About Algeria: Algiers, Tlemçen, Constantine, Biskra, TimgadThomas-Stanford, Charles
History
About Algeria: Algiers, Tlemçen, Constantine, Biskra, Timgad
Thomas-Stanford, Charles
Algeria -- Description and travel
their partner and patron. On one occasion, it is recorded, they offered
to him fifty Spanish youths holding in leash hounds and hawks of the
rarest breeds, and four young ladies of noble birth, attired in splendid
garments and mounted on magnificent horses. Mulai Mohammed, the Sultan,
however keen a hand in purely business matters, was not the man to turn
a deaf ear to the appeal of a brother in distress. The plight of his
fellow-monarch, the Emir of Algiers, moved him deeply. With a quite
distinguished disinterestedness he proposed to his associates that they
should abandon for a time the ordinary course of their duties and
proceed to Algiers to turn the obnoxious Spaniards out of their eyrie on
the island. Baba Aroudj arrived at Algiers with 5000 men, and was hailed
as a deliverer. But the instincts of his trade were too strong for him.
Instead of attacking the Spaniards on the Penon, he put the Emir to
death, proclaimed himself King, and gave the town to pillage. Master of
Algiers, with his vessels dominant at sea, he set himself to win an
empire. He occupied Medea and Tlemçen, and menaced the Spanish position
at Oran. This was too much, and Charles V sent thither a powerful force
to check him. He retired on Tlemçen, and fell in an obscure fight at
Oudjda, on the frontier of Morocco, a town of some significance in
recent history, and now in the occupation of the French.
“He left a name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral and adorn a tale.”
His brother, Kheir-ed-Din, assumed the reins of power at Algiers.
Lacking the vaulting ambition of the terrible Barbarossa, he seems to
have possessed a sounder business head. His first care was to assure his
position; and with this object he offered his African dominions to Selim
I, Sultan of Turkey. The Turk accepted the offer, and named Kheir-ed-Din
his “Captain-pasha.” So arose the Turkish domination of Algeria, which
lasted for three centuries, and inflicted on Europe unnumbered woes. If
Europe had only known it, now was the time to cut off the serpent’s
head; but Europe, as usual, was busy with its own quarrels. Charles V
did indeed conduct an expedition in person in 1535, but it was
half-hearted and proved abortive. No native prince arose to repel the
Turkish pretensions, which were consolidated by the capture of Tunis and
the occupation of Kairouan, the holy city.
Kheir-ed-Din next turned his attention to the Spanish garrison on the
Penon. Having procured heavy guns, he bombarded the position for fifteen
days with an incessant fire. The garrison of 150 men made a heroic
resistance, but when all save twenty-five were killed, the island was
captured and the survivors put to death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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