Janszoon van Salee, Cornelis Janszoon van Salee
Occupation	Admiral
Religion	Islam
Military service
Allegiance	Morocco
Rank	Grand Admiral (Reis)

Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, commonly known as Murat Reis the Younger (c. 1570 – c. 1641), was the first President and Grand Admiral of the Corsair Republic of Salé, Governor of Oualidia, and a Dutch Barbary pirate, one of the most famous of the "Salé Rovers" from the 17th century.

Jan Janszoon van Haerlem was born in Haarlem, a city in the Habsburg ruled province of Holland in 1575. The Eighty Years War between Dutch rebels and the Spanish Empire under king Philip II had started seven years previously and lasted all his life. Little is known of his early life, except that he married Soutgen Cave in 1595 and had two children with her, Edward and Lysbeth. He married Margarita, a Moorish woman, in Cartagena around 1600. They had four children; Anthony, Abraham, Phillip, and Cornelis.

In 1600, Jan Janszoon began as a Dutch privateer sailing from his home port, Haarlem, working for the state with letters of marque to harass Spanish shipping during the Eighty Years' War. Working from the Netherlands was insufficiently profitable, so Janszoon overstepped the boundaries of his letters and found his way to the semi-independent port states of the Barbary Coast 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.

Janszoon was captured in 1618 at Lanzarote (one of the Canary Islands) by Barbary corsairs and taken to Algiers as a captive. There he turned "Turk", or Muslim (as the Ottoman Empire had some limited influence over the region, sometimes Europeans erroneously called all Muslims "Turks"). It is speculated by some 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 very passionate Muslim missionary. The Ottoman Turks maintained a precarious measure of influence on behalf of their Sultan by openly encouraging the Moors to advance themselves through piracy against the European powers, which long resented the Ottoman Empire. After Janszoon's conversion to Islam and the ways of his captors, he sailed with the famous corsair Sulayman Rais, also known as Slemen Reis (originally a Dutchman named De Veenboer whom Janszoon had known before his capture and who, as Janszoon himself, had chosen to convert to Islam) and with Simon de Danser. But, because Algiers had concluded peace with several European nations, it was no longer a suitable harbor 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 Salé and began operating from it as a Barbary corsair himself.

...
Wikipedia