Barbary pirates

In 1198 the problem of Barbary piracy and slave-taking was so great that the Trinitarians, a religious order, were founded to collect ransoms and even to exchange themselves as ransom for those captured and pressed into slavery in North Africa. In the 14th century, Tunisian corsairs became enough of a threat to provoke a Franco-Genoese attack on Mahdia in 1390, also known as the "Barbary Crusade". Morisco exiles of the Reconquista and Maghreb pirates added to the numbers, but it was not until the expansion of the Ottoman Empire and the arrival of the privateer and admiral Kemal Reis in 1487 that the Barbary corsairs became a true menace to shipping from European Christian nations.[8]

Battle of Preveza, 1538

From 1559, the North African cities of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, although nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, were in fact military republics that chose their own rulers and lived by war booty captured from the Spanish and Portuguese. There are several cases of Sephardic Jews, including Sinan Reis and Samuel Pallache, who upon fleeing Iberia turned to attacking the Spanish Empire's shipping under the Ottoman flag.[9][10]

During the first period (1518–1587), the beylerbeys were admirals of the sultan, commanding great fleets and conducting war operations for political ends. They were slave-hunters and their methods were ferocious. After 1587, the sole object of their successors became plunder, on land and sea. The maritime operations were conducted by the captains, or reises, who formed a class or even a corporation. Cruisers were fitted out by investors and commanded by the reises. Ten percent of the value of the prizes was paid to the pasha or his successors, who bore the titles of agha or dey or bey.[11]

The Barbary pirates frequently attacked Corsica, resulting in many Genoese towers being erected.

In 1544 Hayreddin captured the island of Ischia, taking 4,000 prisoners, and enslaved some 2,000–7,000 inhabitants of Lipari.[12][13] In 1551 Turgut Reis enslaved the entire population of the Maltese island of Gozo, between 5,000 and 6,000, sending them to Ottoman Tripolitania. In 1554 corsairs under Turgut Reis sacked Vieste, beheaded 5,000 of its inhabitants, and abducted another 6,000.[14]

The work of the Mercedarians was in ransoming Christian slaves held in Muslim hands, Histoire de Barbarie et de ses Corsaires, 1637

A notable counter action occurred in 1607, when the Knights of Saint Stephen (under Jacopo Inghirami) sacked Bona in Algeria, killing 470 and taking 1,464 captives.[15] This victory is commemorated by a series of frescoes painted by Bernardino Poccetti in the "Sala di Bona" of Palazzo Pitti, Florence.[16][17] In 1611 Spanish galleys from Naples, accompanied by the galleys of the Knights of Malta, raided the Kerkennah Islands off the coast of Tunisia and took away almost 500 Muslim captives.[18] Between 1568 and 1634 the Knights of Saint Stephen may have captured about 14,000 Muslims, with perhaps one-third taken in land raids and two-thirds taken on captured ships.[18]

Ireland was subject to a similar attack. In June 1631 Murat Reis, with corsairs from Algiers and armed troops of the Ottoman Empire, stormed ashore at the little harbor village of Baltimore, County Cork. They captured almost all the villagers and took them away to a life of slavery in North Africa.[11] The prisoners were destined for a variety of fates—some lived out their days chained to the oars as galley slaves, while women spent long years as concubines in harems or within the walls of the sultan's palace. Only two of these captives ever returned to Ireland.[19] England was also subject to pirate raids; in 1640 sixty men, women and children were enslaved by Algerian pirates who raided Penzance.[20][21]

More than 20,000 captives were said to be imprisoned in Algiers alone. The rich were often able to secure release through ransom, but the poor were condemned to slavery. Their masters would on occasion allow them to secure freedom by professing Islam. A long list might be given of people of good social position, not only Italians or Spaniards, but German or English travelers in the south, who were captives for a time.[11]

In 1675 a Royal Navy squadron led by Sir John Narborough negotiated a lasting peace with Tunis and, after bombarding the city to induce compliance, with Tripoli.[22]

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  A French Ship and Barbary Pirates by Aert Anthonisz, c. 1615
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  Battle of a French ship of the line and two galleys of the Barbary corsairs
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  An action between an English ship and vessels of the Barbary Corsairs
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  Lieve Pietersz Verschuier, Dutch ships bomb Tripoli in a punitive expedition against the Barbary pirates, c. 1670

Captain William Bainbridge paying tribute to the Dey of Algiers, c. 1800

Piracy was enough of a problem that some states entered into the redemption business. In Denmark:

At the beginning of the 18th century money was collected systematically in all churches, and a so called 'slave fund' (slavekasse) was established by the state in 1715. Funds were brought in through a compulsory insurance sum for seafarers. 165 slaves were ransomed by this institution between 1716 and 1736.[23]

Between 1716 and 1754 nineteen ships from Denmark-Norway were captured with 208 men; piracy was thus a serious problem for the Danish merchant fleet.[23]

During the American Revolutionary War, the pirates attacked American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean. However, on December 20, 1777, Sultan Mohammed III of Morocco issued a declaration recognizing America as an independent country, and stating that American merchant ships could enjoy safe passage into the Mediterranean and along the coast.[24] The relations were formalized with the Moroccan–American Treaty of Friendship signed in 1786, which stands as the U.S.'s oldest non-broken friendship treaty[25][26] with a foreign power.

