When young, Pieter Maertensz Coy was captured by the Turks and imprisoned as a slave in Algiers.
[1] 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 Maertensz 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.
[2][4] In 1607 however, he was imprisoned by the Moroccan Sultan Mulay Zidan, following an incident in which Dutch pirates attacked English shipping.
[2] Pieter Maertensz Coy arranged the encounter of Al-Hajari with Maurice of Nassau in 1613.