4

A Cinderella Story
Among the Corsairs

AS THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR came to a close in Europe, the Ottoman sultanate rose from a kingdom into a massive empire. The Ottoman Empire was an Islamic state that at its height stretched from southeastern Europe to northern Africa. The Mediterranean basin and surrounding area was, during the sixteenth century, the center for a bitter religious conflict between Christians and Muslims as they battled for control of the area. For about 150 years, from 1500 to 1650, a group of pirates were a vital part of that conflict. These pirates terrorized the area, causing significant damage to the European and Christian powers. Their cruelty was legendary, and stories of their exploits spread across the world. They were known as the Barbary corsairs, some of the most feared pirates of all time. They ruled the Mediterranean Sea until the French acquisition of Algiers in 1830.

Barbary pirates had been around since the collapse of the Roman Empire, but they really picked up steam as a serious threat in the late fifteenth century. Corsair, a term used interchangeably with the word pirate but meant to designate the North African pirates, was a household name during this period. Children were told stories of the Barbary corsairs to frighten them into good behavior. If they weren’t good, the Barbary pirates would steal them away and they would never see home again.

While many parts of the Barbary legend are demonstrably false, this one—the kidnapping of people—is absolutely true. The Barbary pirates kidnapped and enslaved Christians regularly during their heyday. Estimates claim that somewhere between one hundred thousand and over a million Christians were captured and sold into slavery by the Barbary corsairs. People disappeared, and very few were ever ransomed and returned to their homes and families. This practice carried into the early period of the British Empire, although it was not often mentioned in the press or literature at that time. Corsairs captured new slaves not only at sea but also from coastal towns in Portugal, England, Spain, and France. The enslavement of Christians by Barbary pirates would soon be echoed by the enslavement of Africans by Christians, which would cause tension for the large numbers of people who protested the horrors of Barbary white slavery while still supporting black slavery.

In 1631 all the people of the Irish town of Baltimore were whisked away from their homes and into a life of slavery in North Africa. In the dead of night, a band of pirates led by the renegade Murat Reis sailed into the harbor with sackcloth-wrapped oars, silent as the grave. He and his men slipped through the streets, positioning themselves in front of every door in town. When the signal came, the pirates sprang into action, bellowing fiercely and smashing down doors. They dragged men, women, and children out of their beds and into the streets, killing those who resisted. In the end, over one hundred prisoners were taken by the pirates. These luckless souls were carried off to Algiers, where they were sold at auction. Only a few of the villagers lived to see Ireland again.

The Barbary pirates’ reputation for cruelty could very well have been exaggerated. Given that Christian states were engaged in a holy war against Islamic ones, anti-Muslim bias would have been running high among Christian historians during this time. It was in the Christians’ best interest to demonize their foes with extensive propaganda—such as conveniently forgetting that a large number of these Barbary corsairs were actually European-born Christians who switched sides in order to be able to take part in more lucrative pirating. However, the corsairs did not make an effort to counteract their reputation; on the contrary, they relished it. When they swarmed an enemy ship, the crew was often so terrified of the Barbary threat that they surrendered immediately. The legends of the Barbary menace made the corsair’s work much easier—they did much of the corsair’s work for him or her. Although most of the famous corsairs were men, there was a famous woman corsair who was also a queen: Sayyida al-Hurra, the last woman to legitimately claim the Islamic “al-Hurra” title.

Much of what is recorded about the Barbary corsairs is a tangled web of myth, legend, and fact. For example, the corsairs are often cited as the original source of the word barbarian due to their cruel ways. However, the real story is a bit more complicated. The Greek word barbaros simply meant “outsider” or “not a citizen.” As time went on, it was applied to many different civilizations that were not Greek- or Roman-based, and the term ultimately came to be used for any alien culture. The term Barbary Coast is most often linked to the Berber ethnicity of the peoples of North Africa, but it is also said that the Romans called the people of North Africa barbarians due to their non-Roman heritage, regardless of whether or not they were actually Berber. The word barbarian is often used to mean simply “people of Barbary,” so technically, the word does share a common root with Barbary pirates, but it predates the corsairs’ existence. Many other stories involving the Barbary corsairs are similarly tantalizing mixes of fact and fiction.

