The Story of the Barbary Corsairs Part 1

The Story of the Barbary Corsairs.

by Stanley Lane-Poole and Lieut. J. D. Jerrold Kelley.

I.

THE REVENGE OF THE MOORS.

For more than three centuries the trading nations of Europe were suffered to pursue their commerce or forced to abandon their gains at the bidding of pirates. From the days when Barbarossa defied the whole strength of the Emperor Charles V., to the early part of the present century, when prizes were taken by Algerine rovers under the guns, so to say, of all the fleets of Europe, the Corsairs were masters of the narrow seas, and dictated their own terms to all comers. Nothing but the creation of the large standing navies of the present age crippled them; nothing less than the conquest of their too convenient coasts could have thoroughly suppressed them. During those three centuries they levied blackmail upon all who had any trading interest in the Mediterranean. The Venetians, Genoese, Pisans in older days; the English, French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and American Governments in modern times, purchased security by the payment of a regular tribute, or by the periodical presentation of costly gifts. The penalty of resistance was too well known to need exemplification; thousands of Christian slaves in the bagnios at Algiers bore witness to the consequences of an independent policy. So long as the nations of Europe continued to quarrel among themselves, instead of presenting a united line of battle to the enemy, such humiliations had to be endured; so long as a Corsair raid upon Spain suited the policy of France; so long as the Dutch, in their jealousy of other states, could declare that Algiers was necessary to them; there was no chance of the plague subsiding; and it was not till the close of the great Napoleonic wars that the Powers agreed, at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, to act together, and do away with the scourge of Christendom. And even then little was accomplished till France combined territorial aggrandizement with the _role_ of a civilizing influence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GALLEON OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

(_Jurien de la Graviere._)]

There had been pirates in the Mediterranean long before the Turks took up the trade; indeed, ever since boats were built their capabilities for plunder must have been realized. The filibustering expedition of Jason and the loot of the Golden Fleece is an early instance, and the Greeks at all times have distinguished themselves by acting up to Jason's example by sea and land. The Moslems, however, were some time in accustoming themselves to the perils of the deep. At first they marvelled greatly at "those that go down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps, and have their business in great waters," but they did not hasten to follow them. In the early days of the conquest of Egypt the Khalif 'Omar wrote to his general and asked him what the sea was like, to which 'Amr made answer: "The Sea is a huge beast which silly folk ride like worms on logs;" whereupon, much distressed, the prudent Khalif gave orders that no Moslem should voyage on so unruly an element without his leave. But it soon became clear that if the Moslems were to hold their own with their neighbours (still more if they meant to hold their neighbours' own) they must learn how to navigate; and accordingly, in the first century of the Hijra, we find the Khalif 'Abd-el-Melik instructing his lieutenant in Africa to use Tunis as an a.r.s.enal and dockyard, and there to collect a fleet. From that time forward the Mohammedan rulers of the Barbary coast were never long without s.h.i.+ps of some sort. The Aghlabi princes sailed forth from Tunis, and took Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. The Fatimi Khalifs waged war with the navies of 'Abd-er-Rahman, the Great Khalif of Cordova, at a strength of two hundred vessels a side. The Almohades possessed a large and capacious fleet, in which they transported their armies to Spain, and their successors in North Africa, though less powerful, were generally able to keep up a number of vessels for offensive as well as commercial purposes.

During the later Middle Ages the relations between the rulers of the Barbary coast--the kings of Tunis, Tilimsan, Fez, &c.--and the trading nations of Christendom were amicable and just. Treaties show that both parties agreed in denouncing and (so far as they could) suppressing piracy and encouraging mutual commerce. It was not till the beginning of the sixteenth century that a change came over these peaceful conditions, and the way it happened was this.

When the united wisdom of Ferdinand and Isabella resolved on the expatriation of the Spanish Moors, they forgot the risk of an exile's vengeance.[1] No sooner was Granada fallen than thousands of desperate Moors left the land which for seven hundred years had been their home, and, disdaining to live under a Spanish yoke, crossed the strait to Africa, where they established themselves at various strong points, such as Shershel, Oran, and notably at Algiers, which till then had hardly been heard of. No sooner were the banished Moors fairly settled in their new seats than they did what anybody in their place would have done: they carried the war into their oppressors' country. To meet the Spaniards in the open field was impossible in their reduced numbers, but at sea their fleetness and knowledge of the coasts gave them the opportunity of reprisal for which they longed.

