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:''Berberia redirects here. For the Butterfly Genus , see '' Berberia (genus) .

The Barbary Coast, or '''Barbary''', was the term used by Europeans from the 16th until the 19th century to refer to the coastal regions of what is now Morocco , Algeria , Tunisia , and Libya . The name is derived from the Berber People of north Africa . In the West, the name commonly evokes the Barbary Pirate s and Slave Trade rs, based on that coast, who attacked shipping coastal settlements in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic and captured and traded slaves from Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa .

"Barbary" was almost never a unified political entity. From the sixteenth century onwards, it was divided into the familiar political entities of Morocco , Algiers , Tunis , and Tripolitania (Tripoli). Major rulers during the heydays of the barbary states were the Pasha or Dey of Algiers , the Bey of Tunis and the Bey of Tripoli , all nominally subjects of the Ottoman Sultan , but de facto independent rulers. Before then it was usually divided between Ifriqiya , Morocco, and a west-central Algerian state centered on Tlemcen or Tiaret , although powerful dynasties such as the Almohad s, and briefly the Hafsids , occasionally unified it for short periods. From a European perspective its "capital" or chief city was often considered to be Tripoli, in modern-day Libya, although Algiers, in Algeria, and Tangiers , in Morocco, were also sometimes seen as its "capital" by Europeans of the era.

The first United States military action overseas, executed by the U.S. Marines and Navy , was the storming of Derne , Tripoli, in 1805, in an effort to bolster diplomatic efforts in securing the freedom of American prisoners and putting an end to Piracy on the part of the Barbary states. The opening line of the Marine's Hymn refers to this action:

:"From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli,"


SEE ALSO



REFERENCES

  Surname London
  Given Joshua E
  Year 2005
  Title Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the US Navy and Shaped a Nation
  Place New Jersey
  Publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc
  ID ISBN 0-471-44415-4


  • LAFI (Nora), Une ville du Maghreb entre ancien régime et réformes ottomanes. Genèse des institutions municipales à Tripoli de Barbarie (1795-1911), Paris, L'Harmattan, 2002, 305 p. {Link without Title}



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