| Omar Agha | |
|---|---|
| Dey-Pasha of Algiers Sultan of Algiers Dey of Algiers | |
 Omar Agha (Sitting on the couch) | |
| Reign | 11 April 1815-8 September 1817 |
| Predecessor | Mohamed Khaznadji |
| Successor | Ali Khodja |
| Born | Omar ben Mohammed c. 1773 Lesbos [1] |
| Died | 8 September 1817 Algiers |
| Arabic | عمر آغا |
Omar Agha was the Dey of the Deylik of Algiers from April 1815 to September 1817, after the assassination of his predecessor Mohamed Khaznadji on 7 April 1815, who had been in office for only 17 days.
He was born on the island of Lesbos. [2] His name was Omar ben Mohammed. He left for Algiers at an unknown date, and first became a privateer, then a janissary. He soon became Agha of the Odjak of Algiers.
He launched a war against Tunis, and led the attacks of Barbary privateers on American ships. An expedition of the US Navy led by Commodore Stephen Decatur in command of a squadron of nine ships, was conducted in 1815 against the Regency of Algiers. The episode is known as the Second Barbary War. The operation forced Dey Omar to sign a treaty ending attacks of piracy, a treaty that he denounced shortly thereafter.
The Congress of Vienna, which addressed the problem of Christian slaves from Barbary piracy, charged the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to negotiate with the Dey of Algiers and the Beys of Tunis and Tripoli. Although the latter two were agreeable, Omar Agha was not. It would take the 9-hour Bombardment of Algiers (1816) on 27 August 1816, by an Anglo-Dutch naval force commanded by British Admiral Lord Exmouth, to compel the Dey to abolish Christian slavery. However, the bombardment of Algiers did not destroy Barbary power. Despite the signing of the treaty and the release of 3,000 Christian slaves, Dey Omar set to rebuilding the city's defences, putting its Jewish inhabitants to forced labour in the place of Christian slaves. [3] Moreover, the problem remained such that it was one of the main areas of contention at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818).
Thanks to the series of defeats, at the hands of Europeans, he was strangled on September 8, 1817, and he was buried within an hour. [4] His successor was Ali ben Ahmed. [5]
The Barbary Wars were a series of two wars fought by the United States, Sweden, and the Kingdom of Sicily against the Barbary states and Morocco of North Africa in the early 19th century. Sweden had been at war with the Tripolitans since 1800 and was joined by the newly independent US. The First Barbary War extended from 10 May 1801 to 10 June 1805, with the Second Barbary War lasting only three days, ending on 19 June 1815. The Barbary Wars were the first major American war fought entirely outside the New World, and in the Arab World.
The Second Barbary War, also known as the U.S.–Algerian War and the Algerine War, was a brief military conflict between the United States and the North African state of Algiers in 1815.
The Barbary pirates, Barbary corsairs, or Ottoman corsairs were mainly Muslim pirates and privateers who operated from the largely independent Ottoman Barbary states. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, in reference to the Berbers. Slaves in Barbary could be of many ethnicities, and of many different religions, such as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. Their predation extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along West Africa's Atlantic seaboard and into the North Atlantic as far north as Iceland, but they primarily operated in the western Mediterranean. In addition to seizing merchant ships, they engaged in razzias, raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands, and Iceland.
The Bombardment of Algiers was an attempt on 27 August 1816 by Britain and the Netherlands to end the slavery practices of Omar Agha, the Dey of Algiers. An Anglo-Dutch fleet under the command of Admiral Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth bombarded ships and the harbour defences of Algiers.
The Regency of Algiers was a largely independent early modern Ottoman tributary state on the Barbary Coast of North Africa between 1516 and 1830 established by the corsair brothers Aruj and Hayreddin Barbarossa, also known as Oruç and Khayr ad-Din. The Regency was an infamous and formidable pirate base that plundered and waged maritime holy war on European Christian powers. Ottoman regents ruled it as heads of a military oligarchy of janissaries and corsairs.
