Slaves Without Shackles: Forced Labour and Manumission in the Galata Court Registers, 1560-1572 [Hardcover ed.] 3879974365, 9783879974368

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................11
A Note on Transliteration ......................................................................................12
Chapter 1: Laying the Groundwork .................................................................17
Introduction: Historical Context ...........................................................................17
Précis of Chapters ...................................................................................................21
Secondary Literature on Slavery in the Ottoman Empire ..................................25
Methodology ............................................................................................................29
The şeriyye sicilleri as a Primary Source: Methodological Problems ......................29
Methodological Approach: Evaluating a Textual Corpus .......................................34
Terminology .............................................................................................................41
Slavery .......................................................................................................................43
The Social Context of Legal Documents ...............................................................47
Chapter 2: The Corpus of Texts ........................................................................49
Discussion of the Characteristics of the Galata Court Registers
14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 ............................................................................................49
Description of the Galata 14/2 Court Register .........................................................57
Description of the Galata 14/3 Court Register .........................................................59
Description of the Galata 14/4 Court Register .........................................................64
Concluding Comments on the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 Court Registers .....66
Typology of the Manumission hüccets Found in the Galata Court Registers ...70
Type One: ʿItq (ʿItāq) .................................................................................................71
Type Two: Kitāba/Mukātaba ....................................................................................73
Type Three: Tadbīr ....................................................................................................76
Type Four: Umm walad Manumission ......................................................................77
Type Five: Exchange of a Lump Sum of Money for Freedom .................................78
Other Types of Entries in Which Slaves Occur:
Pious Endowments, Inheritance Inventories ..................................................78
Appendix to Chapter 2 ............................................................................................79

Chapter 3: Categorising the Origins of Slaves ..............................................89
The Terminology of Origin (cins) ...........................................................................91
Ottoman Elites and the Origins of Slaves ...........................................................106
Origins and Religious Conversion .......................................................................117
Appendix to Chapter 3 ..........................................................................................127
Chapter 4: The mukātaba Contract and Maritime Slave Labour ............156
Seafaring and Slavery ............................................................................................156
The Psychology and Sociology of the mukātaba Contract
in the Ottoman Context ...................................................................................168
Appendix to Chapter 4 ..........................................................................................175
Chapter 5: Identification or Subjugation? ....................................................219
Introduction to How Slaves Were Categorised and ›Read‹
in the Manumission hüccets of Galata ...........................................................219
The Onomastics of Slavery in Galata ..................................................................221
Physical Description/ḥilya: Inscribing the Slave ...............................................235
Written Power Over the Slave’s Body: the Texts of Manumission in Galata .......235
Analysis of the ḥilya: Terminology ........................................................................238
The Terminology of Scarring in the Court Registers:
Stab Wounds, Pox Scars, Burn Marks, and Missing Teeth ...............................255
Slave ḥilyas: Identification or Linguistic Subjugation Revisited ......................268
Chapter 6: Conclusion .......................................................................................275
Appendix: Individual Slave Manumission Contracts ................................279
Bibliography ...........................................................................................340
Unpublished Primary Sources ................................................................................340
Published Primary Sources .....................................................................................341
Reference Works .....................................................................................................350
Secondary Studies ...................................................................................................351

Citation preview

Nur Sobers-Khan Slaves Without Shackles

STUDIEN ZUR SPRACHE, GESCHICHTE UND KULTUR DER TÜRKVÖLKER Herausgegeben von Pál Fodor, György Hazai, Barbara Kellner-Heinkele, Simone-Christiane Raschmann

STUDIEN ZUR SPRACHE, GESCHICHTE UND KULTUR DER TÜRKVÖLKER Band 20

Nur Sobers-Khan

Slaves Without Shackles Forced Labour and Manumission in the Galata Court Registers, 1560–1572

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de

www.klaus-schwarz-verlag.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

© 2014 by Klaus Schwarz Verlag GmbH First edition Producer: textintegration.de Berlin Printed in Hungary ISBN 978-3-87997-436-8

Table of Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................11 A Note on Transliteration ......................................................................................12

Chapter 1: Laying the Groundwork .................................................................17 Introduction: Historical Context ...........................................................................17 Précis of Chapters ...................................................................................................21 Secondary Literature on Slavery in the Ottoman Empire ..................................25 Methodology ............................................................................................................29 The şeriyye sicilleri as a Primary Source: Methodological Problems ......................29 Methodological Approach: Evaluating a Textual Corpus .......................................34 Terminology .............................................................................................................41 Slavery .......................................................................................................................43

The Social Context of Legal Documents ...............................................................47

Chapter 2: The Corpus of Texts ........................................................................49 Discussion of the Characteristics of the Galata Court Registers 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 ............................................................................................49 Description of the Galata 14/2 Court Register .........................................................57 Description of the Galata 14/3 Court Register .........................................................59 Description of the Galata 14/4 Court Register .........................................................64 Concluding Comments on the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 Court Registers .....66 Typology of the Manumission hüccets Found in the Galata Court Registers ...70 Type One: ʿItq (ʿItāq) .................................................................................................71 Type Two: Kitāba/Mukātaba ....................................................................................73 Type Three: Tadbīr ....................................................................................................76 Type Four: Umm walad Manumission ......................................................................77 Type Five: Exchange of a Lump Sum of Money for Freedom .................................78 Other Types of Entries in Which Slaves Occur: Pious Endowments, Inheritance Inventories ..................................................78 Appendix to Chapter 2 ............................................................................................79

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Chapter 3: Categorising the Origins of Slaves ..............................................89 The Terminology of Origin (cins) ...........................................................................91 Ottoman Elites and the Origins of Slaves ...........................................................106 Origins and Religious Conversion .......................................................................117 Appendix to Chapter 3 ..........................................................................................127

