"I heard that Abdullah came to Tlemsen (Algeria) and dominated the city. His brother Mes'ud hid in the castle for fear of it, and lasted for 25 days. Our soldiers saw that it would take longer, they did not have a large cannon useful for the siege of the castle, they consulted among themselves: "A fake one. Let's do a retreat", they said; they thought we left the castle and fled.
These Arabs are a very cheeky people. They don't know if we were victorious or defeated. They say, "The Turks have fled," come out of the castle and come at us with the greed of plunder. Then we will take them, take the castle, hand it over to Emir Abdullah, and return to Algeria. It happened the way they predicted! The Arabs who were supporters of Sultan Mes'ud in the castle, saying, "Hey, Turks are running away!", fell behind the levents (marines). The levents moved backwards and put most of them to the sword.
Because these Arabs are a people who do not know the art of war. They think that looting in the desert and fighting in an army are the same thing. Even the Spanish infidel, who knew the art of war, had always been defeated by the Turkish levents, but as soon as these Arab tribes happened, they would face the Turks and be devastated. Because for them, human life is quite worthless. Instead of knowing the true meaning of trust in god and taking precautions, they say "everything is from Allah" and die foolishly.
They ride well, though, and there are brave ones among them. But even the harnesses of their horses are quite primitive. They don't have good weapons. They can't use it though. They are not good with firearms. Then the biggest reason for defeat is that they never know the rules of mass fighting. My personal request from the sultan is that you do not have an Arab levent (marine) at our command!"
"The Arab notables after me would fall against each other, and the people would be devastated. In the end, they would invite me back to their country with much gratitude as the only solution. I was sure of this as I believed in it."
"I had 12000 soldiers, but half of them were Arab volunteers who did not know how to fight according to the rules of military service, and it was not surprising that they fled when they were in trouble, and even united with the enemy."
"As I predicted, the 6,000 Arab volunteers under my command betrayed in such a harmful way that it was necessary to retreat to the south as soon as possible. These so-called volunteers opened the city's prisons and took 10000 Christian prisoners while I was in front of the walls with 6000 Turkish Levends, in order to befriend King Carlos. They released them. There were people among them who loved the Turks and were religious enough not to commit such a baseness. But they were deceived by their so-called ruler Mevlay Hasan. Mevlay Hasan's spies are clouding the air in the city of Tunisia. They were spreading word of mouth that they had come to Egypt, that their ruler was allied with Carlos King, and they said that if they took the Spaniards to the city, not a single Muslim would bleed. It seemed impossible to fight the infidels. Just then, the castle of Halkulvad fell."
"My brother wore the belt of fasting and mercy with all his hands. He did not lift his head from prostration until the morning. He wished for nusrat and victory from the Almighty. At sunrise in the morning, he gathered his levents. He had many soldiers from Arabs, Berbers and Andalusians. However, they did not know war like Turkish levents, and when they got stuck, they would turn away from the enemy."
• from Gazavat-ı Hayreddin Pasha
