http://www.thepiratesrealm.com/rais.JPG
Murat Rais was born about 1535 around present day Albania. In 1546 he was captured by pirates led by Kari Ali Rais and started getting into Piracy. He took up the name Murat Rais from then on started sailing with Karis for twenty years. In 1565, Kari died and Murat went "solo". Through the 1570's, his reputation grew through bold land and sea attacks on Spanish and Italian interests. He captured and raided the flagship of the Pope. In one year he plundered enough to equal the annual salary of 40,000 trades men. The way he attacked was lowering the mast of his smaller galiots land conceal them behind larger galleys.
Rais' boldness led him to often break the unspoken rules of Barbary society. As a result, when the Sultan of Algiers commissioned him as, "Captain of the Sea" in 1574, he could not assume the position with the Emperor's permission for another twenty years. In 1578 he captured the Spanish viceroy, incurring Philip II’s wrath and shocking the Christian world.
By the 80's, Murat became notorious for his plunder of Christian ships and towns which extended out to the Atlantic. In one occasion he held an entire Spanish city ransom. He was the first corsair to venture outside their traditional haunts by sacking Lanzarote in the Canary Islands.
As his notorioty grew, so did his boldness. He began doing large attacks on Southern Italian cities and started capturing Spanish and Sicilian warships and held off Maltese corsairs whose galleys outnumbered his. By the 1590's he was given command of the Naval Army of the Ottoman Empire. With it, he had complete control over the Eastern Mediterranean. He finally died in 1638 while sieging the Albanian city, Vlore.
Quite a life! *tongue*
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March 16, 2005, 07:43 PM
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