Bombardment of Algiers by Lord Exmouth in August 1816, Thomas Luny

Until the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, British treaties with the North African states protected American ships from the Barbary corsairs. Morocco, which in 1777 was the first independent nation to publicly recognize the United States, in 1784 became the first Barbary power to seize an American vessel after the nation achieved independence. The Barbary threat led directly to the United States founding the United States Navy in March 1794. While the United States did secure peace treaties with the Barbary states, it was obliged to pay tribute for protection from attack. The burden was substantial: from 1795, the annual tribute paid to the Regency of Algiers amounted to 20% of United States federal government's annual expenditures.[27]

In 1798, an islet near Sardinia was attacked by the Tunisians, and more than 900 inhabitants were taken away as slaves.[28]

French bombardment of Algiers by Admiral Dupperé, 13 June 1830

The Barbary states had difficulty securing uniform compliance with a total prohibition of slave-raiding, as this had been traditionally of central importance to the North African economy. Slavers continued to take captives by preying on less well-protected peoples. Algiers subsequently renewed its slave-raiding, though on a smaller scale. Europeans at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818 discussed possible retaliation. In 1824 a British fleet under Admiral Sir Harry Burrard Neale bombarded Algiers. Corsair activity based in Algiers did not entirely cease until France conquered the state in 1830.[11]

At night the slaves were put into prisons called 'bagnios' (derived from the Italian word "bagno" for public bath, inspired by the Turks' use of Roman baths at Constantinople as prisons),[30] which were often hot and overcrowded. Bagnios had chapels, hospitals, shops and bars run by captives.[31]

Conquest of Tunis by Charles V and liberation of Christian galley slaves in 1535

Although the conditions in bagnios were harsh, they were better than those endured by galley slaves. Most Barbary galleys were at sea for around eighty to a hundred days a year, but when the slaves assigned to them were on land, they were forced to do hard manual labor. There were exceptions:

galley slaves of the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople would be permanently confined to their galleys, and often served extremely long terms, averaging around nineteen years in the late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century periods. These slaves rarely got off the galley but lived there for years.[32]

During this time, rowers were shackled and chained where they sat, and never allowed to leave. Sleeping (which was limited), eating, defecation and urination took place at the seat to which they were shackled. There were usually five or six rowers on each oar. Overseers would walk back and forth and whip slaves considered not to be working hard enough.

According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries.[33][34] However, to extrapolate his numbers, Davis assumes the number of European slaves captured by Barbary pirates were constant for a 250-year period, stating:

There are no records of how many men, women and children were enslaved, but it is possible to calculate roughly the number of fresh captives that would have been needed to keep populations steady and replace those slaves who died, escaped, were ransomed, or converted to Islam. On this basis it is thought that around 8,500 new slaves were needed annually to replenish numbers—about 850,000 captives over the century from 1580 to 1680. By extension, for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000.[5]

Slave market in Algiers, 1684

Historians welcomed Davis's attempt to quantify the number of European slaves, but were divided as to the accuracy of the unorthodox methodology which he relied on in the absence of written records. The historian David Earle, author of The Corsairs of Malta and Barbary and The Pirate Wars, questioned Davis, saying "His figures sound a bit dodgy and I think he may be exaggerating." He cautioned that the true picture of European slaves is clouded by the fact that the corsairs also seized non-Christian whites from eastern Europe and black people from west Africa. He wouldn't "hazard a guess about their total". Professor Ian Blanchard, an expert on African trade and economic history at the University of Edinburgh, said that Davis's work was solid and that a number over a million was in line with his expectations.[5]

Davis notes that his calculations were based on observers reports of approximately 35,000 European Christian slaves on the Barbary Coast at any one time during the late 1500s and early 1600s, held in Tripoli, Tunis and, mostly, Algiers.[35]

The history of Muslim enslavement of white Europeans has been cited by some as contextualising the importance of subsequent European and American enslavement of blacks. Scholar Robert Davis noted that the larger picture isn't so one-sided: during a "clash of empires... taking slaves was part of the conflict," and at the same time 2 million Europeans were enslaved by Muslims in North Africa and the Near East, 1 million Muslim slaves in Europe.[36]