Science, tradition, and observation inform us that primitive man had certain affinities to the beast of prey. By superior strength or ingenuity he slew or snared the means of subsistence. Civilized man leaves the coa.r.s.est forms of slaughter to a professional cla.s.s, and, if he kills at all, elevates his pastime to the rank of sport by the refining element of skill and the excitement of uncertainty and personal risk. But civilized man is still only too p.r.o.ne to prey upon his fellows, though hardly in the brutal manner of his ancestors. He preys upon inferior intelligence, upon weakness of character, upon the greed and upon the gambling instinct of mankind. In the grandest scale he is called a financier; in the meanest, a pickpocket. This predatory spirit is at once so ancient and so general, that the reader, who is, of course, wholly innocent of such reprehensible tendencies, must nevertheless make an effort to understand the delights of robbery considered as a fine art. Some cynics there are who will tell us that the only reason we are not all thieves is because we have not pluck enough; and there must certainly be some fascination, apart from natural depravity or original sin, to make a man prefer to run countless risks in an unlawful pursuit sooner than do an honest day's work. And in this sentence we have the answer: It is precisely the risk, the uncertainty, the danger, the sense of superior skill and ingenuity, that attract the adventurous spirit, the pa.s.sion for sport, which is implanted in the vast majority of mankind.

Our Moorish robbers had all this, and more, to attract them. Brave and daring men they had shown themselves often before in their tussles with the Spaniards, or in their wild sea courses and harryings of Christian sh.o.r.es, in Sardinia, perhaps, or Provence; but now they pursued a quest alluring beyond any that had gone before, a righteous vengeance upon those who had banished them from house and home, and cast them adrift to find what new anchorage they might in the world--a Holy War against the slaughterers of their kith and kin, and the blasphemers of their sacred Faith. What joy more fierce and jubilant than to run the light brigantine down the beach of Algiers and man her for a cruise in Spanish waters? The little s.h.i.+p will hold but ten oars a side, each pulled by a man who knows how to fight as well as to row--as indeed he must, for there is no room for mere landsmen on board a _firkata_. But if there be a fair wind off the land, there will be little rowing; the big lateen sail on her one mast will span the narrow waters between the African coast and the Balearic Isles, where a convenient look-out may be kept for Spanish galleons or perhaps an Italian polacca. Drawing little water, a small squadron of brigantines could be pushed up almost any creek, or lie hidden behind a rock, till the enemy hove in sight. Then oars out, and a quick stroke for a few minutes, and they are alongside their unsuspecting prey, and pouring in their first volley. Then a scramble on board, a hand-to-hand scuffle, a last desperate resistance on the p.o.o.p, under the captain's canopy, and the prize is taken, the prisoners ironed, a jury crew sent on board, and all return in triumph to Algiers, where they are received with acclamations.

Or it might be a descent on the sh.o.r.es of their own beloved Andalusia.

Then the little vessels are run into the crevices between the rocks, or even buried in the sand, and the pirates steal inland to one of the villages they know so well, and the loss of which they will never cease to mourn. They have still friends a-many in Spain, who are willing enough to help them against the oppressor and to hide them when surprised. The sleeping Spaniards are roused and then grimly silenced by the points of swords; their wives and daughters are borne away on the shoulders of the invaders; everything valuable is cleared; and the rovers are soon sailing merrily into the roads at Algiers, laden with spoil and captives, and often with some of the persecuted remnant of their race, who thankfully rejoin their kinsmen in the new country. To wreak such vengeance on the Spaniard added a real zest to life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARAVEL OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

(_Jurien de la Graviere._)]

With all their skill and speed, their knowledge of the coasts, and the help of their compatriots ash.o.r.e, there was still the risk of capture.

