El Maestro Fray Diego de Haedo, "Abad de Fromesta de la Orden del Patriarca
San Benito" and "natural del Valle de Carranca," whose _Topografia e
Historia de Argel_ (or Algiers) was printed in Valladolid in the year 1612,
gives an account of Hamid at this time in which he describes that monarch
as an "unpopular tyrant who sadly persecuted his vassals and the friends of
his father; who could by no means suffer his tyrannies and those of his
ministers, the scum of the earth ("hombres baxos"), to whom he had given
the principal offices of the kingdom. Accordingly, since the time that Ali
had become Basha of Algiers, letters had been written to him importuning
him to come to Tunis that he might possess himself of that city and
kingdom."
There were three principal conspirators--the Alcaid Bengabara, General of
the Cavalry, the Alcaid Botaybo, and the Alcaid Alcadaar. Ali, however, was
too shrewd a man to move until he had satisfied himself by reports from his
own adherents; he, therefore, awaited the result of investigations made by
spies from Algiers. At last, in the beginning of the year 1569, when the
offers from the Alcaids had been three times renewed and the Basha was
assured that the people in Tunis were sincere in their offer to him of the
sovereignty of the kingdom--which they begged him to conquer and hold in
the name of the Ottoman Empire--the ex-galley-slave no longer hesitated. He
left Algiers in the month of October, leaving that city in charge of one
Mami Corso, a fellow renegado.
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