As Dr. John Callow at University of Suffolk notes, the experience of enslavement by the Barbary pirates preceded the Atlantic slave trade and "the memory of slavery, and the methodology of slaving, that was burned into the British consciousness was first and foremost rooted in a North African context, where Britons were more likely to be slaves than slave masters."[37]

Coat of arms of the town of Almuñécar, granted by King Charles V in 1526, showing the turbaned heads of three Barbary pirates floating in the sea

The most famous of the corsairs in North Africa were the Barbarossa brothers, Aruj and Khayr al-Din. They, and two less well-known brothers all became Barbary corsairs in the service of the Ottoman Empire; they were called the Barbarossas (Italian for Redbeards) after the red beard of Oruç, the eldest. Oruç captured the island of Djerba for the Ottoman Empire in 1502 or 1503. He often attacked Spanish territories on the coast of North Africa; during one failed attempt in 1512 he lost his left arm to a cannonball. The eldest Barbarossa also went on a rampage through Algiers in 1516, and captured the town with the help of the Ottoman Empire. He executed the ruler of Algiers and everybody he suspected would oppose him, including local rulers. He was finally captured and killed by the Spanish in 1518, and put on display.

Ottoman admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa

Oruç, based mainly on land, was not the best-known of the Barbarossas. His youngest brother Hızır (later called Hayreddin or Kheir ed-Din) was a more traditional corsair. After capturing many crucial coastal areas, Hayreddin was appointed admiral-in-chief of the Ottoman sultan's fleet. Under his command the Ottoman Empire was able to gain and keep control of the Mediterranean for over thirty years. Barbaros Hızır Hayreddin Pasha died in 1546 of a fever, possibly the plague.

English corsair Jack, or John, Ward was once called "beyond doubt the greatest scoundrel that ever sailed from England" by the English ambassador to Venice. Ward was a privateer for Queen Elizabeth during her war with Spain; after the end of the war, he became a corsair. With some associates he captured a ship in about 1603 and sailed it to Tunis; he and his crew converted to Islam. He was successful and became rich. He introduced heavily armed square-rigged ships, used instead of galleys, to the North African area, a major reason for the Barbary's future dominance of the Mediterranean. He died of plague in 1622.

Sayyida al-Hurra was a female Muslim cleric, merchant, governor of Tétouan, and later the wife of the sultan of Morocco.[38][39] She was born around 1485 in the Emirate of Granada, but was forced to flee to Morocco when she was very young to escape the Reconquista. In Morocco, she gathered a crew largely of exiled Moors, and launched pirate expeditions against Spain and Portugal to avenge the Reconquista, protect Morocco from Christian pirates, and seek riches and glory. Sayyida al-Hurra became wealthy and renowned enough for the Sultan of Morocco, Ahmad al-Wattasi to make her his queen. Notably, however, she refused to marry in his capital of Fez, and would not get married but in Tétouan, of which she was governor. This was the first and only time in history that a Moroccan monarch had married away from his capital.

Hamidou ben Ali , known as Raïs Hamidou (Arabic: الرايس حميدو), or Amidon in American literature, born around 1770, and died on June 17, 1815, near Cape Gata off the coast of southern Spain, was an Algerian corsair.[40] He captured up to 200 ships during his career.[41] Hamidou ensured the prosperity of the Deylik of Algiers, and gave it its last glory before the French invasion. His biography is relatively well known because the French archivist Albert Devoulx has found important documents, including a precious register of prizes opened by the authorities of the Deylik in 1765.[42] Songs and legends have also taken hold of this charismatic character.

• Kemal Reis (c. 1451–1511)
• Mohamed Ben Hassan
• Muhammad I Pasha (c. 1688-1784)
• Hasan Pasha (c.1517-1572)
• Gedik Ahmed Pasha (died 1482)
• Sinan Reis (died 1546)
• Piri Reis (died 1554 or 1555)
• Turgut Reis (1485–1565)
• Sinan Pasha (died 1553)
• Kurtoğlu Muslihiddin Reis (1487–c. 1535)
• Kurtoğlu Hızır Reis
• Salih Reis (c. 1488–1568)
• Seydi Ali Reis (1498–1563)
• Piyale Pasha (c. 1515–1578)
• Raïs Hamidou (1773–1815)
• Uluç Ali Reis (1519–1587)
• Ali Bitchin (c. 1560–1645)
• Simon de Danser or Simon Reis (c. 1579–c. 1611)
• Ivan-Dirkie de Veenboer or Sulayman Reis (died 1620)
• Murat Reis the Elder (c. 1534–1638)
• Jan Janszoon or Murat Reis the Younger (c. 1570–after 1641)