Chapter 4: The mukātaba Contract and Maritime Slave Labour ............156 Seafaring and Slavery ............................................................................................156 The Psychology and Sociology of the mukātaba Contract in the Ottoman Context ...................................................................................168 Appendix to Chapter 4 ..........................................................................................175

Chapter 5: Identification or Subjugation? ....................................................219 Introduction to How Slaves Were Categorised and ›Read‹ in the Manumission hüccets of Galata ...........................................................219 The Onomastics of Slavery in Galata ..................................................................221 Physical Description/ḥilya: Inscribing the Slave ...............................................235 Written Power Over the Slave’s Body: the Texts of Manumission in Galata .......235 Analysis of the ḥilya: Terminology ........................................................................238 The Terminology of Scarring in the Court Registers: Stab Wounds, Pox Scars, Burn Marks, and Missing Teeth ...............................255 Slave ḥilyas: Identification or Linguistic Subjugation Revisited ......................268

Chapter 6: Conclusion .......................................................................................275 Appendix: Individual Slave Manumission Contracts ................................279 Bibliography ...........................................................................................340 Unpublished Primary Sources ................................................................................340 Published Primary Sources .....................................................................................341 Reference Works .....................................................................................................350 Secondary Studies ...................................................................................................351

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List of Figures Figure 1: Origins of slaves found in Galata 14/2 ....................................................128 Figure 2: Origins of slaves found in Galata 14/3 ....................................................131 Figure 3: Origins of slaves found in Galata 14/4 ....................................................133 Figure 4: Change in gender distribution in Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 ................134 Figure 5: Total number of slaves in Galata 14/2 organised by origin and religion .......................................................................135 Figure 6: Total number of slaves in Galata 14/2 organised by gender and religion .....................................................................136 Figure 7: Male slaves in Galata 14/2 organised by origin and religion .......................................................................137 Figure 8: Female slaves in Galata 14/2 organised by origin and religion .......................................................................138 Figure 9: All slaves in Galata 14/2 organised by type of manumission and religion ..............................................139 Figure 10: All Ifrinjī slaves in Galata 14/2 organised by type of manumission and religion ..............................................140 Figure 11: Total number of slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by origin and religion .......................................................................141 Figure 12: Total number of slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by gender and religion .....................................................................142 Figure 13: Male slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by origin and religion .......................................................................143 Figure 14: Female slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by origin and religion .......................................................................144 Figure 15: All slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by type of manumission and religion ..............................................145 Figure 16: All Ifrinjī slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by type of manumission and religion ..............................................146 Figure 17: All Black Sea slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by type of manumission and religion ..............................................147 Figure 18: Total number of slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by origin and religion .......................................................................148 Figure 19: Total number of slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by gender and religion .....................................................................149 Figure 20: Male slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by origin and religion ...............150

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Figure 21: Female slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by origin and religion ...........151 Figure 22: All slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by type of manumission and religion ..............................................152 Figure 23: All Ifrinjī slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by type of manumission and religion ..............................................153 Figure 24: All Qubrūsī slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by type of manumission and religion ..............................................154 Figure 25: All Black Sea slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by type of manumission and religion ..............................................155 Figure 26: Origins of mukātaba slaves in Galata 14/2 ...........................................181 Figure 27: Origins of mukātaba slaves in Galata 14/3 ...........................................199 Figure 28: Origins of mukātaba slaves in Galata 14/4 ...........................................206 Figure 29: Average value of slave labour compared with average value of a slave's body .........................................................................218

List of Tables Table 1: Origins and gender of slaves found in Galata 14/2 ..................................127 Table 2: Origins and gender of slaves found in Galata 14/3 ..................................129 Table 3: Origins and gender of slaves found in Galata 14/4 ..................................132 Table 4: Distribution of gender for Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 ............................134 Table 5: Mukātaba contracts in the Galata 14/2 court register .............................175 Table 6: Mukātaba contracts in the Galata 14/3 court register .............................182 Table 7: Mukātaba contracts in the Galata 14/4 court register .............................200 Table 8: Slave prices in inheritance inventories for Galata 14/2 ...........................207 Table 9: Slave prices in inheritance inventories for Galata 14/3 ...........................211 Table 10: Slave prices in inheritance inventories for Galata 14/4 .........................213 Table 11: Names of freeborn Muslim males in the Galata court registers.............227 Table 12: Names of converted free Muslim males in the Galata court registers . .228 Table 13: Names of converted Muslim male slaves in the Galata court registers ...229 Table 14: Circassian slaves and their ears ..............................................................261

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List of Illustrations Illustration 1: Picture of individual hüccet rolled up ...............................................79 Illustration 2: Picture of individual hüccet unrolled ................................................80 Illustration 3: Sample page from Galata 14/1 court register ...................................81 Illustration 4: Sample page from Galata 14/2 court register (pages 16,17) .............82 Illustration 5: Galata 14/2 court register: Scribe A (pages 24, 25) ...........................83 Illustration 6: Galata 14/2 court register: Scribe B (pages 26, 27 .............................84 Illustration 7. Galata 14/2 court register: Scribe B (pages 53, 54) ............................85 Illustration 8. Galata 14/3 court register: Scribe B (pages 28, 29) ............................86 Illustration 9: Scribe B writes Frankish names ........................................................87 Illustration 10: Galata 14/3 court register: Pages from Scribe A (pages 64, 65).......88

