Hayreddin Barbarossa

Hayreddin Barbarossa commanded the Ottoman fleet and made the Mediterranean an Ottoman sea. Born on Lesbos around 1478, he was the son of a Muslim, possibly a former Christian, and a Greek Christian woman, and he and his three brothers went to sea young. He operated with his elder brother Oruç from bases in North Africa, raiding Christian shipping and coasts and carrying Muslim refugees out of Spain after the fall of Granada. Oruç lost an arm and was known as Barbarossa for his red beard; when he was killed by the Spanish at Tlemcen in 1518, Hayreddin took the name and the command. He understood that independent corsairs could not survive between Spain and the Italian states, and in 1519 offered Algiers to the Ottoman sultan, receiving in return the title of governor and a body of Janissaries. Algiers became an Ottoman regency and remained one for three centuries. Suleiman appointed him Kapudan Pasha, commander of the entire Ottoman navy, in 1533, and he rebuilt it comprehensively. He took Tunis in 1534, raided the coasts of Italy and Spain, and in September 1538 met a much larger Holy League fleet under Andrea Doria at Preveza. Doria manoeuvred and declined to close; Barbarossa attacked and won, and the victory gave the Ottomans naval dominance of the Mediterranean for over thirty years, until Lepanto. He wintered the Ottoman fleet at Toulon in 1543-44 as an ally of Francis I, an arrangement that scandalised Europe. He dictated memoirs and died at Constantinople in 1546.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history