Page 117 - sfogliabile 49

The best-kept secret in the Mediterranean: Barbarossa’s 1534 Tunis campaign 383

of Bizerta on the Tunisian coast . Thus, the Gazavât only touches on
29
Barbarossa’s “unavoidable” landing in Bizerta, dispatching it with just
one sentence, and gives the message that the conquest of Tunis was
not previously planned and was entirely the result of a chain of events
that started with unexpected, adverse weather conditions.
This narrative is reproduced with similar simplicity in several
manuscript versions of the Gazavât in the following centuries.
However, an eighteenth century version that is located in the İstanbul
University Library (Ms. 2639) adds more apologetic phrases from
Barbarossa in the first person . In this version, Barbarossa could not
30
sail to Algiers because of a strong westerly wind that propelled the fleet
to the port of Bizerta. According to the text, when Barbarossa arrived
at the Tunisian coasts, he uttered the following words:

Then, Hayreddin Pasha said to himself: Oh, all-knowing Allah, it is known
to you, your sinful slave had never thought of coming by here [Bizerta], yet,
many hidden causes of yours must arise from coming to this side, ‘Facilitate
at once their accomplishment propitiously,’ he prayed 31 .

According to Gallotta, the Ms. 2639 version belongs to a group of
manuscripts different from the original Gazavâts and written by
someone other than Seyyid Murad, identifying these manuscripts as
the product of “pseudo Seyyid Murad” because they had basic
differences from the other versions that he considered originals .
32
Indeed, the account of Ms. 2639 frames Barbarossa’s unintended
landing in providential terms and absolves Barbarossa of
responsibility with expressions much stronger than the original
versions. This makes the account of Ms. 2639 even more interesting
since, despite its distinct differences in content and narrative, it
maintained the crucial argument of the original Gazavâts with further
emphasis and narrative diversity. It should be emphasized that the
Gazavât is a propagandistic text and the fact that both versions of the
Gazavât made considerable effort to demonstrate that Barbarossa
arrived at Tunis unintentionally could be understood as part of the
authors’ or the copyists’ objective to create a positive and virtuous

29 Ivi, p. 233r; The Gazavât in verse reads: «Çıkdı deryâya yine olub revân / Bes Cezâyir
deyu giderken hemân / Rüzgâr oldı muhalif döndi ol / Tunus’un berrine toğrı tutdı yol».
Gazavât-ı Hayreddin Paşa, Topkapı Palace Museum Library, R1291, 171a.
30 Mustafa Yıldız has published a transcription of this manuscript. M. Yıldız, Gazavât-ı
Hayreddîn Paşa: (MS 2639 Universitätsbibliothek İstanbul): kommentierte Edition mit
deutsche Zusammenfassung, Shaker, Aachen, 1993.
31 Ivi, p. 314b.
32 For more information about “pseudo Seyyid Murad”, see A. Gallotta, Il Gazavat cit.,
pp. 27-30.

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