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Acknowledgements Many colleagues and friends have contributed to the development of this dissertation, perhaps more than many of them realise. Hakan Erdem has given me truly invaluable advice throughout the course of this project, when I first began my archival research in Istanbul. Hülya Canbakal and Charles Wilkins have provided me with insightful suggestions that enriched my understanding of the sicils and improved the breadth of my reading and the quality of my research. I would especially like to thank Geoffrey Khan for sharing his expertise on Arabic legal formulary with me and illuminating many of the confusing aspects of the use of Arabic formulae in legal documents. Gladys Frantz-Murphey has also provided me with encouragement and very useful advice and references. Conversations at seminars and in informal settings with Antonis Hadjikyriacou, Natalia Krolikowska, John-Paul Ghobrial, Adam Silverstein, Joshua White, Amira Bennison and Sooyong Kim were very encouraging and extremely helpful. Zübeyde Güneş Yağcı, Nelly Hanna, Metin Kunt, and Amr Ryad provided very useful feedback at the various conferences in which I presented my work. I would especially like to thank Marianne Boqvist, Palmira Brummett, and Betül Ipşirli Argıt, who were so kind as to read a very early draft of this dissertation and provide constructive criticism. I would especially like to thank Tobias Graf for his meticulous reading of a later draft and his helpful comments. My colleagues at St. Mary’s University College were also very kind and offered much moral support. I would also like to thank the Moody-Stuart Fellowship for generously funding my period of research in Istanbul, as well as Pembroke College for their financial support. My gratitude goes to the staff of the İstanbul Müftülügü Arşivi and the Islam Araştırmalari Merkezi for granting me access to their archives of şeriyye sicilleri and providing me with digital copies of the necessary documents, as well as the staff of the Başbakanlık Arşivi and Süleymaniye Library of Istanbul. The staff of the Cambridge University Library and British Library were also very helpful in providing access to their manuscripts and rare books. Further thanks go to Father Alberto Fabio Ambrosio, who allowed me access to the archive of the church of St. Pierre and Paul in Galata. Also, my dissertation would not have been complete without the invaluable assistance with graphs and tables offered by Imran Sheikh. Without the help and encouragement of Natasha Sabbah, I certainly would not have been able to complete this project. Finally, I would like to thank my supervisor Charles Melville, from whose advice and guidance I greatly benefited not only during the last stages of my doctorate but also in my undergraduate days.

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A Note on Transliteration The language of the Galata court registers is an Arabo-Turkic hybrid. It is not possible to identify the language of the Galata court registers as Ottoman Turkish, as its syntax primarily conforms to the rules of Arabic grammar, characterised by Arabic verb-subject-object word order and the use of Arabic triliteral verbs at the start of the sentence in place of the typically Ottoman Turkish construction of Ar abic maṣdar + Turkish verb [olmak or etmek] at the end of the sentence; sentences in Ottoman Turkish would usually take the form subject-object-verb. However, at occasional rare points in the Galata court registers, a language is used which favours Turkish syntax, verb constructions, postpositions and lexicon. Thus, the question of choosing a uniform transliteration for the language of this set of sicils is a difficult one. There are serious methodological problems incurred in transliterating the texts of the Galata sicils according to modern Turkish orthography, as this system often ignores important orthographic distinctions that affect meaning. Adopting modern Turkish orthography for large passages of text that are actually Arabic from a syntactic and lexical standpoint would also render the text of the primary sources incoherent. Therefore, a hybrid system of transliteration has been adopted that reflects the complex and hybrid nature of the language of the Galata sicils, which is detailed below. Text written in the Galata sicils that conforms to Arabic syntactic structure has been transliterated according to a modified version of the IJMES system. A typical example: ʾaqarra Aḥmad Raʾīs biʾinnahu ʿataqa wa ḥarrara ʿabdahu wa mamlūkahu. Any rare text from the sicils that obeys a more Turkic syntactic structure has been transliterated in line with modern Turkish orthography. For example: mezbur Hasan iki bin akçe karz vermiştir. Despite the Arabic language of the majority of the texts used in the research for this dissertation, the resulting analysis and its conclusions are nonetheless situated in the field of Ottoman history. Hence, certain conventions of historical terminology are obeyed. In the main body of this work, terms that are commonly used by scholars in the literature on Ottoman history have been maintained in their modern Turkish form, rather than transliterating them from Arabic. For example, the terms kadı sicilleri or şeriyye sicilleri have been employed rather than sijilāt sharʿīyya. Other terms used in their modern Turkish form for the sake of clarity and continuity with general terminological trends in the secondary scholarship are: hüccet (not ḥujja), as well as: defter, muhallafat defteri (rather than the awkward and rarely used mukhallafāt daftarī), tereke defteri, kassam askeri, kadıasker, and kırık divani. However, words that are used in Ottoman Turkish originating from Arabic whose meaning and usage are not specific to the Ottoman context have transcribed using the IJMES system: sharīʿa, qāḍī (when used independently of kadı si-

