THE OTHER ARMADA – PART 2

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Charles V’s ill-fated expedition against Algiers was the storm that put an end to it. From the perspective of the Algerians, it was a miraculously providential event.

Various legends emerged in Algiers to explain how it occurred.

There aren’t a lot of easily accessible Muslim sources on Charles V’s attack, but we do have European sources: men who were in Algiers and who heard the stories from the city’s residents. One such story, heard in various versions, was that the storm that destroyed Charles V’s Armada had been caused by a sorcerer.

Father Pierre Dan, a Trinitarian Friar who was in Algiers in the summer of 1637, and who wrote a long, detailed book on the Maghreb, tells how the Algerians, surrounded on the first day of the attack by Charles’ huge and seemingly invincible army, were ready to surrender the city, but…

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As they were planning their capitulation, a famous sorcerer of the city, a man whom history does not name, went to Hassan Agha [Hayreddin Barbarossa’s lieutenant], who ruled the city, and asked him to hold out for nine more days, telling him confidently that by that time he would infallibly see Algiers delivered from the siege, and all the hostile army scattered. Indeed the thing did not fail to happen in the way the sorcerer predicted. For there came a continual rain on earth, and on sea a tempest so furious that the Emperor’s ships could be seen rising up to the clouds and immediately plunging down again into the abysses of the water. Fifteen galleys were lost in that terrible storm, and one hundred ships besides. The Emperor, seeing his army ruined and beset by famine—caused by the wreckage of his ships, in which was the best part of their provisions and munitions of war—was obliged to raise the siege and to sail to Sicily, where he withdrew with the pitiful remnants of this fleet.

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Cornelis Pijnacker, a Dutch envoy who was in Algiers in the 1620s recounts a similar story:

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People here in Algiers told me that when Charles V besieged the town by land and by sea, a certain marabout—for thus they call their hermits or holy men who are considered more devout than others—struck the sea three times with his staff or rod. Immediately torrential rains and unheard-of thunderstorms arose in such a short time that 137 ships broke on the beach and were destroyed. Twenty thousand soldiers perished by rain, storm, hunger, and other setbacks.

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There is yet another version of this story.

In 1627, Algerian corsairs raided Iceland, bringing 400 or so captives back to Algiers and selling them into slavery there. One of those captives, Jón Jónsson, wrote a letter home in 1630. In it, he relates the following:

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The King of Spain wanted to sail with his galleon and other great ships of war to rescue all the captives here by force of arms. But it is said, in truth, that the King is afraid of a devilish wizard here who has, once before, broken the king’s fleet with a violent storm. The King’s fleet suffered such terrible damage that only his own ship and that of his Admiral survived.

The wizard prepared himself with his secret magical skill. He walked to the port and threw into the sea a small drum with magical characters inscribed on it. Then the sea started to toss and was suddenly gripped by a powerful storm with waves so strong that one Spanish ship was driven against another, and they were broken all to pieces. The King of Spain’s crown was thrown into the sea, and, to this day, it is kept here in the town’s treasury. Therefore, the people from Spain say that the King of Madrid only has half his crown on the front of his head, and that he has vowed to return to the Barbary to seek his lost crown.

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These stories—legends, really—about the marabout/sorcerer who saved Algiers by calling up the storm were all related almost a century after Charles’ Armada had come and gone. The fact that such oral accounts were still circulating through Algiers so long after the event shows clearly how much of an impression the dramatic and miraculous defeat of Charles’ Armada had made upon the Algerians. Clearly, also, the same thing happened to these oral legends that happens to all such stories: they changed and developed over time. Each of the versions above is a slightly different rendering of the story.

It’s hard not to wonder, of course, what the original version might have been.

As it turns out,  that original version might not have been what one would expect.

Antonio de Sosa, a Portuguese cleric who was a captive in Algiers from 1577 to 1581 and who wrote a voluminous book about the place titled Topographia e Historia general de Argel (Topography and General History of Algiers), was in Algiers some forty odd years after Charles V’s failed invasion attempt. At that time, there was a story in the city that Allah himself had sent the storm upon the intercession of a pious marabout. De Sosa wrote:

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A marabout named Sidi Batqua, who had been dead for some years, rose from his grave to implore Allah to intercede and save Algiers from the invasion of Charles V, and Allah answered his prayer by sending the storm.

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There is a further wrinkle to this version of the story.

