History Illustrated: Barbarossa and the Battle of Preveza

He was born in roughly 1478, on what today is the Greek island of Lesbos. His name was Khidr, but he is remembered as Barbarossa — meaning Red Beard — hero to the Ottoman Empire.

Barbarossa learned to sail as a boy, and would grow up to assume command at one of the great naval conflicts of all time — the Battle of Preveza.

The Mediterranean in the early 16th century was a dangerous place, where ships were often plundered and Christians and Muslims would raid each other.

By the early 1500s, Khidr and his older brother Aruj controlled a fleet of ships. In 1516, they drove the Spanish out of Algiers, the same year that Charles V took the throne in Spain.

Khidr, now known as Barbarossa, needed help with the Spanish and others, and sought out Suleiman the Magnificent, who had assumed the Ottoman throne in 1520.

At the time, the Knights Hospitaller, a Catholic military order, were based on the island of Rhodes. For centuries they raided Muslim towns and ships, but in 1522 Barbarossa helped the Ottomans take the island.

By 1538, Charles V — by then the Holy Roman Emperor — and Pope Paul III had seen enough. To counter Barbarossa, they created the Holy League, an alliance that included the Papal states, Spain, Genoa and Venice.

Their forces collided on September 28, 1538, in the Ionian Sea, near Preveza in northwestern Greece. Outnumbered, Barbarossa’s smaller galleys were powered by oars and able to outmanoeuvre the sluggish papal fleet for a stunning victory.

Barbarossa’s triumph at Preveza is a cornerstone of his legacy, building as he did a navy that would ensure the Ottoman Empire’s dominance of the seas for centuries after his death.