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cilleri to refer to the judge himself), dhimmī, mustaʿmin, bayt al-māl, waqf and waqfīyya, madhhab, ʿilm al-shurūṭ, ʿilm al-firāsa, ḥilya) but terms whose usage or meaning is particular to Ottoman Turkish, although the same words or roots may exist in Arabic, are transcribed according to modern Turkish orthographical conventions: kanun, akıfbaşı, odabaşı, kapudan, kethüda, sipahi, topcu, çelebi, efendi, danişmend, azap, yeniçeri, tersane-yi amire, askeri, emin, reaya. Note: reis, rather than raʾīs is employed throughout, when it is not attached to a specific individual’s name or used as an Arabic title, as this term in Ottoman Turkish denotes a sea captain or sailor, a meaning specific to Ottoman usage. The only time a transliteration of the form raʿīs is employed is when the term is accompanied by other Arabic-language text. Terms related to slavery that have their roots in Islamic law have been transcribed as though from Arabic, rather than Ottoman Turkish, hence the IJMES system has been used: ʿitq or ʿitāq instead of itk, tadbīr instead of tedbir, mudabbar instead of müdebber, mukātaba instead of mükatebe, mukātab instead of mükateb, and umm walad instead of ümmü veled. The only time an Ottoman Turkish locution is used is to refer to court documents is when the contemporary administration term occurs in the language of the sicils itself, such as a single occurrence of the term itkname. Also note: cariye, as opposed to jārīya has been employed throughout. Words which possess two Ottoman-language versions employed in the sicils, one intended by the Galata court scribe to be ›Arabic‹, i.e., an Arabicised version of an Ottoman term (ṭūbī, silāḥī), and one considered Turkish (topcu, silahdar) have been transliterated according to IJMES and modern Turkish accordingly when they appear in these respective forms. While some may consider this system to blur the lines between Arabic and Turkish, it reflects the linguistic situation of the court registers quite accurately. The English plural ›s‹ has been appended to the terms sicil and hüccet, as sicils and hüccets appear in every discussion that follows, but the Turkish plural is used for muhallafat defterleri. The adjectives describing the origin of slaves, as they are provided in Arabic in the Galata court registers, have also been transcribed according to the IJMES system, although the Turkish equivalent has been provided either in the text or the footnotes to facilitate the reader’s understanding, for instance: Jirkasī/Çerkes; Mighrilī/Meğrel. Furthermore, names of dynasties or ruling powers have remained without diacritical marks: Abbasid, Fatimid, Seljuk, Mamluk (except when a single slave is mentioned or the juridical term is employed, in which case mamlūk is used). Place-names have been rendered in their common English spelling, where such a spelling exists: Istanbul, Cyprus, Anatolia (of the land mass, not the Ottoman administrative district), Jerba, Algeria, Venice, Genoa, Lepanto, Chios, although alternate names are at times indicated in footnotes for clarity. When an uncommon name is employed, or a name with specific administrative resonance, such as Bosna Eyaleti, Rümeli (the administrative district), Kocaeli, Beşiktaş, To-

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phane, Balat, or Üsküdar the Ottoman term is employed, according to modern Turkish spelling conventions. Terms not commonly occurring in the English language have been italicised, but not proper names of persons, places, legal schools or months (by way of example: the Ḥanafī qāḍī of Tophane in Ṣafar, 969 was Aḥmad b. Meḥmed). The transliteration of personal names is a complicated question. Names common to both the Arabic and Turkish traditions (A ḥmad, Ḥasan, Ibrāhim, Maḥmūd, Sulaymān; Amīna, Fāṭima, Khadīja, Rabīʿa, Zaynab) have been transliterated according to the IJMES system. Forenames occurring purely in Turkish have been given both an IJMES transliteration in order to reflect their orthography in Arabic letters in the primary sources, as well as the modern Turkish equivalent, for example: Ṭurmush/Durmuş. The same has been done for Persianate names and mixed Persian-Turkish names: Khodāwardī/Hüdaverdi, Khusraw/Hüsrev, Parwāna/Pervane Bahram/Behrem, Farhād/Ferhat, Kaywān/Keyvan, Pahlawān/Pehlevan, Pīyāla/Piyale, Qīyā/Kiya, Khurram/Hürrem, Jānsurūr/Cansurur, Kūlshān/ Gülşen, or forenames from Arabic that are more commonly used in Turkish than Arabic: Khiḍir/Hizir, Walī/Veli, Baraka/Bereket, Fikra/Fikret, and Safar/Sefer. The name Meḥmed is preserved rather than Muḥammad when it occurs as a personal name in the primary sources, and ʽAbdullah is preferred to ʽAbd Allah. Furthermore, the transliteration of Latinate/Italianate names recorded in Arabic characters in the şeriyye sicilleri is particularly problematic, as the original name is at time obvious, and hence what the corresponding modern orthography of the name in Latin characters would be (for instance, Francesco, Vicenzo, Giovan, Paolo, Nicola), whereas at other times the name is altogether unclear and requires transliteration from Arabic characters. Furthermore, variation occurs in the Arabic rendering of the original name, suggesting a difference in pronunciation arising from either the regional origins of the slave, the scribe (who in one case seems to have been a speaker of Romance languages) or the master. Thus, I have attempted to preserve these variations, as such variations may hint with greater precision at the origins within the Italian peninsula, or elsewhere in the Romance-speaking Mediterranean, of the persons involved in the manumission transaction. The modified IJMES system that has been employed for transliterations from Arabic or Ottoman-Arabic hybrid is provided below. Note: Fatḥa, kasra, and dumma have been represented by a, i, and u, respectively, and tanwīn by n. Diphthongs have been transliterated aw and ay.

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Transliteration

Arabic letter

Transliteration

Arabic letter

ʾ

‫ءإأ‬

ẓ

‫ظ‬

ā

‫آ‬

ʿ

‫ع‬

b

‫ب‬

gh

‫غ‬

t

‫ت‬

f

‫ف‬

th

‫ث‬

q

‫ق‬

j

‫ج‬

k

‫ك‬

ḥ

‫ح‬

l

‫ل‬

kh

‫خ‬

m

‫م‬

d

‫د‬

n

‫ن‬

dh

‫ذ‬

h

‫ه‬

r

‫ر‬

w or ū

‫و‬

z

‫ز‬

ā

‫ى‬

s

‫س‬

y or ī

‫ي‬

sh

‫ش‬

p

‫پ‬

ṣ

‫ص‬

ç

‫چ‬

ḍ

‫ض‬

g

‫گ‬

ṭ

‫ط‬

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Translations Any translations of the text of the sicils attempt to convey the literal and technical sense of the text. The word is taken as the basic unit of translation, rather than the sentence or phrase.

Dates Dates of well-known historical events have been supplied according to the Gregorian or Milādī calendar (AD). For the sake of precision, every effort has been made to supply the dates of entries into the sicils in the form Hijrī AH (Milādī AD) to the greatest accuracy possible. When a day, month, and year are recorded for a specific hüccet, this information is provided in the text or footnotes; however, certain hüccets only present a month (qualified at times by ›beginning‹, ›middle‹ or ›end‹) and a year, or only a year. Whatever chronological information is provided in the hüccet is reproduced accordingly in the text of the dissertation or footnotes. Islamic months have been transcribed as though from Arabic using the IJMES system, and months involving an ʽawwal and akhir have been labelled I and II, thus: Jumādā I and Jumādā II, Rabīʿa I and Rabīʿa II, rather than Cümazi’ül-evvel and so forth.

