The tragic end of Darghut Pasha at the siege of Malta as recounted by the eighteenth-century Arab historian Ibn Ghalboun

Abstract

The history of the great siege of Malta has always been recounted from a Western point of view. The historical sources are primarily, if not exclusively, of Western origin. The lack of knowledge of Arabic and other Ottoman languages are perhaps the real reason for this historical bias. This could be the reason why works from scholars from the former Ottoman countries feature less in the Western narratives about the Great Siege. However, Arab and Ottoman scholars have been working on their history’s involvement in this major sixteenth-century Mediterranean event. Perhaps, their historical canons are not the same as those operated by the West, however, the empirical story retold by Arab and Ottoman texts is by no means unreliable. Facts are facts, and Arab history can be a source of revelation not only for the period when Malta was under Aghlabid and Arab rule, between 870 and 1091, but also for other eras of our history in particular, the sixteenth-century Mediterranean conflict characterized by the clash between the Ottoman Empire on one side and the Spanish Empire and its satellite countries on the other.