Regency of Algiers

Painting of Khair ad Din At about the time Spain was establishing its presidios in the Maghreb , the Muslim privateer brothers Aruj and Khair ad Din -- the latter known to Europeans as Barbarossa, or Red Beard—were operating successfully off Tunisia under the Hafsids . In 1516 , Aruj moved his base of operations to Algiers but was killed in 1518 during his invasion of Tlemcen . Khair ad Din succeeded him as military commander of Algiers. The Ottoman sultan gave him the title of beylerbey (provincial governor) and a contingent of some 2,000 janissaries , well-armed Ottoman soldiers. With the aid of this force, Khair ad Din subdued the coastal region between Constantine and Oran (although the city of Oran remained in Spanish hands until 1791). Under Khair ad Din's regency, Algiers became the center of Ottoman authority in the Maghrib, from which Tunis, Tripoli , and Tlemcen would be overcome and Morocco's independence would be threatened. So successful was Khair ad Din at Algiers that he was recalled to Constantinople in 1533 by the sultan, Süleyman I (r. 1520-66), known in Europe as Süleyman the Magnificent, and appointed admiral of the Ottoman fleet. The next year he mounted a successful seaborne assault on Tunis. The next beylerbey was Khair ad Din's son Hassan, who assumed the position in 1544. Until 1587 the area was governed by officers who served terms with no fixed limits. Subsequently, with the institution of a regular Ottoman administration, governors with the title of pasha ruled for three-year terms. Turkish was the official language, and Arabs and Berbers were excluded from government posts. (See List of Pasha and Dey of Algiers for a list of these rulers.) The pasha was assisted by janissaries, known in Algeria as the ojaq and led by an agha . Recruited from Anatolian peasants, they were committed to a lifetime of service. Although isolated from the rest of society and subject to their own laws and courts, they depended on the ruler and the taifa for income. In the seventeenth century, the force numbered about 15,000, but it was to shrink to only 3,700 by 1830. Discontent among the ojaq rose in the mid-1600s because they were not paid regularly, and they repeatedly revolted against the pasha. As a result, the agha charged the pasha with corruption and incompetence and seized power in 1659. The taifa had the last word, however, when in 1671 it rebelled, killed the agha, and placed one of its own in power. The new leader received the title of dey, which originated in Tunisia. After 1689 the right to select the dey passed to the divan, a council of some sixty notables. The divan at first was dominated by the ojaq, but by the eighteenth century it became the dey's instrument. In 1710 the dey persuaded the sultan to recognize him and his successors as regent, replacing the pasha in that role. Although Algiers remained a part of the Ottoman Empire , the Sublime Porte , or Ottoman government, ceased to have effective influence there. The dey was in effect a constitutional autocrat, but his authority was restricted by the divan and the taifa, as well as by local political conditions. The dey was elected for a life term, but in the 159 years (1671–1830) that the system survived, fourteen of the twenty-nine deys were removed from office by assassination. Despite usurpation, military coups , and occasional mob rule , the day-to-day operation of government was remarkably orderly. In accordance with the millet system applied throughout the Ottoman Empire, each ethnic group-- Turks , Arabs, Kabyles , Berbers , Jews, Europeans—was represented by a guild that exercised legal jurisdiction over its constituents. The dey had direct administrative control only in the regent's enclave, the Dar as Sultan (Domain of the Sultan), which included the city of Algiers and its environs and the fertile Mitidja Plain . The rest of the territory under the regency was divided into three provinces (beyliks): Constantine in the east; Titteri in the central region, with its capital at Médéa ; and a western province that after 1791 had its seat at Oran, abandoned that year by Spain when the city was destroyed in an earthquake. Each province was governed by a bey appointed by the dey, usually from the same circle of families. A contingent of the ojaq was assigned to each bey, who also had at his disposal the provincial auxiliaries provided by the privileged makhzen tribes, traditionally exempted from paying taxes on condition that they collect them from other tribes. Tax revenues were conveyed from the provinces to Algiers twice yearly, but the beys were otherwise left to their own devices. Although the regency patronized the tribal chieftains, it never had the unanimous allegiance of the countryside, where heavy taxation frequently provoked unrest. Autonomous tribal states were tolerated, and the regency's authority was seldom applied in the Kabylie .

