Barbary States

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BARBARY STATES

Sixteenth-century term for states of North Africa's Mediterranean shore.

Morocco and the Ottoman Empire provinces of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, which ranged along the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, became known in the West as the Barbary states beginning in the sixteenth century. In the West, they became synonymous with Corsair raiding and the so-called Barbary pirates, who waged the Barbary wars against ships of Christian states until 1821.

see also barbary wars; corsairs.

Jerome Bookin-Wiener

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