Juma (Friday)

Juma (Friday) is the temporal hinge of an escape plan in Captain Viedma’s account of captivity in Algiers. The term is explicitly glossed as Friday, and its importance lies less in general calendar description than in the way it fixes a date for Zoraida’s visit to her father’s garden, the gathering of the would-be escapees, and their departure by boat. A promised day becomes a practical schedule: money must be delivered, men assembled, and the vessel brought into position before the chance can be lost.

Meaning and Narrative Use

In the account, Juma is paired directly with the familiar weekday name Friday. This explanation makes the word a usable appointment rather than an obscure label: the reader can follow the plan’s timing as the participants coordinate across separate locations and unequal degrees of knowledge. Zoraida’s messages identify the next Friday as the day she will go with her father to the garden near the Babazon Gate, by the seashore. The renegade and the Christian captives then use that date to organize their actions around her presence there.

The weekday also gives the escape plot a distinct short-range chronology. The account’s wider frame is years of captivity and repeated efforts to regain freedom, but the Juma plan advances through a handful of carefully ordered days. It moves from an initial proposal, through additional messages and preparations, to a specific Friday evening. The contrast between the long duration of captivity and the tightly measured approach to a single night gives the appointment its narrative force: the plan can be imagined for months, but it depends on everyone reaching the right place at the right time.

The Appointment and Preparations

In Zoraida’s second message, she says that she cannot devise a complete route to Spain, but offers a way to fund one. She will send gold from a window so that Captain Viedma and his companions can ransom themselves; one of them can then obtain a vessel and return for the rest. She identifies her father’s garden, near the Babazon Gate and the shore, as the place where she will be during the summer, and names the next Juma as the day she will go there. The date links her access to the garden with the captives’ opportunity to approach it.

The plan changes when the renegade argues against sending one freed captive away to buy a vessel. He proposes to purchase a boat in Algiers himself, using a business arrangement with a Tagarin Moor to conceal the purpose. Captain Viedma and his companions accept this approach, despite preferring Zoraida’s suggestion of sending to Majorca. Their answer is followed by a further message: on the next Juma, she will go to the garden and can provide more money if required. She then sends two thousand gold crowns, while Captain Viedma uses eight hundred crowns to secure his own release through a Valencian merchant and arranges the release of three companions in the same way. The Friday date thus remains in place even as the method of escape is revised.

From the Date to the Departure

The next Friday becomes a deadline for practical preparations. Within fifteen days, the renegade has bought a vessel large enough for more than thirty people. He makes voyages to Shershel to give the purchase a legitimate appearance, and anchors near the garden during those trips. Once the vessel is ready, he fixes the following Friday for departure and asks Captain Viedma to find additional Christian rowers. Twelve Spaniards are selected; each is instructed separately to come out secretly on Friday evening and wait near Hadji Morato’s garden. They are not told the full plan, limiting what they can reveal if questioned.

Captain Viedma visits the garden the day before the intended departure, ostensibly to gather herbs. There he encounters Hadji Morato and then Zoraida, and has an opportunity to inspect the approaches, exits, and fastenings of the house. That visit connects the general timetable to the physical setting of the escape. On the appointed Friday, the renegade anchors at nightfall opposite the garden while the Christian rowers wait in hiding. They first secure the vessel and bind the Moorish crew, then hurry to the house, where Zoraida has been watching for them. The shift from a promised Friday visit to an actual night-time operation marks the plan’s decisive movement from preparation to action.

Function in the Escape Narrative

Juma (Friday) gives the escape sequence a clear temporal structure without making success automatic. The date is announced in advance, but the participants still have to adapt their means: they abandon the proposal to send one captive away for a ship, raise and distribute ransom money, acquire a vessel under cover of trade, and recruit rowers discreetly. Each preparation is tied to the same approaching day, so the weekday serves as a practical measure of urgency and coordination.

The account also makes the appointment a point of convergence. Zoraida’s access to her father’s garden, Captain Viedma’s released companions, the renegade’s vessel, and the twelve additional rowers all meet there on Friday evening. The precise timing matters because the rowers do not know the renegade’s intentions and expect that they may have to take the vessel by force; the plan must therefore bring them together before confusion or alarm disrupts it. Juma is not itself the cause of freedom, but it names the moment on which a fragile collective plan depends. Its explicit translation lets the narrative move from an unfamiliar word to a fully legible schedule, and from that schedule to the attempted escape.