A Criminal Rampage on the High Seas
In the meantime, 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. Sayyida led her own fleet, prowled Spanish and Portuguese waters, and became the region’s undisputed pirate leader.
She amassed a fortune from booty, and raised fabulous sums from ransoms to free her captives. Indeed, she became the go-to contact in negotiations to release Christian captives. It is to those negotiations, and the records thereof, that history is most indebted for our knowledge of her. Her reign eventually ended as she neared her 60s. For three decades, Sayyida struck terror into the hearts of captains and crews in the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Her 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.
