Barbary pirates

The Barbary pirates, sometimes called Barbary corsairs or Ottoman corsairs, were and  s and s who operated from, based primarily in the ports of , , , , and. This area was known in as the, a term derived from the name of its  inhabitants. Their predation extended throughout the, south along 's seaboard and into the  as far north as , but they primarily operated in the western Mediterranean. In addition to seizing, they engaged in , raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands, and as far away as Iceland. The main purpose of their attacks was for the  as well as the general  in North Africa and the Middle East. Slaves in Barbary could be black, brown or white, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish or Muslim.

While such raids had occurred since soon after the Muslim conquest of Iberia in the 8th century, the terms "Barbary pirates" and "Barbary corsairs" are normally applied to the raiders active from the 16th century onwards, when the frequency and range of the slavers' attacks increased. In that period Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli came under the sovereignty of the, either as directly administered provinces or as autonomous dependencies known as the. Similar raids were undertaken from and other ports in.

Barbary corsairs captured thousands of merchant ships and repeatedly raided coastal towns. As a result, residents abandoned their former villages of long stretches of coast in Spain and Italy. Between 100,000 and 250,000 Iberians were enslaved by these raids.

The raids were such a problem coastal settlements were seldom undertaken until the 19th century. Between 1580 and 1680 corsairs were said to have captured about 850,000 people as slaves and from 1530 to 1780 as many as 1,250,000 people were enslaved. However, these numbers have been questioned by the historian David Earle. Some of these corsairs were European outcasts and (renegade) such as  and. and, Turkish Barbarossa Brothers, who took control of Algiers on behalf of the Ottomans in the early 16th century, were also notorious corsairs. The European pirates brought advanced sailing and shipbuilding techniques to the Barbary Coast around 1600, which enabled the corsairs to extend their activities into the. The effects of the Barbary raids peaked in the early to mid-17th century.

Long after Europeans had abandoned -driven vessels in favor of sailing ships carrying tons of powerful cannon, many Barbary warships were s carrying a hundred or more fighting men armed with es and small arms. The Barbary navies were not battle fleets. When they sighted a European, they fled.

The scope of corsair activity began to diminish in the latter part of the 17th century, as the more powerful European navies started to compel the Barbary States to make peace and cease attacking their shipping. However, the ships and coasts of Christian states without such effective protection continued to suffer until the early 19th century. Following the and the  in 1814–15, European powers agreed upon the need to suppress the Barbary corsairs entirely and the threat was largely subdued. Occasional incidents occurred, including two between the  and the Barbary States, until finally terminated by the  in 1830.

History
In 1198 the problem of Berber piracy and slave-taking was so great that the, 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 "". exiles of the 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  in 1487 that the Barbary corsairs became a true menace to shipping from European Christian nations.

During the the pirates attacked American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean. But, on December 20, 1777,  issued a declaration recognizing America as an independent country, and that American merchant ships could enjoy safe passage into the Mediterranean and along the coast. The relations were formalized with the signed in 1786, which stands as the U.S.'s oldest non-broken friendship  with a foreign power.

As late as 1798, an islet near was attacked by the, and more than 900 inhabitants were taken away as slaves.

16th century
From 1659, these African cities, 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 s, including and, who upon  turned to attacking the Spanish Empire's shipping under the Ottoman flag, a profitable strategy of revenge for the 's.

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  or bey.

In 1544 Hayreddin captured the island of, taking 4,000 prisoners, and enslaved some 2,000–7,000 inhabitants of. In 1551 enslaved the entire population of the Maltese island of, between 5,000 and 6,000, sending them to. In 1554 corsairs under Turgut Reis sacked, beheaded 5,000 of its inhabitants, and abducted another 6,000.

17th century
A notable counter action occurred in 1607, when the (under ) sacked  in Algeria, killing 470 and taking 1,464 captives. This victory is commemorated by a series of frescoes painted by in the "Sala di Bona" of,. In 1611 Spanish galleys from, accompanied by the galleys of the , raided the off the coast of  and took away almost 500 Muslim captives. 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.

was subject to a similar attack. In June 1631 Murat Reis, with corsairs from Algiers and armed troops of the, stormed ashore at the little harbor village of. They and took them away to a life of slavery in North Africa. 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 in harems or within the walls of the sultan's palace. Only two of these captives ever returned to Ireland.

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.

In 1675 a squadron led by  negotiated a lasting peace with Tunis and, after bombarding the city to induce compliance, with Tripoli.

18th–19th centuries
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." "Between 1716 and 1754 19 ships from Denmark-Norway were captured with 208 men; piracy was thus a serious problem for the Danish merchant fleet."

Until the in 1776,  treaties with the  states protected American ships from the  corsairs. , which in 1777 was, 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 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: in 1800 payments in ransom and tribute to the Barbary states amounted to 20% of 's annual expenditures.

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 in 1818 discussed possible retaliation. In 1820 a British fleet under Admiral Sir Harry Neal bombarded Algiers. Corsair activity based in Algiers did not entirely cease until France.

Barbary slaves
According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in and  between the 16th and 19th centuries. 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."

Davis' numbers have been questioned by the historian David Earle, who said of Davis' numbers "His figures sound a bit dodgy and I think he may be exaggerating" and 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.