So what did they actually do? What made them so effective? They are often compared to a later group of outlaws, the buccaneers, due to the many similarities between the two groups. Like the buccaneers, the corsairs were located in a relatively small area. The Barbary corsairs were based mainly out of three ports: Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, plus scores of smaller ones along the North African coasts. Both groups were also largely composed of privateers rather than true pirates. Corsairs were technically privateers because they attacked only enemies of the state. The local rulers, called beys, offered privateering licenses to the corsairs in exchange for 10 percent of their profits plus port fees. Buccaneers enjoyed a similar, although often less regimented, arrangement with the local government of their area. Their organizations were not identical, however. Buccaneers and corsairs differed in their methods, attire, and length of time they were active. Corsairs also had a larger hold of the public’s imagination while they were in their prime, likely due to a combination of how successful they were and how feared they were.

Under their arrangement with the beys, the corsairs could attack any non-Muslim ships, particularly ships from countries with which the empire was at war, although this rule was not always strictly observed. This system was beneficial to both the beys and the corsairs; the corsairs were able to use the beys’ bustling ports to sell and trade their stolen wares, from goods to slaves, as well as to repair their ships and weaponry and to obtain supplies and crew for their next trip. In return, the beys or the sultans of the empire could call on the corsairs to fight against the Christians in naval battles. Indeed, corsairs took part in all the major battles of the sixteenth century, beefing up the sultan’s fleet and lending their sailing expertise, to the detriment of the Christian (mostly Spanish) adversaries.

The rulers of the area valued and encouraged the corsairs’ privateering, and not just because of their fighting prowess. As Angus Konstam explains in Piracy: The Complete History, the geography of the area also played a role in the corsairs’ popularity. The coast of North Africa sits right along the edge of the vast Sahara Desert, which makes farming and other land-based pursuits nearly impossible. Riches, if they were to come at all, would have to come from the sea. The corsairs were the backbone of port city economies and brought vast riches into the Ottoman Empire. The empire itself was headquartered in Istanbul, which was far enough away from the North African coast to allow the local rulers and corsairs enough latitude to conduct their business without interference. Except when the corsairs were needed in war, they were mostly left alone by the empire to do as they pleased.

Despite the corsairs’ reputation among Europeans as aliens and foreigners, a surprisingly large number of them looked just like their European victims. Estimates claim that several thousand Barbary corsairs were from Europe. Many of those corsairs, including some of the most famous ones, were of Dutch descent. They learned sailing in Europe but made their way to the North African coast to take advantage of the ample privateering licenses that were being issued by the beys and sultans of the area. Converting to Islam seemed a small price to pay to become rich beyond one’s wildest dreams. These converts were known as renegados, from which the word renegade developed. They were said to be among the most ruthless and despised of all the Barbary pirates. The fact that the Western world conveniently forgot to mention that some of the scariest “barbarians” were actually of their own stock is another instance of historical revisionism.

The corsairs’ influence in the Mediterranean basin waned around 1650, yet they deserve a footnote in American history for their role in the development of the United States. Before the Declaration of Independence, the American colonies were protected from Barbary pirates under Britain’s peace treaty with the corsairs. Countries that were not at peace with the corsairs either had to risk attack or pay tribute: an exorbitant protection fee. The fees were not regulated and could be changed at any time according to the whims of the rulers (as with the peace treaties). A Barbary ruler could declare a peace treaty over by chopping down the flag outside of a rival nation’s embassy.

The United States, no longer under Britain’s protection and thus forced to make their own deal with the corsairs, had paid two million dollars in tribute by the time President Thomas Jefferson took office. Jefferson decided that the fledgling nation needed to make a stand to prove that it was to be taken seriously and was capable of defending itself against foreign powers. In 1801 Jefferson declared war on Tripoli. This war spanned over a decade and two presidencies before America was finally safe from the Barbary corsair menace. It also led to the creation of the US Navy, which was built expressly to combat the corsairs. The battle with the corsairs, although often forgotten in modern US history classes and lectures, is nonetheless forever immortalized in American culture through the unlikely vehicle of the Marines’ hymn: “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.”

