ABSTRACT
This essay focuses on the depiction of Khayr al-Din Barbarossa (ca. 1466–1546), “the sword of Islam,” who founded the State of Algiers and later became Grand Admiral of the Ottoman Armada, in the Spanish captivity chronicle of Antonio de Sosa. It aims to assess both the cruelty and humanity of Barbarossa, a galley tactician whose fleets terrified the entire Mediterranean. Questioning the usefulness of national boundaries, numerous present-day scholars are substituting the Mediterranean for traditional nation-based models. The Portuguese cleric Dr. Sosa already does this: his intensive focus on the complexity of sixteenth-century interactions across the Mediterranean includes the expansionist projects of both Iberians and Ottomans. The essay juxtaposes the official sixteenth-century Ottoman biography of Barbarossa, the Gazavat by Muradi, with Sosa’s Spanish portrait of the Turkish national hero. This parallel reading relativizes the binary of stereotypical features of this major figure in Mediterranean corsairing in European and Ottoman narrative accounts of the sixteenth century.
