MURAD REIS —THE COMMANDER OF THE SALÉ CORSAIRS

The commander of the Salé corsairs who raided southeast Iceland in the summer of 1627 was a Dutch renegade whose Muslim name was Murad Reis. Before he converted to Islam, he was known as Jan Janszoon van Haarlem (the image above is a depiction of what he might have looked like after he converted and became a corsair).

(The name “Murad” is Turkish, translating as “desire,” “wish,” “goal,” or “yearning.” It was clearly considered a positive and optimistic name for converts, for there were numerous renegades named Murad (with multiple variant spellings). “Reis” means “Captain.” Calling oneself Murad Reis was rather like calling oneself Captain Ambition.)

There is little detail available about the early life of Jan Janszoon/Murad Reis, but he was one of the Dutch adventurers who started their careers as legal privateers harassing Spanish shipping during the Eighty Years’ War (the war of Dutch independence from Spain) and then turned pirate at the start of the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-1621) between Spain and the Republic of the Netherlands.

As a pirate, Jan Janszoon (as he was then called) operated for a time out of La Rochelle, on the Atlantic coast of France, and then ended up on Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, where, in the summer of 1618, he was captured in a large raid by Algiers corsairs.

Once in Algiers, Jan Janszoon quickly converted to Islam, took the name Murad, and began a new career as a Barbary corsair.

The commander of the raid on Lanzarote was another Dutch renegade: Ivan de Veenboer, known as Suleiman Reis. Murad initially served as a lieutenant under Suleiman Reis but quickly rose to the rank of Captain (Reis) in command of his own ship. When Suleiman Reis was killed in a sea battle (one of his legs was blown off by a cannon ball), Murad Reis relocated to Salé.

In Salé, he rose to the rank of Admiral of the port. The title “Admiral” in this case was not a naval one. That is, Murad Reis did not actually command the Salé corsair fleet at sea. Rather, he functioned as harbour master, customs official, and tax collector. Before leaving on an expedition, all Salé corsairs first had to get an official letter of authorization from him in order for their enterprise to be properly licensed. Murad Reis derived revenues from all of this. As Admiral, he was also part of the ruling council of Salé. So he was not only wealthy but also an important and influential man.

Being Admiral did not prevent Murad Reis from going on corsair expeditions, though, and he is famous—or infamous—for leading not only the Salé corsair raid on southwest Iceland in 1627 but also a raid in the summer of 1631 on Baltimore, on the southern tip of Ireland, in which he took over 100 captives, mostly women and children.

Murad Reis survived in an astonishingly tough world—tougher than most of us today can imagine—while many of his contemporaries died violent deaths, or fell into dire poverty, or disappeared into obscurity. Indeed, he did more than survive: he prospered.

After a decade as Admiral in Salé, he retired from corsairing and moved on to become the wealthy Governor of a town in the Atlantic coast of Morocco and an elder statesman, in which capacity, among other things, he helped negotiate relations between the Moroccan Sultans and the States-General.

At one point while he was Governor, Murad Reis’s estranged Dutch daughter, Lysbeth, visited him from the Netherlands.

With an entourage of eighteen servants, Murad Reis rode down to the harbor where the Dutch ship his daughter was on lay moored. He then had himself rowed out to the ship to meet her. One observer described him like this: “He was superbly seated in the boat, on a carpet and satin cushions, surrounded by his servants.”

Such was Murad Reis at the end of his career: wealthy, influential, important.

In order to have prospered like this, he must have had a particular skill set.

He had to be ruthless, of course, and, if not exactly fearless, at least incredibly audacious, for piracy does not reward the overly cautious or the timid. He also had to be an expert mariner, not only knowledgeable about sailing itself, that is, about the management of sails and ship, but also about how to navigate during long sea voyages—no small challenge given the state of early seventeenth century navigational instruments.

He also had to be able to manage men well enough to keep his crew operating effectively on board a ship without the institutionalized structures of discipline that helped Naval commanders of the time stay in charge; a pirate captain had to keep his unruly crew in line by the force of his own personality.

He had to be an astute businessman as well, for whatever else it might have been, piracy/privateering/corsairing was a business.

More than anything else, though, in order to prosper, Murad Reis had to have a very finely tuned sense of what risks were worth taking and what were not. Barbary corsairs, like pirates in general, were essentially predators, and like predators everywhere, they sought vulnerable victims.

Whether you are a pirate, a cheetah, a weasel, or a trap-door spider, if you injure yourself attacking your prey, you are in trouble; if you injure yourself badly enough, your chances of survival are slim. So being a predator means playing a constant game of risk and reward.

A successful corsair captain like Murad Reis learned to play that game very well indeed.

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For those who may be interested…

The description of Murad Reis being rowed out to see his daughter comes from Henry de Castries, ed., Les sources inédites de l’histoire du Maroc, première série, dynastie saadienne – archives et bibliothèques des Pays-Bas, Tome III, (The Unpublished Sources of Moroccan History, First Series, Sa’adien Dynasty – Archives and Libraries of the Netherlands), Volume IV, p. 588.