27. The Enemy Couldn’t Take Down This Boss, But Her Own Family Did
From her base in Tetouan, spurred on by bitter memories of her exile from Granada, Sayyida al-Hurra conducted a ruthless campaign of piracy against the Spaniards. She allied with Heyreddin Barbarossa, the era’s most prominent corsair, who rose to become the Ottoman Empire’s most successful admiral. With Barbarossa in control of the Eastern Mediterranean and Sayyida in control of the Western Mediterranean and the Atlantic coast of Morocco and Iberia, the duo went to work. She led her own fleet, prowled Spanish and Portuguese shipping lanes, and became the region’s undisputed pirate leader.
Tough as nails, Sayyida amassed vast riches from seized booty and from ransoming her captives. Indeed, during her piratical career, she was the go-to contact in negotiations to release captured Christians. It is to those negotiations, and the records thereof, that history is most indebted for our knowledge of Sayyida al Hurra. Her reign eventually ended as she neared her sixties, after three decades of striking terror into the hearts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean sailors. Sayyida’s downfall came at the hands of her son-in-law, who ousted her in a palace coup. She was stripped of power, and her fate thereafter is lost to history.