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Chapter 1: Laying the Groundwork Introduction: Historical Context The sixteenth-century Mediterranean was an arena of fierce imperial rivalry between the Ottoman fleets and the maritime forces assembled by the Habsburgs, the Papacy and Venice. Dominance in the Mediterranean was crucial to maintaining the Ottomans’ imperial legitimacy and claim to universal monarchy as the heirs to Byzantium, and the era was marked by the Ottoman dream of uniting the two ancient capitals of the Roman Empire: Rome and Constantinople across the Middle Sea.1 This imperial rhetoric reached its height under the reign of Süleyman I (1520-1566) and continued under the rule of his son, Selim II (1566-1574); this rhetoric provided the political basis of the Ottoman fight for maritime supremacy in the Mediterranean throughout the period examined here, 1560 to 1572. This period straddles the reigns of both sovereigns and encompasses some of the most momentous naval events of the era. The imperial rivalry in the Mediterranean provides the political context in which the phenomenon of enslavement and manumission in Galata, Istanbul should be situated. However, the current fashion in Ottoman scholarship on the Mediterranean is to emphasise dialogue and cultural exchange between Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the shared world of the early modern Mediterranean. The assertion that inhabitants of the Mediterranean shared social norms, religious spaces, and material concerns has been so over-examined as to have become a commonplace. At the same time, the popular perception (as well as that of numerous Eurocentric or antiquated historians) of the history of inter-religious contact in the Mediterranean is that of the hackneyed and simplistic ›clash of civilisations‹. In such a context, writing the history of slavery is problematic, as processes of enslavement and manumission in the sixteenth-century Mediterranean often seemed to comply with the political rhetoric of the age but in practice served a much more nuanced and complex social function that cannot be easily positioned in the syncretic ›shared world‹2 vision of the academy nor in the popular ›clash of civilisations‹ understanding of the Mediterranean. While certainly slavery did result in cultural exchange, it did so forcibly, often without the consent of the enslaved individuals who were coerced into crossing various boundaries, be they geographical, political, or religious. Inhabiting a ›shared world‹, which the Mediterranean undeniably was, did not always imply 1 2

Tijana Krstić, Contested Conversions to Islam: Narratives of Religious Change in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Stanford, 2011), 7. Term adopted from Molly Greene’s well-known work on Crete: Molly Greene, A Shared World: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Princeton, 2000).

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peaceful cohabitation; shared codes of honour and social rules could lead to conflict as often as they led to unity. Often sharing a world, in the form of economic trade across religious and political boundaries or religious conversion and the adoption of mixed identities, was not the result of desire, or curiosity, but of necessity. Even the mixing and movement of peoples that gave rise to hybrid cultures and exchange were at times the result of violent conflict, or of the threat of viol ence (take, for instance, the Moriscos, or the movements of armies along frontiers). Curiosity about other languages, cultures, and religions and their appropriation was often viewed as a means to dominate the ›other‹ culture rather than an innocent multicultural intellectual pursuit; consider, for instance, the vast Italian literature on ›le cose Turche‹, the stated purpose of which was to understand the Turk and his heresy of ›Mohammedanism‹ and thereby eradicate it. It is in this context of early modern Mediterranean ›transimperial‹ identities, 3 forced movements of peoples, and shared codes of honour that the phenomenon of slavery will be examined, using a number of languages: Arabic, Ottoman, Italian, Latin, French, Spanish, which encompass a variety of sources: court records, administrative documents, treatises on physiognomy, literary meditations on ›origin‹, captivity narratives, and historical chronicles. It hoped that the diversity of sources reflects the cultural and linguistic diversity of the peoples and the region studied. It is possible that nowhere in the Mediterranean reflected this heady mixture of languages, religions, and worldviews more than Galata, the ›little Frengistan‹ of Istanbul. Although this neighbourhood has a reputation of being the ›Europe‹ of Istanbul, with its Byzantine-era colony of Genoese merchants pre-dating an Ottoman presence in the city, this neighbourhood had a large Muslim population as well as its mixture of Greek and Italian tradesmen. It is the neighbourhood in which many of the Moriscos settled after their expulsion from Spain in 1610. Not only was Galata the centre of trade with Venice and Genoa, but it also housed the Ottoman imperial shipyard, the tersane-yi amire, and thus was also the powerhouse of Ottoman naval domination in the Mediterranean. Galata was where the galleys were built that wreaked terror on Rhodes, Malta, Corfu and Cyprus, on the Habsburg forts on the North African coast, and on the southern coasts of Spain and Italy throughout the sixteenth century. Galata was also the seat of the highest judgeship of the sharīʿa in the Ottoman Empire, the Kadıasker of Rumeli, 4 and thus a major centre of Ottoman legal and administrative power. It is the records of 3

4

18

A very pertinent and useful term coined by E. Natalie Rothman in her oeuvre on VenetianOttoman exchange. For example, see: ›Between Venice and Istanbul: Trans-Imperial Subjects and Cultural Mediation in the Early Modern Mediterranean‹ (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2006). The notion of ›boundary-crossing‹ is also Rothman’s, as put forth in her article: ›Interpreting dragomans: boundaries and crossings in the early modern Mediterranean‹, Comparative Studies in Society and History 51/4 (2009), 771-800. See: ›Kazasker‹, İA2.

