[1] His father wanted him to receive a religious education, but on 29 April 1536, when he was about 17, Giovanni was captured by Ali Ahmed, one of the corsair captains of Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha, and was forced to serve as a galley slave.

[1] He was a very able mariner and soon rose in the ranks, gaining sufficient prize booty to buy a share in a corsair brigantine sailing out of Algiers.

[1] Further success soon enabled him to become the captain and owner of a galley, and he gained a reputation as one of the boldest corsair reis on the Barbary Coast.

[1] In July 1570, while ostensibly en route to Constantinople to ask the Sultan for more ships and men in order to evict the Spaniards from all of North Africa, Uluj Ali encountered five Maltese galleys, commanded by Francisco de Sant Clement, then the captain-general of the Order's galleys, near Cape Passaro in Sicily and captured four of them in the action of 1570.

He kept his squadron together in the melee, outmaneuvered his direct opponent, Giovanni Andrea Doria, and captured the flagship of the Maltese Knights with its great banner.

[1] There he presented the great flag of the Knights of Malta to Sultan Selim II, who gave him the honorary title of Kılıç ("Sword") and on 29 October 1571 appointed him as Kapudan Pasha (Grand Admiral) and Beylerbey of the Isles.

[1] In June 1572, now Kapudan Pasha, he set out with 250 galleys and a large number of smaller ships to seek revenge for Lepanto.

[1] In that same year, the regency of Algiers was transferred to Arab Ahmed, and Don Juan of Austria, the victor of Lepanto, recaptured Tunis.

[3] During this expedition, on 26 July 1574, the forces of Kılıç Ali Pasha constructed an Ottoman fortress on the coastline of Morocco, facing Andalusia in mainland Spain.