In addition, the number of slaves traded was hyperactive, with exaggerated estimates relying on peak years to calculate averages for entire centuries, or millennia. Hence, there were wide fluctuations year-to-year, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, given slave imports, and given the fact that, prior to the 1840s, there are no consistent records. Middle East expert, John Wright, cautions that modern estimates are based on back-calculations from human observation.

Such observations, across the late 1500s and early 1600s observers, account for around 35,000 European Christian slaves held throughout this period on the Barbary Coast, across Tripoli, Tunis, but mostly in Algiers. The majority were sailors (particularly those who were English), taken with their ships, but others were fishermen and poor coastal villagers. However, most of these captives were people from lands close to Africa, particularly Spain and Italy.

From bases on the Barbary coast, North Africa, the Barbary pirates raided ships traveling through the Mediterranean and along the northern and western coasts of Africa, plundering their cargo and enslaving the people they captured. From at least 1500, the pirates also conducted raids along seaside towns of Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, England, the Netherlands and as far away as Iceland, capturing men, women and children. On some occasions, settlements such as, were abandoned following the raid, only being resettled many years later. Between 1609 and 1616, England alone had 466 merchant ships lost to Barbary pirates.

Captives often suffered from privation on voyages to North Africa if taken at a distance. Those who survived the journeys were often forced to walk through town as they were taken to slave auctions. The slaves typically had to stand from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon while buyers viewed them. Next came the auction, where the townspeople would bid on the captives they wanted to purchase and once that was over, the governor of Algiers (the Dey) had the chance to purchase any slave he wanted for the price they were sold at the auction. During the auctions the slaves would be forced to run and jump around to show their strength and stamina. After purchase, the captives would either be held for ransom, or be put to work. Slaves were used for a wide variety of jobs, from hard manual labor to housework (the job assigned to most women slaves). At night the slaves were put into prisons called 's ' (derived from the Italian word "bagno" for public bath, inspired by the Turks' use of Roman baths at Constantinople as prisons), which were often hot and overcrowded. However, these bagnios began improving by the 18th century. Some bagnios had chapels, hospitals, shops, and bars run by captives, though such amenities remained uncommon.

Galley slaves
Although the conditions in bagnios were harsh, they were better than those endured by 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." 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.

Famous Barbary corsairs
According to historian, the most notorious corsairs were English and European renegades who had learned their trade as s, and who moved to the Barbary Coast during peacetime to pursue their trade. These outcasts brought up-to-date naval expertise to the piracy business, and enabled the corsairs to make long-distance slave-catching raids as far away as and. The English corsair later returned to England after gaining a royal pardon. He was knighted, elected to Parliament, and appointed a vice admiral of the Royal Navy.

Oruç Barbarossa
The most famous of the corsairs in North Africa were Albanian/Greek brothers Oruç and Hızır Hayreddin. 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.

Hızır 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. He was a capable engineer and spoke at least six languages. He dyed the hair of his head and beard with to redden it like Oruç's. 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 eastern Mediterranean for over thirty years. Barbaros Hızır Hayreddin Pasha died in 1546 of a fever, possibly the plague.

Captain Jack Ward
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. He was successful and became rich. He introduced heavily armed, 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
Sayyida al-Hurra was a female cleric, merchant, governor of, and later the wife of the sultan of. She was born around 1485 in the, but was forced to flee to Morocco when she was very young to escape the. In Morocco, she gathered a crew largely of exiled, and launched pirate expeditions against Spain and Portugal to avenge the Reconquista, protect Morocco from Christian pirates, and seek riches and glory. She co-founded the Barbary Corsairs with her allies the Barbarossa brothers, who divided the Mediterranean between them—the Barbarossas and their Ottoman fleet operating in the, and Sayyida al-Hurra and her Moorish and North-African pirates operating in the. Sayyida al-Hurra became wealthy and renowned enough for the Sultan of Morocco, to make her his queen. Notably, however, she refused to marry in his capital of, 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.

Other famous Barbary corsairs

 * (c. 1451–1511)
 * (died 1482)
 * (died 1546)
 * (died 1554 or 1555)
 * (1485–1565)
 * (died 1553)
 * (1487–c. 1535)
 * (c. 1488–1568)
 * (1498–1563)
 * (c. 1515–1578)
 * (1773–1815)
 * (1519–1587)
 * (c. 1560–1645)
 * or Simon Reis (c. 1579–c. 1611)
 * or Sulayman Reis (died 1620)
 * (c. 1534–1638)
 * (c. 1570–after 1641)
 * (c. 1570–after 1641)

In fiction
Barbary corsairs are protagonists in  (the panthers of Algiers) by. They were featured in a number of other noted novels, including ' by, ' by , ' by , ' and the Sword of Islam by , ' by , ' by , the ' by , ' by , ' by , ' by and  by. , the Spanish author, was captive for five years as a slave in the ' of Algiers, and reflected his experience in some of his fictional (but not directly autobiographical) writings, including the Captive's tale in ', his two plays set in Algiers, El Trato de Argel (The Treaty of Algiers) and Los Baños de Argel (The Baths of Algiers), and episodes in a number of other works. In 's opera  (a ), two European ladies are discovered in a Turkish harem, presumably captured by Barbary corsairs. 's opera  is based on the capture of several slaves by Barbary corsairs led by the of.

One of the stereotypical features of a pirate as portrayed in popular culture, the, may have been partially derived from the corsair , who wore a patch after losing an eye in battle in the 18th century.