this judge, and his kassam askeri (divider of inheritances and notary for the military class) that will be used to examine the practice of slavery among the seafaring elites of the Ottoman Empire. It is in this heterogeneous seafaring milieu that the phenomenon of the enslavement of skilled sailors and craftsmen will be examined at the height of the Ottoman navy’s sixteenth-century involvement in the Mediterranean. How the identities of such individuals were articulated and defined in legal documents of the period, as well as how the slave labour market of this neighbourhood functioned at such a pivotal point in the Ottoman Empire’s maritime history will be examined. In the following dissertation, the existence of a sizeable group of slaves manumitted in Galata between the years 1560 and 1572 is scrutinised in detail. Because nothing was known about this group of slaves, much of what follows is descriptive in nature, illustrating the previously blank page in Ottoman history concerning the slaves who worked in one of Istanbul’s busiest neighbourhoods. This element of description is necessary before posing any arguments concerning, for instance, the possible role of these slaves in the labour market of Galata or the formation of a post-manumission ethnic and religious identity, questions which are addressed after the basic facts concerning this slave population have been established. Why slavery? In an era when cultural tensions are high, why examine a phenomenon that could be misused to reinforce harmful stereotypes of a ›clash of civilisations‹? The reasons for examining the phenomenon of slavery in the Mediterranean is that a profound investigation into the practices of slavery and manumission in Ottoman Istanbul reveal that the reality was much more complex than a ›clash‹ between Christians and Muslims in the sixteenth century. While historical chronicles written in Italian in Venice or Rome and those written in Ottoman in Istanbul both espouse a similar rhetoric of war against the other, it is clear that this rhetoric masked a much more complicated and ambiguous reality. In the case of slavery, for instance, while the current European scholarly literature is replete with studies of captivity narratives, the ›tropes‹ of captivity, the Inquisition’s attention to the re-integration of captives, and the ransom and return of Christian captives from the clutches of the ›the Turk‹, 5 the question has yet to be asked: 5

For a small sample of this literature: Giulio Cipollone ed., La Liberazione dei ›captivi‹ tra Christianità e Islam oltre la crociata e il gihad: tolleranza e servizio umanitario: atti del congresso interdisciplinare di studi storici a Roma, 16-19 settembre 1998 (Vatican City, 2000); Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy (Basingstoke, 2004); Idem, Holy War and Human Bondage: Tales of Christian-Muslim Slavery in the Early-Modern Mediterranean (Santa Barbara, 2009); Idem, White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (New York, 2003):, Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600-1850 (London, 2003); Nabil Matar, Britain and Barbary, 1589-1689 (Gainesville, 2005); Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York, 1999).

19

what about the Christian captives who chose not to return? What became of them? How were they integrated into Ottoman society during or after their period of slavery? How was their presence conceptualised in the literature of the period, and how were the origins of slaves understood in the legal and social contexts of the time (and did these contexts overlap)? Did slaves convert, and how did this affect their social role? In order to answer these questions, a particularly rich set of documents relating to slavery and manumission was selected from the Galata court registers, and examined in conjunction with a series of other primary sources, as enumerated above. The historical context for examining processes of enslavement and manumission in Istanbul has already been studied in detail by a number of very able historians. Galata, as a centre of maritime endeavours and trade, is easily situated in the world of the sixteenth-century Mediterranean. In fact, the political, climatic, economic, and social trends of the sixteenth-century Mediterranean basin are perhaps some of the best-studied phenomena in modern scholarship, so the need to detail them further here is somewhat superfluous. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that by the second half of the sixteenth-century, the Eastern Mediterranean was largely an Ottoman sea, with the Ottomans in possession of their patrimonial land in Anatolia, also having added the coastline of the Mamluk sultanate to their possessions in 1516-17. The Ottoman navy besieged and took Rhodes in 1520, and expanded its influence over North Africa and the western Mediterranean through the patronage of corsairs, the most famous of whom were the Barbarossa brothers, Khayruddin and ʿUruj. This policy of employing corsairs and piratical tactics against Spanish Habsburg shipping (or against whomever happened to be on the sharp end of Ottoman politics at the time) was continued throughout the sixteenth century, and has been well studied in a number of excellent books and articles, as well as a recent doc toral dissertation.6 The Ottomans also possessed a navy, which they used for pitched battles and sieges (such as those of Rhodes, Malta or Cyprus); again, the administration, organisation, and construction of this navy has been studied in a number of exhaustive and excellent works; 7 specific points relating to the con6

7

20

For instance: Emrah Safa Gürkan, ›The centre and the frontier: Ottoman cooperation with the North African corsairs in the sixteenth century‹, Turkish Historical Review 1 (2010), 125163; Nicolas Vatin, ›L’Empire ottoman et la piraterie en 1559-1560‹, in The Kapudan Pasha: His Office and his Domain, ed. Elizabeth Zachariadou (Rethymon, 2002), 371-408; Andrew C. Hess, The Forgotten Frontier: A History of the Sixteenth-Century Ibero-African Frontier (Chicago, 1978); Joshua White, ›Catch and Release: Piracy, Slavery, and Law in the in Early Modern Ottoman Mediterranean‹ (PhD Diss., University of Michigan, 2012). Idris Bostan, Osmanlılar ve Deniz (Istanbul, 2007); Idem, Osmanlı Bahriye Teşkilatı: XVII. Yüzyılda Tersane-i Amire (Ankara, 1992); Idem, Beylikten İmparatorluğa Osmanlı Denizciliği (Istanbul, 2006). Colin Imber, ›The Administration of the Ottoman Navy during the Reign of Suleyman I 1520-1566‹ (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 1971); Idem, ›The navy of Süleyman the Magnificent‹, in Studies in Ottoman History and Law (Istanbul, 1996), 1-70.

struction of ships will be touched on in Chapter 4, but for the moment let it suffice to reiterate the well known fact of Ottoman maritime history that the sixteenth century was one of intense Ottoman naval activity in both the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.8 The importance of naval expansion for the Ottoman imperial legitimacy cannot be stressed enough; under Süleyman I, whose reign took the Ottoman Empire to its largest geographical extent, the Ottoman navy (and associated corsairs) ranged the waters from Gibraltar to Gujarat to Aceh, giving help (sometimes only moral, at other times military) to various Muslim rulers and peoples along the way. Such a large endeavour required large numbers of skilled sailors and craftsmen to build, maintain, and man the ships required for this imperial projection of might. It is in the context of Ottoman attempts to achieve and maintain naval supremacy that the phenomenon of slavery in Galata, the powerhouse of the Ottoman navy in the Mediterranean, will be examined.

