The Dutch Language in the Muslim World (1600-1800)

ABSTRACT

There was much contact between the Dutch Republic and Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) (1602-1799) undertook extensive commercial activity in the Indian Ocean and Indonesian archipelago, where many Muslims lived. The VOC established trading posts in Bengal, across the Indian sub-continent, in Persia, the Yemen, and at its headquarters in the East Indies at Batavia. Whilst people in these areas practised several religions including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity, most of these areas had significant Muslim populations, often with Muslim rulers. I am undertaking a project to analyse who spoke and wrote Dutch to whom and when in the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Given the scale of the Muslim world, it will be useful to divide it into two parts: one that focuses on the Indonesian archipelago and another on other countries with Muslim populations. This article examines what the second part of this project might look like, mapping out the form and content of a project on contact between Dutch and languages spoken in the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

KEYWORDS:

• Dutch
• VOC
• Muslim world
• Arabic
• Turkish
• Persian
• language contact

Introduction

It is well known that because of the Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula, Muslim scholarship had a significant influence on the development of science in Europe during the Middle Ages. Less well known perhaps are the consequences of encounters between Europe and the Muslim world in the early modern period. One element of this is that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) developed extensive trading contacts with areas of the world, in which Islam was the dominant religion. Amongst these are the Ottoman Empire, the Persian Safavid Empire, the Mughal Empire, and smaller polities such as the Sultanate of Morocco. It also, of course, traded extensively in the Indonesian archipelago, where Islam had already been extensively adopted. The VOC established trading posts at Hooghly/Chinsurah in Bengal, across the Indian sub-continent at inter alia Surat and along the Malabar and Coromandel coasts, at Gamron (now Bandar-e ‘Abbas) in Persia, at Mokka in the Yemen, at Malacca in the Malay Peninsula, and at its headquarters in the East Indies at Batavia.¹ Whilst people in these areas practised several religions including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity, most of these areas had significant Muslim populations, often with Muslim rulers. Trade was certainly one reason why the Dutch engaged with the Muslim world, but it was by no means the only reason. Another reason was diplomatic. In the early seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic established diplomatic relations with Morocco and the Ottoman Empire, as they had a common enemy in Spain. Scholars, too, engaged with the Muslim world. The Leiden scholars, Thomas Erpenius and Jacob Golius, produced several reference works on Arabic, although they used Latin as the European language. Golius spent several years in Morocco and later in the Middle East, acquiring Arabic manuscripts and learning Persian and Turkish.

The aim of this article is to explore the possibility of, and challenges associated with, a project that analyzes contact between the Dutch language and languages used in the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In defining the scope of such a project, it will be necessary to make choices about what to include and what to exclude. It is likely, for example, that the extent to which Dutch had contact with languages in the Indonesian archipelago, which included many predominantly Muslim areas, means that this would need to be examined in a separate project. The article begins by reviewing and evaluating existing publications on this subject. It then identifies primary sources available for such a project. After that, the article describes methodological problems that need to be addressed and then examines possible approaches to carrying out this project. Amongst these are analysing contact between Dutch and other languages by social domain, by language process and by region. I have already mentioned the principal regions in which this contact took place, although some of it also occurred in the Dutch Republic. As for social domains, we can mention trade, diplomacy, and scholarship, but also religion, as there were attempts to convert people in the Muslim world to Christianity and to sustain existing Christian communities such as Greek Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Turning to language process, this contact can be analysed by processes such as language learning, language competition, lexical interference and loanword integration, and translation. One other possible approach is to organize the material chronologically. In short, then, this article is an initial attempt at answering the question of what contact there was between Dutch and languages used in the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and what the consequences of this contact were.

Status Quaestionis

Whilst there has been work on commercial, political, and cultural contact between the Dutch, typically in the form of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), and various parts of the Muslim world, to date less has been written about contact between the Dutch language and languages such as Arabic and Persian spoken in the Muslim world.² Much of what has been written often focusses on specific works such as reference works that resulted from this contact. For example, a short article published by William Linehan in 1949 provides details of Dutch-Malay wordlists and dictionaries, as well as a short grammar of Malay, which were the fruit of early contact between Dutch and Malay.³ More recently, in 2018 Lourens de Vries described the first Malay translation of the Gospel of St Mark compiled by the VOC employee, Albert Ruyl, in 1629–1630. Also in 2018, Anna Pytlowany completed her PhD thesis on the first Dutch grammar of Persian and Hindustani compiled by the VOC merchant Joan Josua Ketelaar with the assistance of an Indian informant.⁴ One recent publication, which although non-scholarly nevertheless contains much useful information and many instructive illustrations on contact between the Dutch and India, is Venu Rajamony’s India and the Netherlands: Past, present & future [Groningen], Bombay Ink, 2019. Rajamony was the Ambassador of India to the Netherlands between 2017 and 2020.

One work that takes a slightly broader view is Wilhelmina Juynboll’s study of those who knew and used Arabic in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic.⁵ Although this is now almost one hundred years old, it was published in 1931, it still has merit as a secondary source. This book examines contact with Arabic, and in a few instances other languages such as Turkish and Persian, by individual Dutchmen (it is always men), above all the Leiden scholars Thomas Erpenius (1584–1624) and Jacob Golius (1596–1667). Another Leiden scholar who knew Arabic was the Professor of Hebrew, Frans van Ravelingen (latine Franciscus Raphelengius) (1539–1597). He was the son-in-law of the printer Christoffel Plantijn. After Plantijn returned to Antwerp in 1585, Raphelengius ran his press in Leiden. It was one of the few presses in Europe to have a set of letters in Arabic font. It was for this reason that the French scholar, Josephus Justus Scaliger (1540–1609), accepted the post of Professor at Leiden in 1593.⁶ Raphelengius was also an expert in Persian. Indeed, he was the first person to put forward the theory of an affinity between Persian and the Germanic languages. Furthermore, he started the compilation of a Persian lexicon. This was completed by Scaliger, who saw it through to press.⁷

A recent work on one scholar of Arabic is a collection of essays on Adriaan Reland (1676–1718), Professor of Oriental Languages at the University of Utrecht, published in 2021.⁸ He collected many Arabic manuscripts, which eventually ended up in the University of Utrecht Library. In disputations and in his oration of 1701, Reland would argue for the use of the knowledge of oriental languages, above all Arabic and Persian, for the study of Christian theology and its defence against Islam.⁹

Other publications reference Dutch contact with languages in the Muslim world tangentially. One example is a collection of essays on cultural transfer between the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa.¹⁰ Here, though, we must strike a note of caution, for the language used in cases such as correspondence is not always given. It is probable, though, that although the cases discussed often involve Dutchmen, the European language used was not Dutch, but Latin. Looking further east, Alexander de Groot’s The Ottoman Empire and the Dutch Republic may offer insights into the use of Dutch in the context of early diplomatic relations between the Dutch Republic and the Sublime Porte in Constantinople/Istanbul.¹¹

As for works on the history of the Dutch language, they typically have little or nothing to say on Dutch as a contact language in the Muslim world, apart from in the East Indies, parts of which were controlled by the Dutch from the late sixteenth century onwards. Bruce Donaldson’s statement in this regard is perhaps indicative of the attitude of historians of the Dutch language. He writes:¹²

The [Dutch] settlements in South America, West Africa, India, Taiwan and Japan were in most cases little more than trading posts, or factories as they were called. Thus, the influence of the Dutch language in these areas was minimal and is difficult or impossible to trace nowadays.

