A summary of the book (in translation) “The Great Dragut – His Siege of Malta and his last campaign", by Orhan Ondes.

But what about the Ottoman side of the affair? There it seems mostly a forgotten event, primarily one may think because the Ottomans tripped in Malta on their way to Europe over sea. From a critical point of view, one may say that the Ottoman failure in the siege was insignificant, since the road to Europe via the Balkans was a very viable alternative.
There are few domestic contemporary and comprehensive literary sources regarding the “The Great Siege of Malta 1565” in the Ottoman archives, such as the account of Katip Celebi titled “Tuhfetul-kibar fi esfaril bihar”, the works of Ali Haydar Emir and Ali Riza Seyfioglu. In a modern book about the history of Turkey “Turkiye Tarihi” by Yilmaz Oztuna the siege of Malta is mentioned. There is only one biography of Turgut Reis (The Great Dragut) by Cevat Sakir Kabagacli.

Rhodes was less than seven miles away from the Turkish coast, although he could have whipped out each and every member of the Order on Rhodes, Suleiman’s aim was only keeping the knights of the Order away from the continent and safe guarding Turkish sea trade. His aim as a ruler was certainly not to engage in bloodshed for fun. However, once the Order was settled at Malta in 1530, it continued policing the Mediterranean Sea in its fashion, disrespecting their terms of surrender to Suleiman. Malta is in the middle of the Mediterranean, where the sea is at its narrowest. It also nearly the same distance from Turkey as from Spain. The Ottoman Empire was ever expanding to the west, the Spanish Empire likewise to the east, the grey areas of both realms meeting at Malta. Instead of Mdina, the capital city of Malta, the Knights preferred to locate in the harbour where there was the fishing hamlet of Birgu. Its old tower was soon enlarged and the Order began to build up castles and fortifications fast. Till the Great Siege there were smaller attacks by Ottomans, including the famous raid of Dragut’s in 1559. During the years leading to 1565, the knights built up good defence lines on the island using the advantage of the natural rock structure of the island.

Emperor Charles V of Spain had donated the island of Malta to the knight of the Order of St John in order to defend it against the Muslims and Ottomans. Suleiman regarded this as treason and a breach of conditions. He also did not understand the Order’s hate towards him. Had he not spared their lives at Rhodes, did they not sail away with their entire fleet intact and all their prized possessions? They should have been thankful that he did not erase their memory from history. Even Dragut Pasha, the famous Ottoman commander and sea hero, had advised Suleiman not to let the knights live. Young Suleiman had let them go free and the old Suleiman felt the anger of this betrayal so much that it would become his main motive to besiege Malta. If the knights had stopped attacking Muslims there would not have been a Great Siege of Malta. In 1564 Suleiman’s consultants were advising him to capture Malta: “While Malta is in the hands of the Order of St John, every Ottoman ship sailing from Istanbul to Trablus (Libya) will be in danger” and “This rock is like an obstacle harming the constitution of our lands. If Malta is not captured in a short while, the connection between the Ottoman Africa and the Asian home land will be broken.”  Now, as an old man, Suleiman was ready to sail to Malta with an enormous navy and army. Grand Master De Valette’s reputation was well known to Suleiman, but weighing his enemy’s chances of survival in the coming siege of Malta he told his advisors that “It makes me sad that I shall have to cast away such an old man from his house.” However, the loyal defenders of Christianity, the knights of St John never remembered the clemency Suleiman had shown them. But it was clear that there would be no exit strategy available for the knights this time round.

The Maltese side the story was quite different. Indeed, the Maltese people have a language that has much in common with Arabic and they were Muslim before the Norman invasion of 1090 AD. Because of that and also the infertility of the islands, the Ottomans were not interested in Malta although successful raids by Berbers were carried out on the island of Gozo and Malta, most notably in 1429.  However, Maltese ships had never attacked Ottoman ships before the knights of the Order came to the island. So it was quite acceptable to say that the Maltese anticipated the arrival of the Order of St John as the starting point with their troubles with the Turks.

At this time of age, the business of piracy was much more profitable than farming or fishing and both Muslims and Christians were engaged wholeheartedly, not as much from the point of view of two clashing religions but more from the mutual beneficial point of raiding economy and slave-trading. There were slave markets at Algeria, Trablus, Napoli, Malta, Tunis, selling people by the thousands from both sides.

Over the years, tension rose to unsustainable proportions. Continuing their raids on Ottoman ships, both the knights of the Order and the Maltese went on with their raids on Ottoman trade ships and the prisons in Malta were filled with Muslims and Turks. They even managed to capture the old nanny of Suleiman’s daughter. Normally a small island would be unimportant for the mighty Sultan, ruling such a wide geography. Main reason of his anger was the ungratefulness of the knights whose lives were spared by the Sultan and their continuous harming of Ottoman sea trade, just as they did when they were still in Rhodes.

