{"id":1463,"date":"2012-04-20T06:15:30","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T10:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/?p=1463"},"modified":"2012-04-19T21:39:16","modified_gmt":"2012-04-20T01:39:16","slug":"captain-jack-sparrow-was-based-on-a-real-muslim-pirate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2012\/04\/captain-jack-sparrow-was-based-on-a-real-muslim-pirate.html","title":{"rendered":"Captain Jack Sparrow was (based on a real) muslim pirate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Earlier I’d linked to an amusing graphic<\/a> making the case that Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean fame was possibly a crypto-muslim. As it turns out, though, Suhaib Webb has a much more indepth analysis of the real historical inspiration for Jack Sparrow: Captain Jack Birdy<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In the late 16th century a young boy collecting scraps of wreckage from the docks wondered if he\u2019d ever leave Faversham in the borough of Kent, the hottest place in the entire United Kingdom. It was a marshy place of little importance to anyone but the brigand. Its docks were a haven for smugglers and pirates and other such unsavory folk. That boy was John Ward, whose dreams would one day come true, though perhaps not in the way he had wanted; he would become Jack Birdy, the most fearsome pirate in the world, and towards the end of his life, Yusuf Reis, penitent Muslim, wealthy beyond any man\u2019s dreams, spending the remainder of his life in his Tunisian palace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ward grew up on the docks, became a British naval officer, then a privateer, and then after a sordid betrayal, a feared pirate.. and converted to Islam afterwards. As Webb points out<\/a>, the real life of Captain Birdy\/Yusuf Reis had several Hollywood movies’ worth of adventure and intrigue. It would be amazing if someone were to bring his real, non-fiction story to the big screen. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier I’d linked to an amusing graphic making the case that Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean fame was possibly a crypto-muslim. As it turns out, though, Suhaib Webb has a much more indepth analysis of the real historical inspiration for Jack Sparrow: Captain Jack Birdy. In the late 16th century a young…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[164,314,267],"class_list":["post-1463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stranger-than-fiction","tag-conversion","tag-movies","tag-pirates"],"yoast_head":"\nCaptain Jack Sparrow was (based on a real) muslim pirate - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Captain Jack Sparrow was (based on a real) muslim pirate - City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Earlier I’d linked to an amusing graphic making the case that Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean fame was possibly a crypto-muslim. As it turns out, though, Suhaib Webb has a much more indepth analysis of the real historical inspiration for Jack Sparrow: Captain Jack Birdy. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1467,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions\/1467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}