Turgut rice

Turgut Reis monument in front of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul

Turgut Reis , in European literature Dragut ( Ottoman طرغود رئيس İA Ṭurġud Reʾīs ; * early 16th century near Muğla , today Turgutreis , Ottoman Empire ; † June 23, 1565 in Malta ), was a Turkish corsair , admiral, and Bey of Tripoli . He received the title Bey in 1552 from Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (Kanuni Sultan Suleyman) after he had wrested Tripoli from the Maltese the year before .

Overall picture

From 1538, when Turgut joined the privateer fleet under Khair ad-Din Barbarossa , he spread fear and terror in the Mediterranean . Already in the naval battle of Preveza in September 1538, in which a European fleet with 300 ships sent by Emperor Charles V , led by Turgut's lifelong opponent, the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria , was replaced by an Ottoman fleet with 120 ships under Khair ad- Din was defeated, Turgut Reis played a significant role.

Until the end of his life he was involved in a leading position in the battles between the Islamic-Turkish and Christian powers in the Mediterranean region (see Turkish Wars ). His successes and defeats, his pirate voyages and sieges stretched over large parts of the Mediterranean, from Dalmatia to Tripoli, from the Levant to the Strait of Gibraltar and even as far as the Canary Islands .

Buccaneering

Turgut was probably born in 1485 on the Bodrum peninsula in Asia Minor into a poor family; Today the town of Turgutreis named after him stands there . At a young age he served as a gunner's assistant on Turkish galleys and very soon became an excellent sailor and gunner . Then he bought a share of a pirate - Brigantine , which operated so successful that after a short time the owner of a schooner was able to rise and earned a reputation as a daring corsair in the eastern Mediterranean.

Around 1538 Turgut joined Khair ad-Din Barbarossa, who after a series of successful actions appointed him Kahya (lieutenant) and commander of twelve of his galleys.

At the end of this decade, Turgut was so notorious and feared in the western Mediterranean that the Genoese admiral Andrea Doria was commissioned by Emperor Charles V to eliminate him in 1540. Doria subordinated a fleet to his great-nephew Giovanni Andrea Doria , who managed to track down Turgut's squadron of 13 galleys in Corsica , where the corsairs anchored under the walls of a fortress. The fortress began to bombard his ships, hundreds of combative Corsicans gathered on the beach, and at sea Doria blocked the escape route. Turgut decided to surrender and spent the next four years as a Genoese galley slave before he was ransomed by Barbarossa in 1544 for a ransom of 3000 ducats (and presumably the threat of pillaging Genoa ).

Ottoman admiral

After Barbarossa's death (1546), Sultan Suleyman ordered all Ottoman naval forces to recognize Turgut Reis as their admiral. Turgut threatened Naples , sacked the coast of Calabria , and then attacked the Spanish possessions of Susa, Sfax and Monastir on the Tunisian coast in the winter of 1548 . In 1549 he conquered the city of Mahdia (al-Mahdiya), at that time the most strongly fortified city on the North African coast, in what is now Tunisia . After long and costly battles for both sides, Andrea Doria and the Bailli and later Grand Master of the Order of Malta, Claude de la Sengle , succeeded in driving Turgut's people out of Mahdia again in September 1550 and taking the city. As the Knights of Malta refused Charles V's offer to administer Mahdia as a fief, the fortress was completely destroyed after a year of Spanish occupation before the withdrawal in 1551.

Turgut escaped with 20 ships to the island of Djerba , which had been his main base since 1524. There Andrea Doria's fleet locked him in a bay. Thereupon Turgut let his people pull the ships overland on a greased boardwalk to the other side of the island and escaped to Constantinople . There, Suleyman appointed him Sanjak Bei (provincial governor ) of the island of Santa Maura , making him an Ottoman official.

Bey from Tripoli

Turgut brought about the equipment of a Turkish fleet of 112 with 12,000 janissaries manned galleys and two galeas , which appeared under the nominal command of Sinan Pasa on July 16, 1551 off Malta . The Turks ravaged the island and conquered the neighboring island of Gozo , where they captured thousands of residents and made them slaves. Then they sailed to North Africa and in August conquered Tripoli in what is now Libya , which Emperor Charles V had given the Order of Malta as a fief in 1530, in addition to Malta. Sultan Suleyman then gave him Tripoli and its surroundings as a fief, as well as the title of Bey .