Sometimes their brigantines "caught a Tartar" when they expected an easy victim, and then the Moors found the tables turned, and had to grace their captors' triumph, and for years, perhaps for ever, to sit on the banks of a Venetian or Genoese galley, heavily chained, pulling the infidel's oar even in the chase of the true believers, and gazing to satiety upon the weals which the lash kept raw on the bare back of the man in front. But the risk added a zest to the Corsair's life, and the captive could often look forward to the hope of recapture, or sometimes of ransom by his friends. The career of the pirate, with all its chances, was a prosperous one. The adventurers grew rich, and their strong places on the Barbary coast became populous and well garrisoned; and, by the time the Spaniards began to awake to the danger of letting such troublesome neighbours alone, the evil was past a cure. For twenty years the exiled Moors had enjoyed immunity, while the big Spanish galleys were obstinately held in port, contemptuous of so small a foe. At last Don Pedro Navarro was despatched by Cardinal Ximenes to bring the pirates to book. He had little difficulty in taking possession of Oran and Bujeya; and Algiers was so imperfectly fortified, that he imposed his own terms. He made the Algerines vow to renounce piracy; and, to see that they kept their word, he built and garrisoned a strong fort, the "Penon de Alger,"[2]

to stop their boats from sallying forth. But the Moors had still more than one strong post on the rocky promontories of Barbary, and having tasted the delights of chasing Spaniards, they were not likely to reform, especially as the choice lay between piracy and starvation.

Dig they would not, and they preferred to beg by force, like the "gentlemen of the road." So they bided their time, till Ferdinand the Catholic pa.s.sed away to his account, and then, in defiance of the Penon, and reckless of all the pains and penalties of Spanish retribution, they threw up their allegiance, and looked about for allies.

Help was not far off, though in this case it meant mastery. The day of the Moorish pirates was over; henceforth they might, and did, triumphantly a.s.sault and batter Spanish and Venetian s.h.i.+ps, but they would do this under the captaincy of the allies they had called in, under the leaders.h.i.+p of the Turkish Corsairs. The Moors had shown the way, and the Corsairs needed little bidding to follow it.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See S. Lane-Poole, _The Story of the Moors in Spain_, 232-280.

[2] Algiers is in Arabic, Al-Gezar ("the Islands"), said to be so called from that in its bay; or, more probably, Al-Gezar is a grammarian's explanation of the name Tzeyr or Tzier, by which the Algerians commonly called their city, and which is, I suspect, a corruption of the Roman city _Caesarea_ (Augusta), which occupied almost the same site. It should be remarked that the Algerians p.r.o.nounce the _gim_ hard: not Al-Jezair. Europeans spelt the name in all sorts of ways: Arger, Argel, Argeir, Algel, &c., down to the French Alger and our Algiers.

II.

THE LAND OF THE CORSAIRS.

It is time to ask how it was that a s.p.a.cious land seemed to lie vacant for the Corsairs to occupy, and a land too that offered almost every feature that a pirate could desire for the safe and successful prosecution of his trade. Geographers tell us that in climate and formation the island of Barbary, for such it is geologically, is really part of Europe, towards which, in history, it has played so unfriendly a part. Once the countries, which we now know as Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco, stood up abruptly as an island, with a comparatively small lake was.h.i.+ng its northern sh.o.r.e, and a huge ocean on the south (see the map). That ocean is now the _Sahra_ or Sahara, which engineers dream of again flooding with salt water, and so forming an inland African sea. The lake is now the Mediterranean, or rather its western basin, for we know that the Barbary island was once nearly a peninsula, joined at its two ends to Spain and Sicily, and that its Atlas ranges formed the connection between the Sierra Nevada and Mt. Aetna. By degrees the Isthmus between Cape Bona and Sicily sank out of sight, and the ocean flowed between Spain and Africa, while the great sea to the south dried up into the immense stony waste which is known preeminently as _the_ Sahra, the Desert, "a tract of land, bare as the back of a beast, without trees or mountains."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _After Bourguignat_ _Walker & Boutallsc._

THE BARBARY PENINSULA.

(_Elisee Reclus._)]

Through one or both of these narrow straits, Gibraltar and Malta, all vessels from the outer ocean bound for the ports of France and Italy and the Levant, were obliged to pa.s.s; and it must be remembered that just about the time when the Corsairs made their appearance in Barbary, the riches of the new-found Western world were beginning to pour through the straits to meet those of the East, which were brought to France and Spain, England and Holland, from Alexandria and Smyrna.

