Trapped in the “Nest of Corsairs”. A Brief Historiographical Overview of Sixteenth Century Ottoman Algiers

Abstract

Since the eighteenth century, a vast number of articles, books and critical essays have been written about the Algerian corsairs and the role played by the city of Algiers in the early modern Mediterranean, but as a rule the historians’ starting hypotheses have remained firmly lodged in rigid and partly erroneous definitions such as «nest of corsairs», «pirate republic» or «Barbary state». By reassessing the historiography of sixteenth-century Algiers, this article argues for the need to go beyond such categories to avoid the trap of Eurocentrism. Far from aiming to present an exhaustive review of all the publications on Ottoman Algiers, in the first section of this article I have selected a number of works that illustrate how the stereotype of the «nest of corsairs» pervaded European historiography until only a few decades ago, when, by combining Christian and Islamic sources and considering new research perspectives, a number of historians have presented a more rational image of the city of Algiers, not only as the epicentre of the Mediterranean corso, but also as the capital of the province of Cezayir-i Garb. Following on from the most recent publications by Ottomanists and Arabists, in the second section I shall examine the complex role played by the Algerine corso and its protagonists during the sixteenth century.