One author who does give us a good insight into the consequences of Dutch language contact in the Muslim world is Nicoline van der Sijs. She has written extensively on Dutch loanwords in other languages. She provides a summary of Dutch loanwords in varieties of Arabic, although does not indicate precisely when Arabic adopted these words. As for another contact language, Persian or Farsi, this has borrowed some twenty Dutch words, although it has done so primarily in the twentieth century and mainly via two other languages, French, and English.¹³ The case of Turkish is slightly different. The Dutch Republic had diplomatic and trading relations with the Ottoman Empire from the early seventeenth century. One loanword borrowed from Turkish is derwisj [dervish], from the Ottoman Turkish (لسان عثمانی lisân-ı Osmânî or عثمانليجه Osmanlıca) درويش (dervīsh). This appeared in De Hollandsche Spectator as early as 1734 (WNT). Another word that Dutch borrowed from Turkish was koffie [coffee]. In Ottoman Turkish, the word for this was (kahve) from the Arabic قهوة (qahwa).¹⁴ The Dutch word koffie was subsequently borrowed by other languages including Japanese, as コーヒー kōhī.¹⁵ This example is borrowed from Van der Sijs's 2010 book Nederlandse woorden wereldwijd. This forms the basis of an online database of Dutch loanwords https://uitleenwoordenbank.ivdnt.org/, which also includes these examples.

Finally, books that explore cultural aspects of the VOC’s activities may offer some insights into the use of Dutch and its contact with other languages in the Muslim world.¹⁶ One example is a collection of essays edited by Leonard Blussé and Ilonka Ooms: Kennis en Compagnie. De Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie en de moderne wetenschap (Amsterdam, 2002). Many German VOC employees wrote about their experiences after they returned to Europe. One who kept extensive notes of his travels was the physician, Engelbert Kaempfer (1651–1716), who visited Persia, India, and Thailand, as well as Japan.¹⁷ Roelof van Gelder provides a general account of these German VOC employees in Het Oost-Indisch avontuur. Duitsers in dienst van de VOC (1600–1800) (Nijmegen, 1997). A Dutchman who kept a detailed account of his experiences in Malabar and Coromandel in southern India was Philippus Baldaeus. He published his account, Naauwkeurige beschryvinge van Malabar en Choromandel, in Amsterdam in 1672. This includes a ‘Short Description of Malabar Grammar’ (Inleydingh tot de Malabaarsche Spraak-konst), as well as translations of the Lord’s Prayer and Apostles’ Creed. ‘Malabaarsch’ references a variant of the Dravidian language, Tamil. Baldaeus had Indian informants. One of these is known to us as Gerrit Mossopotam. He was depicted with Baldaeus in paintings made in the Dutch Republic. One possibility is that Gerrit (note the Dutch name) assisted Baldaeus in preparing his grammar and translating the Christian texts into Tamil.¹⁸

Accounts of the scientific activities of VOC employees, above all in the field of botany, may also provide interesting insights into language contact and competition. One work on this subject is Johannes Heniger, Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakenstein (1636–1691) and Hortus Malabaricus. A contribution to the History of Dutch Colonial Botany (Rotterdam, 1987). As the title suggests, this focuses on the botanical work of Hendrik van Rheede tot Drakenstein (in post 1669–76), the governor of Dutch Malabar, centred around Cochin on the southwest coast of the Indian sub-continent. The first edition of Hortus Malabaricus was published in Latin although names of plants were given in several languages including Malayalam, Konkani, Arabic and English. Van Rheede’s principal informant was the prominent Indian herbalist, Itty Achuthan/Achudan, who provided him with information in Malayalam.¹⁹ One Dutch VOC employee who was a noted intellectual and polyglot was Isaac Titsingh (1745–1812). He served as head of the trading post at Deshima in Japan before becoming director of the VOC in Bengal at Chinsura. His correspondence in Dutch, much of which has been published, is often a riot of code switching and so it will be instructive to analyse this for examples of switching from Dutch into other languages.²⁰

Primary Sources

Besides published texts such as Titsingh’s letters, there are various other primary sources on which to base a study of this nature. These include factory journals (dagregisters), trading documents, local port records, and other correspondence, both private and official. Furthermore, they include reference works such as the Ketelaar grammar of Persian and Hindustani, Instructie of Onderwijsinghe der Hindoustanse en Persiaanse taalen, mentioned above. Some of the dagregisters, such as those for Elmina, have been published.²¹ Others such as those for Chinsura in Bengal and Malabar in India have not been published and would need to be consulted in the VOC archive at the Nationaal Archief in The Hague, or, where possible, by online scans. One example is a copy of the agreement made in Dutch between the VOC admiral Pieter Willemsz. Verhoeff and the Zamorin (Dutch: samorijn) of Calicut in 1608 which allowed the VOC to trade with Calicut.²²

Another source is the General Missives (Generale Missiven), which contain summaries of the reports made by VOC officials to their superiors in the Dutch Republic. These are in the Nationaal Archief, too, but have also been published.²³ An important recent development in this regard is a project, funded by the Dutch NWO, to digitize some 25 million VOC documents. The project, named Globalise, will use an intelligent search system to read and make information in the documents available quickly. Another possible fruitful avenue of investigation, albeit in a targeted way, is the study of manuscripts in Arabic, Turkish and Persian bought, owned, or sold during this period. Golius spent the period between 1626 and 1629 in the Middle East. He learnt Turkish and Persian and was temporarily employed in Constantinople as secretary to Cornelis Haga (1578–1654), the Dutch representative to the Sublime Porte. In 1629, Golius returned to the Dutch Republic with more than 200 Middle Eastern manuscripts which are now in Leiden University Library.²⁴ Furthermore, he made an appeal to VOC agents in Bandar-e ‘Abbas to send him Persian manuscripts.²⁵ Golius, who held chairs in both mathematics and Arabic, was able to read important mathematical texts compiled in Arabic. A catalogue of the sale of 168 manuscripts owned by Jan Hubertus Reland, the son of Adriaan, indicates that many of those manuscripts were in Arabic and Persian, whilst others were in Ottoman Turkish or Malay.²⁶

