Pieter Marteen Coy

Who is Pieter Marteen Coy?

Pieter Marteen Coy, also Pieter Martensz Coy or Pedr Marteen, was a 17th-century diplomat of the Netherlands, active in Morocco.

When young, Pieter Marteen Coy was captured by the Turks and imprisoned as a slave in Algiers. It was there that he learned to speak Turkish.

Eventually – unbeknownst whether set free or escaped from captivity – he managed to return to the Netherlands, where he then resided in Hoorn.

In April–May 1605, Pieter Marteen Coy went from the Low Countries to Safi in Morocco and Algiers accompanied by 135 Muslim captives, both Turkish and Moorish, who had been seized by the Dutch in the Low Countries in a naval encounter with Spanish galleys. This event led to a first Dutch mission to Morocco led by Pieter Marteen Coy.

From 1605, Coy became representative of the States General in Marrakesh.

In 1607 however, he was imprisoned by the Moroccan Sultan Mulay Zidan, following an incident in which Dutch pirates attacked English shipping. He was released on July 18, 1607, with the help of a local secretary to the Sultan, Al-Hajari.

Pieter Marteen Coy was recalled to the Netherlands on December 13, 1607.

He met the Moroccan envoy to the Netherlands Al-Hajari in La Hague in 1613, as recounted by the latter in his 1641 book The Book of the Protector of Religion against the Unbelievers.