Over two centuries ago, the United States was dragged into the affairs of the Islamic world by an escalating series of unprovoked attacks on Americans by Muslim pirates, the terrorists of the era.

Tunis and Tripoli. Beginning in 1784, raiders from these statelets along the Barbary coast, known as the Barbary Pirates, would attack American merchant shipping, capturing sailors for whom they ...

Like their acclaimed bestseller "George Washington's Secret Six," "Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates" sheds new light on a vitally important episode that has been forgotten by most Americans.

TRIPOLI – In an unmarked grave in a corner of Tripoli's Green Square, where supporters of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi stage daily rallies to denounce NATO and the West, lie the remains of ...

It is 1805 and the Tripoli pirates have challenged America's right to freedom of the seas---all of them, anywhere---so United Stares warships were sent to that port to bottle up their fleet and ...

which the Tripoli pirates had captured. "Not a man was killed and only one was wounded," the text reads. Evidently they freed the American prisoners without going ashore. It was later, after the ...