An immense proportion of the trade of Europe had to cross the western basin of the Mediterranean, of which Barbary formed the southern boundary. Any bold man who could hold Tunis at the eastern corner, or Algiers in the middle, or Ceuta or Tangiers at the western point, might reckon upon numerous opportunities of stopping argosies of untold wealth as they pa.s.sed by his lair. The situation seemed purposely contrived for Corsairs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MAP OF THE KINGDOMS OF BARBARY.

(_Voyages to Barbary for the Redemption of Captives, 1736._)]

More than this, the coast was just what a pirate wants. The map shows a series of natural harbours, often backed by lagunes which offer every facility for the escape of the rover from his pursuers; and while in the sixteenth century there were no deep ports for vessels of heavy draught, there were endless creeks, shallow harbours, and lagunes where the Corsairs' galleys (which never drew more than six feet of water) could take refuge. Behind Jerba, the fabled island of the Lotus-Eaters, was an immense inland sea, commanded in the Middle Ages by castles, and affording a refuge for which the rovers had often had cause to be grateful. Merchant vessels were shy of sailing in the dangerous Gulf of the Greater Syrtes with its heavy tides and spreading sandbanks, and even the war-galleys of Venice and Spain were at a disadvantage when manoeuvring in its treacherous eddies against the Corsair who knew every inch of the coast. Pa.s.sing westward, a famous medieval fortress, with the remains of a harbour, is seen at Mahdiya, the "Africa" of the chroniclers. Next, Tunis presents the finest harbour on all the Barbary coast; within its Goletta (or "Throat") a vessel is safe from all the winds that blow, and if a ca.n.a.l were cut to join it with the inland lake of Bizerta, a deep harbour would be formed big enough to hold all the s.h.i.+pping of the Mediterranean. The ancient ports of Carthage and Porto Farina offered more protection in the Corsairs' time than now when the sand has choked the coast; and in the autumn months a vessel needed all the shelter she could get when the Cyprian wind was blowing off Cape Bona.

Close to the present Algerine frontier is Tabarka, which the Lomellini family of Genoa found a thriving situation for their trading establishments. Lacalle, once a famous nest of pirates, had then a fine harbour, as the merchants of Ma.r.s.eilles discovered when they superintended the coral fisheries from the neighbouring Bastion de France. Bona, just beyond, has its roads, and formerly possessed a deep harbour. Jijil, an impregnable post, held successively by Phoenicians, Normans, Romans, Pisans, and Genoese, till Barbarossa got possession of it and made it a fortress of refuge for his Corsairs, stands on a rocky peninsula joined by a sandy isthmus to the mainland, with a port well sheltered by a natural breakwater. Further on were Bujeya (Bougie), its harbour well protected from the worst winds; Algiers, not then a port, but soon to become one; Shershel, with a harbour to be shunned in a heavy swell from the north, but otherwise a valuable nook for sea rovers; Tinnis, not always accessible, but safe when you were inside; and Oran, with the important harbour of Mars El-Kebir the "Portus Divinus" of the Romans; while beyond, the Jamia-el-Ghazawat or Pirates' Mosque, shows where a favourite creek offered an asylum between the Brothers Rocks for distressed Corsairs. Pa.s.sing Tangiers and Ceuta (Septa), and turning beyond the Straits, various shelters are found, and amongst others the celebrated ports of Sale, which, in spite of its bar of sand, managed to send out many mischievous craft to hara.s.s the argosies on their return from the New World.

Not only were there ports in abundance for the shelter of galleys, but the land behind was all that could be desired. River indeed there was none capable of navigation, but the very shortness of the watershed which precluded the possibility of great streams brought with it a counterbalancing advantage; for the mountains rise so steep and high near the coast that the Corsairs' look-out could sight the vessels to be attacked a long way out to sea, and thus give notice of a prize or warning of an enemy. Moreover the land produced all that was needed to content the heart of man. Below the mountains where the Berbers dwelt and the steppes where Arab shepherds roamed, fertile valleys spread to the seash.o.r.e. Jerba was a perfect garden of corn and fruit, vines, olives, almonds, apricots, and figs; Tunis stood in the midst of green fields, and deserved the t.i.tle of "the White, the Odoriferous, the Flowery Bride of the West,"--though, indeed, the second epithet, according to its inhabitants, was derived from the odour of the lake which received the drainage of the city, to which they ascribed its peculiar salubrity.

