Corsairs of the Mediterranean

Corsairs of the Mediterranean explores the fierce maritime world where empires, faiths, merchants, knights, and sea raiders fought for control of the inland sea. From the rise of the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary States to the legendary careers of Aruj and Hayreddin Barbarossa, this book reveals how corsair warfare shaped the Mediterranean through raids, ransom, slavery, diplomacy, and naval battles. Christian privateers, Muslim corsairs, the Knights of Saint John, and imperial fleets all turned the sea into a dangerous frontier where profit, religion, and power were inseparable. Moreover, the book follows the struggle from Algiers and Malta to Lepanto and the wider seventeenth-century corsair world, showing how the Mediterranean became one of history's most contested maritime battlegrounds.