The Story of the Barbary Corsairs | Page 9

made piracy impossible. In the early and more pugnacious days of the
Saracen domination conflicts were frequent. The F[=a]tim[=i] Khalifs
conquered and held all the larger islands of the Western Mediterranean,
Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Isles. In 1002 the Saracens
pillaged Pisa, and the Pisans retaliated by burning an African fleet.
Three years later El-Muj[=a]hid ("Muget"), the lord of Majorca, and
conqueror of Sardinia, burnt part of Pisa; and another incursion is
recorded in 1011. From his stronghold at Luni in Etruria this terrible
scourge ravaged the country round, until the Pope drove him out of
Italy, and the Pisans and others turned him out of Sardinia (1017). We
read of African fleets cruising with hostile intent off the Calabrian coast,
and of the Pisans taking Bona, which was then a nest of Corsairs (1034).
Mahd[=i]ya was burnt in 1087, and Sicily conquered by the Normans
about the same time (1072). But these were in the early days, and even
then were the exceptions; in succeeding centuries, under more settled
governments, war became very rare, and mutual amity was the
prevailing policy.[3]
Piracy was always distinctly prohibited in the commercial treaties of
the African States; nevertheless piracy went on, and most
pertinaciously on the part of the Christians. The Greeks, Sardinians,
Maltese, and Genoese were by far the worse members of the fraternity
of rovers, as the treaties themselves prove: the increase of commerce
under the stimulus of the Crusades tempted the adventurous, and the
absence of any organized State navies gave them immunity; and there
was generally a war afoot between some nation or other, Christian or
Moslem, and piracy (in the then state of international law) at once
became legitimate privateering. Our buccaneers of the Spanish main
had the same apology to offer. But it is important to observe that all

this was private piracy: the African and the Italian governments
distinctly repudiated the practice, and bound themselves to execute any
Corsair of their own country whom they might arrest, and to deliver all
his goods over to the state which he had robbed.[4] These early
Corsairs were private freebooters, totally distinct from the authorized
pirates of later days. In 1200, in time of peace, two Pisan vessels
attacked three Mohammedan ships in Tunis roads, captured the crews,
outraged the women, and made off, vainly pursued by the Tunisian
fleet: but they received no countenance from Pisa, the merchants of
which might have suffered severely had the Tunisians exacted reprisals.
Sicily was full of Corsairs, and the King of Tunis paid a sort of tribute
to the Normans, partly to induce them to restrain these excesses.
Aragonese and Genoese preyed upon each other and upon the Moslems;
but their doings were entirely private and unsupported by the state.
Up to the fourteenth century the Christians were the chief pirates of the
Mediterranean, and dealt largely in stolen goods and slaves. Then the
growth of large commercial fleets discouraged the profession, and very
soon we begin to hear much less of European brigandage, and much
more of Moorish Corsairs. The inhabitants of the coast about the Gulf
of Gabes had always shown a bent towards piracy, and the port of
Mahd[=i]ya, or "Africa," now became a regular resort of sea rovers.
El-Bekr[=i], in the twelfth century, had noticed the practice of sending
galleys on the cruise for prey (perhaps during war) from the harbours of
Bona; and Ibn-Khald[=u]n, in the fourteenth, describes an organized
company of pirates at Buj[=e]ya, who made a handsome profit from
goods and the ransom of captives. The evil grew with the increase of
the Turkish power in the Levant, and received a violent impetus upon
the fall of Constantinople; while on the west, the gradual expulsion of
the Moors from Spain which followed upon the Christian advance
filled Africa with disaffected, ruined, and vengeful Moriscos, whose
one dominant passion was to wipe out their old scores with the
Spaniards.
Against such influences the mild governors of North Africa were
powerless. They had so long enjoyed peace and friendship with the
Mediterranean States, that they were in no condition to enforce order

with the strong hand. Their armies and fleets were insignificant, and
their coasts were long to protect, and abounded with almost
impregnable strongholds which they could not afford to garrison.
Hence, when the Moors flocked over from Spain, the shores of Africa
offered them a sure and accessible refuge, and the hospitable character
of the Moslem's religion forbade all thought of repelling the refugees.
Still more, when the armed galleots of the Levant came crowding to
Barbary, fired with the hope of rich gain, the ports were open, and the
creeks afforded them shelter. A foothold once gained, the rest was easy.
It was to this land, lying ready to his use, that