#1695

The truth. This book, written in Latin in 1695, describes the region called Palestine at that time.

Author Adriani Relandi was a geographer, cartographer, traveler, philologist.

He understood many languages, including Arabic, Ancient Greek and Hebrew.

He described nearly 2,500 settlements mentioned in the Bible, and made an approximate census according to settlements.

 His notes;

 1. Palestine is mostly empty, abandoned, sparsely populated.  The main population is concentrated in Jerusalem, Akko, Tsfat, Jaffa, Tveria and Gaza.

 2. The majority of the population is Jewish; almost everyone else is Christian. A very small part is Muslim, mostly Bedouin...

 (Relandi refers to Muslims as nomadic Bedouins who come to cities only as seasonal workers in agriculture or construction.)

 3. The only exception is Nablus, inhabited by about 120 members of the Muslim Natsha family and approximately 70 Samaritans.

 4. About 5,000 people live in Jerusalem; almost all Jews, and a few Christians.

 5. The names of most of the settlements are of Jewish origin, and some have Greek or Roman Latin names.  Apart from the city of Ramla, there is no Arab settlement whose original name is Arabic.

 Place names derived from Jewish, Greek or Latin are usually adapted into Arabic and meaningless...

 6. Approximately 550 people live in Gaza, half of whom are Jews and half are Christians.

Jews were successful in agriculture, especially vineyards, olives and wheat, while Christians were engaged in trade and transportation..."

Sir Gilman from Pyre

"One of the outlandish wyrm-knights of the Sea-Dominion, he appears to have withstood many battles in the name of the Commonwealth, which employs many of his kind for its ongoing war against the Highwing Remnants. His exile seems to be self-imposed, though even he can only take so much abuse from his fellow knights..."

Treasure & Booty in the Golden Age of Piracy

During the Golden Age of Piracy (1690-1730), pirates were first and foremost after gold, silver, and jewels, but if these could not be grabbed, then a ship’s cargo would be taken for resale at a pirate haven. Shared amongst the crew, the lure of plunder drove many a mariner to piracy in the hope that they could escape the toil and hardships of ordinary ship life and enjoy the fleeting pleasures of shore. While the majority of pirates quickly frittered away their ill-gotten gains, some pirates did hit the jackpot when they captured a treasure ship and took, in a few hours, riches that an honest seaman would never earn in a lifetime before the mast.

Coinage

The most sought-after loot for a pirate was gold, silver, and gemstones. Bullion and jewels could be sold to a dealer in a pirate haven, but coinage was even handier as it could be spent directly. During the Golden Age of Piracy, the coinage a pirate might hope to come across included Spanish silver reales (0.12 oz / 3.43 g each), silver pesos (equivalent to eight reales and consequently often called 'pieces of eight'), gold and silver ducats (originally minted in Venice but widely used elsewhere; the gold version was worth about 10 reales), and Spanish doubloons (the largest gold coin, known as the 8-escudo coin, and weighing about 1 oz / 28 g).