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380 Evrim Türkçelik

so on. The emphasis of these historical accounts was naturally on
military and political affairs and they paid particular attention to
Süleyman’s campaigns that ended in victory . However, not all historical
20
works were composed as dynastic propaganda. There were also historical
texts that transmitted different interpretations of events without being
constrained by dynastic concerns. Barbarossa’s conquest of Tunis
became the subject of various genres of Ottoman historical production
and received different treatment from each of them.
There are at least five distinct approaches that can be identified in the
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Ottoman works which included the
episode of Barbarossa’s occupation of Tunis. The first approach implies
that Barbarossa conquered Tunis with the authorization of the sultan.
The second approach explains the conquest as the result of Barbarossa’s
unintended arrival at Tunis without any mention of a sultanic order. The
third approach criticizes Barbarossa and argues that the sultan only
ordered a campaign against the infidels and not the conquest of Tunis
from fellow Muslims. The fourth approach defines the principal objective
of the Ottoman-corsair fleet as the peninsula of Morea and explains
Barbarossa’s conquest of Tunis by alluding to a variety of reasons but
not due to the sultan’s order. The fifth approach is seen in seventeenth-
century sources and argues that the conquest of Tunis was ordered by
the sultan and was part of a wider naval strategy to secure a better naval
base from which to attack southern Italy. To understand these
differences in the historical works we need a thematic and chronological
analysis of the narratives as well as to consider the interpretative
nuances that unveil their approach to Barbarossa’s first campaign.
The first approach appears in the Süleymannâmes of Bostan Çelebi
(d. 1570) and Matrakçı Nasuh (d. 1564), which were written in
panegyric style and were more likely to be in the nature of history
either sponsored or intended for consumption by the court. Both
authors completed their works at a date very close to the conquest of
Tunis and provided concise but vivid accounts of the events in 1534
and 1535. Their explanations for the reasons behind Barbarossa’s
campaign differ only very slightly from each other, but both refer to
the sultan’s approval and the just causes of the conquest of Tunis.
The earliest of the two is Bostan Çelebi’s Süleymannâme and, in fact,
it is the earliest available account of the conquest of Tunis. He covered
the event for the first time in the second version of his Süleymannâme

20 C. Woodhead, Perspectives on Suleyman, in M. Kunt, C. Woodhead (ed.), Süleyman the
Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World, Longman, London,
1995, pp. 171-173.

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