Barbarosa

This book chronicles the life of Barbarosa (Kheir-ed-din), a 16th Century Corsair who rose from an obscure birth to supreme Admiral of the Ottoman Navy. He was also a great linguist, a marine architecht of note, the supreme master of Galley warfare and a warrior of exceptional courage who survived 40 years of sea battles to die in bed with a beautiful, young wife at his side. His story also serves as a canvas on which to paint one of history's great, but too little known empires in its heyday, and to bring alive an exciting chapter of the age-old war between Islam and Christianity. By the end of the 15th century Islamic Turkey's fierce horsemen and terrible cannons had conquered the Middle East, Greece, the Balkans and much of the Black Sea littoral. Early in the 16th, a young and brilliant Sultan, promising to say his five daily prayers in France and stable his horse in Rome, thundered hundreds of miles up the Danube to digest Hungary and much of the old Roman Empire. Stymied by weather and distance, he turned to the sea, called on Barbarosa, and in one generation, built a navy which conquered the Mediterranean. In minor instances the chronology is manipulated or characters are expanded in order to give coherence or fill gaps in the historical record. These are minor and are clearly identified. Otherwise, the people in this book all lived and the adventures all happened. The accuracy of this book is the accuracy of most history. Excerpts