Methodological Issues

There are several methodological issues that would need to be addressed during this study. First, one question that needs to be answered is what precisely was the Muslim world? Putting to one side the East Indies for a later project, we might begin by identifying polities that had Muslim rulers and many Muslim inhabitants. Here, we can make a start with the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire, and the Mughal Empire. There were of course exceptions. The Ottoman Empire had large Christian populations in Greece and elsewhere in the Balkans, as well as a significant Jewish population. The Safavid Empire included Armenia, which had previously been under Ottoman rule, Georgia, and a Pontic Greek population. In the Indian sub-continent, the Muslim Mughal Empire gradually expanded into the territory of the once powerful Vijayanagar Empire. In the sub-continent, the Hindu religion was dominant, but there were also Sikhs, various Christian coastal communities, and Zoroastrians.²⁷ Between 1656 and 1796, much of Ceylon/Sri Lanka, where cinnamon was an important product, was under VOC control.²⁸ Although there were Muslims in Ceylon when large parts of it, above all in the coastal areas, were controlled by the VOC, the religion of most of the islanders was Buddhism. So, the project will need to evaluate the extent to which it references the use of Dutch in Ceylon.²⁹ Therefore, whilst it is relatively straightforward to define ‘the Muslim world’ in broad terms, many religions were practised within this area. It should also be noted that Islam was marked by its heterogeneity. Whereas the Ottomans and Mughals were Sunni Muslims, the Safavids were Shi’a Muslims. Furthermore, patterns of religious adherence across this region changed during the two hundred years that this project aims to cover. Whether and if so to what extent this religious diversity had an impact on the knowledge and use of Dutch is a question that this project will need to explore.

Another methodological question that the project will need to address is how to identify whether and to what extent Dutch was spoken in contact situations. This is of course more difficult in a historical investigation than in a contemporary situation. One relatively reliable way of doing this is to identify metalinguistic comment, i.e. comments about which languages were spoken in given situations. Quotations of speech may seem to be another reliable source. However, these are not always written in the language in which they are spoken. Where people come from may also tell us what languages were being spoken, but again one must be cautious about drawing firm conclusions in this regard. If two or more Dutchmen are together, for example in a trading enterprise, then we can reasonably assume that they spoke Dutch. If, on the other hand, a Dutchman and a non-Dutchman are together, it is more difficult to draw conclusions about which language(s) were spoken. In such cases, it will be instructive to identify whether interpreters facilitated communication. If so, this would suggest that at least some Dutch was spoken.

Approach

One other methodological question, which will concern us for the rest of this article, is what approach would be most suitable for organizing the relevant material and attempting to answer the central research question: What were the consequences of language contact between Dutch and other languages used across the Muslim world in the early modern period? One possible approach is an analysis of the knowledge and use of language by social domain, attempting to answer a modified version of Joshua Fishman’s question, ‘Who speaks which language to whom?’ Another approach is to use language process, for example language learning and translation, as the primary analytical tool. In some sense, these two approaches place the two elements of sociolinguistics in the foreground. Whereas an analysis by social domain brings the social or societal dimension to language to the fore – the context in which a language functions and which it helps to shape and is shaped by – the analysis by language process places language itself front and centre, making it in some sense the subject of the book.

As for the proposed study of contact between Dutch and the Muslim world, apart from social domain and language process, two other approaches that may be fruitful are an analysis by country or polity and a broadly chronological account from c. 1600 to 1800, more or less the lifespan of the VOC (1602–1799). One other possibility is a hybrid approach involving two or more of these individual approaches.

Analysis by Social Domain

First, the reader’s attention is drawn to an analysis of language contact by social domain. Amongst the social domains in which Dutch came into contact with languages in the Muslim world are trade; religion; education, including the production of material for language learning such as grammars; the home; diplomacy and politics; and the production of literature. Whilst the domain of the home may have little material for this study, with the exception of private correspondence such as that of Isaac Titsingh in Chinsura, other domains would provide much material for analysis. The fact that there were several VOC trading posts throughout the Muslim world means that there was much language contact involving Dutch in the domain of trade. The VOC operation in Ceylon gained a measure of independence and its leaders sent ‘General calls’ (Generale eisen) to the Gentlemen Seventeen of the VOC stating what money, resources and manpower it required to function. These ‘General calls’, written in Dutch, included many examples of code switching into local languages.³⁰ In the Dutch Republic, there was contact between people from the Muslim world and native Dutch speakers. One example is a Greek merchant named Stephano d’Isay. We do not know precisely when he arrived in Amsterdam, but by 1763 he was already able to speak Dutch well enough to act as translator for Greek contractors in the city.³¹

Similarly, there was much diplomatic and political contact between representatives of the Dutch Republic and those of Muslim polities such as the Sultanate of Morocco and the Ottoman Empire. These contacts often required the intervention of interpreters. One Dutch interpreter who worked in the Ottoman Empire was Jeroen (latine Hieronymus) Harder. He arrived in Constantinople in 1673, and in January 1675 was recommended to the States General for the position of interpreter for the Dutch delegation to the Sublime Porte.³² He probably worked alongside the cohort of dragomans, the interpreter/translators who facilitated communication within the Ottoman Empire and with those from outside the Empire. As for the Persian Empire, there was no direct equivalent of the dragomans. It will be instructive to investigate to what extent other groups including the Banians, a south Asian merchant community, and indeed the Armenians functioned not only as commercial but also linguistic go-betweens.³³ Secular European art was appreciated at the Persian Safavid court. Shah ‘Abbas I and his direct successors employed (minor) Dutch painters, most notably Jan Lukasz. van Hasselt (born c. 1600) and Philips Angel II (born c. 1618).³⁴

Furthermore, it will probably be appropriate to analyse the military sphere for contact between Dutch and other languages. Many Dutch soldiers went to India. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, as the VOC declined, some worked for the Maharajahs. One example is Eustachius Benedictus de Lannoy (1715–77), who was of French descent. He was captured whilst fighting for the Dutch and eventually became an officer in the army of the Kingdom of Travancore or Thiruvithamkoor.

