Was There Room In Rum For Corsairs?: Who Was An Ottoman In The Naval Forces Of The Ottoman Empire In The 15th And 16th Centuries?

Abstract

The Portuguese conquered Ceuta in 1415 and retained control of the city until 1580 when Philip II of Spain claimed all Portuguese lands. When Piri Reis presented his Kitab-ı Bahriye to Süleyman in 1526 he used the term Diyar-ı Rum to indicate the land possessed by the ruler he intended to praise; his audience in the 16th century understood that a ruler from “the land of Rum” signified the Ottoman sultan. In contrast, historians in the 20th and 21st centuries continue to debate the meaning of the term Rum. The geographic aspect of the term refers to the territories that the Ottomans conquered that had formerly been ruled by the Byzantines who continued Roman imperial traditions at Constantinople and its surrounding districts.