The length of the North African coast from Morocco to Egypt spurned a number of independent and semi-independent Islamic naval states during the age of fighting sail. While the nature and command structure of some of the navies in this region may appear haphazard and confusing, there can be little question that the vast majority of those who sailed from the ports of this coastline, including those of the Maghreb, were operating under the full authority of the state from which they were operating. This is an important point, and one that needs to be made from the outset, since those who served in some of these navies have frequently been accorded the appellation of ‘pirate’ or ‘sea robber’. Here reference is made to Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, four Islamic territories where maritime forces, often privately financed, were conducting, on behalf of the state, an endless and unremitting war of commerce raiding – the Guerra de Corso. Collectively referred to by Europeans as the Barbary coastal states, the use of the term piracy in connection with their maritime forces is incorrect, a pirate being one who has no protection of the state. In terms of a correct definition, a pirate is a rogue operator at sea who, quite independently, attacks shipping of any nation or state for the purpose of committing violence or stealing cargo for personal gain. It suited those from within the Christian European states of the time, those whose shipping was most frequently attacked by ships emanating from those four territories, to make this claim, allowing them to assume the moral high ground. Furthermore, despite the lack of a continued need to apply the term, it is one used by a number of contemporary commentators whose writings are often directed at the popular market. Even the seemingly more neutral term of corsair is one that also needs to be questioned as to its veracity, originating as it does from corsaire which, in Middle French, also has the meaning of pirate. Of course, it could be suggested that ‘privateer’ is a more suitable term, this normally defined as sailing under the commission of a belligerent state, through the issuing of letters of marque which empowered the person or persons to which these were granted to attack and seize, at sea, vessels or other property of the enemies of that state.