Ali Basha has a title to fame in the fact that he is
mentioned by Cervantes in his _Don Quijote de la Mancha_ under the name of
"Uchali" in chapter xxxix., "Donde el cautivo cuenta su vida y sucesos."
The captive is supposed to have been no less a person than the famous
Cervantes himself, and he briefly describes how Uchali became "Rey de
Argel," or King of Algiers.
Ali was a Christian, having been born at a miserable little village in
Calabria called Licastelli. Nothing whatever is known of his birth and
parentage, and he does not appear even to have possessed a Christian name,
although born in a Christian land. He followed from his earliest youth the
calling of a mariner; "he was from infancy inured to salt water," says
Joseph Morgan, in his _Compleat History of Algiers_, and he was, as a mere
boy, captured by Ali Ahamed, Admiral of Algiers, and was chained to the
starboard-bow oar in the galley of that officer. He was thus very early in
life "inured" to suffering, and must have possessed a constitution of iron
to withstand thus, in boyhood, the hardships of the life of a galley-slave,
which as a rule broke down the endurance of strong men in a very few years.
Morgan presents us with a description of him at this period which in these
more squeamish days can certainly not be set down in its entirety: suffice
it to say that he suffered all his days from what is known as "scald-head,"
and that personal filthiness was one of his principal characteristics.
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