Suleiman’s patience ended when the Knights captured a Turkish trade ship with a very substantial pay load. He has decided to solve the problem by sending his combined army and navy to Malta. Also, Malta was the perfect port to support his logistics in his advance to Europe. Sultan Suleiman remembered the Knights formerly of Rhodes and they were certainly not ordinary Christian soldiers. They would sacrifice their lives to protect Christianity and they hated every fibre of the Ottomans, fearing them as the advancing part of Islam, just as Europe had experienced in the eighth and ninth centuries.

Admiral Piyale Pasha and General Serdar Mustapha Pasha had been commissioned to lead the Navy and Army expedition to Malta respectively and were expected to take the command in harmony under the generalship of the Great Dragut. That presumption of harmony was the first big mistake and this two-headed direction would be one of the biggest reasons for failure of the Malta campaign. Preparations were under way for a long term siege, taking into consideration that Malta was at the far extreme of the Empire, unlike Rhodes which was visible with the naked eye from the Turkish coast. Spies had brought the news that the new Grand Master Jean Parisot De Valletta had already made sure there would be no food available from the soil of Malta for his enemies.

At arrival at Malta the total Ottoman force counted around 50.000 soldiers. Malta’s forces were approximately 9.000 detailed as following: 2.500 Knights, 400 Spanish troops under the command of the knights De Miranda and Juan de la Cerda, 200 Italian troops under the command of the knight Asdrubale de Medici, 200 French troops under the command of the knight De la Motto, 400 Italian troops under the command of Colonel Mas, 100 guards of St Elmo Castle, 500 sailors of the Order’s fleet,200 crew of the knights, 200 crew of Sicilian and Greeks at Malta, 500 rowers (slaves, prisoners and rented rowers) and 3.000 local Maltese.

Even though Mustapha Pasha had insisted on keeping the Navy at the North of the island to catch any ship leaving or any help arriving at the island, Admiral Piyale Pasha decided to remain with his fleet at the ports after landing due to bad weather at sea. Because of his inharmonious attitude the Ottoman navy stayed locked at the south ports of Malta without a proper reason during most of the siege.

Moreover, Mustapha Pasha wanted to start the siege from the St. Michael and Birgu side, employing just 10,000 troops with enough firepower to do the job intended within one week, the period Sultan Suleiman had calculated to run over the island. Due to the same attitude of Piyale Pasha, he had to revise his plan and begin with St. Elmo. When the Great Dragut joined the war a few weeks later, he questioned the reason why the siege had not started with the Mdina or St Michael castles too. The main body of the Ottoman army remained at Marsa, a flat marsh and unprotected against the knights’ cavalry attacks directed from Mdina. Because the Ottomans failed to capture the Mdina castle, their army was never safe. Relentlessly, the small and fast cavalry units made sudden raids into the army camps, poisoning the water sources, exhausting the Ottoman Army. The siege began at the 21st of May 1565and Dragut joined on the 3rd of June. He arrived later due to unfinished business in Tunisia and the Ottomans always regretted his late arrival. It is firmly believed that should he had been in Malta at the beginning of siege, the coordination of the command would have been firmly established and right decisions taken.

Another tragedy hit the Ottomans. Their most valuable leader, Dragut Pasha died accidently when stone shrapnel hit him in the head on the 21st of June, the day St Elmo fell to the Ottoman forces. What should have been a happy day with celebrations on their first victory in the siege was a day of bitter mourning. The soldiers were attacking mainly with rocks and stones as ammunition, from the fields and walls of Malta, while the defenders, knights of St John were successful and experienced in defending castles and quickly rebuilding collapsed walls, since their time in Jerusalem. Also the Knights were used to fight with heavy armour. That is obviously a disadvantage in the open field in close combat with non-armoured or very light armoured Ottoman soldiers. But in attacking a castle the non-armoured Janissaries were clearly in the disadvantage. After St. Elmo our army began to attack to Senglea, Birgu and Castile.

On the 7th of August Turks got into the fortification of Castile but they retreated in a hurry because of a small cavalry unit from Mdina attacked the command centre at Marsa, acting like they were the long expected Christian relief army from Sicily. At the end of August Malta was still resisting, but Mustapha Pasha knew that if they were able to go on with the siege just a little longer, Malta would fall. There were also logistical problems of delivering ammunition and food for the army. Winter was approaching and Piyale Pasha stated that it was not possible to delay their departure with more than three weeks or they would be risking the fleet in early wintry storms. Mustapha Pasha, a land soldier with not a clue about sea faring, had neither any idea how precarious the situation was at Birgu and Senglea. The strongholds were about to collapse should the attacks continue at the same pace.
Ottoman opinion was that they were the victim of naked hate. According to the Ottoman sources this hate aimed at Ottomans during the Great Siege was so intense big that every captured Ottoman soldier would be decapitated and their heads put on pikes and shown at the fortification walls. Furthermore, on a few occasions the decapitated heads of Ottoman prisoners were shot back into the Ottoman camps in an attempt to destroy the moral of Ottoman Army. The Turkish Cemetery at Marsa (near the Grand Harbour of Valletta) contains many graves of Ottoman soldiers.