![]() ![]() While such raids had occurred since soon after the Muslim conquest of Iberian Peninsula in the 710s, 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. ![]() Slaves in Barbary could be of many ethnicities, and of many different religions, such as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. The main purpose of their attacks was to capture slaves for the Ottoman slave trade as well as the general Arab slavery market in North Africa and the Middle East. In addition to seizing merchant 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 Iceland. Their predation extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along West Africa's Atlantic seaboard and into the North Atlantic as far north as Iceland, but they primarily operated in the western Mediterranean. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, in reference to the Berbers. The Barbary pirates, or Barbary corsairs or Ottoman corsairs, were Muslim pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Salé, Rabat, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. A Barbary pirate, Pier Francesco Mola 1650 ![]()
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