As for religion, attempts to sustain existing Christian communities such as Greek Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire led to the translation of Dutch texts. Dutch churches were established at trading posts and occasionally elsewhere in the Muslim world, such as one at Masulipatnam in the kingdom of Golconda on the Coromandel coast.³⁵ This was under the rule of the Muslim Qutb Shahi dynasty until 1687, when it was taken for the Mughal Empire by Emperor Aurangzeb (1618–1707).³⁶ In Ceylon seminaries were established in Jaffna (1690–1723) and Colombo (1696–1796), where the sons of local chiefs were trained as catechists or preachers.³⁷ Material culture, too, was susceptible to Dutch. For example, gravestones inscribed in Dutch are another piece of evidence for the use of the language in the domain of religion. The gravestone of Magdalena Haijers, who died in Surat in 1642, is engraved in Dutch.³⁸ The impressive mausoleum to Hendrik van Rheede tot Drakenstein is located at Surat. It is inscribed with verses from the Bible. The Dutch cemetery at Chinsura survives. Although it requires repair, it is reckoned to house some forty-five Dutch graves.³⁹ Further investigation may reveal how many of these are inscribed in Dutch and whether the inscriptions include other linguistic features such as code switching.

Dutch was used in the domain of education. However, in relation to the production of learning materials, we need to strike a note of caution, for much of it, certainly in the early part of this story, was produced not in Dutch, but Latin. Whilst such material should be remarked upon, above all because it points to language competition, the focus of a monograph should remain contact between Dutch and other languages.

Finally, some material does not fit neatly into one social domain or another. One example of this is maps and views of VOC trading posts, which were produced with Dutch legends. One view of Negapatnam on the Coromandel coast from the seventeenth century has a Dutch title.⁴⁰ Some of these views, such as one of Cochin, were produced by the cartographer, Johannes Vingboons (1617–70). He in fact never left the Dutch Republic but based his works on reports and sketches made by VOC employees. Another view, with a long Dutch legend, was produced of Kandy (Candia) during the VOC siege of the town in 1765 by an anonymous artist. This includes many transcriptions of local toponyms.⁴¹ A similar question concerning the appropriate social domain arises in relation to the European names that the Dutch gave to geographical features. For example, they named the mountain called Sri Pada (ශ්රී පාද) in Sinhala, Adams Piek. This often appears in Dutch maps and profiles of Ceylon.⁴² And Dutch mapmaking activities in the Persian Gulf, following the 1645 expedition of Cornelis Roobacker to the Persian Gulf, resulted in an unprecedentedly accurate depiction of the waterway.⁴³

Another example is travelogues. Although it was first published slightly before our period (1st edn. Amsterdam, 1596), the project will probably need to reference Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Itinerario. This gave the Dutch important insights into the Portuguese trade in the Asia. Jacob Gotfried Haafner (1754–1809) was a German-Dutch travel writer who worked for the VOC and then the British in India. He travelled extensively across the sub-continent and was a keen student of Indian languages. In 1808, he published the fruit of his travels in Reize in eenen Palanquin [Travels in a palanquin]. The only noteworthy Dutch travelogue on Persia written for the reading public is the valuable account of Cornelis de Bruijn (1652–1726/7). His lengthy description of Persepolis accompanied by plates that were unique in their quality and attention to detail facilitated the study of the cuneiform script until it was deciphered in the nineteenth century.⁴⁴

Many works of literature written in the Dutch Republic referenced the Muslim world. One example is a poem by the artist Willem Schellinks published in 1657. The poem, entitled Op de schilder-konst der Benjanen [On the painterly art of the Banias], extols the virtues of oriental art, and more specifically, Indian miniatures. Schellinks renders Gujarat as Gusuratt.⁴⁵ The use of <s> here points to the lack of [dʒ] in the native sound system of Dutch.⁴⁶ Indeed, how sounds in other languages were modified to fit the Dutch phonological system, and vice versa, will be an important theme in this study. It will be necessary to decide whether to include such works of literature within the scope of the project. It may be appropriate to select a representative sample of such works, above all those which are of interest from the perspective of language.

Therefore, whilst an analysis of language contact by social domain does have much to recommend it, it also has certain limitations. Perhaps the most significant of these is the fact that whilst there was extensive contact in some domains such as commerce and diplomacy, in other domains such as the domestic domain, there was probably relatively little language contact.

Language Process

The second approach is the analysis of language contact by language process. These processes include language learning, language contact and competition, interference, translation, and language shift. In broad terms, these processes cover the life cycle of a language, above all as an L2 or L3, introduced into contact situations.

Regarding language learning, in the case of the Dutch language in the Muslim world, the Dutch often established schools in areas that they colonized. In 1668, Herman Hasancamp, a Dutch linguist, established a school at Thali Fort in Thazhathangadi in Kottayam in Kerala. Here, Dutch, Latin, Sanskrit, and Malayalam were taught. It operated for about twenty years under the patronage of Kerararu Goda Varman Manikandan, then ruler of the Thekkumkur Kingdom.⁴⁷ Another area in which the VOC established schools was Ceylon.⁴⁸ Here, though, as noted above, we need to be careful, for most of the local people in Ceylon were Buddhists.⁴⁹ We find a similar situation in southeast Asia, where there were Muslims, but they were not in the majority. I return to this point below.

Dutch came into contact with many other languages in the Muslim world. As suggested above, given that this is a study of historical language use, however, evidence for the spoken use of Dutch may be limited. In some cases, where, for example, native Dutch speakers and interpreters are present, it is reasonable to assume that some Dutch was spoken and that there was contact with another language. One type of written evidence is bilingual reference works. The Dutch grammar of Persian and Hindustani compiled by Joan Josua Ketelaar is one example of this. Apart from these languages, Dutch had contact with Arabic. Here, the question will arise as to whether we can discern the type of Arabic with which Dutch had contact. On the one hand it might be Classical Arabic (اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَى al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā) or a closely-related type of Arabic that developed from it prior to the emergence of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which began in the early nineteenth century.⁵⁰ Alternatively, it may be one of the many dialects, which are often mutually unintelligible, spoken across the arabophone world. Furthermore, of course, because of its unique place in Islam, Classical Arabic was used in other countries or regions where Arabic was not otherwise the common vernacular.

Dutch faced competition from different languages for different reasons. In Ceylon, for example, Portuguese had become established as the Language of Wider Communication (LWC) before the Portuguese themselves were removed from the island in 1656. The VOC controlled large parts of the island for some 140 years, and it was the VOC policy to make Dutch the dominant language, by, for example, teaching it in schools. This policy, however, largely failed as Dutch was never able to replace Portuguese as the LWC.⁵¹ Portuguese continued to be used in trading posts which the Dutch took over from their Iberian competitors. One example is Cochin/Kochi in southwest India.⁵² The Dutch had extensive contact with the Jewish community in Cochin. However, the extent to which the Jews of Cochin used Dutch is unclear. They probably continued to use Portuguese alongside Hebrew. In 1685, a Portuguese Jew born in Amsterdam, Mosseh Pereyra de Paiva, stopped off at Cochin on his way to Surat. He authored a brief report of his experiences in Cochin in Portuguese, Notisias dos judeos de Cochim [News of the Jews of Cochin].⁵³

Latin, too, was a competitor to Dutch, but in different circumstances. For most if not all the period under review, Latin was the primary language of learning in Europe. Therefore, reference works on non-European languages, such as Arabic, were often written in Latin, although the Ketelaar lexicon is one exception to this. For example, Franciscus Raphelengius published an Arabic-Latin Dictionary, Lexicon Arabicum, on his own press in Leiden in 1613.

