Connect with us

History and Seerah

England and the East: A Tale of Pirates and Treasures

Published

British history classes do well to teach the World Wars, the abolition of slavery and the French Revolution(s). But one thing you may not have heard of is the long and swashbuckling history of England’s relationship with the Islamic world.

Active interaction with Islam existed since the establishment of medieval Muslim Spain in 711, and can be seen throughout some of the most canonical literature in the English heritage. The Prophet Muhammad ṣallallāhu 'alayhi wa sallam (peace and blessings of Allāh be upon him) and his cousin Ali raḍyAllāhu 'anhu (may Allāh be pleased with him) are featured in Dante’s Inferno, Islamic scholars are mentioned in Chaucer’s prologue to The Canterbury Tales, and countless plays from the early modern period bear characters and plots surrounding the Islamic Orient.

This relationship included both cooperation and conflict, from the flourishing trade of the Levant Company and East India Company to the bloody Crusades. The Muslims who influenced Britons most were those of the Ottoman Empire whose capital lay in Istanbul, present day Turkey, but whose reaches extended well into North Africa and the Middle East.

Keep supporting MuslimMatters for the sake of Allah

Alhamdulillah, we're at over 850 supporters. Help us get to 900 supporters this month. All it takes is a small gift from a reader like you to keep us going, for just $2 / month.

The Prophet (SAW) has taught us the best of deeds are those that done consistently, even if they are small. Click here to support MuslimMatters with a monthly donation of $2 per month. Set it and collect blessings from Allah (swt) for the khayr you're supporting without thinking about it.

Of course, money and trade was key. In 1577, the Sultan of Morocco, ‘Abd al-Malik, granted the English trading privileges in his realm and, in 1580, the English Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, William Harborne, negotiated the first Anglo-Ottoman commercial treaty in Istanbul, culminating in the formation of England’s The Levant Company, a company created exclusively for trade with the Ottomans. By 1626, The Levant Company was exporting £250,000 worth of goods, a tremendous figure for its time, and importing an amount of equivalent value. In December 1648, the Council of Mechanics voted a toleration of various religious groups to encourage commercial activity, allowing Muslims to trade in England

Of all Europe, Britain enjoyed the most commercial activity with the Muslims in the 17th century, its trade with Turkey alone accounting for an impressive quarter of English overseas commercial activity.

Piracy

But alongside legitimate trade, lurking in the dark waters and high waves, another prominent mode of engagement between the East and West ensued: piracy. In fact, the 17th and 18th centuries – about the time of the setting of our favourite pirate movie, Pirates of the Caribbean – has been referred to as the ‘Golden Age of Piracy’. The Pirate Round of the 1790s was among the infamous sailing routes taken by English pirates which targeted Muslim ships, particularly off the coast of Yemen and India. Their piracy at the mouth of the Red Sea especially targeted Indian Muslim ships traveling to or from the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Makkah in present day Saudi Arabia.

Pirates Islam

An 18th century image of Captain Henry Every

The English pirate, Captain Henry Every, is perhaps the most notorious from the Round. Every conducted what is probably the single most lucrative pirating venture in history against wealthy Indian pilgrimage ships, making him the richest pirate in the world. His story pushes the escapades of Captain Jack Sparrow well into the backwaters.

In 1695, Every attacked and captured two major Mughal vessels on their way back from the pilgrimage to Makkah. The smaller vessel ‘Fateh Muhammad’ was owned by a wealthy Indian Muslim trader, Abdul Ghafur, from the Indian coastal city of Surat and contained treasure of £50,000-60,000, enough to purchase Every’s own ship ‘The Fancy’ 50 times over. The second ship, ‘Ganj-i-Sawai’ (‘Exceeding Treasure’) was a massive militarized vessel owned by the ruling Indian Emperor Aurangzeb that carried up to £600,000 worth of riches alone, reportedly including up to 500,000 gold and silver pieces. Following capture, the inhabitants of the ship, which included civilians, and many of them women, were subject to a lengthy orgy of violence and violation.

First Worldwide Manhunt

This event put serious strain on the already fragile relationship between England and the Mughals. The English had just emerged from yet another unsuccessful bid for trading privileges in India followed by Child’s War with Aurangzeb, in which the English were defeated. What our history lessons often fail to discuss is that the East India Company, although later responsible for Company rule in India, had a very tough time in its early days. Aurangzeb’s fury at the Ganj-i-Sawai piracy and the brutality on passengers was incredible. He shut down the East India Company’s factories, imprisoned its employees and threatened to cut off all English trade in India until Every was caught.

In a diplomatic scramble, the East India Company and English Privy Council put the unprecedented offer of £1,000 for Every’s capture leading to the first worldwide manhunt in recorded history. While some members of his crew were eventually caught, Henry Every was never found. English piracy was not limited to targeting the Indians either. English and European pirates were active in the seizure of Muslim men, women and children for slavery from across the Ottoman Empire. From 1521 to 1522 alone, a staggering 60,000 Moroccans were reportedly seized and deported to Europe. The threat of piracy was very real for the Muslims, limiting travel and mobility.

