Because they were operating on behalf of certain countries, rather than as independent marauders, the Barbary corsairs did not need to operate on a small scale, as pirates generally did, but would combine in huge fleets to take part in coordinated actions. In 1544, as the Ottoman Empire was reaching the peak of its power, the island of Ischia in the Gulf of Naples was attacked and 4,000 of the inhabitants carried off to Africa as slaves. The same year, Lipari, an island off the coast of Sicily, was raided and between 2,000 and 7,000 people taken as slaves to Tripoli (Syed, 2011). These were
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