At a glance
- Era
- The Gunpowder Empires
- Region
- Maghreb
- Review
- Draft Completeness 2/5 · Help complete it
In time
In space
Map: Natural Earth, public domain · places and route from the graph
Summary
The campaign
Circumstances favoured Spain: the Ottomans were busy at war with Safavid Persia and Francis I had promised neutrality. Answering the appeal of the Hafsid al-Hasan b. Muhammad and wishing to isolate Istanbul, Charles led 30,000 fighters — Spaniards, Germans, Neapolitans, Sicilians — on five hundred ships out of Barcelona 1.
Outcome
Khayr al-Din's force could not answer — seven thousand Ottoman soldiers and about five thousand Tunisians, with the Arab tribes failing the muster — so Charles took La Goulette, the stronghold of Tunis's harbour. The Spanish reinstalled al-Hasan b. Muhammad bound to surrender Bône and Mahdia, to aid the Knights of St John at Tripoli, to oppose the Ottomans, and to fund a 2,000-man Spanish garrison at La Goulette castle; Mahdia he could not deliver, for it remained in Ottoman hands 1.
Connections
- Had participant
- Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor· خير الدين بربروسة
- Occurred at
- Tunis
People and things also explored
Khayr al-Din takes Tunis (1534)· Hasan Agha al-Tushi· al-Zaytuna Mosque· Charles V's Algiers expedition (1541)· Algiers enters Ottoman sovereignty (1519)· Capture of the Peñón of Algiers (1529)· Louis IX's siege of Tunis (the Eighth Crusade)· Abu Zakariya al-Hafsi's break with the Almohads
Sources
- al-Dawla al-Uthmaniyya — Ali Muhammad al-Salabi (2001) , p. 220
Cite this page
islam.museum contributors. “Charles V's conquest of Tunis (1535)”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/event/conquest-of-tunis-1535/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-10-22.