The Barbary corsairs produced a series of notable pirates, none more famous than the brothers Barbarossa. These men are the subject of innumerable legends and stories due to their dominance of much of the Barbary Coast and the war they waged against Spain. Much is said about these men, but very little can be verified—right down to their names. Some sources claim they were called Barbarossa due to their red beards; the words for red and beard in Spanish and French sound similar to barba and rosa. However, some say that due to his kindness, brother Aruj was known as Baba Aruj, Baba being an honorific for “father.” This term was then westernized to Barbarossa. No matter how they got their name, these men made a huge mark on the history of the region. Allegedly, they aided Sayyida al-Hurra as she was starting out.

From the mighty Barbarossa brothers to the lowliest corsairs, Barbary pirates used roughly the same technique to attack. They sailed up behind an enemy ship and boarded it from the rear. They used grappling hooks and other tools to climb aboard and engage the crew in hand-to-hand combat. They primarily attacked merchant ships, which were not staffed with trained combatants, so the battles were often short. Also, the corsairs’ fearsome reputation generally prompted the crews to surrender right away to save their own lives. Those taken would be ransomed or sold into slavery back at port. Many of the people captured by the corsairs were slaves already: galley slaves who rowed the ships. This was another reason corsair ships were often victorious in battle—they had the advantage of being crewed entirely by free pirates, who were more motivated to defend their own ships.

The corsairs’ favorite mode of attack was designed around the strengths and weaknesses of their ship. The corsair galley was a sharp departure from the warships of the period and most resembled the pirate ships of antiquity—bearing more than a passing resemblance to the monoreme ships used by the ancient Greeks. The new galleys had one or more masts but also had twenty to thirty oars, which required three to six rowers each. In the Mediterranean basin, the lack of a breeze meant a ship was often dead in the water without another means of propulsion. The return to galley ships allowed the corsairs to practically dance around their prey when the wind was down due to the power of the oarsmen.

Most of the Barbary corsairs used a modified galley design called a galliot. It was smaller and faster than a traditional galley, and this gave the pirates an even bigger advantage on their targets. A galliot had only one mast. Instead of twenty or thirty oars, galliots had twelve to twenty-four oars, which could be rowed by just two oarsmen each. Remember that in pirate galliots, the oarsmen would be freemen instead of slaves, who were the rowers of choice on nonpirate galleys. This was not an entirely altruistic decision—besides the increased fighting motivation, the small size of the ship demanded that everyone onboard was part of the boarding party for maximum impact. The corsairs did have a few larger galleys, but they were used for raiding, backup vessels, and as command ships. Sometimes, a tartan was used in corsair attacks, which was very similar to the galliot except it had two masts instead of one.

The galleys also had a specially built forecastle equipped both with forward-facing artillery and swivel guns. Weaponry was not the most desirable trait of the design, however, because for the corsairs, a firefight was to be avoided at all costs. A gun battle would damage both ships and lower the resale value of the captured ship, and therefore was financially unwise. The galley’s lightness, which gave it maneuverability, also meant that it was weaker and more vulnerable in a head-to-head battle. Therefore, the boarding method was popular since it allowed the corsairs to use speed to their advantage without exposing their weaknesses to the enemy ships. The galley’s design remained popular throughout the next few centuries and was used by pirates around the world, including, most likely, the pirate queen of the Mediterranean, Sayyida al-Hurra.

In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella, Catholic monarchs of Spain, wrapped up a nearly eight-hundred-year conflict between Christians and Muslims over control of the Iberian Peninsula. This bloody battle, known as the Reconquista, ended with Spain capturing Granada. Many thousands of Muslims found life under Christian rule intolerable and fled Spain, emigrating to northern Africa, which was more hospitable to Muslims. One of the innumerable families who made the trek south was the Banu Rashid, a powerful tribe of some wealth. One of the daughters of a Banu Rashid family, born around 1485, would never forget what exile felt like and the pain it caused her family. She would dedicate her life to making the Spanish pay for what they had done. Her real name has been lost, but she grew up to be called Sayyida al-Hurra, a name that means “the woman sovereign [who exercises] power.”