Précis of Chapters This dissertation is arranged thematically. This, the first chapter, outlines the methodological groundwork employed to research slavery according to the Ottoman court registers (şeriyye sicilleri), detailing the problems encountered in such research and the approach adopted to solve these difficulties. The second chapter is largely descriptive in nature and evaluates the texts of slavery produced in the court of the maritime centre of the Istanbul, the Galata mahkemesi, in the period dating from the Ottoman naval victory at Jerba in 1560, until 1572, immediately before the completion of the siege of Cyprus. This chapter details the contents of the corpus of texts selected for examination, including arguments regarding patterns of slave ownership, as well as a discussion of scribal practice in the Galata sharīʿa court. A typology of the manumission documents encountered in this corpus of legal texts is also presented. The slave-related legal entries in the Galata court registers are highly formulaic and uniform in language and content; furthermore, Arabic, rather than Turkish, was the language of slavery in mid- to late sixteenth-century Galata, a fact which deserves some attention. Such linguistic phenomena and their relationship to the ceremonial involved in slavery and manumission are described and accounted for in this chapter in the context of Ḥanafī fiqh and the philology of Arabic-language deeds and documents. 8

For detailed history of Ottoman naval activity in the 16th-century Indian Ocean and Mediterranean, see: Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford, 2010); Palmira Brummett, Ottoman Seapower and Levantine Diplomacy in the Age of Discovery (Albany, 1994).

21

The third chapter describes the origins of the slave population of Galata, parsing the terminology used to classify them as a specific cins (a term which signified a type, group, ethnicity, or even nation in a pre-modern sense) and mapping their geographical origins and how they came to be captured. In this chapter, it is argued that the categories of origin applied to the slave reflected a process of bureaucratic articulation of identity to render the slaves ›readable‹ to Ottoman scribes and slave owners. This chapter also analyses patterns in conversion to Islam among the slave population of Galata and attempts to account for them and discusses the possibility that conversion to Islam played a central role in the process of inculcation into the Ottoman habitus and was influenced both by the putative ›origins‹ of the slave as well as the type of slavery to which he (or she) was subjected. Through an examination of Mustafa Ali and other works of literature and advice, insight is gained into the interactions between legal and literary vocabulary, and the Ottoman social and cultural context of slavery and manumission is reconstructed. The fourth chapter examines the role of the mukātab slaves in the labour market of Galata and argues that the mukātab slaves in Galata court registers were skilled craftsmen employed in the Ottoman arsenal, who represented a distinct phenomenon of forced migration in the early modern Mediterranean and Black Sea areas. This wave of forced migration enriched the talent pool in Istanbul in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, and it can be assumed from a reading of primary narrative sources,9 that many skilled slaves remained in Istanbul and 9

22

The numerous travel and captivity accounts by fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth-century ›European‹ authors consulted: Luigi Bassano, Costumi et i modi particolari della vita de’ Turchi, ed. Franz Babinger (Monaco di Baviera, 1963); Bertrandon de la Broquière, The Voyage d’Outremer, ed. trans. Galen R. Kline (New York, 1988); Francesco Balbi, Diario dell’assedio di Malta 18 maggio - 8 settembre 1565 (Rome, 1965); Ottavio Bon, The Sultan’s Seraglio: An Intimate Portrait of Life at the Ottoman Court, ed. Godfrey Goodwin (London, 1996); Ogier de Busbecq, Turkish Letters (Oxford, 1927, reprinted London, 2001); Florio Bustron, Chronique de l’Île de Chypre, ed. M. René de Mas Latrie (Paris, 1884); Fray Diego de Haedo, Topografia e Historia Generale de Argel (Madrid, 1927, revised edition of the 1612 original); Bartholomeus Georgieuiz, The Offspring of the house of Ottomano, and offices pertaining to the greate Turkes court (London, 1553); Paulo Giovo and Andrea Gambini, Comentarii delle cose de Turchi, di Paulo Giovio, et Andrea Gambini, con gli fatti, et la vita di Scanderbeg (1541); Philippe du Fresne-Canaye, Le Voyage du Levant de Philippe du Fresne-Canaye 1573, ed. M.H. Hauser (Paris, 1897); Michael Heberer, Osmanlıda bir Köle: Brettenli Michael Heberer’in Anıları 15851588, trans. Türkis Noyan (Istanbul, 2003); William Lithgow, The Rare Adventures of Painful Peregrinations of William Lithgow, ed. Gilbert Phelps (London, 1974); Gio Antonio Menavino, I costumi, et la vita de Turchi, trans. M. Lodovico Domenichi (Florence, 1551); Konstantin Mihailovic, Memoirs of a Janissary, trans. Benjamin Stolz (Ann Arbor, 1975); Nicolas de Nicolay, The Nauigations into Turkie (London, 1585, facsimile printed Amsterdam, 1968); John Sanderson, The Travels of John Sanderson in the Levant 1584-1602, ed. Sir William Foster (London, 1931); George Sandys, Description of the Turkish Empire (facsimile, Amsterdam, 1973); Johann Schiltberger, The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger, a native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa 1396-1427 trans. J. Buchan Telfer (London, 1879); Wenceslas Wratislaw,