In Leiden in 1653, Jacob Golius published an Arabic-Latin Dictionary, Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, comprising some 1500 pages, which was a much more ambitious enterprise than that of Raphelengius.⁵⁴ Golius also compiled a Persian-Latin dictionary, Dictionarium Persico-Latinum. This remained in manuscript during his lifetime but was published by Edmund Castell in London in 1669 as the second part of a seven-language lexicon.⁵⁵ One example of using French instead of Dutch was that in 1604 the Leiden Professor Joseph Scaliger translated a letter in Arabic from the Sharif of Morocco addressed to the States General into French.⁵⁶

‘Lexical interference’ by one language in texts and utterances in another can be subdivided into two phenomena, code switching and ‘gap-filling’. Code switching is a notoriously difficult concept to define. One feature that several commentators agree on is that there is nothing accidental about code switching. Furthermore, it is therefore part of a user’s discourse strategy. Lim and Ansaldo define it as ‘an alternation of languages within a conversation, usually at semantically or sociolinguistically meaningful junctures, which is associated with particular pragmatic effects, discourse functions or associations with group identity’.⁵⁷ As for gap-filling, this occurs where terms do not currently exist in one of the contact languages. They are often for things such as new technologies or concepts.⁵⁸ For example, types of boat which the Dutch may not previously have encountered, such as a داو‎ (dāwa), often written by European authors as ‘dhow’, and indeed ‘dhow’ in Late Modern Dutch, might be inserted into an otherwise Dutch text, where Dutch is the matrix language. One important aspect of this process is phonological integration, i.e. how the phonology of a word is modified when it is adopted by the matrix language to fit the phonological system of that language, a question raised above in relation to Willem Schellinks’s rendering of Gujarat. For example, Arabic has sounds such as [ɮ^ʕ] and [ð^ʕ] represented by the letters ḍād ض and ḏạ̄ʾ ظ, which are not found in the Dutch phonological system.⁵⁹ Over time, words involved in lexical interference may become embedded in the matrix language and be treated as loanwords.

Indeed, loanword integration is another process that will demand our attention. One of the aims of the project is to establish which loanwords Dutch borrowed as a result of contact with languages in the Muslim world during this period, and which loanwords were borrowed by other languages from Dutch. Examples such as ‘koffie’ have already been given. Here, the project will build on work by Nicoline van der Sijs. She has identified some 230 Dutch loanwords in Sinhala although some have fallen into disuse. For example, a Sinhala word for ‘potato’ is අර්තාපල් pronounced artapal (< Dutch: aardappel). Given that Dutch influence in Ceylon declined after the Napoleonic Wars, most of these loanwords probably entered Sinhala during the Dutch period in Ceylon, something the project will attempt to confirm.⁶⁰ Malayalam is another language which adopted Dutch loanwords. These include അടുതാപ്പ് (aṭutāppŭ) ‘potato’ from aardappel and കക്കൂസ് (kakkūsŭ) ‘toilet’ from the Dutch kakhuis.

In contact situations, one question that linguists try to answer is whether any pidgins developed from which creoles emerged. One situation in which this occurs is where slaves or indentured labourers with different first languages are brought together, living and working in close proximity. This project will therefore attempt to analyse whether any Dutch creoles or pidgins emerged in contact situations in the Muslim world.⁶¹

Another process, which needs to be analysed, is translation into and out of Dutch. One question that the project will need to address is whether it should only analyse translations made in the Muslim world itself, or include translations made elsewhere involving Dutch and a language spoken in the Muslim world, such as those made in the Dutch Republic of Dutch catechisms for Greek Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Several of their spiritual leaders including the Metropolitan of Ephesus were in Leiden in the 1640s. They translated the Heidelberg Catechism, the Reformed Confession of Faith and liturgy into New Greek.⁶² In several areas where the VOC traded, Dutch missionaries and officials were often the first to translate the Bible or parts thereof into contact languages. For example, the Dutch translated and printed the first translation of the four Gospels in Sinhala in 1739.⁶³

Diplomatic correspondence needed to be translated into and out of Dutch. In 1596 Franciscus Raphelengius translated a letter addressed by the States-General to the ‘grooten keyser van Marocos’ i.e. the Sultan of Morocco, into Arabic. In 1610 Jan Theunisz of Amsterdam translated a letter from the Turkish Admiral and Grand Vizier Khalil Pasha Ḳayṣariyyeli (d. 1629) from Arabic into Dutch.⁶⁴

Peter Burke has written extensively about language in the early modern period and more specifically translation. Burke frames his discussion of cultures of translation in early modern Europe as responses to several questions: Who translates? What is translated? For whom? In what manner? And with what consequences? It will probably be useful to analyse translations to and from Dutch into and out of languages spoken in the Muslim world as responses to the same questions.⁶⁵

One other language process to analyse is language shift. Typically, this term is applied to situations where a language community shifts from one L1 to another. In this case, apart from a few exceptions, it is unlikely that there were any significant Dutch language communities in the Muslim world. Therefore, any shift would typically involve speakers shifting from one L2 or L3 etc. to another. Most of the evidence is probably written, although there may be some metalinguistic comment which allows us to identify cases of shifting away from the use of Dutch in the Muslim world.

By Region/polity

Two other approaches to analysing the relevant material are by region or polity and by chronological order. As already suggested, one problem that this project faces is providing an adequate definition of the Muslim world. Islam itself divided the world into dār al-Islām دار الإسلام‎ literally ‘house/abode of Islam’ and dār al-ḥarb دار الحرب‎ ‘house of war’. This division dates, however, from the eighth century, and the extent to which it could be used in the seventeenth century would require further investigation. Another term often used to define who is Muslim and who not is the ummat al-Islām أمة الإسلام, ‘the Islamic community’. For our purposes, however, it may be difficult to map this onto specific regions which can be usefully analysed. For example, Dutch was used in the Russian Empire, parts of which had significant Muslim populations, such as the Tatars.⁶⁶ It will probably not be appropriate, however, to have a separate chapter on contact between Dutch and languages spoken by Muslims in the Russian Empire.