In 1552 he was appointed by Sultan Suleyman as admiral at the head of a large Turkish fleet, which the Sultan sent against Italy on the basis of the secret treaty agreed between him and King Henry II of France . Turgut Reis sacked Calabria in 1553 , raided Elba and then besieged Bonifacio in Corsica . But when Bonifacio surrendered to the French, Turgut felt compelled to return to Constantinople after unsuccessful attempts to conquer Piombino and Portoferraio on Elba. Although he came to the coast of Calabria again in 1554, he soon withdrew to Durazzo and then to Tripoli. In 1559 he repulsed an attack by the Spaniards on Algiers . In the naval battle of Djerba from the 9th to the. May 14, 1560 a fleet of the Ottoman Empire under Grand Admiral Piyale Pascha and Turgut Reis inflicted a crushing defeat on the fleet of a coalition of Christian Mediterranean powers led by Spain.

Turgut's cruelty and tyranny made him extremely unpopular with the other Ottoman satraps in North Africa . Several of them therefore concluded an alliance in 1560 with the viceroy of Sicily , who was commissioned by King Philip II of Spain to re-conquer Tripoli. But this did not succeed because Turgut defeated the Sicilian and Maltese fleets .

When in 1560 a Christian force of 30 ships and 30,000 men conquered the Bordj-el-Kebir fortress in Houmt Souk on Djerba, which had been expanded by Turgut , Turgut retook it a few months later, beheaded the survivors of the approximately 5,000-strong crew and removed a pyramid erect their skulls. Only in 1858 this was removed at the urging of the Europeans and an obelisk was erected in its place.

Death in Malta

Giuseppe Cali: Death of Dragut

When Süleyman ordered the conquest of Malta in 1565 , Turgut Reis joined the Ottoman fleet with 13 galleys and two galleons . He was supposed to advise the actual Commander in Chief Admiral Piyale Pascha and Mustafa Pascha . On June 18, during the siege of Fort St. Elmo , Turgut was hit in the head by a stone splinter when a cannonball struck near him, fatally injured by the impact fragments. As he was dying, he heard of the capture of the fort on June 23, 1565, which was mainly due to his tactical instructions. He was buried in Tripoli in the Dragut Mosque named after him.

Honors

Several ships of the Turkish Navy were named after Turgut Reis, for example the formerly German armored ship SMS Weißenburg (1891) in 1910 .

literature

• Ernle Bradford : The Shield of Europe: The Battle of the Knights of Malta against the Turks in 1565 . Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-548-34912-9 (translated from English, title of the original edition: The Great Siege: Malta 1565 ).
• Ernle Bradford: The Sultan's Admiral: The Life of Barbarossa . Hodder and Stoughton, London 1969.
• Edward Hamilton Currey: Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean. The Grand Period of the Muslim Corsairs . Nelson, London 1910 ( online at MENAdoc ).
• Özlem Kumrular: Turgut Reis (1485-1565): The uncrowned King of the Mediterranean . In: Dejanirah Couto, Feza Gunergun, Maria Pia Pedani (eds.): Seapower, Technology and Trade. Studies in Turkish Maritime History . Piri Reis University Publications / Denizler Kitabevi, Istanbul 2014, ISBN 978-9944-26-451-8 , pp. 48-52.
• Tim Pickles: Malta 1565: Last Battle of the Crusades . Osprey Publishing, London 1998, ISBN 1-85532-603-5 .
• Stephen C. Spiteri : The Great Siege: Knights vs. Turks, 1565. Spiteri / Gutenberg Press, Tarxien (Malta) 2005.
• John B. Wolf: The Barbary Coast: Algiers under the Turks, 1500 to 1830 . Norton, New York 1979, ISBN 0-393-01205-0 .

Web links

Commons : Turgut Reis  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Capraia Island and Dragut (Italian)
• Exact dates (Italian)
• History of piracy: Turgut Reis (English) (well, partly wrong but tried)
• Turgut Reis: Birthplace of Turgut Reis (English), but unfortunately with wrong dates (e.g. Battle of Malta 1595)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Svat Soucek: Torghud Re'is . In: Encyclopaedia of Islam
2. ↑ Baedeker Tunisia . 3. Edition. 1995