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The best-kept secret in the Mediterranean: Barbarossa’s 1534 Tunis campaign 387

certainly known, even though they were not always discussed or
mentioned in the sources. Although Ârif Çelebi criticizes the ruler of
Tunis for having befriended an infidel and having become his ally, he
implies that Barbarossa used the sultan’s fleet to resolve his own,
unresolved issues with the Hafsid dynasty. Thus, in the work of the
first permanent court historian, Barbarossa’s conquest of Tunis
appears as something undertaken without prior official authorization.
Ârif Çelebi’s approach created a pattern for the subsequent
panegyric historical works supported by the Ottoman court. This is
especially seen in the works identified with Seyyid Lokmân, the third
şehnâmeci of the Ottoman dynasty, who served during the reigns of
Selim II and Murad III. Tomâr-ı Hümâyun, Zübdetü’t-tevârîh (1583)
Hünernâme (1588) and Şehnâme-i Âl-i Osman (1590) dedicated
considerable space to Barbarossa’s 1534 expedition. The longest
account of the Tunis campaign appears in Tomâr-ı Hümâyun, which
was designed in the form of a huge scroll and composed as a universal
history that starts from the creation and finishes with the Ottoman
dynasty. Tomâr-ı Hümâyun was originally the project of Ârif Çelebi and
of the second şehnâmeci Eflâtun during the reign of Süleyman, and it
was later taken up by Seyyid Lokmân, who extended it to cover the
whole of Murad III’s reign . Therefore, it is still a matter of debate
45
whether Seyyid Lokmân himself or his predecessors authored the
account of the reign of Süleyman . Tomâr-ı Hümâyun reproduced Ârif
46
Çelebi’s argument that the principal target of the fleet was Morea.
However, unlike Ârif Çelebi’s 1558 account, it did not attribute the
conquest of Tunis to Barbarossa’s enmity with Mulay Hassan.
According to Tomâr-ı Hümâyun, when Barbarossa heard that the
enemy had already evacuated Koron, he headed for North Africa and
conquered Tunis. Unsurprisingly, there is no reference to the sultan’s
order to take Tunis, although the conquest is described as a natural
extension of the Ottoman fleet’s range of operations after Koron .
47
Thus, Tomâr-ı Hümâyun fits with Ârif Çelebi’s tendency to detach the
sultan from responsibility for the conquest of Tunis, but the

45 E. Fetvacı, Picturing History at the Ottoman Court, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington, 2013, pp. 67-68. For a detailed analysis of Tomâr-ı Hümâyun [Imperial Scroll],
see F.S. Eryılmaz, The Shehnamecis of Sultan Süleyman cit., pp. 229-261.
46 Bekir Kütükoğlu thinks that Seyyid Lokmân’s predecessors wrote the parts until
Süleyman’s reign. Eryılmaz has recently argued that Eflâtun might have written certain
parts of the reign of Süleyman. B. Kütükoğlu, Lokmân b. Hüseyin, in Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı
İslâm Ansiklopedisi cit., vol. XXVII, pp. 208-209; F.S. Eryılmaz, The Shehnamecis of Sultan
Süleyman cit., p. 108.
47 «Hayreddin Paşa keferenün firârın malûm idindikde tonanma-yı hümâyunla Mağrib
diyârına inüb Tunus vilâyetin ve kal’asın ‘Arab elinden alub feth eyledi». S. Lokmân,
Tomâr-ı Hümâyun [Imperial Scroll], Topkapı Palace Museum Library, A3599.

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