Hayreddin Barbarossa: From a Lesbos Potter's Son to Victor at Preveza

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Hayreddin Barbarossa was born Hizir on the island of Lesbos in the late 15th century to Yakup Agha, a former Ottoman sipahi turned potter and island trader, and Katerina, a Greek Orthodox widow. He and his brothers Ishak, Oruç and Ilyas grew up in the family business until raids by the Knights Hospitaller of Rhodes pushed the brothers into privateering. Off Lebanon the Knights killed Ilyas and captured Oruç, who spent four years as a galley slave before his father ransomed him. Oruç and Hizir then operated from Djerba and La Goulette, paying the Sultan of Tunis a third of their prizes, and carried Mudéjar refugees fleeing Spain to North Africa, earning Oruç the name Baba Oruç, which Europeans heard as Barbarossa. Oruç lost his left arm to a cannonball in 1512, took Algiers in 1516, and handed it to Sultan Selim I. He and Ishak were killed defending Tlemcen against the Spanish in 1518.

Hizir inherited the fleet, was named beylerbey and given the honorific Hayreddin. He organized seven voyages that moved 70,000 Mudéjars to North Africa, and in 1529 took the Spanish fort on the Peñón of Algiers, using its rubble to build a breakwater that created a sheltered harbor. Suleiman the Magnificent made him Kapudan Pasha, Grand Admiral of the Ottoman Navy, in 1532. In 1538 at Preveza his oared galleys defeated Andrea Doria's Holy League fleet when the wind dropped, securing Ottoman control of the Mediterranean for 33 years. Allied with Francis I of France, he helped besiege Nice and wintered at Toulon in 1543. He retired in 1545, dictated his memoirs and died in 1546.

• He rejected Charles V's secret offer to rule North Africa in exchange for switching sides and beheaded the envoy.
• Francis I evacuated the French residents of Toulon so the Ottoman fleet of over 200 ships could winter there, complete with a slave market.
• His raids sacked coastal towns such as Lipari and Sperlonga and enslaved tens of thousands of civilians.
• His flag bore the six-pointed Seal of Solomon, a Quranic verse, the names of the first four caliphs and the sword Zulfiqar.
• He was buried in a tomb designed by Mimar Sinan, and the Turkish navy revived its cannon salute to the tomb in 2019.