Regency of Algiers

The Regency of Algiers was a state on the coast of North Africa, nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, that existed from 1516 to the French conquest in 1830. It was the most powerful of the Barbary states, and for three centuries its corsairs raided shipping and coasts across the Mediterranean and beyond.

In the early sixteenth century, after the fall of Granada, Spain seized ports along the North African coast, including Oran, Bejaia and an island fortress, the Peñón, in front of Algiers. The people of Algiers asked for help from two Turkish corsair brothers from Lesbos, Aruj and Hayreddin, known in Europe as Barbarossa, "red beard". In 1516 Aruj took control of Algiers, killing its local ruler, and expanded to Tlemcen, where he was killed by the Spanish in 1518.

Hayreddin placed Algiers under the protection of the Ottoman sultan Selim I, who sent janissaries and made him beylerbey, governor. In 1529 Hayreddin took the Spanish Peñón fortress and built a breakwater, creating the harbour of Algiers. He later became admiral of the Ottoman fleet, defeating a Christian alliance at Preveza in 1538. In 1541 Emperor Charles V led a huge expedition against Algiers, but storms wrecked his fleet and the attack failed.

Algiers was governed by Ottoman officials, pashas sent from Istanbul, but real power was shared with the janissary corps, the ojaq, and the corsair captains, the taifa of the reis. From 1659 power passed to the aghas of the janissaries, and from 1671 to deys, elected by the janissaries or corsairs, who ruled with only nominal recognition of the sultan. Many deys were assassinated. The interior was governed through beys in provinces, such as Constantine, Titteri and Oran, and through alliances with tribes.

Algiers's corsairs, many of them European converts to Islam, renegades, attacked merchant ships and raided coasts as far as Spain, Italy, France, England, Ireland and even Iceland, in 1627. Captives were held for ransom or enslaved, working as galley slaves, servants or labourers. Historians estimate that hundreds of thousands of Europeans were held in the Barbary states over three centuries. Religious orders, such as the Trinitarians and Mercedarians, raised money to ransom captives. The Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes was held in Algiers from 1575 to 1580, tried to escape four times, and was ransomed. European states paid tribute for protection or bombarded Algiers.

Algiers was a prosperous city of perhaps 100,000 people in the seventeenth century, with mosques, such as the Ketchaoua mosque, palaces, bathhouses and markets, and a diverse population of Turks, Kouloughlis, the children of Turks and local women, Moors, Andalusian refugees, Jews and captives. Its Casbah, the old city, is a World Heritage Site.

In the eighteenth century, corsair activity declined. The United States, after its ships were captured, paid tribute and then fought the First and Second Barbary Wars, in 1801–1805 and 1815. In 1816 an Anglo-Dutch fleet under Lord Exmouth bombarded Algiers, forcing the release of Christian slaves.

In 1827, during a dispute over unpaid debts for grain France had bought, the dey Hussein struck the French consul with a fly whisk. France blockaded Algiers and, in June 1830, landed an army at Sidi Ferruch. The dey surrendered on 5 July 1830 and went into exile. The French conquest of the interior took decades, facing resistance led by Emir Abdelkader until 1847, and in Kabylia until 1857. Algeria remained French until independence in 1962.

Our maps show the Regency of Algiers on the 1650 map and from 1715 to 1815. Its largest outline, about 440,000 square kilometres on the 1715 map, lies entirely in today's Algeria, mostly in the north. Algiers lies inside it throughout. On the 1878 map the region is French Algeria.