Hayreddin Barbarossa: Corsair and Ottoman Grand Admiral

Hayreddin Barbarossa (c. 1478–1546) was a corsair who rose to become ruler of Algiers and grand admiral of the Ottoman navy. With his brother Oruç he built a corsair base in North Africa around 1516, placed Algiers under Ottoman protection, and, under Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, led the Ottoman fleet to its greatest victories in the Mediterranean. Feared on the coasts of Spain and Italy, he is honoured in Turkey as one of the founders of its naval tradition.

Origins on Lesbos

Hayreddin was born Hızır (Khizr) on the island of Lesbos, called Midilli in Turkish, which the Ottomans had taken in 1462. His birth year is uncertain; it is usually given as about 1478, though some estimates are earlier. His father, Yakup, was a Muslim cavalryman settled on the island, and his mother is said to have been a local Greek Christian woman.

Hızır had three brothers, Oruç, İlyas and İshak. The brothers became seafarers and traders, and Oruç and Hızır turned to privateering in the eastern Mediterranean. After İlyas was killed and Oruç was captured for a time by the Knights of St John of Rhodes, the brothers moved their operations west.

The brothers in North Africa

Around 1504 Oruç and Hızır were operating from Tunis and the island of Djerba with the permission of the Hafsid sultan, sharing their prizes with him. They attacked Christian shipping and became famous after capturing papal galleys. They also ferried Muslim refugees from Spain, where pressure on the remaining Muslim population had grown after the fall of Granada in 1492.

Spain, meanwhile, was seizing fortified ports along the North African coast, including Oran and Bougie (Béjaïa), and built a fort on an island facing Algiers. Oruç lost an arm in a failed attack on Bougie in 1512. In 1516 the people of Algiers called on the brothers for help against the Spanish. Oruç took control of the city, killed its local ruler and made himself master of Algiers.

Oruç was killed by Spanish forces near Tlemcen in 1518. Hızır inherited his position, but his hold on Algiers was insecure. In 1519 he offered the city to the Ottoman sultan Selim I, who named him governor-general and sent troops, including Janissaries. From this time he was known by the honorific name Hayreddin, “goodness of the faith”.

Master of Algiers

Hayreddin lost Algiers for several years to local rivals in the early 1520s but recovered it by about 1525. In 1529 he captured the Spanish island fortress facing the harbour, the Peñón of Algiers, and joined the islet to the shore with a breakwater, creating a secure harbour. Algiers became the leading base of the Barbary corsairs for almost three centuries.

His fleets raided the coasts of Spain, the Balearic Islands and Italy. They captured ships, goods and people; captives were ransomed or sold into slavery, a practice that also existed on the Christian side of the Mediterranean. Hayreddin also carried thousands of Moriscos, Muslims of Spain, to North Africa.

Grand admiral of Suleiman

In 1533 Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent summoned Hayreddin to Istanbul and appointed him kapudan pasha, grand admiral of the Ottoman fleet, and governor of the Aegean islands. He reorganised the arsenal and fleet, and in 1534 sailed west, raiding the Italian coast before capturing Tunis in August.

The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V answered in 1535 with a large expedition that retook Tunis and restored a Hafsid ruler under Spanish protection. Hayreddin escaped and raided Mahón on Menorca soon afterwards.

His most famous victory came in the war of 1537–1540 against Venice, the papacy and Charles V. After capturing many Venetian-held islands in the Aegean, he faced a larger Holy League fleet under the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria off Preveza in western Greece. On 28 September 1538 Hayreddin’s fleet won the Battle of Preveza, and Doria withdrew. The victory gave the Ottomans dominance at sea in the eastern and central Mediterranean until Lepanto in 1571.

The Franco-Ottoman fleet and Nice

France and the Ottoman Empire had become allies against Charles V in the 1530s, an alliance that shocked much of Christian Europe. In 1543 Hayreddin sailed with a large fleet to support King Francis I. Ottoman and French forces besieged Nice, then held by the Duke of Savoy, an ally of Charles V, in August 1543; the town was taken but its citadel held out.

The Ottoman fleet then spent the winter of 1543–1544 at Toulon, which Francis I placed at its disposal. Much of the town’s population was moved out to make room for some tens of thousands of sailors and soldiers. On his return voyage in 1544 Hayreddin raided the coasts of southern Italy and the Lipari Islands, taking many captives.

Corsairs, captives and the Mediterranean war

Barbarossa’s career belongs to a wider struggle between the Ottoman Empire and Habsburg Spain for control of the Mediterranean. Both sides used corsairs: licensed raiders who attacked enemy shipping and coasts and shared their prizes with the ruler who protected them. The Knights of St John on Rhodes, and later Malta, and Tuscan and Spanish corsairs played a similar role on the Christian side.

Captives were central to this economy. Men, women and children seized at sea or in coastal raids were held for ransom or sold as slaves, and galley crews on both sides were often made up of enslaved oarsmen. Estimates of the number of Europeans enslaved by North African corsairs over the following three centuries run into the hundreds of thousands, though historians debate the figures.

Barbarossa’s raids were therefore not only plunder but part of a war between empires. They tied down Spanish and Italian resources, pushed coastal communities inland and gave the Ottomans a powerful naval arm in the western Mediterranean, far from Istanbul.

Key people

• Oruç Reis (c. 1474–1518), Hayreddin’s elder brother, the original “Barbarossa”, who seized Algiers.
• Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–1566), the sultan who made Hayreddin grand admiral.
• Andrea Doria (1466–1560), Genoese admiral in the service of Charles V and Hayreddin’s main opponent.
• Charles V (1500–1558), Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain, who captured Tunis in 1535 but failed against Algiers in 1541.
• Hasan Pasha, Hayreddin’s son, later governor-general of Algiers.

Timeline

• c. 1478: Hızır, later Hayreddin, is born on Lesbos.
• c. 1504: Oruç and Hızır begin operating from Tunis and Djerba.
• 1516: Oruç takes control of Algiers.
• 1518: Oruç is killed near Tlemcen; Hızır takes over.
• 1519: Algiers is placed under Ottoman sovereignty.
• 1529: Hayreddin captures the Peñón of Algiers.
• 1533: Suleiman appoints him grand admiral.
• 1534, August: Hayreddin captures Tunis; Charles V retakes it in 1535.
• 1538, 28 September: Victory over the Holy League at Preveza.
• 1546, 4 July: Hayreddin dies in Istanbul.

Legacy

Hayreddin retired to Istanbul, where he dictated his memoirs, known as the Gazavat-ı Hayreddin Paşa, and died on 4 July 1546. He was buried in a tomb designed by Mimar Sinan at Beşiktaş, beside the Bosphorus. For generations Ottoman fleets leaving Istanbul are said to have saluted his tomb.

In Turkey he is a national hero; several warships have borne his name and his statue stands near his tomb. In southern Europe he was remembered as a terrifying raider whose attacks led coastal towns to build watchtowers. Historians today see him as both: a ruthless raider and a gifted commander and organiser who turned Algiers into an Ottoman province and the Ottoman fleet into a Mediterranean power.

Why it matters

Barbarossa’s career linked the corsair world of North Africa with the Ottoman state. He secured the Maghreb west of Egypt for Ottoman influence, made Algiers a lasting power and gave Suleiman a navy able to challenge Spain, Venice and the papacy at sea.