While the galley remained the primary weapon of the ghāzī states during the sixteenth century, this was to quickly change during the following century. Admittedly, if the ghāzī sea warriors had continued to operate from the smaller, secluded coastal bays to which they had been restricted during the early period of their endeavours, then the galley would have continued to dominate their naval arsenals, given that this was the best vessel for navigating the shallower entrances and narrow creeks that characterised those early ports of the Maghreb, used for conducting either a razzia (a plundering raid against Christian coastline territory) or capture of merchant ships. The acquisition of larger harbours during the middle years of the sixteenth century allowed for the establishment of secure deep-water harbours that would also permit a transfer to sailing ships, with their high-sided, deep-draughted hulls.

The adoption of sail by the North African ghāzī states would appear, from evidence put forward by Jamieson and others, to have been fairly rapid. Jamieson indicates that Algeria, home to the greatest number of ghāzīs, was by 1634 harbouring a fleet dominated by sail. He compares the situation with the year 1581, when Algiers possessed some thirty-six galleys and galiots. Similarly, Jamieson indicates that by the 1630s Tunis had a fleet of forty sailing ships, with only five galleys retained, while Salé, at the time of its declared independence, possessed forty to fifty sailing ships. Possibly, in his reference to Algiers, Jamieson is using evidence produced by the French historian Pere Dan who, during a visit to Algiers in 1631, counted in the harbour of Algiers only two galiots and eight galley frigates.

But other evidence would dispute the transition to sail being quite as rapid as is suggested. While there can be no doubt that North American ghāzīs were certainly entering the Atlantic and fully able to do this through the adoption of sail over oar, in the Mediterranean the situation was very different.