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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Libya
Index
Part of an excavated Roman city at Sabratah, near Tripoli
Courtesy United Nations
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.
Data as of 1987
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