The Barbary Pirates were a band of who served as part of the naval forces of the Ottoman Empire, a huge, multi-ethnic empire that throughout southern Europe, northern Africa, the Mediterranean , and the Middle East. The Barbary Pirates in teams from in North Africa such as Algeirs, Tunis and Tripoli. Their of terror in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean lasted about 250 years from the late 1500's to the early 1800's. By the 1700's, the Barbary Pirates had become so that many nations, the United States for some time, agreed to pay them an ransom to their trading vessels sailed safely in the Mediterranean.