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Libya
OTTOMAN REGENCY
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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