36°42′13.8″N 3°9′30.6″E  /  36.703833°N 3.158500°E  / 36.703833; 3.158500 Today part of Algeria The regency of Algiers (in Arabic : Al Jazâ'ir ), was a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire in North Africa lasting from 1515 to 1830, when it was conquered by the French . Situated between the regency of Tunis in the east and the Sultanate of Morocco (from 1553) in the west (and the Spanish and Portuguese possessions of North Africa), the Regency originally extended its borders from La Calle to the east to Trara in the west and from Algiers to Biskra, and after spread to the present eastern and western borders of Algeria. The Regency was governed by beylerbeys , pashas , aghas and deys , and was composed of various beyliks (provinces) under the authority of beys (vassals): Constantine in the east, Medea in the Titteri and Mazouna, then Mascara and then Oran in the west. Each beylik was divided into various outan (counties) with at their head the caïds directly under the bey. To administer the interior of the country, the administration relied on the tribes said makhzen . These tribes were responsible for securing order and collecting taxes on the tributary regions of the country. It was through this system that, for three centuries, the State of Algiers extended its authority over the north of Algeria. However, society was still divided into tribes and dominated by maraboutics brotherhoods or local djouads (nobles). Several regions of the country thus only lightly recognised the authority of Algiers. Throughout its history, they formed numerous revolts, confederations, tribal fiefs or sultanates that fought with the regency for control. Before 1830, out of the 516 political units, a total of 200 principalities or tribes were considered independent because they controlled over 60% of the territory in Algeria and refused to pay taxes to Algiers. The Ottoman response to European expansion: studies on Ottoman-Portuguese relations in the Indian Ocean and Ottoman administration in the Arab lands during the sixteenth century . Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire . According to an 1849 engraving by Gustav Feldweg, the former Algerian flag was an arm holding a sword on a red field and the flag of the Algerian corsairs was a skull and crossbones on the same field. See also Historical flags of Algeria . There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or templates on this page, but the references will not show without a template or template (see the help page ).

1516–1830 Autonomous Ottoman state in North Africa 36°42′13.8″N 3°9′30.6″E  /  36.703833°N 3.158500°E  / 36.703833; 3.158500 ( Learn how and when to remove this message ) Today part of Algeria The Regency of Algiers ( ) was an autonomous eyalet of the Ottoman Empire in North Africa from 1516 to 1830. It was an early modern tributary state founded by the Corsair brothers Oruç and Hayreddin Barbarossa and ruled first by viceroys , then later became a sovereign military republic . The Regency was the earliest and the most powerful of the Barbary states and had the largest navy in North Africa. Situated between the Regency of Tunis in the east, the Sharifian Sultanate of Morocco and Spanish Oran (until 1791) in the west, the Regency originally extended its borders from the Mellegue river in the east to Moulouya river in the west and from Collo to Ouargla , and had nominal authority over the Tuat as well as the country south of In Salah in the south. Towards the end of the Regency, it extended to the present eastern and western borders of Algeria. The sixteenth century witnessed the clash between the Spanish and Ottoman empires in the Mediterranean and the rise of the Algerian regency in North Africa - a unique society ruled by both heavily autonomous Turkish Janissary army corps and a multiethnic Corsair community, supported by the plunder from corsairs engaged in a holy war against Spanish Christendom. This regime, founded by Oruç Barbarossa and his younger brother Hayreddin Barbarossa, brought the entire central Magreb under its control. After the war between the two empires ended in the early 17th century, Algerian pirates who refused to recognize peace found new territories for their plunder when France , England and the United Kingdom of the Netherlands made peace with Spain. Soon the lords of Europe found themselves in an embarrassment as their merchant ships and goods were captured and their subjects enslaved, and they clamored for relief. The sultan could not force his vassals to cease their attacks, while great princes, such as the kings of France and England, were willing to deal directly with the regency. A more or less reasonable settlement was reached after a century of negotiations and wild sea operations, but by this time the pirates had expanded their piracy across the Atlantic, and by 1650 there were some 25,000 Christian slaves in Algiers. Throughout its existence, the Regency experienced several degrees of autonomy, with rulers emerging and being chosen locally. However the Regency continued to pay homage to the Ottoman sultan , recognizing his spiritual authority as the Caliph — the leader of the Islamic world. With the Janissary coup in 1659, the military republic of Algiers became practically independent from the Sublime porte , yet the regime was very unstable, which resulted first in a Corsair coup in 1671, and finally the Dey Ali chaouch refusing to allow Ottoman pashas to be sent to Algiers from 1710 on, assuming himself this title and thus guaranteed a relative stability in power. After a phase of decline in the second half of the 18th century, linked to the consolidation of diplomatic relations with European states and the regency's attempt to better fit into Mediterranean trade, the corso experienced three successive bursts with the contraction exchanges during the European wars of the French Revolution and Empire : in 1793, then between 1802 and 1810 and finally after 1812, when merchant ships from Algiers, Tunisia and Tripolitania were definitively excluded from European ports. The balance between the two shores of the Mediterranean which maintained the permanence of the corso broke at the beginning of the 19th century: after the commitment to put an end to the slave trade made at the Congress of Vienna and in an economic context where commercial development was not accommodate maritime insecurity, European states were acting together for the first time. As historian Daniel Panzac shows, the Anglo-Dutch expedition led in 1816 under the command of Lord Exmouth marked a decisive turning point, practically putting an end to the corso. The weakening of the Algerian state began at the beginning of the 19th century due to multiple causes. First, the lack of cohesion between groups of different status: Ra'ya, Makhzen, vassal, allied, independent tribes, with in several cases feudal-type entities escaping the authority of the beylik and levying a large share of direct taxes for themselves. Then real economic difficulties, linked to the decline of the corso, the decrease in internal trade, the impoverishment of the wealthy classes and the non-development of the means of communication. The drop in cereal production was a consequence of the disorganization of this entire commercial sector which was further destabilized by the arrival of cheap Russian wheat. Finally, all these difficulties were compounded by the stranglehold of foreigners on foreign trade and renewed European attacks. The power of the dey was then at the mercy of these interventions. The interior of the country found itself shaken by a succession of revolts against the tax system and by the weakening of the central power in the face of the demands of the Christian powers. The main revolts were caused by religious brotherhoods, mainly those of Darqawi and the Tijani orders. France would take advantage of this situation to intervene in Algeria and launched an invasion in 1830, leading to the French conquest of Algeria and eventually the establishment of French colonial rule across the country until 1962. Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire . Alger la Blanche: biographies d'une ville (in French). Atlas of Islamic History . A Short History of Algiers: With a Concise View of the Origin of the Rupture Between Algiers and the United States : to Wich is Added a Copious Appendix Containing Letters from Captains Penrose, M'Shane, and Sundry Other American Captives ... Hamdan-Ben-Othman-Khoja(1833), Aperçu historique et statistique sur la régence d'Alger, intitulé en arabe : "Le Miroir" , p94-102 William Shaler(1826), Sketches of Algiers, political, historical, and civil : containing an account of the geography, population, government, revenues, commerce, agriculture, arts, civil institutions, tribes, manners, languages, and recent political history of that country , p16 Bachelot, Bernard (2012). Louis XIV en Algérie: Gigeri - 1664 (in French). Sultân Djezâı̈r: aux origines historiques des janissaires d'Alger (in French). The A to Z of the Ottoman Empire . Historical Dictionary of Algeria . "Estats de l'Empire du Grand Seigneur des Turcs, en Europe, en Asie, et en Afrique, divisé en touts ses Beglerbeglicz, ou Gouvernements ; ou [sic] sont aussi remarqués les Estats qui luy sont Tributaires / dressé sur les plus Nouvelles Relations par le S[ieu]r Sanson, Géographe ordinaire du Roy ; présenté a [sic] Monseigneur le Dauphin, par son tres-humble, tres-obéissant, et tres fidele Serviteur Hubert Iaillot" . A - Bābā Beg . The Arabs: A History – Third Edition . The Cambridge History of Africa . The Diplomacy of the United States: Being an Account of the Foreign Relations of the Country, from the First Treaty with France, in 1778, to the Present Time . The Barbary Corsairs: The End of a Legend, 1800-1820 . Lords of the Sea: A History of the Barbary Corsairs . A Short History of Algiers: With a Concise View of the Origin of the Rupture Between Algiers and the United States : to Wich is Added a Copious Appendix Containing Letters from Captains Penrose, M'Shane, and Sundry Other American Captives ... An Historical and Geographical Account of Algiers: Comprehending a Novel and Interesting Detail of Events Relative to the American Captives . Les oasis du Gourara (Sahara algérien) (in French). The Barbary Coast: Algeria Under the Turks . North Africa: A History from Antiquity to the Present . L'orfèvrerie algérienne et tunisienne... / Paul Eudel (in French). Pirates, corsaires et flibustiers par Sylvie Requemora et Sophie Linon Chipon" . There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or templates on this page, but the references will not show without a template or template (see the help page ).

1516–1830 autonomous Ottoman state in North Africa Today part of Algeria The Regency of Algiers was an early modern semi-independent Ottoman province and nominal vassal state on the Barbary Coast of North Africa from 1516 to 1830. Founded by the privateer brothers Aruj and Hayreddin Reis (also known as the Barbarossa brothers), the Regency succeeded the Kingdom of Tlemcen as an infamous and formidable base that waged maritime holy war on European Christian powers. Elected regents headed a stratocracy that haunted European imagination for three centuries but still gained recognition as a regional power. The Regency emerged in the 16th-century Ottoman–Habsburg wars . As self-proclaimed ghazis gaining popular support and legitimacy from the religious leaders at the expense of hostile local emirs , the Barbarossa brothers and their successors carved a unique corsair state that drew revenue and political power from its naval warfare against Habsburg Spain . In the 17th century, when the wars between Spain and the Ottoman Empire , Kingdom of France , Kingdom of England and Dutch Republic ended, Barbary corsairs started capturing merchant ships and their crews and goods from these states. When the Ottomans could not prevent these attacks, European powers negotiated directly with Algiers and also took military action against it. This policy would emancipate Algiers from the Ottomans. The Regency held significant naval power in the 16th and 17th centuries and well into the end of the Napoleonic wars despite European naval superiority. Its institutionalised privateering dealt substantial damage to European shipping , took captives for ransom, plundered booty, hijacked ships and eventually demanded regular tribute payments. In the rich and bustling city of Algiers , the Barbary slave trade reached an apex. The Regency also expanded its hold in the interior by allowing a large degree of autonomy to the tribal communities. After the janissary coup of 1659, the Regency became a sovereign military republic, and its rulers were thenceforth elected by the council known as the diwan rather than appointed by the Ottoman sultan previously. Despite wars over territory with Spain and the Maghrebi states in the 18th century, Mediterranean trade and diplomatic relations with European states expanded, as wheat exports secured Algerian revenues after privateering decline. Bureaucratisation efforts stabilized the Regency's government, allowing into office regents such as Mohammed ben-Osman , who maintained Algerian prestige thanks to his public and defensive works. Increased Algerian privateering and demands for tribute started the Barbary Wars at the beginning of the 19th century, when Algiers was decisively defeated for the first time. Internal central authority weakened in Algiers due to political intrigue, failed harvests and the decline of privateering. Violent tribal revolts followed, mainly led by maraboutic orders such as the Darqawis and Tijanis . In 1830, France took advantage of this domestic turmoil to invade. The resulting French conquest of Algeria led to colonial rule until 1962. There are <ref group=nb> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a template (see the help page ). There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or templates on this page, but the references will not show without a template or template (see the help page ).