Arabian coins found in US may unlock 17th-century pirate mystery | Hacker News Reader

Arabian coins found in US may unlock 17th-century pirate mystery

theguardian.com

130 pointsBerislavLopac17 comments

If anyone has any interest in this topic, THE PIRATE HISTORY PODCAST is absolutely brilliant. I'm up to Ep. 50 and I'm pretty sure I'll start again when I finish (apx 200ish episodes). It takes podcast quality and depth to another level.

What is so good about it?

I don’t think there is such a thing as an ‘Arabian’ coin. Arabic script was widespread over a vast geographical expanse. ‘Islamic’ coin might have been a better term.

I’m thinking some modern-day collector is having a blast seeding some fields with cheap coins bought off eBay.

A similar mystery is this coin from Calcutta, India found buried in Southern Utah https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6qf93c3

Evidently, according to a book I read about lost treasures in Utah, Spanish missionaries in New Mexico/Arizona would run a side business of secretly accumulating gold from the natives. They would then stash them underground in safe locations. This coin was found in one such stash. How a coin from Calcutta ended up in Utah - nobody knows.

My wild guess is someone brought it by sea

You, sir, just unlocked the case!

Possibly in their pocket! (Did pants have pockets back then?)

Could have been planted by the person who found the cache. People do weird things like that.

I wouldn't call fraud for personal gain weird. It's quite common, actually.

That coin was minted in 1831 according to the document you linked. That only leaves about 16 years for the coin to make it from India to Utah before the territory was won by or ceded to the United States during the Mexican War around 1847. If it was indeed related to Spanish missionaries it probably would be older than 1831 since those missionaries would've been Mexican. Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821-1822 though the Spanish only officially recognized it in 1836 I think.

It probably found its way there in the pocket of a Mormon who came to California to serve against the Mexicans during that short-lived part of the Mexican War. Or maybe a friar, or miner who got it as payment during some transaction with a Mexican or Spanish sailor in a California port city before the state came under control of the United States. Its placement could be dated more accurately if it were placed in context with the mint marks or dates from coins that it was found with.

There are lots of reasons why people would bury valuables back then and never return to recover them.

> “There’s extensive primary source documentation to show the American colonies were bases of operation for pirates,”

Ironic. A century later, the newly created United States would build a navy and start fighting pirates (First Barbary War). How things can change.

Some of the earliest settlers on Long Island, originally a Dutch colony, were Barbary pirates. Some Dutch converted to Islam and worked as pirates. They raided the English lands, bringing their captives to Ottoman rulers in Libya, Algeria or Tunisia who would sell or trade them through the empire. The breakup of this trade is part of the story of the United States Marine Corps and is referenced in the Marine Corps hymn line - "to the shores of Tripoli!" It is also one of recognize the independence of the new United States (1777). France was the second and probably the first to establish diplomatic relations. We have had a long friendly relationship with the Moroccan leadership since then with a treaty in 1786 being the oldest treaty that the US has not violated or broken.

Read about the sack of Baltimore, where inhabitants of an Irish village were captured and enslaved to the Ottoman Empire in 1631. The man leading that raid ended up on Long Island and has been listed as an ancestor of several relatively famous American personalities according to the book.

It is not surprising, in that light, to find that coinage from Muslim countries would find its way to the east coast of N America considering that pirates used the relative safety of those waters and many settled there using the spoils of their trade, and their connections, to establish themselves as legitimate citizens in the new lands. These coins are connected to different events but the existence of other world coinage in colonial America should be no surprise.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4881890-the-stolen-villa...

When it comes to US - North African relations, Morocco was a world apart from the Barbary states. Morocco was friendly towards the US and never enslaved American citizens, it even tried to protect them diplomatically.

Dey of Algiers etc., well that was something different. Any infidels who hadn't paid protection money were a fair game for them. The British paid protection money and had free passage around North Africa - to the detriment of their Italian competitors who could not afford to do the same. Americans, after trying to negotiate via France, decided to crush the enemy instead of paying ransom.

Thanks for the additional context. It was fascinating to me to discover the story behind our deployment of Marines to Libya and especially to find that it happened so long ago when our nation was just starting out. That was an additional nugget of knowledge that I learned in the telling of the story of enslavement of Irish people which was the reason that I originally bought the book. I had no idea that the British had shipped so many into slavery in the Caribbean to provide labor on sugar plantations. For years, my understanding was that most of the non-native labor was supplied from east African slave markets. There is so much to unpack in that story.

Don't forget the intermediate stage: the privateers that fought for independence.

Nobody tell Nathan Drake. It will ruin his life.

His guy was capt Avery, maybe a distant cousin. Or changed the last name to elude discovery

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