The Regency of Algiers was an early modern semi-independent Ottoman province and nominal vassal state on the Barbary Coast of North Africa from 1516 to 1830. Founded by the privateer brothers Aruj and Hayreddin Reis, the Regency succeeded the Kingdom of Tlemcen as an infamous and formidable pirate base that plundered and waged maritime holy war on European Christian powers. Ottoman regents ruled as heads of a stratocracy—an autonomous military government controlled by the janissary corps—known as Garp ocakları in Ottoman terminology.