Mir Ali Beg

Ottoman corsair Mir Ali Beg was an Ottoman corsair (or buccaneer) in the late 16th century. Throughout the 1580s, Mir Ali Beg reportedly led several expeditions in the attempt of the Ottoman Empire to contest the Portuguese control of the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean down the Eastern Coast of Africa. He began this chain of expeditions in 1581, when he raided the Portuguese controlled city of Muscat, Oman, which appears to have been a resounding success. From there he would begin making his way down the Eastern African Coast, reaching the Kenyan city of Malindi by 1585. Ali Beg would return from his first expedition to the Swahili Coast in 1586 resoundingly successful, having "managed to secure the allegiance of every major Swahili port town except Malindi, to capture three fully laden Portuguese vessels, and to return safely to Mocha with some 150,000 cruzados of booty and nearly sixty Portuguese prisoners." However, the success of Mir Ali Beg's expeditions were widely kept a secret from the general Ottoman government, because three government members: Hasan Pasha, Kilich Ali Pasha, and Hazinedar Sinan Pasha, had hatched a conspiracy to gain more funding for naval expedi