Her childhood was spent in Chaouen, a city in present-day Morocco that housed a large refugee community at that time. Sayyida must have spent countless nights as a child listening to the adults discuss how much they hated the Spanish Christians and how they would do anything to get revenge. Plans to return to Spain were frequently made and sorties against the Spanish were carried out almost constantly. Many exiles were obsessed with the idea of, if not getting back home, at least hurting the Spanish. It makes sense that this group of angry refugees eventually made contact with the corsairs due to their shared agenda. As Sayyida grew up, she bided her time and waited for the opportunity to join the Barbary corsairs herself, which would not come for over twenty years.

As a child, Sayyida was promised to a man named Abu al-Hasan al-Mandri. Sources are not totally clear whether she married al-Mandri the father, who was some thirty years her senior, or al-Mandri II, the son. Regardless of which one she married, he encouraged or at least allowed her to get involved in his political affairs. Her husband was the ruler of nearby Tétouan, also a town in present-day Morocco a little over forty miles from Chaouen.

Even if her marriage was not a love match, it seems clear that Sayyida’s husband at least respected her. She was allowed to rule with him and took part in his efforts to rebuild the city of Tétouan, which had been destroyed by the Castilians around 1400. The al-Mandris sent a delegation to the sultan of Morocco, Abu al-Abbas-Amhad ibn Muhammad of the Wattasid dynasty, and asked for his permission to resettle the town and defend it against attackers. This was possibly the first time Sayyida came in contact with the sultan, who would play a huge role in her life after her husband’s death. Once the king agreed, the al-Mandris painstakingly restored Tétouan to its former glory and made it into a bustling metropolis, featuring a Great Mosque and narrow, mazelike streets to ward off invaders. Today, old town Tétouan is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Sayyida’s husband died in 1515. Upon his death, she took his title for herself and proclaimed that she was now the sole ruler of Tétouan. This action set a precedent for many women pirates who would come after her, Cheng I Sao among them. A woman could rise to power by taking over for her husband after his death. Sayyida was officially confirmed as a prefect in Tétouan, but she was soon promoted to governor of the area, legitimately obtaining the title of al-Hurra, meaning “free and independent woman.”

During the Ottoman Empire, all Islamic women’s lives were ruled by sharia law, a moral and religious legal system considered the infallible law of God. It comes from religious prophecy instead of human lawmakers and governs all manner of topics, from conventional ones such as crime and trade to more personal ones such as diet, sexual congress, and bodily hygiene. Under sharia law, women must be veiled around men who are not their husbands or close relatives. However, during Sayyida’s time, women under sharia law had more freedom than women under many Western legal systems. For example, traditional interpretations of sharia law said that Islamic women could divorce, keep their surnames after marriage, and handle their own financial affairs.

Political success was not enough for Sayyida. Now that she had a large amount of power, she decided to use it to make her enemies pay for what they had done to her family and her people. Nearly five hundred miles separated her from the Barbary corsair Khair-ed-din’s headquarters in Algiers, but somehow the prefect of Tétouan made contact with the last and most famous Barbarossa brother and obtained some tips on the business of privateering. There are no details on how, when, and where the two met, but one imagines that the fearsome pirate was at first amused, then impressed with the woman from Tétouan. Sayyida began privateering and soon became the “undisputed leader of the pirates in the western Mediterranean,” according to Fatima Mernissi in her book The Forgotten Queens of Islam.

Sayyida enters the historical record through the transaction logs of the Spanish and Portuguese authorities who dealt with her. She was the person who could get a hostage released or negotiate terms for trade. In Spanish and Portuguese documents, Sayyida is portrayed as a predominant power in the area. Spain and Portugal considered her not a nuisance but a legitimate naval power—a true rival. She is always listed only as “Sayyida al-Hurra”; her real name is never mentioned.

