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territory upon their retirement, the Sultan handed over lands and property to the men who had helped capture the island. Among those left behind to inherit the rich earth and the commerce that had formerly belonged to Genoese and Venetians was the father of the Barbarossas. He has been variously described as a “retired janissary” and a “Sipahi soldier.” Certainly, although some Spanish writers claim that he was a native Christian, there is little doubt that he was a Moslem. His name was Ya’Kub (Jacob), but the most reliable sources state that he himself was the son of a Christian. This would make perfect sense if one may assume that he had been a janissary; for all janissaries were the sons of Christians, forcibly abducted from their parents, converted to the Moslem faith in early childhood, and then trained to be the most formidable warriors of the Grand Turk. Although the janissaries, so long as they served in the army, were forbidden to marry, it was natural that they should do so upon retirement. Ya’Kub, accordingly, married a woman of Lesbos. She was, it would seem, the widow of a Greek priest. (Unlike the Church of Rome, the Orthodox Eastern Church does not forbid marriage to its clergy.)
    About the ancestry of the Barbarossas one thing is certain— there is no evidence that they had a drop of Turkish blood in their veins. Some Christian commentators have made great play with the fact that the two brothers who fathered Turkish prowess at sea were not Turks, but this is irrelevant. No one has ever denied to the Turks their prowess in warfare, or their fanatical courage. The sons of Ya’Kub may have been Roumeliot, Albanian, or Greek in their physical lineage, but they were certainly “Sons of the Prophet” in their faith.
    It is a curious thought that, when the classical Greeks of antiquity descended upon the land that they were to make their own, they dispossessed a Mother Goddess (hitherto worshipped throughout the eastern Mediterranean) and installed, among a pantechnicon of gods and goddesses, a male god, the King of the Sky. The female mother goddess was, as it were, driven underground, until, with the increasing complexities of Christianity, she reasserted herself as the Virgin Mary. The Moslem Turks now, in their turn, removed the female from the religious calendar and brought back a conception of God not so far removed from the ancient Zeus. When nations are defeated, women submit to the new conquering males, and it is an ironical fact that the mother of the Barbarossas was the widow of an Orthodox Greek priest.
    “A retired janissary, described as un honnete Musulman , made his home [in Lesbos], married the widow of a Greek priest, and evidently prospered as a potter, since he is said to have owned a vessel for the transportation of his wares and traded sometimes as far as Constantinople. Most of the family must still have been resident there in 1501, when Venetian and French forces tried to seize the island as a suitable base for operations against the Dardanelles, on the strength of a Genoese report that it was moult riche, fertile el prenable . .
    Both Turkish and Spanish records have it that Ya’Kub was a potter: an important trade then as now; and it is more than likely that he also had some acquaintance with the sea. Indeed, in an island like Lesbos, how could a man live without being familiar with the sea? The briny wind swirled the sails of the windmills that ground the corn. It drove the coasters southwards to Chios, Samos, Andros, and all the clustering islands of the archipelago. Islanders are usually seamen, and the sons of Ya’Kub were to prove that the salt was in their blood and the high north wind in their hearts.
    There were four sons and two daughters of the marriage between the ex-janissary and the widow of the Greek priest. Their mother’s name was Catalina. We do not know the names of her daughters, but then, in the eastern Mediterranean, daughters are nothing to boast