https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayreddin_BarbarossaHayreddin Barbarossa (1478 – 4 July 1546)
He began his naval career as a Barbary pirate, alongside his brothers, raiding Christian coastal villages and seizing ships across the Mediterranean. Khair-ed-Din, also known as Hayreddin Barbarossa, was so successful as a corsair that he managed to become the ruler of Algiers, and then the chief admiral of the Ottoman Turkish navy under Suleiman the Magnificent. Barbarossa started life as a simple potter's son, and rose to lasting piratical fame.
EARLY LIFE
Khair-ed-Din was born sometime in the late 1470s or early 1480s in the village of Palaiokipos, on the Ottoman-controlled Greek island of Midilli. His mother Katerina was likely a Greek Christian, while his father Yakup is of uncertain ethnicity - different sources state that he was Turkish, Greek, or Albanian. In any case, Khair was the third of their four sons.
Yakup was a potter, who purchased a boat to help him sell his goods all around the island and beyond. His sons all learned to sail as part of the family business. As young men, sons Ilyas and Aruj operated their father's boat, while Khair bought a ship of his own; they all began operating as privateers in the Mediterranean.
Between 1504 and 1510, Aruj used his fleet of ships to help ferry Moorish Muslim refugees from Spain to North Africa after the Christian Reconquista and the fall of Granada. The refugees referred to him as Baba Aruj or "Father Aruj," but Christians heard the name as Barbarossa, which is Italian for "Redbeard." As it happened, Aruj and Khair both had red beards, so the western nickname stuck.
In 1516, Khair and his older brother Aruj led a sea and land invasion of Algiers, then under Spanish domination. The local amir, Salim al-Tumi, had invited them to come and free his city, with assistance from the Ottoman Empire. The brothers defeated the Spanish and drove them from the city, and then assassinated the amir.
Aruj took power as the new Sultan of Algiers, but his position was not secure. He accepted an offer from the Ottoman sultan Selim I to make Algiers part of the Ottoman Empire; Aruj became the Bey of Algiers, a tributary ruler under Istanbul's control. The Spanish killed Aruj in 1518, however, at the capture of Tlemcen, and Khair took on both the beyship of Algiers and the nickname "Barbarossa."
http://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/hayreddin-barbarossa-causing-ruckus-notorious-pirate-redbeard-005191 http://www.badassoftheweek.com/barbarossa.htmlhttp://www.thepiratesrealm.com/Barbarossa%20Brothers.html
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