What more could be required in a land which was, now to become a nest of pirates? Yet, as though this were not sufficient, one more virtue was added. The coast was visited by terrible gales, which, while avoidable by those who had experience and knew where to run, were fatal to the unwary, and foiled many an attack of the avenging enemy.

It remains to explain how it was that the Corsairs were able to possess themselves of this convenient territory, which was neither devoid of inhabitants nor without settled governments.

North Africa--the only Africa known to the ancients--had seen many rulers come and go since the Arabs under Okba first overran its plains and valleys. Dynasty had succeeded dynasty; the Arab governors under the Khalifs of Damascus and Baghdad had made room for the Houses of Idris (A.D. 788) and Aghlab (800); these in turn had given way to the Fatimi Khalifs (909); and when these schismatics removed their seat of power from their newly founded capital of Mahdiya to their final metropolis of Cairo (968), their western empire speedily split up into the several princedoms of the Zeyris of Tunis, the Beni Hammad of Tilimsan, and other minor governments. At the close of the eleventh century, the Murabits or Almoravides, a Berber dynasty, imposed their authority over the greater part of North Africa and Spain, but gave place in the middle of the twelfth to the Muwahhids or Almohades, whose rule extended from the Atlantic to Tunis, and endured for over a hundred years. On the ruins of their vast empire three separate and long-lived dynasties sprang up: the Beni Hafs in Tunis (1228-1534), the Beni Ziyan in Central Maghrib (1235-1400), and the Beni Merin in Morocco (1200-1550). To complete the chronology it may be added that these were succeeded in the sixteenth century by the Corsair Pashas (afterwards Deys) of Algiers, the Turkish Pashas or Beys of Tunis, and the Sherifs or Emperors of Morocco. The last still continue to reign; but the Deys of Algiers have given place to the French, and the Bey of Tunis is under French tutelage.

Except during the temporary excitement of a change of dynasty, the rule of these African princes was generally mild and enlightened. They came, for the most part, of the indigenous Berber population, and were not naturally disposed to intolerance or unneighbourliness. The Christians kept their churches, and were suffered to wors.h.i.+p unmolested. We read of a Bishop of Fez as late as the thirteenth century, and the Kings of Morocco and Tunis were usually on friendly terms with the Pope. Christians were largely enrolled in the African armies, and were even appointed to civil employments. The relations of the rulers of Barbary with the European States throughout the greater part of this period--from the eleventh century, when the fighting Fatimis left Tunis and went eastward to Egypt, to the sixteenth, when the fighting Turks came westward to molest the peace of the Mediterranean--were eminently wise and statesmanlike. The Africans wanted many of the industries of Europe; Europe required the skins and raw products of Africa: and a series of treaties involving a principle of reciprocity was the result. No doubt the naval inferiority of the African States to the trading Republics of the Mediterranean was a potent factor in bringing about this satisfactory arrangement; but it is only right to admit the remarkable fairness, moderation, and probity of the African princes in the settlement and maintenance of these treaties. As a general rule, Sicily and the commercial Republics were allied to the rulers of Tunis and Tilimsan and Fez by bonds of amity and mutual advantage. One after the other, Pisa, Genoa, Provence, Aragon, and Venice, concluded commercial treaties with the African sovereigns, and renewed them from time to time. Some of these States had special quarters reserved for them at Tunis, Ceuta, and other towns; and all had their consuls in the thirteenth century, who were protected in a manner that the English agent at Algiers would have envied seventy years ago. The African trade was especially valuable to the Pisans and Genoese, and there was a regular African company trading at the Ports of Tripoli, Tunis, Bujeya, Ceuta, and Sale. Indeed, the Genoese went so far as to defend Ceuta against Christian crusaders, so much did commerce avail against religion; and, on the other hand, the Christian residents at Tunis, the western metropolis of Islam, had their own place of wors.h.i.+p, where they were free to pray undisturbed, as late as 1530. This tolerance was largely due to the mild and judicious government of the Beni Hafs, whose three centuries' sway at Tunis was an unmixed benefit to their subjects, and to all who had relations with them.

