Capture of the Peñón of Algiers (1529)

Khayr al-Din Barbarossa's capture of the Spanish Peñón in 1529 ¹.

The Peñón was a Spanish fortress on the islet facing Algiers. Khayr al-Din bombarded it for twenty days until its walls gave way, then stormed it with troops landed by forty-five ships from the coast, capturing the fortress commander and his senior officers ¹.

Al-Salabi counts this capture as the founding act of the eyalet of Algiers: from that date the port became the great capital of the central Maghreb and of all Ottoman North Africa, and 'Algiers' came to name the whole province until the end of the eighteenth century ¹.