Jewish Pirates terrorise the Mediterranean
- Thread starter Macsporan
- Start date
Max Sinister
Banned
Why indeed. Piracy is always dangerous since you'll piss off powerful people with that. Now if you also happen to have a different religion, especially one which was too often made the scapegoat of others, it's kind of suicidal.
I once thought about Socialist British pirates, but that...
I once thought about Socialist British pirates, but that...
IIRC a lot of Sephardic Jews, when expelled from Spain, went to North Africa.
You might be able to wrangle a significant Jewish presence among the Barbary Corsairs.
You might be able to wrangle a significant Jewish presence among the Barbary Corsairs.
The ancient Israelites and Phoenicians basically spoke the same language, and were more or less neighbors. If you envision a POD where the Davidic/Solomonic Kingdom keeps growing, and the Israelites think that conversion of closely related fellow Semites is a religious duty, you could have the ancient Israelites colonizing large chunks of the Med in competition with the Greeks. Perhaps Hebrew Carthage versus the Romans. From this POD, you could have any number of reasonable developments of Jewish pirates.
Last edited:
NapoleonXIV
Banned
Oyyyrrrrr....
What??...well, yes, you all showed admirable restraint, but, I'm only human and...well did you want some Noob resurrecting the thread just of do it some months from now?
537 BCE, the Jews return to Israel from the Babylonian captivity. As allies of the Persians, who overthrew the Babylonians, many of them become shipwrights and mariners, eventually forming a substantial arm of the Persian fleet.
480 BCE The Jews switching sides at the crucial moment wins the Battle of Salamis for the Greeks and saves Western civilization. For the Jews, however, it is the beginning of a century of tribulations. The Persians turn upon them in a fury and their Greek allies are unable/unwilling to help. The remnants of the Jews become a people without a homeland.
479-400BCE-Embittered by their oppression and betrayal the Jews settle in a series of strongholds in Greece, Italy, Sicily and Cyprus. From these, they strike out to become the main pirates in the Mediterranean world. They are adept at both rapine and diplomacy and skillfully play off one Greek city state against each other and their common enemy the Persians so that at no point does anyone decide to wipe them all out, although they do lose strongholds from time to time.
332BCE Alliance with Alexander in the Siege of Tyre results in Alexander restoring the Jewish Homeland. However, the strongholds and the Jewish Pirates, remain.
From here, we follow mainly OTL, the Romans wipe out the strongholds about a century before the Diaspora
Anyone have and plausible ideas about how they could survive the Romans, surviving into the modern age to compete or supplant the Barbary Coast corsairs?
What??...well, yes, you all showed admirable restraint, but, I'm only human and...well did you want some Noob resurrecting the thread just of do it some months from now?
537 BCE, the Jews return to Israel from the Babylonian captivity. As allies of the Persians, who overthrew the Babylonians, many of them become shipwrights and mariners, eventually forming a substantial arm of the Persian fleet.
480 BCE The Jews switching sides at the crucial moment wins the Battle of Salamis for the Greeks and saves Western civilization. For the Jews, however, it is the beginning of a century of tribulations. The Persians turn upon them in a fury and their Greek allies are unable/unwilling to help. The remnants of the Jews become a people without a homeland.
479-400BCE-Embittered by their oppression and betrayal the Jews settle in a series of strongholds in Greece, Italy, Sicily and Cyprus. From these, they strike out to become the main pirates in the Mediterranean world. They are adept at both rapine and diplomacy and skillfully play off one Greek city state against each other and their common enemy the Persians so that at no point does anyone decide to wipe them all out, although they do lose strongholds from time to time.
332BCE Alliance with Alexander in the Siege of Tyre results in Alexander restoring the Jewish Homeland. However, the strongholds and the Jewish Pirates, remain.
From here, we follow mainly OTL, the Romans wipe out the strongholds about a century before the Diaspora
Anyone have and plausible ideas about how they could survive the Romans, surviving into the modern age to compete or supplant the Barbary Coast corsairs?
You have missed the bit about the Cilician pirates getting annoyed with the competition and fighting a giant battle with their Jewish rivals just off the coast of Crete.NapoleonXIV said:
***********
So far it has only been suggested that Jewish pirates operate in the Med. Given that the Diaspora drives them out to Egypt and Persia, how about some of them moving to the coast and using trading vessels as corsairs in the Indian Ocean.
Their insular nature plus the fact that some of their brethren are merchants would make it easy to sell off the silk and spices taken at scimitar point.
As no one controlled the Indian Ocean Ocean until the Royal Navy in the nineteenth century, they would be safe for hundreds of years. However, it would be necessary for them to relocate their ports to southern Arabia and East Africa to order to escape the wrath of the more powerful caliphs.