While such raids had occurred since soon after the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the 710s, the terms 'Barbary pirates' and 'Barbary corsairs' are normally applied to the raiders active from the 16th century onwards, when the frequency and range of the slavers' attacks increased. In addition to seizing merchant ships, they engaged in razzias, raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands, and Iceland. Their predation extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along West Africa's Atlantic seaboard and into the North Atlantic as far north as Iceland, but they primarily operated in the western Mediterranean. Slaves in Barbary could be of many ethnicities, and of many different religions, such as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. The main purpose of their attacks was to capture slaves for the Barbary slave trade. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, in reference to the Berbers. The Barbary pirates, Barbary corsairs, or Ottoman corsairs were mainly Muslim pirates and privateers who operated from the Barbary States. 1650 An Algerine pirate ship A man from the Barbary States A Barbary pirate, Pier Francesco Mola, 1650

1681 Barbaria by Jan Janssonius, shows the coast of North Africa, an area known in the 17th century as Barbaria, c.

Pirates based in North Africa A Sea Fight with Barbary Corsairs by Laureys a Castro, c.

Pirates plague of the dead