Sayyida ruled the western Mediterranean for twenty years. Although nobody knows for sure whether or not she ever actually sailed with the pirates whom she commanded, she was most definitely in charge and everybody knew it. Her corsair crews raided on land, took prisoners, and enslaved Christians. Corsair crews on the water plundered European ships. The money she obtained from her labors was poured back into Tétouan, which was now prosperous due to her work. Not just Sayyida but also many of the exiled families of Tétouan could feel that they had been paid back for the injustice they had suffered. Sayyida ensured that the Spanish knew the Moors of Granada had not forgotten how they had been treated.

Just before the end of Sayyida’s reign, she decided to marry once again. In 1541 the widow of nearly thirty years set her sights high. She chose no less of a suitor than the sultan of Morocco himself: Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad, ruler of the kingdom of Fez. Many years ago as a newlywed, she had appealed to him for help in rebuilding her city. Now the city he had helped her raise from the ashes was flourishing, and she was the ruler of not just the city but also half the Mediterranean Sea. The young woman seems to have made quite an impression on the sultan, and sources claim he was very fond of Sayyida.

He was so in love with (or under the sway of) his new bride-to-be that he consented to leave his capital city of Fez and travel all the way to Tétouan at her request so that their marriage could take place in her home. The approximately 170-mile journey was not particularly long, but it was a giant distance for a ruler to travel. According to The Historical Dictionary of Morocco, it was unprecedented for a sultan to leave his capital city to get married, and this was the only time in Moroccan history that it happened. After the marriage, Sayyida refused to leave Tétouan and continued ruling as before. One wonders why she deigned to remarry at all. Clearly she felt there was some value in it, otherwise she would not have done it, but it does not appear that she was interested in keeping house or even living in the same city as her new husband. Perhaps she felt that an alliance with the sultan would increase her own power.

What thoughts ran through her mind on her wedding day? Did she picture the frightened child she had been, forced to leave her home behind? She had traveled a long way, both literally and figuratively, from her childhood status as powerless refugee to the queen of an empire. When she began her journey, did she ever imagine she would end up here?

Sayyida’s story does not mention whether her new husband had other wives or concubines, or who made up his harem—a concept misunderstood by the West since the first Western translation of A Thousand and One Nights. Completed in 1717, Antoine Galland’s French translation of the stories popularized the titillating images of the captive slave girls of the harem, passive vessels that exist solely for male pleasure. The odalisque of Western art, lounging indolently in semi-undress and making eyes at the viewer, is a part of this same concept. Harems were viewed for many years as a prison for the sultan’s women, where men could seek any pleasure.

This view was perpetuated by Western male travelers to the Ottoman Empire. Historian Patricia Ebrey says that “travelers’ accounts invariably reveal as much about themselves as about those they describe,” and it holds true in this case: men were never even allowed to enter the harems. They invented and extrapolated these sexual playgrounds from fantasy and gossip, and in the process created a myth that would endure for generations. It was not until Western women travelers gained access that a clear picture of life inside the harem began to emerge. The eyewitness accounts from women begin in the Victorian era, so they postdate Sayyida by quite a bit. However, it is the best information available. This knowledge turned the old ideas on their head, but the erotic image of dancing girls endures to this day.

Professor Leslie Peirce says that the term harem is “redolent of religious purity and honor,” claiming the harem was more akin to a sacred space than a prison, a place where women could escape the coarse world of men. They existed in ordinary homes as well as palaces, and were essentially large rooms where women and the men of their immediate family were allowed to go. These multipurpose rooms were where women ate, entertained company, and sometimes slept, depending on the family. Victorian visitors describe them as sumptuously appointed, comfortable, and extremely pleasant.