Captain John Ward’s Conversion

Piracy was not, however, a one-way process. Muslim piracy, much of it retaliatory, was a major challenge experienced by the English. From their earliest ventures into the Mediterranean, English ships were repeatedly seized by Muslim ships with the crew taken captive or enslaved. The events left their mark on popular literature too. The 1612 play, A Christian Turn’d Turk, by Robert Daborne loosely dramatized the real life case of Captain John Ward, an English pirate who converted to Islam and became an Ottoman corsair commandeering a fleet off the coast of Tunis. Ransoming English captives from Ottoman pirates was racking up costs in the thousands for Britain. Between 1609 and 1616, 466 English ships were captured. Fear began to arise over potential shortages in sailors to man the English royal fleet. When Charles I ascended the throne in 1625, the captives numbered hundreds, and by 1640, they numbered thousands; Ottoman pirates were destabilizing English commercial activity. They were even bold enough to attack ships in English waters.

The situation was further complicated by the fact that Barbary pirates were often Christian renegades to Islam, such as John Ward. While piracy was bad enough, being looted by converted Englishmen was both embarrassing and aggravating. It is no surprise Daborne’s play adopted leaps in artistic license to conform to its audience’s prejudices by portraying Captain Ward to be a tortured soul who suffered in his marriage to a shrewish Ottoman woman.

The long association between the English and the Muslim world is as entertaining as significant. These tales of encounter paint a legacy of exciting adventure, amicable partnerships and also notorious atrocity. At a time of renewed scrutiny on Britain’s relationship with Islam, a peek into a long and shared history can do much to quell the ignorance that breeds distrust and acknowledge a relationship that spans centuries. The subjects of History and English have especially much to gain from a long overdue revision of traditional syllabuses to one that acknowledges this captivating past. And for a generation of Jack Sparrow lovers, such learning is sure to be a treat.

Lubaaba Amatullah is joint Editor-in-Chief of The Platform. When not consuming tea or waxing lyrical on the glories of British chocolate, she pursues a PhD on England’s early encounters with the Islamic world.

Keep supporting MuslimMatters for the sake of Allah

Alhamdulillah, we're at over 850 supporters. Help us get to 900 supporters this month. All it takes is a small gift from a reader like you to keep us going, for just $2 / month.

The Prophet (SAW) has taught us the best of deeds are those that done consistently, even if they are small. Click here to support MuslimMatters with a monthly donation of $2 per month. Set it and collect blessings from Allah (swt) for the khayr you're supporting without thinking about it.

13 Comments

13 Comments

  1. WAJiD

    January 15, 2014 at 4:41 PM

    Asalaam alaikum.

    Excellent article and full of interesting information. Please do write more in the future inshaAllah.
    WAJiD

  2. TheSaliha

    January 15, 2014 at 6:40 PM

    Really interesting article! It would be interesting to have a series of articles on this.

  3. Inqiyaad

    January 15, 2014 at 7:42 PM

    As salaamu ‘alaikum,
    Masha Allah! Interesting and engaging. Looking forward to more from the sister. Also, it will be great if she can share the references she uses for her works.

  4. Lubaaba

    January 16, 2014 at 6:37 PM

    Salam,
    JazakAllah khayr for the kind comments. For those interested in my sources and reading more about England’s early encounters with Islam, I’d recommend the writings of Professor Nabil Matar. A list of his publications can be found on his page: http://english.umn.edu/faculty/profile.php?UID=matar010.

    • Hena Zuberi

      January 16, 2014 at 6:56 PM

      Lubaaba,
      Jazakillah Khayr for submitting this. I thoroughly enjoyed it and will use it as a homeschooling history lesson for my girls. Keep them coming.

  5. Driss

    January 17, 2014 at 10:18 AM

    Most of the informations are false , english pirates didn’t operate in north africa , i repeat it, they never operated there but more in the carabean , the north african pirates of the barbary coast are the ones who went as far as ireland and iceland

    • Kamran

      February 8, 2014 at 9:03 PM

      The article states that English pirates attacked muslim vessels primarily in the red sea and off the Indian coast. Not North Africa. Re N Africa she said “English and European pirates” were active. Please read the “informations” properly before you comment…

  6. Farhan

    January 17, 2014 at 2:36 PM

    Please continue to produce such works on Islamic history. This is awesome and exciting.
    I just need to learn about West Africa now.

    It seems that we Muslims weren’t perfect during that time either. We enslaved sailors and presumably stole merchandise? Was this during a time of war or as a deterrent or what? Would be interesting to hear.

    btw, I subscribe to Lost Islamic History on FB.
    https://www.facebook.com/LostIslamicHistory

  7. Um Aneesa

    January 20, 2014 at 11:59 PM

    A dramatic retelling of the Islamic connections of Captain Jack Sparrow by Shibli Zaman
    “……….Captain Jack was a notorious drunkard, cunning and cruel, and taken to tomfoolery. Yet now, water and unfermented nectar were all Captain Jack would drink…….Have you seen me sip gin or rum in the twice you’ve come? Since I traded captain’s hat for turban, I ne’er drank a drop ‘o bourbon.”

    “Captain Jack is sober, and a poet no less. Has Christ returned?”

    http://www.suhaibwebb.com/society/entertainment/the-legend-of-captain-jack-from-birdy-to-sparrow/

  8. Jerome Binten

    January 25, 2014 at 9:36 AM

    Misguided article, false information, typical islmic teaching, by rewriting history in a way that islam=good everything else=false, only retardet people believ these stories.

  9. Binyamin Moore

    July 20, 2014 at 6:44 PM

    This is an amazing article! Where I come from in England my sea side town is actually a port used by famous pirates even the vikings invaded through my town also the British and American troops set off to Normandy on D Day as well Love History :D

  10. Pingback: Eastern Texts Meeting Western Quills | The First English Translation of the Quran » MuslimMatters.org

  11. Pingback: Eastern Texts Meet Western Quills: The First English Translation of the Qur’an | The Platform

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Trending