In addition to seizing ships, they engaged in
Razzias, raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands and as far away as Iceland. The main purpose of their attacks was to capture
Christian slaves for the
Ottoman slave trade as well as the general
Arabic market in North Africa and the Middle East.
[2]
While such raids had occurred since soon after the Muslim conquest of the region, the terms "Barbary pirates" and "Barbary corsairs" are normally applied to the raiders active from the 16th century onwards, when the frequency and range of the slavers' attacks increased.
Corsairs captured thousands of ships and repeatedly raided coastal towns. As a result, residents abandoned their former villages of long stretches of coast in Spain and Italy. The raids were such a problem that coastal settlements were seldom undertaken until the 19th century. From the 16th to 19th century, corsairs captured an estimated 800,000 to 1.25 million people as slaves.
[2] Some corsairs were European outcasts and
converts such as
John Ward and
Zymen Danseker.
[3] Hayreddin Barbarossa and
Oruç Reis, the Barbarossa brothers, who took control of Algiers on behalf of the Ottomans in the early 16th century, were also notorious corsairs. The European pirates brought advanced sailing and shipbuilding techniques to the Barbary Coast around 1600, which enabled the corsairs to extend their activities into the
Atlantic Ocean.
[3] The effects of the Barbary raids peaked in the early to mid-17th century.
