Muezzinzade Ali Pasha

Muezzinzade Ali Pasha was the Ottoman commander-in-chief at Lepanto and was killed there, and the manner of his death did more damage than the loss of his life. His name records his origin - the son of a muezzin, a man who rose through the palace service rather than through the fleet. He was Kapudan Pasha, grand admiral, from 1571, an appointment that owed more to court standing than to sea experience, and he took the fleet out with the professional corsair admirals Uluc Ali and Pertev Pasha under him. On 7 October 1571 he met the Holy League off the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth with roughly equal numbers, some 250 galleys against 210. He chose to fight rather than withdraw, and he chose to close with the enemy centre and lay his flagship the Sultana alongside Don John of Austria's Real, which turned the battle into the boarding action the Christian side, with its heavier infantry and its arquebuses, was better equipped to win. He was shot in the head during the third assault on his deck. A Spanish soldier cut off his head and raised it on a pike, against Don John's explicit order, and the sight of it broke Ottoman morale across the centre. The Ottomans lost around 200 ships and perhaps 20,000 men, and some 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed. He had reportedly kept his own Christian oarsmen unchained with a promise of freedom if he lost, and they were the ones who took his ship. The fleet was rebuilt within a year, but the legend of Ottoman invincibility at sea was not.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history