Biography
For many years, little was known about the identity of Piri Reis. His name, roughly translated, means Captain Piri. Today, based on the Ottoman archives, we know that his full name was "Hadji Ahmed Muhiddin Piri" and that he was born either in Gelibolu (Gallipoli) on the European part of the Ottoman Empire (in present-day Turkish Thrace), or in Karaman (his father's birthplace) in central Anatolia, then the capital of the Beylik of Karaman (annexed by the Ottoman Empire in 1487). The exact date of his birth is unknown. The honorary and informal Islamic title Hadji (Turkish: Hacı) in Piri's (Hadji Ahmed Muhiddin Piri) and his father's (Hadji Mehmed Piri) names indicate that they had completed the Hajj (Islamic pilgrimage) by going to Mecca during the dedicated period of Hadjj and fulfilling the required rituals.
He was the son of Hadji Mehmed Piri, and began engaging in government-supported privateering (a common practice in the Mediterranean Sea among both the Muslim and Christian states of the 15th and 16th centuries) when he was young, in 1481, following his uncle Kemal Reis, a well-known corsair and seafarer of the time, who later became a famous admiral of the Ottoman Navy. During this period, together with his uncle, he took part in many naval wars of the Ottoman Empire against Spain, the Republic of Genoa and the Republic of Venice, including the First Battle of Lepanto (Battle of Zonchio) in 1499 and Second Battle of Lepanto (Battle of Modon) in 1500. When his uncle Kemal Reis died in 1511 (his ship was wrecked by a storm in the Mediterranean Sea, while he was heading to Egypt), Piri returned to Gelibolu, where he started working on his studies about navigation.
By 1516, he was again at sea as a ship's captain in the Ottoman fleet. He took part in the 1516–17 Ottoman conquest of Egypt. In 1522 he participated in the Siege of Rhodes against the Knights of St. John, which ended with the island's surrender to the Ottomans on 25 December 1522 and the permanent departure of the Knights from Rhodes on 1 January 1523 (the Knights relocated first (briefly) to Sicily and later (permanently) to Malta). In 1524 he captained the ship that took the Ottoman Grand Vizier Pargalı İbrahim Pasha to Egypt.
In 1547, Piri had risen to the rank of Reis (admiral) as the Commander of the Ottoman Fleet in the Indian Ocean and Admiral of the Fleet in Egypt, headquartered in Suez. On 26 February 1548 he recaptured Aden from the Portuguese, followed in 1552 by the capture of Muscat, which Portugal had occupied since 1507, and the strategically important island of Kish. Turning further east, Piri Reis captured the island of Hormuz in the Strait of Hormuz, at the entrance of the Persian Gulf. When the Portuguese turned their attention to the Persian Gulf, Piri Reis occupied the Qatar peninsula and the island of Bahrain to deprive the Portuguese of suitable bases on the Arabian coast.
He then returned to Egypt, an old man approaching the age of 90. When he refused to support the Ottoman Vali (Governor) of Basra, Kubad Pasha, in another campaign against the Portuguese in the northern Persian Gulf, Piri Reis was beheaded in 1553.
Several warships and submarines of the Turkish Navy have been named after Piri Reis.
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