Maria ter Meetelen
Maria ter Meetelen (20 June 1704, Amsterdam – fl. 1751), was a Dutch writer, famous for writing an autobiographic slave narrative of her years as a slave in Morrocco, having been taken captive by Corsair pirates.[1] Her biography is considered to be a valuable witness statement of the life of a former slave (1748).
Life[]
Meetelen was a child from the slum. She enlisted in the Spanish army disguised as a man in 1725. After this, she lived in Spain as a nun until she married.
The couple was on a ship destined for the Netherlands in 1731, when it was captured by pirates and all the passengers sold as slaves in Morocco. Her spouse died, and to avoid being taken to the harem of the sultan, Abdallah of Morocco, she refused to convert to Islam and married the spokesperson of the sultan's slaves, Pieter Janszn Iede, the couple provided the non-Muslim slaves with alcohol and lived quite well at the court.
In 1743, the Dutch slaves where bought free by the Dutch state and returned to the Netherlands. She emigrated to South Africa in 1751, where the traces of her disappear.
Works[]
- Maria ter Meetelen, The Curious and Amazing Adventures of Maria ter Meetelen; Twelve Years a Slave (1731- 43), Translated and Introduced by Caroline Stone. (Hardinge Simpole, 2010). [1].
References[]
- ^ Sytze van der Veen, Meetelen, Maria ter, in: Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland. URL: http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/lemmata/data/Meetelen [13/01/2014]
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- 1704 births
- 18th-century deaths
- 18th-century Dutch people
- 18th-century Dutch women writers
- 18th-century Dutch writers
- Dutch autobiographers
- Dutch expatriates in Spain
- Dutch emigrants to South Africa
- Dutch-language writers
- Female wartime cross-dressers
- Moroccan slaves
- Women in 18th-century warfare
- Writers from Amsterdam
- Women in war in Spain
- Women in war in the Netherlands
- Women autobiographers
- 18th-century slaves
- People who wrote slave narratives