Commerce and warfare: a Brief Note on the Activities of Ottoman and Portuguese Pirates and Privateers in the Eastern Mediterranean (second half of the 15th century and early 16th century)

Abstract

This note focuses on the intertwined activities of Ottoman and Portuguese pirates and privateers in the Eastern Mediterranean in the second half of the 15th century and early 16th century. Their actions had impacts on the Portuguese-Mamluk conflict, which expanded in the Red Sea and the western Indian Ocean in the early 16th century. The growth of this Portuguese piracy was linked up with Portugal’s political and military ambitions in the central and eastern Mediterranean at the beginning of the 16th century. To achieve this strategy, they wielded enormous influence within the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. This article deals with two prominent Portuguese privateers and nobleman : André do Amaral, Chancellor of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem (in Rhodes), who defeatead the fleet of the Mamluk sultan Ḳānṣawḥ al-Ghawrī’s in the Gulf of Ayāz (1510). This defeat strongly contributed to increasing the dependence of the sultanate on the Ottomans, thus preparing the conquest of Egypt by Selim I in 1517. With regard to Diogo Fernandes de Almeida, it is worth clarifying that he was the brother of the first Vice-roy of the Estado da Índia (i.e. the Portuguese Empire in Asia).