The Battle of Preveza 1538

In the eastern Mediterranean the dominant development of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries was the rise and deployment of Ottoman power. We have already seen how, beginning in Anatolia, it had spread into the Balkan provinces of the Byzantine empire, encircling and finally capturing Constantinople in 1453. From there on, its progress into Greece and the Aegean islands, and up the Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic, brought it at once into conflict with Venice, which could only be successfully pursued by turning itself into a naval as well as a military power. Sultan Bayezid II (1481–1512) accordingly set in motion an ambitious programme of naval construction, which established Ottoman supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean and lasted through most of the sixteenth century. The conquest of Egypt and Syria by his successor, Selim, was the most spectacular result of this policy, but by no means the only one. The Knights of St John had already been driven from Rhodes, and an Ottoman enclave established on the mainland of Italy at Otranto. Add to these naval exploits the land victories of Suleyman the Magnificent in Serbia and Hungary and his threat to the eastern half of the Habsburg empire by laying siege in 1529 to Vienna, and there could be no doubt that Ottoman advances in the eastern Mediterranean would lead on to others in the west. The security of the Iberian peninsula, along with that of southern Italy, Sicily and the other Mediterranean islands, was at stake.

In so serious a conflict the whole of the African coastline of the Mediterranean had necessarily to be involved, and it was inevitable that Hafsid Ifriqiya, with its strategic position at the narrows of the sea, would suffer interference from both sides. Indeed, Spain, following its conquest of Granada in 1492, had already moved to forestall a Muslim counterattack by occupying and placing garrisons (presidios) in several of the main harbours of North Africa, including Bijaya and Tripoli, at either end of the Ifriqiyan coastline. These operations were carried out between 1496 and 1511. Meanwhile, as early as 1504 a band of Turkish corsairs, acting initially under licence from the Hafsid ruler Muhammad ibn al-Hasan (1493–1526), established a base in the great harbour of Tunis at Goletta, from which they conducted highly successful privateering operations against Christian shipping passing through the narrows, and raided for booty and captives in the fishing villages of Sicily and southern Italy. The leaders were three brothers, Turkish Muslims from the recently conquered Aegean island of Lesbos, of whom the two elder ones were called Aruj and Khayr al-Din. They shared their booty with the ruler, and as the number of their ships and crews increased, he authorised them to open a second base on the offshore island of Jerba in the southwestern corner of the Gulf of Sirte and within easy reach of the Spanish presidio near Tripoli. Next, in 1512, still working closely with the Hafsid ruler, ‘Aruj led the first of several unsuccessful expeditions to Bijaya, where the Spaniards had driven out the Hafsid governor and planted a garrison of their own. After failing at Bijaya, the brothers responded in 1516 to an appeal from the inhabitants of Algiers, then only an insignificant fishing port in the neighbouring state of Tlemcen, for help in ridding themselves of the Spanish garrison recently planted on an offshore island called the Peñon, which faced their harbour. Here, it could be said that the brothers, in accepting, crossed the always narrow boundary between piracy and imperialism. From their toe-hold in Algiers they inevitably became involved in the politics of Tlemcen, in which they held no licence from the local Zayyanid ruler to intervene. In 1518 ‘Aruj was driven out and killed by a combined force of Spaniards and Zayyanids. Thereafter, Khayr al-Din, nicknamed Barbarossa, ‘the redbeard’, by his Spanish foes, declared a jihad against the Spaniards. He appealed to the Ottoman sultan for military help, placing himself under his protection and receiving in return the Ottoman title of pasha and the military rank of beylerbey (commander-in-chief) in respect of the force of Turkish janissaries, armed with muskets and cannon, which were sent to his aid.

Although initially forced to retreat from Algiers, Khayr al-Din gradually built up a successful bridgehead a little further to the east, at Jijilli. From there, he returned to capture Algiers in 1525, occupying first the town and then the Spanish fortress on the Peñon. By building a causeway between the Peñon and the mainland he created a nearly impregnable harbour, which was to become the main Ottoman naval base in the western Mediterranean and the headquarters of an extensive and profitable corsairing enterprise. Territorially, his dominions now comprised the coastline of eastern Algeria and the island base of Jerba in the Gulf of Sirte. In between lay the crumbling state of the Hafsids. However, his contribution to the whole momentum of Ottoman maritime expansion in the Mediterranean was so highly appreciated by the Porte (the English name for the Ottoman government) that in 1533 he was summoned to Istanbul and appointed by Sultan Suleyman as high admiral of all the Ottoman fleets. Acting from this position, which he held for the next thirteen years, he was able to send a fleet of eighty-four ships to capture Tunis briefly for the Ottomans. But the Turkish garrison there was soon ejected by the Spaniards, who restored the Hafsid sultanate, which endured, but with steadily diminishing significance, for another forty years. Meantime, the main theatre of Ottoman expansion had moved west to Algiers, where Khayr al- Din’s fleet successfully resisted a mighty assault by the Spaniards in 1541, which was said to have consisted of 500 ships, carrying an invasion force of 24,000 men. The expedition was commanded by the Emperor Charles V in person, who lost one-third of his ships and himself narrowly escaped capture.

The successful defence of Algiers in 1541 marked the high point of Ottoman naval power in the Mediterranean. It marked also the beginnings of Ottoman imperial rule in North Africa. It meant that beylerbeys were henceforth regularly appointed from Istanbul to command the Algiers government in succession to the more personal and territorially indeterminate command given to Khayr al- Din. It meant the steady development of Algiers into a capital city which rapidly eclipsed that of the Zayyanid sultans of Tlemcen, who now became politically dependent on the Ottoman beylerbeys. Not least, it set the pattern of Ottoman overrule in the rest of their North African dependencies. Following Khayr al-Din’s death in 1546, he was succeeded as high admiral by Sinan Pasha, who in 1551 laid siege to the fortress of Tripoli and drove out the Knights of St John, who had replaced the Spanish garrison. A famous corsair captain named Dragut was appointed governor of the town, and soon developed it into the capital of an Ottoman province comparable to that of Algiers. The political authority of the Hafsids of Tunis over Tripoli was simply ignored. Under Dragut’s rule corsairs from Tripoli relentlessly raided the coasts of Sicily and southern Italy. The Spaniards, as the rulers of Sicily and Naples, attempted a counterattack on Tripoli, but were ignominiously defeated. The Ottomans in their turn suffered a parallel reverse in 1565 in their attempt to capture Malta, when an Ottoman expeditionary force of 20,000, led by Dragut and the Ottoman admiral, ‘Uluj ‘Ali, was successfully resisted by a handful of Knights. In 1571 the Ottoman navy suffered a far more serious disaster when 230 of its ships, assembled for the invasion of Cyprus, were surprised in their winter quarters in the Gulf of Lepanto by the combined navies of Spain and Venice, and all but thirty were lost. Nevertheless, in 1573 and 1574 ‘Uluj ‘Ali, with the help of Sinan Pasha, was able to achieve the definitive capture of Tunis and so put an end to Hafsid rule. At last, in 1581, Spain and the Ottomans signed a truce which effectively ended their Mediterranean contest.