Inside royal palaces, including the imperial harem, where the sultan of the Ottoman Empire lived, the same essential function remained, but all the elements were magnified to befit a sultan. According to the Koran, men could have up to four wives. Sultans often had four wives—but it was not common to officially marry these women until after the fifteenth century. When Süleyman the Magnificent actually married his companion Roxelana, it was a shocking break with tradition—but more on that in a bit. Besides the wives, in the legendary Topkapi Palace in present-day Istanbul, the sultan kept wives as well as concubines of various ranks in the harem. Inside the imperial harem were also the children of the sultan and their wet nurses; slave servants, who had no sexual contact with the sultan and served as domestic servants to the women; and the valide sultan, the sultan’s mother. Every person in the harem had a specific place in the social order, and everyone knew exactly what her role was.

At the top of the harem was the valide sultan. She wielded absolute power inside the harem and often outside it as well. The valide sultan could rule as regent if her son was unable to rule, and many of them continued to rule even once their sons reached adulthood (albeit indirectly through influencing their sons). Her rooms were between the servant quarters and family quarters in order to keep an eye on everyone. She got the largest daily stipend of all of the women of the harem and managed large amounts of money. The valide sultan was in charge of some land grants and tax income, which she used to pay for her public works. History is full of schools, hospitals, mosques, and many other buildings that were constructed under the auspices of the valide sultan. These women could not rule directly, but they did their best within the existing system to exert power on the sultan and control the fate of their kingdom. In the harem, they lived “at the very heart of political life,” according to Peirce.

Underneath the valide sultan were the wives, known as kadin. The sultan was bound by etiquette to visit his women in a strict order. The only reason a woman would lose her turn in line was if she was for some reason indisposed. Each woman, when she was brought into the palace, would be taken under the wing of a senior palace official. She would be given new clothes, sent to a “charm school” to learn social graces, and taught to read, so she could read the Koran. Girls who showed musical aptitude would be instructed in musical instruments to be able to perform for the sultan. Top performers would be selected as concubines for the sultan. Women of lesser talent might still be retained as an ikbal, a lower type of courtesan. If a girl was not chosen to be either, she would become a serving girl, but she could ask to be discharged after nine years of service, when she was usually married off to an upper-level official, complete with a dowry. One imagines a scaled-down version of this system in the Moroccan palace at Fez, but of course Sayyida was never a resident of that palace’s harem. She preferred to stay in her own household, under nobody’s authority but her own.

Sadly, her marriage did not protect her from what was to come just one year later; in fact, it may have accelerated her fate. In 1542, fifty years after her family fled Spain, Sayyida’s thirty-year reign came to an end. She was deposed by someone—many sources believe it was a stepson of hers, one of the king’s sons. Despite having been a beloved ruler and bringing prosperity to her subjects for over a quarter century, she had nobody to turn to in order to protect her claim to the throne. How did the people of Tétouan react to losing Sayyida? Were they devastated or secretly glad? There is no way to discover what the sentiment was in the area during that time. Sayyida’s life is scarcely documented in general, but on this topic there is virtually nothing. Most sources note that she was deposed and nothing more.

Curiously, it seems that Sayyida’s model of governing might have made its mark on her part of the world, even if her name did not. In Istanbul, Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent broke with two hundred years of Ottoman tradition and legally married one of his concubines, the woman who would come to be known as Hürrem Sultan, around 1534, during Sayyida’s reign. Hürrem Sultan was the first woman to hold power in the sultanate of women. Known in the west as Roxelana, she was born in western Ukraine. She was allegedly a daughter of a priest and was kidnapped and sold to the sultan by Tatars. An ambassador to the sultan’s court described her as “young but not beautiful, although graceful and petite.” Hürrem worked her way up the concubine hierarchy, and eventually she and Sultan Süleyman fell deeply in love. While he was away fighting a campaign, they exchanged love letters, often in poem form, many of which survive today. Although Hürrem was the second concubine—the mother of the sultan’s heir was ahead of her in line—she managed to uproot the first wife and her son, eventually securing her son as heir apparent. She was known as Haseki Sultan (sultan’s chief wife), and she exerted considerable influence on him (and consequently the empire). It was said that she “had the bridle of the sultan’s will in her hands.” The sultan stopped visiting any of his other concubines for physical pleasures and remained monogamously devoted to Hürrem until her death.

