Hi, I’m the History Guy. I have a degree in history and I love history,
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Pirates. They're both the stuff of legend and of history. They have been both romanticized and
villainized. They have plied the world's oceans since almost as soon as humans went to sea,
and they still plague the world's oceans today. But piracy is not a normal crime. Throughout
history piracy has been less an act of petty thievery, and more an act of economic warfare,
engaged by the world's great powers. And no group of pirates in history have been more
successful at that economic warfare, than the Barbary pirates. Rising in the 16th century as
the Ottoman Empire came to dominate the North African ports of Algeria, Tripoli, and Tunis,
the Barbary pirates were the scourge of Europe. They captured thousands of ships,
raided as far north as Iceland, and in a 300 year period, took more than one and a quarter million
people into slavery. And among the Barbary pirates one name rises above the rest. The
greatest pirate in history, the pirate who changed Europe, Hayreddin Barbarossa, The Pirate King.
The history of conflict between Christian Europe and the Muslim world dates back to
the early Muslim conquests in the 7th century AD. In the century following the death of the
Prophet Muhammad, Muslim conquests had created a Caliphate that spanned nearly
5 million square miles, from the borders of China to the Iberian Peninsula. It was the
largest empire in history to that time, 3 times larger than the Roman Empire at its height. This
created a conflict with Christian Europe that spanned centuries. The so-called Reconquista,
the effort by the armies of Christendom to retake the Iberian Peninsula for example,
took 780 years. Between 1096 and 1272 Christian Europe engaged in nine major Crusades to the
Holy Land, in brutal wars of religion that cost millions of lives. But the nature of the conflict
changed during the 14th century with the rise of the new and powerful Turkish Ottoman Empire,
which became a transcontinental Empire with the conquest of the Balkans in the 1350s.
And defeated the Byzantine Empire, the last vestige of Rome, under Sultan Mehmed
the conqueror in 1453. The Ottoman Empire reached its apex in the sixteenth century, under the great
Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, facilitated by his great Admiral, Hayreddin Barbarossa.
Born in 1478 and originally named Hizir, the future admiral was a product of the Ottoman
Wars. Born on a Turkish occupied Greek island, his father was an Ottoman knight of Albanian descent
who had been granted land, after helping to conquer the island, in 1462. His father became a
successful maker of pottery, and bought a merchant fleet to go sell his wares, and all four of his
sons had become seamen, engaging in international trade, and later piracy. Privateering against the
Christian Knights of St. John, then operating out of their stronghold on the Isle of Rhodes. This
was a period where privateers, state-sanctioned pirates, were commonly used as a form of economic
warfare on both sides. In fact, piracy in the time was largely conducted using galleys,
which were frequently rowed by slaves that had been captured in pirate raids.
The family were first victims of pirates themselves. One brother was killed,
and the oldest brother Aruj was captured when privateers of the Knights of St. John captured
their father's merchant vessel. Of course all good stories begin with being captured by
pirates. Eventually Hizir helped Aruj escape and the two became privateers themselves,
eventually becoming some of the most successful pirates of their era.
Under the patronage of an Ottoman prince, from 1503 to 1516 they raided across the Mediterranean,
capturing dozens of ships from as far away as England. In true pirate form Aruj lost an arm,
and replaced it with a silver prosthetic, earning the name “Gumus Kol” or “Silver Arm” in turkish.
But it was another name that would become much more famous. While helping to evacuate Muslim
refugees, Aruj became called by the name “Baba Aruj”, which means Father Aruj. But
in Europe where the brothers already had a great reputation as pirates, that was misunderstood to
be Barbarossa, Italian for “Red Beard”. As all three brothers had red beards, the name stuck.
Their fortunes took another turn in 1516. The Emir of Algiers asked for their help in expelling
Spain which was encroaching on his kingdom. The brothers defeated not just the Spanish,
but the Emir, whom they felt had conspired with Spain. And Aruj
was proclaimed the Sultan of Algiers. The pirate brothers had become kings.
When Aruj was killed fighting the Spanish in 1517, Hizir took over his title, and his name,
Barbarossa. To protect his new territory he sought the support of the Ottoman Empire,
and Algiers became an Ottoman province. Conflict with Spain continued until 1529,
but Algeria would become an Ottoman state, and the main base of the Barbary pirates
until the French conquest of Algeria 300 years later. Hizir offered his
vast pirate fleet to the service of the new Ottoman Emperor, Suleiman the Magnificent,
who gave Hizir the honorary name “Hayreddin” meaning, “Best of Islam”.
The pirate king continued to be the scourge of Europe, and used Algiers as a base in his conflict
with Spain. In 1533 he changed the world when he was sent as an emissary to King Francis the First
of France, famously giving the King a present of a live African lion, which became known as the Lion
of Barbarossa. The embassy would lead, three years later, to an alliance between Christian France and
the Islamic Ottoman Empire, commonly called in Europe, “The Unholy Alliance”. The alliance,
based on shared opposition to the Habsburg Empire, would become one of the longest lasting,
and most influential alliances of Europe. And would endure for two and a half centuries.
Now allied with France, Hayreddin Barbarossa became such a thorn in the side of the Habsburg
Empire, that the Holy Roman Emperor himself, Charles the Fifth, tried to bribe Hayreddin
to switch sides. Hayreddin responded by beheading the agent who carried the offer.
As Hayreddin and his fleets helped to capture the islands of the Mediterranean from European
kingdoms, and as Suleiman besieged Vienna itself, the Pope, Paul the Third, put together a Holy
League, combining the fleet's of the papacy. Spain, the Habsburgs, the Republic of Venice
and the Knights of Malta, under the command of the famous Genoese Admiral Andrea Doria. Hayreddin led
the Ottoman fleet against the Holy League fleet in the Aegean Sea, near the great town of Preveza,
on September 28th,1538. Despite being outnumbered more than two to one, Hayreddin outmaneuvered
Andrea Doria’s fleet, leveraging his more mobile galleys, he defeated the Alliance,
sinking 10 ships and capturing 36 more without the loss of a single Ottoman ship. The victory was
decisive. Hayreddin captured most of the remaining Mediterranean islands under European control in
the next year, and the Republic of Venice was forced to sue for peace. Because of Preveza,
the Ottoman fleets would militarily dominate the Mediterranean for the next 30 years.
Barbarossa would continue to be the Scourge of the Mediterranean, defeating European fleets,
raiding and capturing European cities, and strongholds. He retired in 1545 to write his
memoirs and died peacefully in 1546. He is entombed in a tomb in Istanbul, next to the
Istanbul naval museum. The Ottoman Empire would continue to be one of the world's most powerful
navies clear until the 19th century; they were the third largest Navy in the world as late as
1875. Barbarossa's Kingdom, Algeria endured long enough to fight two wars with the United States,
in 1801 and again in 1815, before finally being conquered by the French in 1847. But it was in
the 16th century, under the great ruler Suleiman the Magnificent, that the Ottoman Empire would be
at the height of its power. And much of that success was due to his great Admiral. At one
time commanding more than 200 ships, and feared throughout Christendom. Hayreddin Barbarossa,
The Dread Pirate Red Beard was without peer, the greatest pirate in history.
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