|
|
|
| Throughout
the sixteenth century, Hapsburg
Spain and the Ottoman Turks were pitted in a struggle for supremacy
in the Mediterranean. Spanish forces had already occupied a
number of other North African ports when in 1510 they captured
Tripoli, destroyed the city, and constructed a fortified naval
base from the rubble. Tripoli was of only marginal importance
to Spain, however, and in 1524 the king-emperor Charles V entrusted
its defense to the Knights of St. John of Malta. Piracy, which
for both Christians and Muslims was a dimension of the conflict
between the opposing powers, lured adventurers from around the
Mediterranean to the Maghribi coastal towns and islands. Among
them was Khair ad Din, called Barbarossa, who in 1510 seized
Algiers on the pretext of defending it from the Spaniards. Barbarossa
subsequently recognized the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan
over the territory that he controlled and was in turn appointed
the sultan's regent in the Maghrib. Using Algiers as their base,
Barbarossa and his successors consolidated Ottoman authority
in the central Maghrib, extended it to Tunisia and Tripolitania,
and threatened Morocco. In 1551 the knights were driven out
of Tripoli by the Turkish admiral, Sinan Pasha. In the next
year Draughut Pasha, a Turkish pirate captain named governor
by the sultan, restored order in the coastal towns and undertook
the pacification of the Arab nomads in Tripolitania, although
he admitted the difficulty of subduing a people "who carry
their cities with them." Only in the 1580s did the rulers
of Fezzan give their allegiance to the sultan, but the Turks
refrained from trying to exercise any influence there. Ottoman
authority was also absent in Cyrenaica, although a bey (commander)
was stationed at Benghazi late in the next century to act as
agent of the government in Tripoli. |
|
|
|
|
The
Libyans fought a very intense war when Turky invaded Libya |
|
|
| |
| The
Ottoman Maghrib was formally divided into three regencies--
at Algiers,
Tunis, and Tripoli. After 1565 authority as regent in Tripoli
was vested in a pasha (see Glossary) appointed by the sultan.
The regency was provided a corps of janissaries (see Glossary),
recruited from Turkish peasants who were committed to a lifetime
of military service. The corps was organized into companies,
each commanded by a junior officer with the rank of dey (literally,
"maternal uncle"). It formed a self-governing military
guild, subject to its own laws, whose interests were protected
by the Divan, a council of senior officers that also advised
the pasha. In time the pasha's role was reduced to that of ceremonial
head of state and figurehead representative of Ottoman suzerainty,
as real power came to rest with the army. Mutinies
and coups were frequent, and generally the |
|
|
|
janissaries were loyal to whoever paid and fed them most regularly.
In 1611 the deys staged a successful coup, forcing the pasha
to appoint their leader, Suleiman Safar, as head of government--in
which capacity he and his successors continued to bear the title
dey. At various times the dey was also pasha-regent. His succession
to office occurred generally amid intrigue and violence. The
regency that he governed was autonomous in internal affairs
and, although dependent on the sultan for fresh recruits to
the corps of janissaries, his government was left to pursue
a virtually independent foreign policy as well. Tripoli, which
had 30,000 inhabitants at the end of the seventeenth century,
was the only city of any size in the regency. The bulk of its
residents were Moors, as city-dwelling Arabs were known. Several
hundred Turks and renegades formed a governing elite apart from
the rest of the population. A larger component was the khouloughlis
(literally, "sons of servants"), offspring of Turkish
soldiers and Arab women who traditionally held high administrative
posts and provided officers for the spahis, the provincial cavalry
units that augmented the corps of janissaries. They identified
themselves with local interests and were, in contrast to the
Turks, respected by the Arabs. Regarded as a distinct caste,
the khouloughlis lived in their menshia, a lush oasis located
just outside the walls of the city. Jews and moriscos, descendants
of Muslims expelled from Spain in the sixteenth century, were
active as merchants and craftsmen, some of the moriscos also
achieving notoriety as pirates. A small community of European
traders clustered around the compounds of the foreign consuls,
whose principal task was to sue for the release of captives
brought to Tripoli by the corsairs. European slaves and larger
numbers of enslaved blacks transported from the Sudan were a
ubiquitous feature of the life of the city. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
