410 



B All I) Alt Y STATES. 



book. The Moor never laughs : serious, nnd, to nil 

 appearance, absorbed in thought, li' gives no sin cf 

 a desire of knowledge, or of intellectual action. His 

 greatest pleasure is, to go into llie Ui(h. to drink 

 coflee, and to hear stories. The iiMial food of this 

 people is cuscosoo, a kind of macc.:n>iii. The inha- 

 bitants of Morocco drink aNo much ten. Tin- belief 

 prevails uiii\cr>ally among the Moors, that, at some 

 future time, on a festival day, at the hour of prayer, 

 they will be attacked mid suMued by a people 

 clothed in red. In their Mind fatalism, they bear 

 with indiiFereiice every change of condition, and die 

 quietly under the severest pain, if they can only lie 

 with their faces turned towards Mecca. Free ne- 

 groes ha \e settled among the Moors, and, in Morocco, 

 i M n fill the offices of state, and serve in the army. 



Jews are scattered over the whole of Barbary. 

 They carry on the foreign trade. They are descended 

 from the first colony of Israelites from I'lucnicia, 

 increased by the hundreds of thousands who were 

 banished from Spain and Portugal. Notwithstanding 

 the contempt in which they live, separated in a narrow 

 district from the rest of the inhabitants of the cities, 

 insulted by the common people, and oppressed by the 

 rich, yet all business is done by them. The ignorant 

 Moorish rulers farm out to the Jews their revenues, 

 and choose from among them their men of business, 

 taxgatherers, secretaries^ interpreters, &c. They coin 

 ihc money, and manufacture ornaments of all kinds. 

 Heavy taxes are imposed on them, according to their 

 age. Seldom is a murder punished which a Moor 

 commits upon n Jew. The Jews are not allowed to 

 wear any thing but black, a colour hated by the 

 Moors. They, therefore, adorn themselves so much 

 the more in their houses. 



The ruling class is the Turks. Since Turkish 

 and other pirates settled here, three hundred years 

 ago, through the perfidy of the first Home or Aruch 

 Barlmrossa (see Barbarossa), the arts, sciences, agri- 

 culture, and commerce, which formerly distinguished 

 the Arabian states, here, as in Grenada, have perished. 

 The political privileges of the Turks, and their riches 

 gained by piracy and traffic in slaves, have enabled 

 them to tyrannize over the other inhabitants. The con- 

 tinual wars which the knights of Malta of the order of 

 St John carried on with the unbelievers, gave these 

 military states of northern Africa the occasion for 

 their piratical policy. The knights destroyed the 

 Moorish commerce. Selim and Soliman, therefore, 

 called upon their subjects to commit robberies on the 

 Christians. Excellent sailors were soon formed under 

 the flag of the crescent. Among them, the two brothers 

 Home and Hayradin (or Khayr Eddin, who died in 

 1546), both surnamed Barbarossa, distinguished 

 themselves. They founded, about 1518, the piratical 

 republic of Algiers, where religious fanaticism has 

 given to piracy a sacred character. As the Moorish 

 commerce declined whilst that of the Christians 

 increased, the Maltese, consequently, gained little, the 

 Algerines, on the contrary, much booty, and Tunis, 

 Tripoli, and Morocco were induced to follow the ex- 

 ample : but Algiers constantly distinguished itself 

 above the rest of the Barbary states by courage and 

 crime. Here, as in Malta, the sovereignty was 

 the exclusive possession of foreign warriors. The 

 reigning soldiery was supported by voluntary en- 

 listments in all countries of the same belief, ex- 

 cepting that in which it governed. This militia re- 

 served to itself the right of choosing their chief, and 

 the dey was the first among his equals, for the sol- 

 diers a general, and for the native races an unlimited 

 rider. The Algerine government also prohibited 

 the marriage of the soldiers, and jealousy excluded 

 fielr children from all participation in the govern- 

 ment, Uie Turks reserving the important places for 



themselves. For this reason, the government mit 

 ships every oilier year to the Levant, to obtain new 

 enlistments. They took recruits even among the 

 criminals in Constantinople. Here despised, in Al- 

 giers they immediately became rffeiidis (Turkish 

 lawyers), with all the haughtiness of upstarts and 

 adventurers. There are not more than 12 13,000 

 of them, and yet they rule over several millions. 



