Barbarous Barbary Bandits

"Yar-har, fiddle-dee-dee, robbing an infidel fills me with glee...!"

When you hear the word pirate, what comes to mind? A West Country-accented old sea dog with a scraggly beard, a cutlass, an eye patch, and a parrot on his shoulder? Or a vicious Somalian with an AK-47?

What about a mustachioed, turban-wearing guy with a scimitar?

Operating out of North Africa, known as the Barbary Coast to Europeans all the way back to the Middle Ages, the Barbary or Ottoman corsairs were a group of privateers who devastated coasts as far away as Iceland. Nowadays they aren't quite as well-known as their European counterparts as seafaring plunderers go, but they make their appearance in media now and again, whether as the genuine article or a fantasy counterpart who decided to Dress To Plunder with turbans and scimitars instead of tricorns and cutlasses. If an "Arabian Nights" Days work gets anywhere near the coast, you can almost guarantee these guys will make an appearance. They also can be hired as mercenaries if you need a port town to be sacked.

Oddly enough, unlike other pirates in fiction, you rarely see them as heroes, anti- or otherwise: The best you'll usually get out of these cold-hearted cutthroats is a code of honor as warriors that keeps them from being completely irredeemable.

For more on the real-life Barbary corsairs, see Barbary Coast Wars.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• De Cape et de Crocs: Subverted with the Raïs (Arabic for "leader") Kader, an ex-janissary and corsair captain seeking a treasure that will allow him to raise a fleet big enough to conquer Maracaïbo (a port in modern-day Venezuela). He's introduced as willing to be a Bad Boss (threatening to impale a dozen of his sailors for losing the treasure map) and is at first seen as an evil heathen by the staunchly Catholic Don Lope, but eventually, it's revealed his plans for conquest are fueled by his desire to find his daughter whom he last saw there and turns out to be Hermine. Kader keeps getting into fights with Don Lope (despite, or because of, the fact that both are honorable to a fault), but eventually accepts him as his son-in-law.
• A few examples in the Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • "Night of the Saracen" has Donald and his nephews finding a map hidden in a prop sword that purportedly leads to the treasure of the Saracen corsair Don al-Din, sunk off the coast of Italy. The treasure turns out to be a love poem that Don wrote to an Italian girl with whom he fell in Love at First Sight while raiding, making him give up his piratical ways.
  • The multi-chapter story "Messer Papero" at one point mentions an attempted attack on Pisa by Barbary corsairs (depicted by the Beagle Boys in the story).

Films — Animated

• Peter Pan: One of Hook's crew, simply known as "The Turk", has a visibly Middle-Eastern look to him with a thick black mustache, a big ol' scimitar, and a fez.

Films — Live-Action

• In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, the Nine Pirate Lords are a Cosmopolitan Council representing the major bodies of water of the world. The Black Sea is ruled by Ammand the Corsair, who fits this trope right down to the cutlass and giant mustache. His personal army of pirates is also composed of nothing but corsairs.

Literature

• Alexis Carew: Privateer and The Queen's Pardon (originally a single novel that was Divided for Publication after it got too long) take place in "the Barbary", a sparsely settled and difficult-to-navigate region of space between The 'Verse's major powers where Space Pirates run rampant. Alexis takes command of a privateer ship and eventually tracks the pirates back to a Death World called Erzurum where thousands of spacers have been enslaved by the pirates.
• Pellucidar: The Korsars are descendants of a fleet of Barbary corsairs who fell into a portal to Hollow Earth, they've kept up their old traditions since then.
• In the RCN novel Though Hell Should Bar the Way, Roy Olfetrie gets kidnapped from a port call and enslaved as crew aboard a freighter before being dumped off on a world inspired by the Barbary (confirmed by David Drake's foreword). He ends up orchestrating a slave revolt against the local lord to escape and rescues Monica, a harem slave he'd fallen in love with, in the process.
• The gamebook, Seas of Blood, which is set in the Middle-Eastern inspired Land of Tak, have both you and your main rival, Abdul the Butcher, being buccaneers terrorizing the seas.
• The Heroic Legend of Arslan (and its 1990s OVA and 2015 remake) is set in Pars, a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Ancient Persia, and during the story, Prince Arslan and his comrades will occasionally encounter scimitar-wielding, turban-wearing Arabic pirates.
• The Riftwar Cycle: The island nation of Queg is based loosely on the Barbary states. Quegan raiders carry scimitars and wear loose tunics and pants with turbans on their heads. Queg also harbors a number of fairly wealthy merchants who make lots of money buying and selling plundered goods.
• The Wind in the Willows: Discussed by Rat at one point when he and Mole are entertaining a bunch of Christmas guests, one of whom was a mouse who starred in a play in which his character was held captive by Barbary corsairs, after which he escaped only to find his love had left him to live in a convent.
• Solomon Kane: Part of Solomon's backstory includes having been imprisoned by Barbary corsairs for several years.
• Corsair by Clive Cussler features, well, corsairs as a major part of the plot background; specifically, Stephen Decatur's raid to burn the captured U.S.S. Philadelphia.
• The Witch of Knightcharm: Amira Chadid, a rookie witch at an evil Wizarding School, is descended from a Barbary pirate weather witch and knows lots of water spells thanks to her family passing them down for centuries. She clearly identifies with her ancestor, even going so far as to have a Barbary pirate flag stitched onto her school uniform. She also acts in a barbarous manner, abusing and even attacking other students just because she thinks she's stronger than them.
• In Sourcery, the ship Rincewind and Conina travel on is attacked by Klatchian slaver-pirates with curly swords.

