Tully’s Letters

The literature of the Barbary Regencies is scare and diffuse, and its principal sources still lie buried in the consular archives of Britain, France, Holland, and Italy, and among the surviving records of the Sublime Porte.The Regency of Tripoli, the setting of this book, was the most important of the three Regencies which owed their suzerainty to the Sublime Porte. Its Bashaw, or ruler, carried a seniority of “Three Tails”, a rank equivalent to that of the governors of the three greatest provinces in the Sultan’s dominions; those of Cairo, Budapest, and Baghdad.Tully’s Letters were written by the sister of Richard Tully, his Brittanic Majesty’s Consul at the Court of Tripoli, between whose family and that of the Bashaw, it will be seen that...