History of the Barbary Slates. Since the subjec- 

 tion of Northern Africa by Omar (A. D. (>47,) and 

 Other generals of the Arabian caliphs, several small 

 States hn\e arisen on the coast. Zeiri, a distinguish- 

 ed Arab, built Algiers (Aschir) in 944, and extended 

 the dominion of his countrymen. One of. the, Fati- 

 mite caliphs conferred on the family of this able man 

 (who died in 970) hereditary power. It was governed, 

 under the name of tin- Zeiritcs, till 1)48, when Roger, 

 king of Sicily, took from Hassan Ben Ali, the last 

 of this dynasty, Tripoli and a great portion of his 

 territory. The Moravides, the rulers of Morocco, 

 made themselves masters of the rest. The dynasty 

 of the Moravides governed the whole coast till I2(i\), 

 in which year the negro princes Abouhafs founded 

 a kingdom at Tunis. St Louis (q. v.) died of the 

 plague, at the siege of the city of this name, in 1270. 

 After this, the Beni Zian became masters of the 

 greatest part of the Algerine state, but could not 

 prevent the most important cities (Oran, Algiers, 

 Tunis, and Tripoli) from raising themselves to inde- 

 pendent sovereignties, which, by the expulsion of the 

 Moors and Jews from Spain, in and after 1492, be 

 came very populous. About 1494, they began to 

 revenge themselves for their expulsion from Spain 

 by piracy. Ferdinand the Catholic, therefore, fitted 

 out a powerful expedition against them. He con- 

 quered, in 1506, Oran and other cities, made the 

 riders of Tunis and Tremecen tributary to him ; took 

 Tripoli in 1509, subdued Algiers, and built, on an 

 island before the harbour of the city, a castle, which 

 he provided with a strong garrison, and thereby 

 commanded the commerce of the place. But, after 

 Ferdinand's death, the Algerines called to their assis- 

 tance a Turkish pirate, the above named Home or 

 Aruch Barbarossa, who, with his brother, Khayr 

 Eddin or Hayradin, appeared with a squadron before 

 Algiers. He was received with joy by the inhabi- 

 tants ; but, soon after his arrival, he caused the emir 

 Selim Eutemi (who till this time had defended Al 

 giers) to be strangled, and himself to be proclaim) d 

 king, in 1518, by the Turks, who now exercised 

 such intolerable tyranny, murdering and plundering 

 at pleasure, that the natives were even compelled to 

 call upon the Spaniards for assistance ; but a storm 

 destroyed the Spanish fleet. Horuc Barbarossa af- 

 terwards defeated the Arabs, and conquered Tunis 

 and Tremecen. But he was vanquished before Oran 

 by the Spanish governor, the marquis de Gonmrcz, 

 and, with 1500 Turks, remained dead upon the field. 

 His brother and successor, Hayradin, seeing no pos- 

 sibility of being able to maintain himself against tin- 

 Christians and the discontented Algerines, placed 

 the kingdom, in 1519, under the protection of the 

 sultan Soliman, who appointed him pacha, and sup- 

 plied him with 10,000 janizaries. With these troops 

 he expelled the Spaniards from the fortified island, 

 which, in I 529, he connected with the main land by 

 a mole, so as to render Algiers an excellent harbour. 

 He took Tunis by stratagem, but was obliged, in 

 1535, to abandon it to Charles V., who again placed 

 upon the throne the banished king, set at liberty 

 20,000 Christian slaves, and kept possession of the 

 citadel of Goletta. Against Hassan (a renegade from 

 Sardinia), Hayradin's successor in the office of pacha, 

 Charles V., contrary to the advice of the experienced 

 Doria, undertook the siege of Algiers, with a fleet 



