Jewish pirates
While there is some mention of the phenomenon in antiquity, especially during the Hasmonean period (c. 140–37 BCE), most Jewish pirates were Sephardim who operated in the years following the Alhambra Decree of 1492 ordering the expulsion of Iberia's Jews.
Upon fleeing Spain and Portugal, some of these Jews became pirates and turned to attacking the Catholic empires' shipping as both Barbary corsairs from their refuge in the Ottoman dominions, as well as privateers bearing letters of marque from Spanish rivals such as the United Netherlands.
They viewed this campaign to be a profitable strategy of revenge for their expulsion and the Inquisition's continued religious persecution of their Jewish and converso brethren in both the Old and New Worlds.
As a matter of fact there were so many Jews at sea during Pompey's time, some of whom were pirates, that king Antigonus II Mattathias was accused of sending them out on purpose.
[2] By the end of First Jewish–Roman War, also known as The Great Revolt, Jews who had been driven out of Galilee rebuilt Joppa (Jaffa), which had been destroyed earlier by Cestius Gallus.
Surrounded and cut off by the Romans they rebuilt the city walls, and used a light flotilla to demoralize commerce and interrupt the grain supply to Rome from Alexandria.
"[6][7] The Age of Exploration was, in part, enabled by crucial navigational advances developed by the primarily Jewish Majorcan cartographic school as well as Abraham Zacuto's ephemerides.
Suddenly expelled from Iberia, their knowledge and skills in ship navigation made them enemies of the state and were contributing factors to the development of Jewish piracy in that age.
[1] The English State Papers of 1521 bear evidences of Sinan Reis, who sailed with Hayreddin Barbarossa: As to Coron, it was reported at Rome a few days ago that Andrea Doria was informed that the famous Jewish pirate had prepared a strong fleet to meet the Spanish galleys which are to join Doria's nineteen[11]Christopher Columbus himself noticed a great symbolism in the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and his sea voyages of discovery, when he started his diary with this statement: In the same month in which their Majesties issued the edict that all Jews should be driven out of the kingdom and the territories, in the same month they gave me the order to undertake, with sufficient men, my expedition of discovery to the Indies.
While for a time the Columbus family's rule kept out the Inquisition, when their power was eroded and the Church began threatening the crypto-Jewish populace, they aided the English conquest of Jamaica.
One of the most famous Jewish pirates of Jamaica was Moses Cohen Henriques, who in 1628, led with Piet Pieterszoon Hein the only successful capture of the Spanish treasure fleet.
[14] Sinan, called The Great Jew by the Spaniards, was one such Jewish refugee whose family emigrated from Spain to the Ottoman Empire, according to some non-academic authors.
