I’ve written before about the Barbary pirates, but to sum up who they were in a nutshell: After Ferdinand and Isabella kicked the last of the Moors out of Spain, in the late 1400s, many of the Moors joined forces with the Barbary states—Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers—all parts of the Ottoman Empire. These understandably-disgruntled Moors became pirates who preyed on Christian ships. Piracy in the southern Mediterranean became a huge problem from the 16th to the 18th centuries.
One of the more famous hostages taken by the Barbary pirates was Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (1547 – 1616), who was captured by Albanian buccaneers in 1575. He was never a wealthy man—far from it. But he had fought bravely as a soldier in a recent battle with the Turks, and happened to be carrying letters from a duke to the King, recommending him for promotion. So his captors believed that the young Spaniard was more important (and valuable) than he actually was. As a result, the pirates set his ransom price very high. He was sold into slavery in Algiers. After five years in captivity, his family finally managed to raise the exorbitant price for his release, and he was ransomed in 1580. Twenty five years later, he published part one of his masterpiece, Don Quixote.