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390 Evrim Türkçelik

It gives the impression that Peçevî retrospectively attributes the
responsibility of the conquest of Tunis in 1534 to Süleyman and
Barbarossa. Thus, the account of Peçevî was overlooked because he
wrote his chronicle a century after the conquest of Tunis.
However, a similar version from the sixteenth century verified this.
It is by Şaban Reis, a senior captain of Barbarossa’s fleet, who was
captured by the Spanish captain Álvaro de Bazán in July 1534 near
Oran, the main Spanish base in North Africa. Álvaro de Bazán
interrogated the Ottoman captain in order to find out Barbarossa’s
objectives, and according to his report to the emperor, under
interrogation Şaban Reis declared the following:

What [Barbarossa] discussed with his captains and with him was that they
should head the coast of Calabria and that if there were anything (to be done)
along the coast, they would do it; and that without losing time they would head
straight to Tunis, to take that city and to use the place to store victuals so that
they might (make) war against the Christians in the best manner possible 55 .

This confession indicates that the conquest of Tunis was
Barbarossa’s objective from the outset, and in order to carry it out he
did not want to lose much time attacking the Italian coast. Barbarossa
had evidently shared with his captains his plan to use Tunis as a
strategic base for future operations against the Christian states. The
testimony of Şaban Reis, besides flatly contradicting Barbarossa’s
testimony in the Gazavât’s account, shows that Peçevî relies on firm
historical evidence and cannot be disregarded or dismissed simply
because his account was produced in the seventeenth century. Yet,
the most interesting aspect of Peçevî’s narrative is that he brought up
an important topic that most sixteenth-century Ottoman sources had
suppressed: Barbarossa’s deception concerning Mulay Rashid.
Upon his arrival at Bizerta, Barbarossa spread the false news
among the Tunisians that Rashid, brother of Mulay Hassan, was in
the fleet with him. This created excitement among the populace, as
Rashid seems to have had considerable support in the city. After the
city had been occupied, when the people wanted to see Rashid and he
did not appear, the Tunisians understood that they had been deceived
and rebelled against Barbarossa. This was an integral part of the

55 1534 Alvaro de Bazán Hace Preso a Xaban Arráez, Capitán de Barbarroja, en La Isla
Alhabiba, Archivo de la Frontera, Alcalá de Henares, 2014, p. 9 (http://www.archivodelafron
tera.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1534-ALVARO-DE-BAZ%C3%81N-HACE-PRESO
-A-XABAN-ARR%C3%81EZ-con-plantilla.pdf).

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