The Barbary Coast, or Berber Coast, was the term used by Europeans from the 16th until the 19th century to refer to much of the collective land of the Berber people. Today, the term Maghreb correspond roughly to "Barbary". The term "Barbary Coast" emphasizes the Berber coastal regions and cities throughout the middle and western coastal regions of North Africa – what is now Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. The English term "Barbary" (and its European varieties: Barbaria, Berbérie, etc.) referred mainly to the entire Berber lands including non-coastal regions, deep into the continent. This is clearly the case in European geographical and political maps published during the 17–20th centuries.
The name is clearly derived from the Berber people of north Africa. In the West, the name commonly evoked the Barbary pirates and Barbary Slave Traders based on that coast, who attacked ships and coastal settlements in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic and captured and traded slaves or goods from Europe, America and sub-Saharan Africa. The slaves and goods were being traded and sold throughout the Ottoman Empire or to the Europeans themselves.
Read more about Barbary Coast: History
Famous quotes containing the word coast:
“Frequently also some fair-weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm near the coast was nailed up against an outhouse. I saw fastened to a shed near the lighthouse a long new sign with the words “ANGLO SAXON” on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a useless part which the ship could afford to lose, or which the sailors had discharged at the same time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off in passing through the Symplegades.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)