A more pragmatic approach might be to use the faith of the ruler of a given polity to determine whether an area could be defined as part of the Muslim world. We could begin with the three great Muslim Empires in this period, the Ottoman Turkish, the Safavid Persian and the Mughal Empires.⁶⁷ In each of these, though, as already suggested, there were significant non-Muslim minorities. To these we can add the Sultanate of Morocco. As for other regions, choices will need to be made. For example, the VOC traded with Cambodia in the early seventeenth century. In the early 1640s, the king of Cambodia, King Ramathibodi I (ruled 1642–58), converted to Islam. This led to an increase in the power of Cambodia’s Muslim Malay and Cham communities. In 1643, probably with the encouragement of the Portuguese, they massacred or imprisoned several representatives of the VOC.⁶⁸ Neighbouring Thailand did not have a Muslim ruler. However, the Dutch traded with Muslims in Thailand/Siam. Indeed, after 1688 they were the only Europeans allowed to trade with Thailand.⁶⁹ Vinal Smith presents other references to Muslim traders who were active in the internal market, and procured and sold non-monopoly products to the Dutch. He writes, ‘Throughout the seventeenth century the Dutch bought most of the non-monopoly goods from Japanese, Muslim (Persian, Indian and Malay), Chinese, Mon and Portuguese mestizo nai’.⁷⁰ Other areas such as Ceylon did not have Muslim rulers but did have a significant Muslim minority. In defining the limits of the project, it will therefore be necessary to determine if and to what extent the interesting case of the Dutch language in Ceylon should be analysed.

One advantage of organizing this material by region or polity is that it would allow for the analysis of contact between Dutch and one or two languages in each case. For example, in analysing contact between Dutch and the Ottoman Empire, most of the contact would be between Dutch and Ottoman Turkish or Arabic. On the other hand, as we have seen, Dutch did have contact with minority languages in the Ottoman Empire such as New Greek. One major disadvantage would be duplication. There was probably contact between Dutch and Arabic across these three Empires, so giving a full account of this on an Empire-by-Empire basis may lead to repetition. Furthermore, there are examples of contact between Dutch and other languages such as Arabic in the Dutch Republic. If this approach were adopted, it would probably be necessary to have a separate chapter on language contact in the Dutch Republic.

Chronological

Finally, another possible approach to organizing the material available for this study is chronologically. The story that the project aims to tell covers a fixed period of two hundred years. Telling this story chronologically would enable the identification of early points of contact between Dutch and the Muslim world and analysis of how this contact developed. Furthermore, it would allow for an analysis of contact between Dutch and other languages, which is synchronic as well as diachronic. On the other hand, there would probably be some repetition and it would still be necessarily to use other approaches such as an analysis by language process, given that the principal subject of the project is language contact and its consequences. Whilst a chronological approach on its own may not be appropriate, it will nevertheless be useful to give a chronological account, by, for example, country or region, of contact between Dutch and other languages, possibly as an opening chapter, to give the reader the necessary historical context with which to navigate the rest of the book. This final point is important for it may be necessary to adopt a mixed economy, employing more than one of these approaches, to provide a comprehensive account of contact between Dutch and languages in the Muslim world and its consequences.

Conclusion

Concluding, the aim of this article has been to explore the possibility of, and challenges associated with, a project analysing contact between the Dutch language and languages used in the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Furthermore, it has attempted to analyse what approach would be most suitable for the organization and analysis of the primary and secondary sources available for such a study. One positive result from this initial survey is the identification of many primary sources, which have not previously been synthesized for a project of this nature. Another result is that the article has identified more than one approach to analysing this material. An analysis by social domain and language process both offer interesting possibilities. It may, however, be necessary to adopt more than one approach. Questions remain, perhaps most importantly concerning the geographical limits of the Muslim world in this period. Whilst it is relatively easy to define the core of this world, the cases of Thailand and Ceylon illustrate that there are certain ‘grey’ areas. The boundaries of the project would need to be defined in the prologue of a monograph and it may be that the author will leave these boundaries deliberately somewhat loosely defined.

Finally, whilst this project would in no way be an attempt at applied history, given recent history in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe and North America, it would be a valuable exercise to analyse how the Dutch through the medium of their language engaged with the Muslim world in the early modern period. It is to be hoped that the picture that emerges illustrates that the linguistic and cultural exchange that took place between the Dutch Republic and the Muslim world in that period was a rich, interesting, and complex one. This would, furthermore, add another chapter to the history of contact between Dutch and other languages outside the Low Countries.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Prof. dr. Nicoline van der Sijs for reading an earlier version of this article and providing valuable comments on it.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher Joby

Christopher Joby is Honorary Research Fellow & Associate Tutor, School of History, University of East Anglia, and Research Associate, Centre of Taiwan Studies, SOAS, University of London. His research focusses on the intersection of the Dutch language and culture and other languages and cultures in a historical context. In 2020, he published The Dutch Language in Japan (1600-1900) (Brill) and in 2022, John Cruso of Norwich and Anglo-Dutch Literary Identity in the Seventeenth Century (Boydell).

Notes

1. The VOC had a trading post at Basra for many years. This swapped hands between the Persian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. For a map of the VOC trading posts in the Indian Ocean in the eighteenth century, see Els M. Jacobs, Koopman in Azië: De handel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie tijdens de 18de eeuw. Zutphen, 2000, p. 12. See also, accessed March 5, 2024 https://www.atlasofmutualheritage.nl/. One of the VOC’s major trading partners at Surat was Virji Vorat (also Baharji Borah) (c. 1590-c. 1670s), an Ismaili trader reputed to be the richest merchant in the world at that time. Ismailism (الإسماعيلية al-ʾIsmāʿīlīyah) is a branch of Shi'a Islam.

2. See, for example, Jacobs, Koopman in Azië; and Femme Gaastra, De Geschiedenis van de VOC. Zutphen, 1991. Femme S. Gaastra, The Dutch East India Company: Expansion and Decline (ET). Zutphen, 2003, is an English translation of the second book. An example of an article on the commercial activity of the VOC, which also references language, is Rudi Matthee, “Coffee in Safavid Iran: Commerce and Consumption.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 37, no. 1 (1994): 1–32.

3. William Linehan, “The earliest word-lists and dictionaries of the Malay language.” JMBRAS 22:1 (147) (1949): 183–87. See also Nicoline van der Sijs, Wie komt daar aan op die olifant? Een zestiende-eeuws taalgidsje voor Nederland en Indië, inclusief het verhaal van de avontuurlijke gevangenschap van Frederik de Houtman in Indië, Amsterdam, 2000, for the earliest Dutch book on Malay, Frederick de Houtman’s. Spraeck ende woord-boek, Maleysche ende Madagaskarsche woorden Amsterdam: Jan Evertsz. Cloppenburch, 1603. This consisted of several bilingual Dutch-Malay dialogues and an extensive trilingual Dutch-Malay-Malagasy wordlist in alphabetical order.

