Barbary Coast

Encyclopedia : B : BA : BAR : Barbary Coast

For other meanings, see Barbary Coast (disambiguation).

The Barbary Coast, or Barbary, was the term used by Europeans 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 Arab slave traders based on that coast, who captured and traded slaves from Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. It also evokes the Barbary pirates, based on the North African coast, who attacked shipping in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic.

"Barbary" was almost never a unified political entity; from the sixteenth century onwards, it was divided into the familiar political entities of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and the no longer extant Tripolitania, and before that it was usually divided between Ifriqiya, Morocco, and a west-central Algerian state centered on Tlemcen or Tiaret, although powerful dynasties such as the Almohads, and briefly the Hafsids, occasionally unified it for short periods. However, 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 Derna, Tripoli in 1805 in an effort to bolster diplomatic efforts in securing both the freedom of American prisoners and an end to piracy on the part of the Barbary state. The opening line of the Marine's Hymn, "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli," refers to this action.

Barbary Coast

See also