The Barbary corsairs first appeared to terrorize shipping at the end of the fifteenth century. These Muslim pirates sailed out of the ports of North Africa, primarily Sal?, Rabat, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, a term derived from the name of its Berber inhabitants. Acting as officers of the sprawling Ottoman Empire, these pirates plundered the trading routes of the Mediterranean and sowed horror in the hearts of Christians everywhere.

The late Ch.-E. Dufourcq was one of the first to map out the relations between the Christian and Muslim coastlands of the medieval western Mediterranean. These studies reveal the extent of the contribution he made to the subject, and the care and attention with which he handled the scattered documentary sources. There are three main themes to the volume: one group of articles focuses on the political and diplomatic aspects of the relations between Spain (Catalonia in particular) and the Ma...