page_title: Jewish pirates
section_title: The Great Jew
hierarchical_section_title: Jewish pirates / Notable pirates / The Great Jew
caption_attribution_description: Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha defeats the Holy League of Charles V under the command of Andrea Doria at the Battle of Preveza (1538)
context_page_description: Jewish pirates were those seafaring Jewish people who engaged in piracy. While there is some mention of the phenomenon in antiquity, especially during the Hasmonean period, most Jewish pirates were Sephardim who operated in the years following the Alhambra Decree ordering the expulsion of Iberia's Jews. Upon fleeing Spain and Portugal, some of these Jews became pirates and turned to attacking the Catholic Empire's shipping as both barbary corsairs from their refuge in the Ottoman dominions, as well as privateers bearing letters of marque from Spanish rivals such as the United Netherlands.
  Many Jews also were involved in backing Spanish-attacking privateers economically. They viewed this campaign to be a profitable strategy of revenge for their expulsion and the Inquisition's continued religious persecution of their Jewish and converso brethren in both the Old and New Worlds.
context_section_description: Sinan, called The Great Jew by the Spaniards, was one such Jewish refugee whose family emigrated from Spain to the Ottoman Empire, according to some non-academic  authors. He sailed as a barbary corsair under Hayreddin Barbarossa. Some attribute to him the defeat of an Imperial-Spanish fleet in 1538 at the Battle of Preveza. Some non-academic authors, mistaking him for Sinan Pasha and sometimes again mistaking the latter's place of burial, Üsküdar, for Shkodër in Albania (both places bearing the alternative name of Scutari), wrote erroneously that Sinan the Jew is buried in a Jewish cemetery in Albania.
caption: Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha's force defeats the Holy League of Charles V under the command of Andrea Doria at the Battle of Preveza in 1538. Sinan Reis' leadership was key to the Ottoman victory.[citation needed]
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