Samuel Pallache

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Samuel Pallache

Samuel Pallache ( Hebrew שמואל פאלאג'י; born 1550 in Fez ; died February 4, 1616 in The Hague ) was a Moroccan merchant, diplomat, spy, double agent, pirate and allegedly co-founder of the first Jewish community in Amsterdam .

Life

Samuel Pallache was born in Fez around 1550 as the son of the Spanish-born rabbi Isaak Pallache. His family probably fled to Morocco around 1492 on the occasion of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain . His ancestors are said to have served as rabbis in Cordoba . In Morocco, Jews, like Christians, were tolerated as long as they accepted Islam as an official religion. This allowed a lively Jewish community in Morocco to act as a bridgehead between the Islamic, Christian and Jewish worlds.

After a Dutch delegation visited Morocco to negotiate a joint alliance against Spain and the corsairs of the barbarian states , Sultan Zaydan appointed the merchant Samuel Pallache as his envoy to Nasr in 1608, who was to represent him in The Hague with the Dutch government. Pallache was officially the mediator, not the Sultan's ambassador.

On June 23, 1608, Pallache met with governor Prince Moritz of Orange and the States General in The Hague to negotiate an alliance of mutual aid against Spain. On December 24, 1610, the two nations signed a treaty that recognized the free trade between the Netherlands and Morocco, and that allowed the Sultan to purchase ships, weapons and ammunition from the Dutch. It was the first treaty between a European and a non-Christian state after the treaties of the Franco-Ottoman Alliance of the 16th century.

Research found that Pallache was secretly working as a double agent . He maintained close links with the Spanish court and passed on secret information about Dutch-Moroccan relations with the Spanish. At the same time he passed information about the Spaniards to the Dutch and Moroccans. When this finally became known, he lost the sultan's favor.

In addition to his diplomatic duties, he continued to work as a merchant between the Netherlands and Morocco. He also got permission for pirate trips from Moritz von Oranien . The goods he captured during these voyages were sold along the Moroccan coast.

In 1614 he hijacked a Portuguese ship and sailed with it, unable to bring the cargo to the coast of Morocco, to the Netherlands. A severe storm forced him to seek refuge in an English port; there, at the request of the Spanish ambassador, he was captured and imprisoned. Finally, Moritz of Orange came to his aid and brought him back to the Netherlands. However, by this point he lost all of his money and fell ill a short time later. He died on February 4, 1616 in The Hague and was buried in the Sephardic Jewish cemetery Beth Haim in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel near Amsterdam . Moritz von Orange, with whom Pallache was probably in close contact, was present at the funeral.

literature

  • Miguel de Barrios : Historia Universal Judaica . Amsterdam 1683.
  • Mercedes García-Arenal, Gerard Wiegers: A man of three worlds: Samuel Pallache, a Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe . Baltimore 2003. ISBN 978-0-8018-7225-9 . (Original edition: Un hombre en tres mundos: Samuel Pallache, un judío marroquí en la Europa protestante y en la católica . Madrid 1999. ISBN 978-84-323-1292-2 .)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Diplomaat, handelaar, kaper en leerde - "Diplomat, trader, privateer and scholar"  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / static.rnw.nl  
  2. ↑ a b c d Joodse Moroccan onder christenen - Jewish Moroccans among Christians (Dutch)
personal data
SURNAME Pallache, Samuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish-Moroccan merchant, diplomat and pirate
DATE OF BIRTH around 1550
PLACE OF BIRTH Fez
DATE OF DEATH February 4, 1616
Place of death The hague