"For the conservation of this city”: Arab Ahmed Pasha and the many visions of Algiers in the Mediterranean after Lepanto (1572-74)
Keywords:
Ottoman Empire, French-Ottoman Alliance, Mediterranean Diplomacy, Algiers Foreign PolicyCopyright (c) 2023 Francesco Caprioli
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract
During his governorship in Ottoman Algiers (1572-74), Arab Ahmed Pasha maintained an intense correspondence with the French crown. In one of the letters he addressed to Charles IX, he asked the Valois to intercede on his behalf with Sultan Selim II to defend himself against accusations of misrule made by Arnaud Mami, the chief of the Algerine corso. However, such a support could not prevent the Sublime Porte from deciding to remove Arab Ahmed from his post and appoint a new governor for the province of Algiers. By following the woven threads of this story from three different points of view (French, Ottoman, and Algerine), this article tries to explore distinct functions performed by Algiers in the Mediterranean after Lepanto. Alongside the classic roles of Algiers as a major corsair centre and first Ottoman province in North Africa, this investigation also points to the presence of a personal policy decided by the local governor and not always in line with that of the sultans of Istanbul or that of the main actors in the Algerian context.
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