Live-Action TV

• Highlander: the Series: A flashback to 1653 shows Duncan in the city of Algiers, capital of Algeria. As Duncan was neither rich nor powerful, there would be only one way for him to be in Algiers at that time: he was captured in a raid by Barbary pirates. The Tie-In Novel Highlander: Scimitar confirms this.

Music

• The line "To the shores of Tripoli" in "The Marines' Hymn" references the punitive campaign the US Navy and Marine Corps waged against the Barbary pirates in the 1800s rather than pay their tribute.
• Attempting to cheer up the object of his (unrequited) affections in the Half Man Half Biscuit song 27 Yards Of Dental Floss, the singer points out:
  The sky's a bit dull but the fridge is full
  Things could be a lot worse
  It's not like you've been captured by Barbary Corsairs

Video Games

• Age of Empires III: The Barbary Corsair is a recruitable mercenary unit. True to depictions of this trope, they wield scimitars to engage enemies in melee.
• Arabian Fight have your characters infiltrating a ship occupied by Arabic slavers, with a boss fight against the Slaver Captain.
• Arabian Magic has a stage set aboard a galley full of Arabic pirates.
• Civilization VI: The Barbary Corsair is the Ottoman's unique unit, replacing the generic Privateer available to other civilizations. Compared to the Privateer, they are cheaper and cost no movement points to perform coastal raids.
• Dragon's Crown: The pirates of the Ghost Ship Cove have this aesthetic: the setting is a Middle Ages fantasy world, and the Middle Ages were right about the time the Barbary corsairs were just starting to set sail, while what we'd think of as the stereotypical pirate didn't start plundering the Caribbean for about five hundred years. To further the Arabian theme, the final battle in the stage's normal route is a Wolfpack Boss against an onslaught of them with a magic lamp thrown in the middle. Whoever picks up the lamp can summon forth a genie to wreak magical havoc around the arena three times before it goes flying out of their hands to be picked up again: the battle is a desperate scramble to keep the lamp away from the pirates, using the genie as often as possible to stem the pirates' Zerg Rush.
• In Europa Universalis 4, North African Maghrebi nations have the Raid Coasts ability and idea to allow them to reflect the history and raid European coasts.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The Gerudo, who were already portrayed with an "Arabian Nights" Days culture in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, are reinterpreted as pirates in the Great Bay region of the alternate world of Termina.
• Might & Magic: Heroes VII: The Stronghold faction of orcs, goblins, and beastmen use this aesthetic, being a separate Stronghold subfaction from the fifth game's Hordes from the East and the Mayincatec flavour from VI.
• The Hack and Slash action game Pirate Hunter, with assorted pirates as enemy types, also include turban-wearing Middle-Eastern pirates armed with schmitars, including an Ottoman Pirate captain who attacks the Pirate Hunter with Guns Akimbo.

Visual Novels

• Funbag Fantasy: Sideboob Story 2: The corsairs in the employ of Queen Serebria strike an odd appearance that crosses this with medieval European knights: while they wear turbans and have darker skin than the rest of the cast, the rest of their outfit is a mix between plate armor, leather armor, and cloth sashes.

Western Animation

• Pirates of Dark Water features Ioz, a Token Evil Teammate who may be as close to a Fantasy Counterpart Culture equivalent of a Mediterranean pirate as an elf can get. He has cinnamon-toned skin and dark brown hair fashioned into a ponytail on his forehead, evoking Middle-Eastern origins, but his accent ranges from vaguely Spanish to all over Europe depending on the individual line. He also wields a scimitar as his weapon of choice.

Real Life

• The original Captain Colorbeard was the Ottoman corsair Oruç or Redbeard, via folk etymology (Baba Oruç, meaning "father Oruç", sounding similar to Barbarossa) for helping Muslims escape Spain to North Africa. He fought against the Knights Hospitaller, captured ships from many European powers, and eventually became ruler of Algiers before being killed by Spanish forces.
• One of Barbarossa's major allies was Sayyida al-Hurra (1485-1561). Born with the name Lalla Aicha bint Ali ibn Rashid al-Alami, she was an Andalusian noblewoman who was forced to flee her home in Granada for Morocco as a child ahead of the Reconquista. She turned pirate as an adult, taking much plunder and prisoners in raids on Spanish coastal waters. She also ruled a fief in Morocco in her own right for thirty years after her first husband died (hence her moniker Sayyida al-Hurra, meaning "noble lady who is free and independent" or "the woman sovereign who bows to no superior authority"), even getting her second husband to come to her for the wedding and recognize her independent title. She was finally deposed by her son-in-law from her first marriage in 1542 and retired. She's very much a case of Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters, considered a national hero in Morocco and a mass-murderer in Europe.

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