Hayreddin Barbarossa

Hayreddin Barbarossa or Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha ( or Hızır Hayreddin (Hayrettin) Paşa; also Khizr Reis before being promoted to the rank of Pasha and becoming the Kapudan-i Derya, born Khizr or Khidr, Turkish: Hızır; c. 1478 – 4 July 1546) was an Ottoman admiral who dominated the Mediterranean for decades. He was born on the island of Lesbos/ Mytilini and died in Constantinople (Istanbul), the Ottoman capital.<!---His original name was Yakupoglu Hizir (meaning Hizir, Son of Yakub) I can find only in Gail Michael's The Passions of Roxanna - Page 290--->Hayreddin (Arabic: Khair ad-Din خير الدين, which literally means Goodness or best of the Religion of Islam) was an honorary name given to him by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. He became known as Barbarossa (Redbeard in Italian) in Europe, a name he inherited from his elder brother "Baba Oruç" (Father Aruj) after Aruj was killed in a battle with the Spanish in Algeria. This name sounded like "Barbarossa" (Redbeard) to the Europeans, and Aruj did have a red beard. The nickname stuck then also to Hayreddin's Turkish name, in the form Barbaros.

Background

Khizr was born in the 1470s on the island of Midilli (Lesbos) to his father Yakup Ağa to his mother Katerina. Sources refer to Khizr as a Greek,Hayreddin Barbarossa, who would rise to become the ruler of Algiers, and later admiral of the Ottoman fleet, was of Greek origin and got his......
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