4. Lourens de Vries. “Iang Evangelivm Ul-Kadus Menjurat kapada Marcum: The First Malay Gospel of Mark (1629–1630) and the Agama Kumpeni.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 174, (2018): 47–79. Anna Pytlowany, Ketelaar rediscovered. The first Dutch grammar of Persian and Hindustani (1698). Utrecht, 2018. See also at J. Ph. Vogel, “Joan Josua Ketelaar of Elbing, Author of the First Hindūstānī Grammar.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London 8, No. 2/3 (1936): 817–22, at 820–1. In 1700, Ketelaar was appointed as head of the Dutch factory at Agra.

5. Wilhelmina Maria Cornelia Juynboll. Zeventiende-eeuwsche beoefenaars van het Arabisch in Nederland. Utrecht, 1931.

6. Juynboll, Zeventiende-eeuwsche beoefenaars. 35–6; 245. For more on Raphelengius’s work as the founder of Arabic studies at Leiden, see Francine de Nave, “Franciscus I Raphelengius (1539–1597), grondlegger van de Arabische studiën in de Nederlanden.” De Gulden Passer (1988–1989), jg. 66–67 (themanummer Ex Officina Plantiniana), pp. 523–555. I thank Nicoline van der Sijs for this reference.

7. Rudi Matthee. “Iran’s Relations with Europe in the Safavid Period Diplomats, Missionaries, Merchants and Travel.” In The Fascination of Persia. The Persian-European Dialogue in Seventeenth-Century Art & Contemporary Art of Tehran, edited by A. Langer, 6–37. Zurich, 2013, at p. 19.

8. Bart Jaski et al., eds., The Orient in Utrecht: Adriaan Reland (1676–1718), Arabist, Cartographer, Antiquarian and Scholar of Comparative Religion. Leiden, 2021.

9. Bart Jaski. “The Manuscript Collection of Adriaan Reland in the University Library of Utrecht and Beyond.” In The Orient in Utrecht, edited by Bart Jaski et al., 321–61, at p. 321.

10. Otto Zwartjes, G. J. H. Van Gelder and Ed C. M. De Moor. Poetry, Politics and Polemics: Cultural Transfer between the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. Amsterdam, 1996.

11. Alexander de Groot. The Ottoman Empire and the Dutch Republic: A History of the Earliest Diplomatic Relations 1610–1630. Leiden, 2012 [Rev. ed., 1st edn. 1978].

12. Bruce Donaldson. Dutch: A Linguistic History of Holland and Belgium. Leiden, 1983, 109.

13. Nicoline van der Sijs. Nederlandse woorden wereldwijd. The Hague, 2010, 49–50; 104.

14. For an introduction to the grammar of Ottoman-Turkish, see J.W. Redhouse. A Simplified Grammar of the Ottoman-Turkish Language. London, 1884.

15. Van der Sijs. Nederlandse woorden wereldwijd, 127.

16. For a more comprehensive list of books, from which a selection is given above, see Gaastra, The Dutch East India Company, 183–4.

17. For Kaempfer’s observations on Persia, see, Engelbert Kaempfer, Willem M. Floor, and Colette Ouahes. Exotic Attractions in Persia, 1684–1688: Travels & Observations. Washington: DC, 2018.

18. See, for example, a painting of the two men by Johan de la Rocquette (1668). Accessed March 5, 2024 . https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-1299.

19. A. Sreedhara Menon. Legacy of Kerala. Kottayam: D.C. Books, 2008 [1st edn. 1982], p. 70.

20. See, for example, Frank Lequin. The Private Correspondence of Isaac Titsingh, 2 vols. (vol. 1 1785–1811; vol. 2. 1779–1812). Amsterdam, 1990.

21. Jacob Ruychaver & Jacob van der Wel, Vijf dagregisters van het kasteel São Jorge da Mina;(Elmina) aan de Goudkust;(1645–1647). ed. Klaas Ratelband. The Hague, 1953.

22. Nationaal Archief, The Hague, 1.04.02, Deel 1/E 1.e, stuk 536. A similar agreement had been made in 1604, but this is lost.

23. W. Ph. Coolhaas. Generale missiven van Gouverneurs-Generaal en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie. The Hague, 1960–88.

24. These are now registered as Or.1 to Or. 211, and mark the beginning of the Oriental department in that library.

25. Matthee. “Iran’s Relations with Europe.” 19.

26. Jaski. “The Manuscript Collection of Adriaan Reland.” p. 323.

27. Gaastra. The Dutch East India Company. 50. For economic relations between the VOC and Mughal Empire, see also Najaf Haider. “Precious Metal Flows and Currency Circulation in the Mughal Empire.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 39, no. 3 (1996): 298–364.

28. Gaastra. The Dutch East India Company, p. 52.

29. A fascinating recent contribution to our understanding of the VOC’s activities in Ceylon is Nira Wickramasinghe’s Slave in a Palanquin: Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka. New York, 2020. This book discusses the position of Islam in Ceylon as well as making many references to language.

30. Gaastra, The Dutch East India Company. 66.

31. İsmail Hakkı Kadı. Ottoman and Dutch Merchants in the Eighteenth Century: Competition and Cooperation in Ankara, Izmir, and Amsterdam. Leiden, 2012, 202, 226.

32. Juynboll, Zeventiende-eeuwsche beoefenaars. p. 235.

33. For the Banians, see also Peter Good. The East India Company in Persia: Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century. London, 2022.

34. Matthee. “Iran’s Relations with Europe.” 23; Willem Floor & Forough Sajadi. “Jan Lucasz. van Hasselt: A Dutch Painter in Safavid Isfahan.” Iranian Studies 54, no. 3–4 (2021): 399–426. As well as Dutch, Van Hasselt wrote Italian.

35. Other offices along the Coromandel Coast were at Bimelepatnam, Dacheron, Paliacol, Petapuli, Paleacatta, Pulicat, Sadraspatnam, Tegenapatnam, Karikal and Negapatnam. Further investigation may reveal whether churches were established at these offices, too. Gaastra. The Dutch East India Company. 77. See also Tapan Raychaudhuri. Jan Company in Coromandel 1605–1690. The Hague, 1962. This has a list of unpublished archival documents relating to VOC activities in southern India and Ceylon, which may be of use in this study (pp. 225–8).

36. Gaastra. The Dutch East India Company. 47. An engraving from 1663 depicts a visit to the church by the king of Golconda on Christmas Eve.

37. Gerrit J. Schutte. “Christendom en Compagnie.” In Kennis en Compagnie. De Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie en de moderne wetenschap, edited by Leonard Blussé and Ilonka Ooms, 87–99. Amsterdam, 2002, at p. 94.

38. Gaastra. The Dutch East India Company. 92.

39. Pamphlet: Chinsura: The Dutch heritage ‘Dutch Cemetery’. There is a bell from a Dutch ship at the Janardana Swami Temple at Varkala. It is inscribed with the names ‘Peter von (sic) Belson’ and ‘Michelle Evarald’. A bell at Kodungallur Temple in Kerala may have been gifted by the Dutch.

40. Gaastra. The Dutch East India Company. 48.

41. Jacobs. Koopman in Azië. 49.

42. Jacobs. Koopman in Azië. 50.

43. Matthee. “Iran’s Relations with Europe.” 19; Cornelis Cornelisz Roobacker, A Hotz. Scheepsjournaal Gamron-Basra (1645); de eerste reis der Nederlanders door de Perzische Golf. Leiden, 1907.

44. Matthee. “Iran’s Relations with Europe.” 19.

45. Jan Gommans and Jan de Hond. “The Unseen World of Willem Schellinks: Local Milieu and Global Circulation in the Visualization of Mughal India.” In A Companion to the Global Renaissance: Literature and Culture in the Era of Expansion, 1500–1700, edited by Jyotsna G. Singh 2nd edn. Chichester, 2021. 231–48, at 237–8. See also, accessed March 5, 2024 http://www.garyschwartzarthistorian.nl/377-three-discoveries-by-jan-de-hond-of-which-i-am-envious/.

46. Geert Booij. The Phonology of Dutch. Oxford, 1995. 7.

47. Accessed March 5, 2024. https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Thiruvananthapuram/unravelling-a-17th-century-multilingual-school/article25753903.ece.

48. Gaastra. The Dutch East India Company. 52.

49. Kees Groeneboer. Gateway to the West: The Dutch Language in Colonial Indonesia: A History of Language Policy. Amsterdam, 1998. 51–58.

50. Kees Versteegh. The Arabic Language. Edinburgh, 1997. 173.

51. Groeneboer. Gateway to the West. 51–58.

52. Gaastra. The Dutch East India Company. 78. The Portuguese built Mattancherry Palace in Cochin, which the Dutch subsequently took over. It then became popularly known as the Dutch Palace.

53. Jonathan Schorsch. “Mosseh Pereyra de Paiva: An Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish Merchant abroad in the Seventeenth Century.” In The Dutch Intersection:The Jews and the Netherlands in Modern History, edited by Yosef Kaplan, 63–85. Leiden, 2008, at pp. 63–4. An edition of the Notisias was published in Lisbon in 1923.

54. Jacobus Golius. Jacobi Golii Lexicon arabico-latinum, contextum ex probatioribus orientis lexicographis; accedit index latinus copiosissimus, qui lexici latino-arabici vicem explere possit. Leiden: Typis Bonaventurae & Abrahami Elseviriorum, 1653. Golius based his dictionary on the Sihah (al-Ṣiḥāḥ fī al-lughah ;(الصحاح في اللغة)) dictionary of Al-Jauhari and the al-Qāmous ;(القاموس) dictionary of Fairuzabadi.

55. Jacobus Golius, Edmund Castell. Lexici Orientalis heptaglotti, pars altera: seu, Dictionarium persico-latinum. London: T. Roycroft, 1669.

56. Juynboll. Zeventiende-eeuwsche beoefenaars. 51.

57. Lisa Lim and Umberto Ansaldo. Languages in Contact. Cambridge, 2015, 40–41.

58. Simon Swain. “Bilingualism in Cicero? The Evidence of Code-Switching.” In Bilingualism in Ancient Society: Language Contact and the Written Text, edited by J. Adams, M. Janse and S. Swain, 128–67. Oxford, 2002, at pp. 143–44.

59. Booij. The Phonology of Dutch. 7.

60. Van der Sijs. Nederlandse woorden wereldwijd. 116–7. See also L. Peeters, & B.P. Sannasgala, “Dutch loan words in Sinhala.” Spektator 5, (1975): 245–81.

61. There is no exact definition of a pidgin. One view is that it is often lexically based on one of the contact languages (the lexifer), with a grammar that is a ‘cross language compromise’ with ‘influence from universals from second-language learning, such as a simplified verb system’. Sarah Grey Thomason. “Extracts from “Contact languages I: Pidgins and Creoles”.” In Pidgins and Creoles: Critical Concepts in Linguistics, edited by Joseph T. Farquharson and Bettina Migge, 62–93. I. London, 2017, at 64.

62. Juynboll. Zeventiende-eeuwsche beoefenaars. 169–170.

63. Het Heylige Evangelium onses Heeren en Zaligmakers Jesu Christi, na de beschryvinge van de mannen Gods en H. Evangelisten Mattheus, Marcus, Lucas en Joannes, uyt Het oirspronkelyke Grieks in de Singaleesche Tale overgebragt en behoorlyk gerevideert, trans. Willem Konyn et al. Colombo: s’Compagnies Boek-Drukkerye, 1739. Van der Sijs, Nederlandse woorden wereldwijd, p. 117. Ratnasiri Arangala and Manoj Ariyaratne. “Eighteenth Century Dutch Missionaries and Their Contribution for the Advancement of Sinhala Literature.” American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR) 4, no. 7 (2020): 71–79.

64. Juynboll. Zeventiende-eeuwsche beoefenaars. 51.

65. Peter Burke. “Cultures of translation in early modern Europe.” In Cultural Translation in Early Modern Europe, edited by P. Burke and R. Po-Chia Hsia, 7–38. Cambridge, 2007.

66. The mayor of Amsterdam, Nicolaas Witsen, wrote about this subject. His work on it is published in: Nicolaas Witsen, Bruno Naarden. The fascination with Inner Eurasian languages in the 17th century: the Amsterdam mayor Nicolaas Witsen and his collection of ‘Tartarian’ glossaries and scripts. Amsterdam, 2018.

67. For Persia, see, for example, Willem Floor. “The Decline of the Dutch East Indies Company in Bandar ‘Abbas, (1747–1759).” Moyen Orient & Ocean Indien 6, (1989): 45–80, and Willem Floor. “Dutch Relations with the Persian Gulf.” In The Persian Gulf in History, edited by Lawrence G. Potter, 235–60. New York, 2009.

68. Carool Kersten. “Cambodia’s Muslim King: Khmer and Dutch Sources on the Conversion of Reameathipadei I, 1642–1658.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 37 no. 1 (2006): 1–22.

69. Gaastra. The Dutch East India Company. 56.

70. George Vinal Smith. The Dutch in Seventeenth-Century Thailand, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Special Report No.16, Northern Illinois University, 1977, 75. Quoted in Rita Bernardes de Carvalho. “Bitter Enemies or Machiavellian Friends? Exploring the Dutch – Portuguese Relationship in Seventeenth-Century Siam.” Anais de história de além-mar X, (2009): 363–87, at 378. Nai was a specific rank within Thai society.