ABSTRACT
The Scottish traveller does in fact show a certain interest in the political and historical geography of what are now Algeria and Tunisia, attempting to relate the conditions prevailing at the time of his visit to the administrative divisions of the classical province of Numidia, and mentioning such features as corsair harbours, À re-towers or beacons and fortiÀ cations. He inveighs against ‘ignorant Sea-men … who cannot distinguish parts nor provinces [that is, within the Maghrib]’ but who lump the whole coastland from Barca in Cyrenaica in the east to southern Morocco under the blanked designation of ‘Barbary’. He enumerates the three main divisions of Turkish North Africa: Tripoli, with 8,000 timariots and 6,000 Janissaries; Tunis, where the pasha or beglerbeg had under him twelve sanjaq beys and 35,000 timariots; and Algiers, where the pasha commanded fourteen sanjaq beys and 40,000 timariots. In another place he mentions a garrison of 6,000 Janissaries in Algiers.44