Süleyman merged the harem (formerly housed elsewhere) and the rest of the palace, bringing women out of the private and into the political sphere. Wives and mothers of sultans thereafter were allowed to be by the sultans’ sides and exert influence in their decisions and affairs. Hürrem was instrumental in moving women closer to the center of power, yet she is often portrayed as a scheming shrew who bewitched the sultan. However, she was just protecting her son—just as Mahidevran, the first wife, attempted to do. Anxiety about Hürrem may stem from her dual role as mother of a prince and wife of a sultan. Before, women had been mothers first and concubines a distant second. Hürrem’s legal marriage made her mother and wife. How could she possibly serve both men at the same time? It was an untenable position that turned the people against her. They simply could not understand why the sultan would break with tradition and legally marry her; they distrusted the amount of power she exerted over the sultan. Also, she was a disruption to the established powerful mother-son bond. Süleyman’s own mother, Hafsa, did not enjoy the same amount of power after Hürrem joined the palace as she had before.

Hürrem died before the sultan, who was completely bereft. He was buried next to her in the magnificent mosque built to bury their young son, who died of smallpox. Their elder son, Selim II, succeeded his father on the throne. Selim II was a drunkard who pursued pleasure over affairs of state. His wife was also a part of the sultanate of women. Although his mother had had considerable say in the politics of the empire, his wife Nurbanu, born Cecilia in Venice before being kidnapped by a Barbarossa and given to the sultan at the age of twelve, controlled even more of the empire due to her husband’s utter disinterest in ruling. She maintained extensive foreign correspondence, including with Catherine de Medici—who was herself the regent of King Henry III of France. Nurbanu, like Roxelana before her and the women who came after her, all but ruled the Ottoman Empire, despite having no official power. They were more like Western queens than concubines in terms of status and power.

These women were constantly opposed by male advisors to the sultan and had to be extraordinarily careful about how they wielded their power. They could not march off to war like men could; they had to be content with peaceful displays of power, such as charitable works and public buildings. Many mosques, schools, and other monuments were constructed by these shadow sultans. Although historians sometimes dismiss the sultanate of woman as an aberration, Peirce argues that it was an inevitable by-product of the gender politics of the time. Sayyida was certainly a part of the gender politics of the area.

Perhaps Sayyida’s example showed Süleyman the Magnificent that women and politics could mix harmoniously, though no evidence has been discovered of a direct connection between her and the imperial sultan. However, it seems significant that as a powerful pirate woman rose in influence in Morocco, the imperial sultan saw fit to end a centuries-old ban and bring women into more power. The sultanate of women lasted for over a hundred years, so Sayyida’s influence might have lasted much longer than her own reign did.

How does such a remarkable ruler, consort to the sultan of Morocco, disappear? After her deposition, there is no information on what happened to her. She was presumably stripped of her title, her throne, and her property. Perhaps she was absorbed into her husband’s household. Perhaps she was executed. Perhaps she slipped away in the night and took refuge among the many families whom she had helped during her reign. One hopes that after all she had been through in her tumultuous career, she was afforded if not a happy, then at least a peaceful ending. However and whenever she died, she went to her grave secure in the knowledge that she had been a great ruler and had revitalized her new home city of Tétouan.

So why was Sayyida’s name kept out of the record? Perhaps her successor made an effort to erase her, as the Vatican did to traditional pagan women goddesses. Maybe the society of her time could accept women having some equal rights to men but not surpassing them as leaders, and so it erased her contributions. Although her life is not well remembered, at least it was recorded at all by the people whom she opposed. It would have been a great loss if her life had fallen through the cracks of history entirely.

After Sayyida’s disappearance, the heyday of the Barbary corsairs would last for another hundred years. But just as her reign was ending, a few hundred miles away in the Atlantic another pirate woman was born. Her story was also one of fighting her oppressors and bringing justice to her family, and she would also be called a pirate queen. Grace O’Malley was one of two pirate women who ruled the waves during the reign of another fierce queen: Elizabeth I.