After recounting the tale of the sorcerer who called up the storm to save Algiers, Father Dan adds this:

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To cover up the shame and the reproach that might be aimed at them for using a sorcerer to withstand the danger of the siege, those of Algiers insist that the loss of Charles V’s army was caused by the prayers of one of their marabouts, named Sidi Utica, who was then in great credit, not as a magician, but a holy man.

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Father Dan’s explanations of devout Muslims trying to hide the fact that they relied on a sorcerer, a man employing dark arts that no good Muslim (or Christina) would sanction, provides us with an interesting scenario: an ‘official’ version of events in which a holy man, through his pious prayers, evoked the intercession of Allah, and a popular version in which a sorcerer, through his magical arts, saved the city.

There is a further twist to all this, though.

Antonio De Sosa originally wrote his Topographia in Spanish. There was a French translation of the book made in 1870. It contains a fascinating footnote which adds a crucial bit of detail to the story of the marabout/sorcerer who saved Algiers:

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Sidi Batqua played a role in the disaster experienced by the illustrious Emperor [Charles V] that is not known to the Algerian generation of today [i.e., in 1870]. Old texts say that after the retreat of the Spaniards, the people of Algiers attributed their deliverance to a negro named Youssef, and that the scholars and marabouts of the city, humiliated to be associated with such a vile black slave, a man who was a professor of spells, went to Hassan Agha, who governed Algiers in the absence of Hayreddin Barbarossa, saying that it was Sidi Batqua, who had been praying and fasting fervently since the arrival of the Christians, who had actually brought on the storm by striking the sea with a stick. The divan [the governing council of Algiers] sided with the religious authorities and officially declared that the true liberator of the city was Sidi Batqua.

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So not only was the man (supposedly) responsible for saving Algiers a sorcerer; he was a black sorcerer.

And his role in the siege of the city was written out by the Algerian authorities, and Sidi Batqua—the pious marabout—was given official credit for the save (this seems to have been this version of the story that Pijnacker heard).

Whether or not he deserved that credit, Sidi Batqua became one of the most famous of the Algiers holy men. His tomb was located outside the Bab Azzoun, one of the main gates into the city, facing southeastwards and close to the sea. As they set off, corsairs (and everybody else) saluted the tomb of Sidi Batqua in order to make a propitious start for their journey.   De Sosa described it as follows:

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Every corsair or merchant vessel, before they set sail, salute the sepulcher of a marabout whom they hold for a saint, located outside the Bab Azzoun gate, buried in a koubba or chapel, called Cid Butico, or Sidi Batqua. All the crew, having turned toward this tomb, cry aloud, and Christians with them must say it also: “Bismillah! Bismillah!” which means: “In the name of God. In the name of God.”

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Like every kind of hunting, corsairing required a combination of skill and luck. The skill, people could perfect. The luck… well, there was no simple way to perfect being lucky. So corsairs turned to whatever supernatural sources of blessing they could. It was that sort of age. Christians prayed to saints—dead holy men and women—for intercession in times of need. Muslins prayed at the tombs of famous deceased marabouts.

In those days, people firmly believed that God and sorcerers and holy men directly influenced events in the world.

The trick was to have them on your side.

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The extracts from Father Dan come from Book 2, Chapter 5, Section 1 of Histoire de Barbarie et de ses corsaires, des royaumes, et des villes d’Alger, de Thunis et de Salé (History of the Barbary and its Corsairs, its Kingdoms, and of the Towns of Algiers, Tunis, and Salé), second edition, originally published in 1649.

The excerpts from Antonio de Sosa, and the instructive foot note, come from Chapter XXI of Topographie et histoire générale d’Alger, the 1870 French translation of Topographia e Historia general de Argel (Topography and General History of Algiers), originally published in the 1612, translated by MM. le Dr. Monnereau et A. Berbrugger.

The extract from Cornelis Pijnacker comes from Chapter VII of Description historique des villes de Tunis, s’Alger et d’autres se trouvant en Barbarie (1627), a French translation of Pijnacker’s original Dutch text, Historysch verhael van den steden Thunes, Algiers ende andere steden in Barbarien gelegen, (Historical Description of the Towns of Tunis, Algiers, and other Towns in the Barbary), originally written in 1627, translated by Gérard van Krieken and Marie-Agnès de Bruijn-Jolivet.

The extract from Jón Jónsson’s letter comes from The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson: the Story of the Barbary Corsair raid on Iceland in 1627.

All translations are my own.