When the Moors were displaced from Spain and settled in North Africa, they needed a way to earn a living and there was little or no employment for the large numbers of people coming into North Africa. The need felt for revenge, and for a Holy War against Spain, made piracy a natural solution. The Moors knew the language and geography of Spain and had possible allies among those who had remained behind. They built big, fast ships and made arrangements to give North African rulers a percentage of their profits in return for their protection. Strictly speaking, they became privateers, not pirates. (While the distinction between the two is blurry, in general, pirates act on their own, attacking the ships and ports of any country. Privateers act under the sanction of a particular government as a tool against its enemies. When Francis Drake started he was a pirate. He later became a privateer for the English.) The distinction is also in the eye of the beholder; the English called John Paul Jones a pirate. The name corsair is applied to the pirates or privateers of the Mediterranean. Those of the Spanish Main are called buccaneers from the French word boucan, or barbecue, because they dried and salted their meat to preserve it for sea voyages.

The greatest of the corsairs of Algiers were not even Algerian. They were the sixteenth century, Greek Barbarossa (red beard) brothers. As a youth, the elder, Arouj, had turned to Islam, enlisted on board a Turkish pirate vessel, and soon earned a command in the Aegean. He persuaded his crew to repudiate allegiance to the Turks and to join him in a Mediterranean career. He agreed to give the Bey of Tunis twenty percent of the profits in return for using his port. In 1504, he seized two richly laden Papal galleys off the coast of Italy, and soon he had developed a large fleet and spawned a host of imitators.

Spain was forced to retaliate. Ferdinand, King of Aragon, blockaded the coast and captured several cities, including Algiers, where he set up a fort. After Ferdinand's death, Salim, the ruler of Algiers, invited Arouj to help him seize the fort. The corsair strangled Salim with his own hands and became ruler of Algiers, nominally as the vassal of the Sultan of Turkey. He soon controlled all of present-day Algeria except the still Spanish-held fort. When the Algerians revolted against him and invited the Spanish to help them, Charles V sent a fleet, Arouj's army was defeated, and he himself was killed. (One of those who sailed with the Spanish was Hernan Cortés, later the conqueror of Mexico.)

The younger Barbarossa brother, Khair-ed-Din, was even stronger. A man of striking appearance: "His stature was advantageous, his mien portly and majestic; well-proportioned and robust; very hairy with a beard extremely bushy; his brows and eyelashes remarkably long and thick; before his hair turned gray and hoary it was a bright auburn". He soon controlled most of Northern Africa, had charge of several fleets of ships, brought terror to the Mediterranean, and finally succeeded in reducing the Spanish fort at Algiers. This he had razed and used the stone in building the great mole which still shelters the harbor. The work was done by Christian slaves. (The slave quarters of Algiers were so overflowing that it was said, "a Christian was scarcely a fair trade for an onion".) Again Charles V assembled a fleet under the command of Andrea Doria. Barbarossa escaped its clutches, offered the Turks six thousand captives, and was appointed Beylerbey of Algiers and High-Admiral of all the Ottoman fleets. He transformed Algiers into a powerful naval base, which became rich on the booty of corsairs. In 1533 Khair-ed-Din became a hero by helping ferry 70,000 Moors from Spain, where they were no longer welcome, to Africa. In later years he returned to Turkey, and died there in 1546. "For many years after his death, no Turkish ship left the Golden Horn without a prayer and a salute to the tomb of the greatest of Turkish seamen and the mightiest of Mediterranean pirates."

During the seventeenth century, warfare at sea changed. Until then, the Algerian ships had used galley slaves as a source of power. In 1606 they learned to build and navigate square-rigged sailing vessels. With this powerful tool they could range farther and farther, in all weather, and at all times of the year. Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, sent a squadron to hunt out and exterminate the Mediterranean pirates. His commander was able to burn all the ships anchored in Tunis and rescue all the English, Scottish and Irish captives in Algiers.

Two famous victims of the Barbary corsairs were Miguel de Cervantes (from 1574-1579), the author of Don Quixote, and St. Vincent de Paul. After his capture in 1605, St. Vincent de Paul was taken to Tunis, paraded in chains with others through the streets and sold, first to a fisherman, and by him to an aged alchemist. He left a vivid description of his experience.

[The alchemist] told me he had devoted fifty years to a search for the Philosopher's Stone. My duty was to keep up the heat of ten or twelve furnaces. ... My master had great love for me, and like to discourse on alchemy and still more of his creed, toward which he did his best to draw me, with the promise of wealth and all the secrets of his learning. ... He left me to his nephew, who sold me ... [to] a renegade [i.e one who had renounced Christianity] and [I was] taken by him to his dwelling-place among the mountains in a part of the country that is very hot and arid. One of his three wives [a Christian] ... displayed a great liking for me. ... Her curiosity as to our manner of life brought her daily to the fields where I worked.

The renegade was persuaded to return to Christianity and arranged for them all to escape to Spain.

In the early days, the entire population of Algiers benefited from privateering; the economy depended on it. However, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, profits were decreasing. Before the American Revolution, the shipping of the colonies had been protected by the bribes paid by the British, but afterward they were on their own. In 1785 John Adams and Thomas Jefferson completed a treaty with Tripoli for protection and, by 1799, the United States was paying the then enormous sum of $50,000, 28 guns, 10,000 cannon balls, and other supplies. Alarmed at the escalating cost, the young republic decided to resist. It fought two Barbary Wars between 1801 and 1815 and, in 1815, signed a treaty which protected its ships from further attacks. In 1816, the English Admiral, Lord Exmouth, anchored off Algiers and, by bombarding the city, forced the Dey to release most of the captives. When Algiers finally fell to the French in 1830, only a few hundred slaves were found in the city.

Note: This article is an abridgement of an article originally written for the San Diego Opera Teacher's Sourcebook for the opera L'ítaliana in Algeri.

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Revised July 2009
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