Not that the years pa.s.sed by without war and retaliation, or that treaties made piracy impossible. In the early and more pugnacious days of the Saracen domination conflicts were frequent. The Fatimi Khalifs conquered and held all the larger islands of the Western Mediterranean, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles. In 1002 the Saracens pillaged Pisa, and the Pisans retaliated by burning an African fleet. Three years later El-Mujahid ("Muget"), the lord of Majorca, and conqueror of Sardinia, burnt part of Pisa; and another incursion is recorded in 1011. From his stronghold at Luni in Etruria this terrible scourge ravaged the country round, until the Pope drove him out of Italy, and the Pisans and others turned him out of Sardinia (1017). We read of African fleets cruising with hostile intent off the Calabrian coast, and of the Pisans taking Bona, which was then a nest of Corsairs (1034). Mahdiya was burnt in 1087, and Sicily conquered by the Normans about the same time (1072). But these were in the early days, and even then were the exceptions; in succeeding centuries, under more settled governments, war became very rare, and mutual amity was the prevailing policy.[3]

Piracy was always distinctly prohibited in the commercial treaties of the African States; nevertheless piracy went on, and most pertinaciously on the part of the Christians. The Greeks, Sardinians, Maltese, and Genoese were by far the worse members of the fraternity of rovers, as the treaties themselves prove: the increase of commerce under the stimulus of the Crusades tempted the adventurous, and the absence of any organized State navies gave them immunity; and there was generally a war afoot between some nation or other, Christian or Moslem, and piracy (in the then state of international law) at once became legitimate privateering. Our buccaneers of the Spanish main had the same apology to offer. But it is important to observe that all this was private piracy: the African and the Italian governments distinctly repudiated the practice, and bound themselves to execute any Corsair of their own country whom they might arrest, and to deliver all his goods over to the state which he had robbed.[4] These early Corsairs were private freebooters, totally distinct from the authorized pirates of later days. In 1200, in time of peace, two Pisan vessels attacked three Mohammedan s.h.i.+ps in Tunis roads, captured the crews, outraged the women, and made off, vainly pursued by the Tunisian fleet: but they received no countenance from Pisa, the merchants of which might have suffered severely had the Tunisians exacted reprisals. Sicily was full of Corsairs, and the King of Tunis paid a sort of tribute to the Normans, partly to induce them to restrain these excesses. Aragonese and Genoese preyed upon each other and upon the Moslems; but their doings were entirely private and unsupported by the state.

Up to the fourteenth century the Christians were the chief pirates of the Mediterranean, and dealt largely in stolen goods and slaves. Then the growth of large commercial fleets discouraged the profession, and very soon we begin to hear much less of European brigandage, and much more of Moorish Corsairs. The inhabitants of the coast about the Gulf of Gabes had always shown a bent towards piracy, and the port of Mahdiya, or "Africa," now became a regular resort of sea rovers.

El-Bekri, in the twelfth century, had noticed the practice of sending galleys on the cruise for prey (perhaps during war) from the harbours of Bona; and Ibn-Khaldun, in the fourteenth, describes an organized company of pirates at Bujeya, who made a handsome profit from goods and the ransom of captives. The evil grew with the increase of the Turkish power in the Levant, and received a violent impetus upon the fall of Constantinople; while on the west, the gradual expulsion of the Moors from Spain which followed upon the Christian advance filled Africa with disaffected, ruined, and vengeful Moriscos, whose one dominant pa.s.sion was to wipe out their old scores with the Spaniards.

Against such influences the mild governors of North Africa were powerless. They had so long enjoyed peace and friends.h.i.+p with the Mediterranean States, that they were in no condition to enforce order with the strong hand. Their armies and fleets were insignificant, and their coasts were long to protect, and abounded with almost impregnable strongholds which they could not afford to garrison.

Hence, when the Moors flocked over from Spain, the sh.o.r.es of Africa offered them a sure and accessible refuge, and the hospitable character of the Moslem's religion forbade all thought of repelling the refugees. Still more, when the armed galleots of the Levant came crowding to Barbary, fired with the hope of rich gain, the ports were open, and the creeks afforded them shelter. A foothold once gained, the rest was easy.

It was to this land, lying ready to his use, that Captain Uruj Barbarossa came in the beginning of the sixteenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Le Comte de Mas-Latrie, _Relations et commerce de l'Afrique Septentrionale avec les nations chretiennes au moyen age_, 1886.

[4] Le Comte de Mas-Latrie, _Relations et commerce de l'Afrique Septentrionale avec les nations chretiennes au moyen age_, pp. 175-9.