James Leander Cathcart was an American diplomat, slave, and sailor of Irish descent. He is notable for his narrative as a slave in Algiers, Ottoman Algeria, for eleven years.
The conquest of Tunis occurred in 1535 when the Habsburg Emperor Charles V and his allies wrestled the city away from the control of the Ottoman Empire.
The Barbary slave trade involved the capture and selling of European slaves at slave markets in the largely independent Ottoman Barbary states. European slaves were captured by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to the Netherlands, Ireland and the southwest of Britain, as far north as Iceland and into the Eastern Mediterranean.
USS Spitfire was the former Baltimore privateer Grampus that the United States Navy purchased. She was a heavily armed schooner built for service in the War of 1812, but did not see service until the Barbary Wars when she was sent with the American fleet to the Mediterranean to force an end to piracy of American ships.
The invasion of Algiers in 1830 was a large-scale military operation by which the Kingdom of France, ruled by Charles X, invaded and conquered the Deylik of Algiers.
Hamidou ben Ali, known as Raïs Hamidou, or Amidon in American literature, born around 1770, and died on June 17, 1815, near Cape Gata off the coast of southern Spain, was an Algerian corsair. He captured up to 200 ships during his career. Hamidou ensured the prosperity of the Deylik of Algiers, and gave it its last glory before the French invasion. His biography is relatively well known because the French archivist Albert Devoulx found documents that told of this charismatic character.
Ali V Ben Ahmed, nicknamed Ali Khodja, Ali-Meguer, or Ali Loco was a Kouloughli of partial Georgian (Mengrelian) and Native Algerian origins born in Algeria. He was the dey of the Deylik of Algiers from September 1817, just after the assassination of his predecessor Omar Agha the 8th. He remained so until his death in February 1818. His sobriquet Ali-Meguer may indicate his Mingrelian background.
Haji Ali ben Khalil was Dey of the Deylik of Algiers from 1809 - 1815.
The bombardment of Algiers in 1683 was a French naval operation against the Regency of Algiers during the French-Algerian War 1681–88. It led to the rescue of more than 100 French prisoners, in some cases after decades of captivity, but the great majority of Christian captives in Algiers were not liberated.
Until 1815 the Beylik of Tunis maintained a corsair navy to attack European shipping, raid coastal towns on the northern shores of the Mediterranean and defend against incursions from Algiers or Tripoli. After 1815 Tunis tried, with limited success, to create a modern navy, which fought in the Greek War of Independence and the Crimean War.
The French-Algerian War of 1681–1688 was part of a wider campaign by France against the Barbary Pirates in the 1680s.
The Shipwreck of Dellys took place in May 1830, during the French conquest of Algeria. It involved French troupes coloniales, under captains Félix-Ariel d'Assigny (1794-1846) and Armand Joseph Bruat (1796-1855), who were captured by the resistance fighters of the town of Dellys in Kabylia of the Igawawen.
Mohamed ben Hassan or Muhammad III was the 12th ruler and Dey of Algiers. He ruled five months after his predecessor Baba Ali Chaouch.
The ta'ifa of raïs or the Raïs for short, were Barbary pirates based in Ottoman Algeria who were involved in piracy and the slave trade in the Mediterranean Sea from the 16th to the 19th century. They were an ethnically mixed group of seafarers, including mostly "renegades" from European provinces of the Mediterranean and the North Sea, along with a minority of Turks and Moors. Such crews were experienced in naval combat, making Algiers a formidable pirate base. Its activity was directed against the Spanish empire, but it did not neglect the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia, Naples or Provence. It was the taifa which, through its seizures, maintained the prosperity of Algiers and its finances.
History of the Regency of Algiers includes political, economic and military events in the Regency of Algiers from its founding in 1516 to the French invasion of 1830. The Regency of Algiers was a largely independent tributary state of the Ottoman Empire. Founded by the corsair brothers Aruj and Khayr ad-Din Barbarossa, it became involved in numerous armed conflicts with European powers, and was an important pirate base notorious for Barbary corsairs.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)  | This Algerian biographical article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |