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374 Evrim Türkçelik

capture of Tunis in 1534. As Charles V’s greatest victory against Islam,
the year 1535 acquired symbolic and propagandistic resonance for his
claim to be the protector of Christendom. On the international political
scene, the conquest of Tunis created on the one hand, a triumphal
atmosphere among Christian powers that led to the renewal of
proposals to forge an anti-Islamic Holy League . On the other hand, it
1
deepened divisions among European powers and accelerated the move
towards alliances that would provide a strategic counterweight to
Charles V’s expansion. The most striking result of this process was the
«unholy alliance» between Francis I and Süleyman I . Modern historical
2
research, driven by the conquest’s historical importance and nourished
by abundant primary sources, has produced numerous accounts and
analyses of various aspects of the campaign and its results. Scholars
have also studied the political and religious significance of the artistic
commemorations of the Tunis expedition, such as the tapestries of
Vermeyen , and literary eulogies of the victory, including the poetry of
3
Garcilaso de la Vega . Interestingly, the references to Tunis and
4
Barbarossa in Gargantua, the French satirical work that mocked the
imperial ambitions of Charles V, have been examined to determine the
exact publication date of the work’s earlier versions and whether
Rabelais published this famous work before or after 1535 .
5
In comparison to the comprehensive studies of 1535 from European
perspectives, Ottoman historiography has not shown the same level of
interest in Barbarossa’s 1534 Tunis campaign, or in his unsuccessful
resistance against Charles V in Tunis in 1535 which he followed up with
the successful assault on Mahón. Ottoman chronicles reserve little
space for these episodes, and Ottoman archival sources, correspon-
dence and first-person narratives relevant to the years 1534 and 1535
are rather scarce. The main reason for this appears to be the 1534-1535
campaign in Iraq against the Safavids, which Süleyman I (hereafter,

1 M.J. Rodríguez Salgado, ¿Carolus Africanus?: el Emperador y el turco, in J. Martínez
Millán (ed.), Carlos V y la quiebra del humanismo político en Europa (1530-1558), Sociedad
Estatal para la Conmemoración de los centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V, Madrid, vol. I, pp.
487-531.
2 É. Garnier, L’Alliance impie. François I er et Soliman le Magnifique contre Charles V,
Éditions du Félin, Paris, 2008; M. Heath, Unholy Alliance: Valois and Ottomans,
«Renaissance Studies», 3 (1989), pp. 303-315.
3 M. Falomir Faus, M.Á. Bunes Ibarra, Carlos V, Vermeyen y la conquista de Túnez, in
J.L. Castellanos, F. Sánchez-Montes (eds.), Carlos V. Europeísmo y Universalidad. Religión,
cultura y mentalidad, Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoración de los Centenarios de Felipe
II y Carlos V, Madrid, 2001, t. V, pp. 243-257.
4 V. Beltran, De Túnez a Cartago. Propaganda política y tradiciones poéticas en la época
del emperador, «Boletín de la Real Academia Española», 315 (2017), pp. 45-114.
5 M. Screech, Some reflexions on the problem of dating Gargantua <A> and <B>, «Études
rabelaisiennes», 11 (1974), pp. 9-56.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XVII - Agosto 2020
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)