Battle of Djerba

The Battle of Djerba (near the island of Djerba off the coast of Tunisia) was a naval battle that took place in 1560 and in which the Ottomans under Piyale Pasha's command overwhelmed a large joint European fleet, chiefly Spanish forces, sinking half its ships. <ref>Ted Thornton's History of the Middle East Database </ref>

[edit] Background

In 1558 Piyale Pasha captured the Balearic Islands and raided the Mediterranean coasts of Spain. King Philip II appealed to Pope Paul IV and his allies in Europe to establish a Holy League and bring an end to the Turkish threat that had reached the Spanish mainland. Since losing against the Turks at the Battle of Preveza in 1538 and the disastrous expedition of Charles V against Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha in 1541, the major European sea powers in the Mediterranean, namely Spain and Venice, felt more and more hesitant to confront the Turks.

[edit] Forces

In 1560 King Philip II organized a Holy League between Spain, the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Genoa, the Papal States, the Duchy of Savoy and the Knights of Malta. The joint fleet was assembled at Messina and consisted of 200 ships and 30,000 soldiers under the command of Giovanni Andrea Doria, nephew of the famous Genoese admiral Andrea Doria.

On 12 March 1560, the Holy League captured the island of Djerba which had a strategic location and could control the sea routes between Algiers and Tripoli. As response, Suleiman the Magnificent sent an Ottoman fleet of 120 ships under the command of Piyale Pasha, which arrived at Djerba on 9 May 1560.

[edit] The battle

The battle lasted until 14 May 1560, and the forces of Piyale Pasha and Turgut Reis (who joined Piyale Pasha on the third day) won an overwhelming victory. The Holy League lost more than 60 galleys and 20,000 men, and Giovanni Andrea Doria could barely escape with a small vessel. The Turks took back Djerba, whose Spanish commander, D. Alvaro de Sande, attempted to escape with a ship but was followed and eventually captured by Turgut Reis.

[edit] Aftermath

The Battle of Djerba was the culmination of the Ottoman naval domination in the Mediterranean, in ascendance since the Battle of Preveza in 1538. As a result of the battle, the Ottomans were to become even bolder, assaulting the new base of the Knights of St. John in Malta in 1565, although without success. It was not until the Ottoman fleet was destroyed by a combined Spanish-Venetian-Papal fleet at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, that the virtual invincibility of the Turkish naval forces finally ended. Although the Turks were able to get a large new fleet into action the following year, and managed to reconquer Tunis back from the Spaniards and their Hafsid vassals and Cyprus from the Venetians, Turkish supremacy in the Mediterranean had come to an end.

The Turkish navy, however, continued to be a major sea power until the early decades of the 19th century, and for a brief period in the late 19th century, during the reign of Sultan Abdülaziz, had the third largest naval fleet in the world.