North Africa (1396–1539 CE): Dynastic Fragmentation and Imperial Incursions

Geographic & Environmental Context

The subregion of North Africa includes Morocco (together with the Western Sahara), Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Anchors included the Atlas Mountains, the Tell plains, the Saharan oases and trade routes, the Western Sahara corridor linking to the Sahel, and the Maghreb seaports of Fez, Tlemcen, Tunis, Tripoli, and Ceuta. This was a region where desert, steppe, and sea converged: caravan roads from Timbuktu and Gao brought gold and slaves across the Sahara, while Mediterranean ports tied the Maghreb into the larger Islamic and Christian worlds.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

The Little Ice Age brought cooler winters and erratic rainfall. Drought cycles struck the Western Sahara and Maghreb steppe, tightening dependence on oases and irrigation. Locust invasions and periodic plague outbreaks compounded crises, shrinking urban populations. Yet fertile plains along the Tell and Atlas valleys sustained wheat, olives, and fruit production. Coastal fisheries provided further resilience.

Subsistence & Settlement

Agrarian villages cultivated cereals, olives, and figs, while nomadic herders managed sheep, goats, and camels across steppe and desert. Oases of the Western Sahara sustained date palms, cereals, and salt trade. Cities like Fez and Tunis thrived as centers of crafts, scholarship, and trade, while Tripoli and Algiers connected desert routes to Mediterranean shipping.

Technology & Material Culture

Workshops in Fez, Tunis, and Tlemcen produced fine textiles, ceramics, and leatherwork. Goldsmithing and manuscript illumination flourished in urban centers. Zawiyas (Sufi lodges) served as nodes of education, manuscript copying, and devotion. Camel caravans remained the backbone of Saharan commerce, though firearms began to trickle into the region via European trade, altering the dynamics of warfare.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Western Sahara caravans: Carried salt, gold, and slaves from West Africa northward, exchanging for horses, textiles, and metal goods.

• Mediterranean seaports: Linked Maghreb cities with Italy, Iberia, and the Ottoman Levant.

• Portuguese expansion: Ceuta fell to Portugal in 1415; Tangier, Asilah, and other coastal strongholds soon followed, embedding Iberian enclaves along the Atlantic littoral.

• Spanish expansion: After 1492, Spain joined in the seizure of Melilla (1497) and Oran (1509).

• Ottoman interest: Algiers increasingly leaned toward Ottoman protection against Spain, foreshadowing Ottoman conquest.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

Madrasas in Fez and Tunis trained scholars in Islamic law and sciences, while Sufi brotherhoods expanded across steppe and desert, binding rural populations into ritual networks. Oral epics of tribal champions and saints’ legends circulated widely. Decorative tiles, stucco, and calligraphy adorned mosques and palaces. Christian forts along the coast embodied rival European claims.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Nomadic tribes shifted grazing routes in response to drought. Farmers rotated cereals and legumes, relying on irrigation and terrace cultivation in mountain valleys. Caravan merchants diversified routes to avoid conflict and secured oasis rights through diplomacy or tribute. Waqf endowments and Sufi zawiyas supported the needy in times of famine.

Transition

By 1539 CE, North Africa was politically fragmented but geopolitically pivotal. The Wattasid dynasty in Morocco struggled to defend Atlantic ports against Portugal. The Hafsids in Tunis and Tripoli balanced diplomacy and piracy. The Ottomans, through corsair captains like Barbarossa (Hayreddin Pasha), were entering the scene, soon to secure Algiers. Spain and Portugal pressed inland from fortified ports, foreshadowing centuries of contest between European powers, Ottoman regencies, and Indigenous dynasties across the Maghreb and Sahara.

The expanding Ottoman Empire had overpowered the Balkan Peninsula in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Present-day European Turkey and the Balkans, among the first territories conquered, are used as bases for expansion far to the West during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The Ottoman Turks have by 1517 conquered Persia, Syria, Palestine, the Hejaz and Egypt itself, in the process destroying the Mamluks, who have failed to adopt field artillery as a weapon in any but siege warfare.

Selim I's son, Suleyman I (r. 1520-66), is called the "lawgiver" (kanuni) by his Muslim subjects because of a new codification of seriat undertaken during his reign.

He is known in Europe, however, as Suleyman the Magnificent, a recognition of his prowess by those who have most to fear from it.

Belgrade falls to Suleyman in 1521, and in 1522 he compels the Knights of Saint John to abandon Rhodes.

The Ottoman victory at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526 leads to the taking of Buda on the Danube.

Vienna is besieged unsuccessfully during the campaign season of 1529.

North Africa up to the Moroccan frontier is brought under Ottoman suzerainty in the 1520s and 1530s, and governors named by the sultan are installed in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.

Kurdistan and Mesopotamia are taken from Persia in 1534.

The latter conquest gives the Ottomans an outlet to the Persian Gulf, where they are soon engaged in a naval war with the Portuguese.

The emir of Algiers had appealed to two Turkish corsairs to expel the Spaniards from the fortified offshore island of Peñon in the Bay of Algiers.

One of the corsairs, Khayr ad-Din (known to Europeans as Barbarossa for his red beard), has built a major pirate fleet of “sea ghazis” in the western Mediterranean and uses it to capture Algiers (1529) and other North African ports.

Habsburg emperor Charles V had sent a small Spanish fleet of eight galleys under the Spanish commander of the Castilla fleet, Rodrigo Portuondo, to eliminate Barbary ships from Algiers that are raiding the coast of Valencia and ferrying Moriscos from Spain to Algeria.

Portundo, routed by an Ottoman fleet under under Aydın Reis, known to the Spanish as Cachidiablo and to the Italians as Caccia Diavolo—"Hunting Devil", is killed in the battle, seven of his eight galleys are captured, and his soldiers are taken as slaves to the recently conquered city of Algiers.

Sultan Süleyman enrolls Khayr ad-Din (Barbarossa) in Ottoman service in 1533 as grand admiral.

As part of the arrangement with Barbarossa, the Ottomans annex Algiers to the empire as a special timar province permanently assigned to the grand admiral to support the fleet.

Ottoman land troops are sent to defend Algiers against Habsburg attacks, which probably is the main reason Barbarossa has agreed to join the sultan.

Barbarossa had managed to Tunis escape for the harbor of Bône, where a fleet was waiting for him. From there, he had sailed to the Balearics and sacked the port of Mahón, where he takes as many as six thousand captives and brings them as slaves to Algiers.

The naval strength of the Ottomans has become formidable in the reign of Süleyman.

Suleiman the Magnificent had in 1653 ordered Hayreddin Barbarossa, whom he had summoned from Algiers, to build a large war fleet in the arsenal of Constantinople.

Altogether, seventy galleys had been built during the winter of 1533–1534.

With this fleet, Barbarossa conducts aggressive raids along the coast of Italy, until he conquers Tunis on  August 16, 1534, ousting the local ruler, heretofore subservient to the Spanish, Muley Hasan.

Barbarossa thus establishes a strong naval base in Tunis that can be used for raids in the region, and on nearby Malta. 

Charles V, one of the most powerful men in Europe at this time, assembles a large army of some thirty thousand soldiers, seventy-four galleys, and three hundred ships—including the Santa Anna and Portuguese galleon São João Baptista, also known as Botafogo (Spitfire) and the most powerful ship in the world at the time, with three hundred and sixty-six bronze cannons—to drive the Ottomans from the region.

The expense involved for Charles V is considerable, and at one million ducats is on par with the cost of Charles' campaign against Suleiman on the Danube.

Unexpectedly, the funding of the conquest of Tunis comes from the galleons sailing in from the New World, in the form of a two million gold ducats treasure extracted by Francisco Pizarro in exchange for his releasing of the Inca king Atahualpa (whom he nevertheless executed on August 29, 1533).

Despite a request by Charles V, Francis I has denied French support to the expedition, explaining that he is under a three-year truce with Barbarossa following the 1533 Ottoman embassy to France.

Francis I is also under negotiations with Suleiman the Magnificent for a combined attack on Charles V, following the 1534 Ottoman embassy to France.

Francis I only agrees to Pope Paul III's request that no fight between Christians occur during the time of the expedition.

The Knights of Malta, who have organized piratical raids against Ottoman ships, capture Tunis and Goletta in 1535 with the aid of Doria and the imperial fleet.

A combined force of Austrians and Bohemians, twenty-four thousand strong, unsuccessfully besieges the Ottoman fortress of Eszèk in 1537, in response to depredations by Ottoman soldiers in the region, a violation of the truce of 1533 ending the previous Austro-Turkish War.

The Ottomans also suspect Moldavia’s current governor of intrigue with Vienna.

In reaction to a presumed Venetian insult, …