Barbary Crusade | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Part of Crusades in Northern Africa | |||||||
![]() Muslim and Crusader forces at the Battle of Gergis | |||||||
| |||||||
Belligerents | |||||||
![]()
|
![]()
| ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
![]()
|
![]()
| ||||||
Strength | |||||||
![]() |
![]()
| ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
Total: 30,000 | Total: 70,000 |
The Barbary Crusade (Italian: Crociata di Barbary; Spanish: Cruzada de Berbería), known in the Muslim world as the Libyan Jihad (Arabic: الجهاد لوبيا "al-Jihād Lībiyā"), and commonly referenced as The Great African Crusade was a religious conflict in the early 15th century between the crusader kingdom of Tripolitania and the Berber Hafsid Caliphate. Although the conflict initially began as an attack on Berber piracy near the coast of the Béjaïa Emirate by Tripolitania, tensions escalated with the landing of Crusaders near Béjaïa and the Hafsid dynasty declaring Jihad against Tripolitania.
Seen as the successor to the Libyan Crusade, the Barbary Crusade wouldn't exist as an official crusade until 1432 when Pope Victor V called all Christian nations into crusade to help Tripolitania after the Berber armies came close to it's capital, Tripoli. Within that same year, nearly 30,000 total crusader forces stood at Tripoli, being the one of the largest active armies ever built in African history up to that point, as well as causing the ruination the local economy Tripoli and much of the kingdom itself. The most famous battle from the war, the Last Stand at Sabratah, would take place later in that same year, as the large crusader army encircled roughly 19,000 Berber forces, led by by General Malik Al-Najm, at Sabratah, one of the three ancient Roman Tripoli cities.