Thu, Feb 8, 2024
Jans Janszoon, born during the Eithty Years War in a poor Protestant family in the Dutch coastal city of Haarlem, came to hate the Habsburg rulers of the Low Countries unconditionally during the bloody Spanish siege and capture of the city, enough to prefer the heathen Moors to Catholics. He joins the crew of a Dutch privateer, but their crew is captured after shipwreck near the Canary island of Lanzarote by pirate Ivan de Veenboer ("Soliman Reis"), who takes them to the Bazrbary base of Algiers, making soon Islam-converted Jan bosun. He adopts the name of Mourad Reïs when succeeding the late pirate captain.