For the first two decades of the 17th century, the most notorious corsair in the Mediterranean was the legendary Yusuf Ra s. Operating out of Tunis, where he lived in a mansion built of alabaster and gold, his fleet was the scourge of merchants, navies and royal vessels from the Levant to the North Atlantic. Amassing a vast fortune and innumerable enemies - it was a far cry from his early life - as John Ward, a fisherman from Faversham. Such were the humble origins of many of the most feared corsairs of the time. From European runaways to Islamic sea-rovers, Pirates of Barbary is an extraordinary record of the men who terrorised the Barbary coast and beyond.Taking the individual histories of a range of these men, Adrian Tinniswood expertly recreates the twilight world of the corsair in fascinating detail; their origins, culture and practices, from pirate etiquette to intimidation tactics, as well as examining the remarkable clash of cultures that was to form in the Mediterranean straits. Stretching from Morocco through the Ottoman states of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, Christian and Muslim seafarers met along the length of the coast to swap religions, to battle and to trade goods. The real currency of the corsair though was not sugar or spice, but men and women. Pirates regularly raided beyond the Mediterranean to the south coast of England and Ireland, reaching as far as Iceland and New England in search of victims. Some one million Europeans and as many Moors and Arabs were sold into slavery along the North African coast, traded in the bustling markets of Livorno, Venice and Malta. Pirates of Barbary draws on an incredible wealth of primary material, from furious royal proclamations to the private letters of pirates and their victims, as well as recent scholarly Islamic accounts to provide a new perspective on the corsairs, both as criminals, and as devout warriors engaged in a battle against European incursions. The result is a kaleidoscopic image of a wild and exotic people, place and time, and a fascinating insight into what it meant to sacrifice all you have for a life so violent, so uncertain, and so alien that it set you apart from the rest of mankind.