were integrated into free society after their manumission. This argument is extended to contend that these individuals may have then used their period of slavery as a ›career path‹,10 as Giancarlo Casale so aptly phrases it, to raise their overall professional and socio-economic status. This section also contains extensive economic information on the values of slave labour in Galata in the sixteenth century, as compared with the price of the slave’s body as reflected in Galata’s inheritance inventories (muhallafat defterleri). The fifth chapter analyses the ways in which the identities of enslaved persons were categorised, created and recast according to Ottoman bureaucratic terminology during the course of slavery and manumission in Galata. This chapter also establishes a new methodological framework for writing the history of slavery based on the Ottoman court registers. The naming practices of slaves and the account of the slave’s physical appearance ( ḥilya) and description of scars are discussed. In each section, the social and legal implications of the use of such terminology for the slave’s possible assimilation into the culture of elite households of Galata post-manumission is analysed. Like in Chapter 3, the legal documents of manumission are read in conjunction with contemporary texts on ʿilm al-firāsa in order to establish the social context of manumission and answer the question, why were slaves described the way that they were described, and what can these texts tell us about the ›gaze‹ of the slave-owner and scribe who controlled the process of manumission? Furthermore, the examination of the methods of description and classification employed in these texts elucidates the role of language in reinforcing the master-slave and patron-client relationship. Through a wide reading on slavery in the Mediterranean, extending in breadth both synchronically and diachronically, I hope to integrate the study of ›Ottoman‹ slavery and its practices into the environment from which it emerged. While no positive conclusion may be drawn at the moment regarding the complicated issue of the ›roots‹ of a specific manifestation of slavery, it is hoped that by pointing out related examples encountered through a wide reading of both primary sources and secondary studies from a variety of fields within Mediterranean and Islamic history in a number of languages that a groundwork may be laid for future investigation. While there is no chapter in this dissertation entitled, ›The influence of Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz 1599, trans. A.H. Wratislaw (London, 1862); Simeon of Poland, The Travel Accounts of Simeon of Poland (Simeon dpri Lehats’woy Ughregrut’iwn), trans. George A. Bournoutian (California, 2007); Paul Rycault, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1971, facsimile of the 1668 London edition); Bertrandon de la Broquière, The Voyage d’Outremer, ed. trans. Galen R. Kline (New York, 1988); Benedetto Ramberti, Delle Cose di Turchi (Venice, 1541); Stephan Gerlach, Türkiye Günlüğü 1577-1578, vols. 1 and 2, ed. Kemal Beydilli, trans. Türkis Noyan (Istanbul, 2007). 10 As suggested by Giancarlo Casale in his article, ›The ethnic composition of Ottoman ship crews and the ›Rūmī challenge‹ to Portuguese identity‹, Medieval Encounters 13 (2007), 122144.

23

Roman law via Byzantium on the practice of Ottoman slavery in Istanbul‹ or ›A comparative study of manumission according to Venetian, Genoese, Mamluk, and Ottoman legal practice in the 14th – 16th century‹ (as much as I would have liked to include one), there is a constant attempt, both in the main text of the dissertation and the footnotes, to integrate examples of parallel practices in the cultures and legal traditions of enslavement that may have influenced or interacted with the Ottoman practice and legislation of slavery. Furthermore, readings into linguistics and the philosophy of history have influenced my thinking on the practice of slavery in Galata.11 These readings were undertaken in an attempt to situate both the slaves, as actors enmeshed in a social and cultural tradition, and the legislation surrounding their labour contracts and manumission, in the proper historical and legal setting. To summarise, this research represents a contribution to the study of court registers and how such registers are used to write the social and legal history of slavery. More important than the contribution to the social and economic history of a neighbourhood of sixteenth-century Istanbul, this dissertation attempts to establish a methodological framework and a basis for comparison with further studies of slavery in the Ottoman court registers. Issues of legal terminology, classification, and the ramifications of the sixteenth-century juridical language of slavery are discussed, and while the framework established for the examination of slavery is by no means perfect, it will at least open debate over the nature of how we as scholars study slavery in the Ottoman Empire. By reading the manumission documents of Ottoman slaves in their cultural and social context, using for comparison and contextualisation literary and pseudo-scientific texts that encompassed the learning of the age, an attempt is made at recreating and describing the culture of Ottoman slavery and manumission. This dissertation concludes with the argument that slavery in the early modern Mediterranean was not simply a system of perpetuating violence and forced labour but also a means of coercive boundary crossing that contributed to the cosmopolitan identity of the sixteenth-century Ottoman seafaring elites. Slavery played a central role in the exchange of language, technical skills, and religious practice in the Mediterranean, and the study of slavery has so far been neglected as a framework for the examination of the formation of identity in the early modern Ottoman Empire.

11 In particular, J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford, 1962); Peter Burke, History and Social Theory, (Cambridge, 2005); Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. John B. Thompson, trans. Ginio Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, 1992).

24

Secondary Literature on Slavery in the Ottoman Empire Having clarified my aims in this dissertation, it is useful to survey what has been written so far on the subject of slavery in the Ottoman Empire and related geographical areas. The study of slavery in the late medieval and early modern Mediterranean from the standpoint of so-called ›Western‹ sources, the primary sources and chronicles emanating from ›Christendom‹ and its archives, written in Latin and its various offshoots (Italian, French, Spanish, etcetera) is fairly developed, if one-sided in its understanding of the phenomenon of Mediterranean slavery. 12 In contrast, other areas of immediate relevancy from both a geographical and historical standpoint to the development of the practice of slavery in Ottoman Istanbul have barely been touched by modern scholarship: for instance, the study of nonmilitary slavery in the Mamluk Empire, which is barely in its infancy. 13 Related to the study of slavery in the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period is the ex12 For a representative, but far from exhaustive, sample of the secondary studies on Mediterranean slavery and the main authors of this field, see the following: Benjamin Arbel, ›Slave trade and slave labour in Frankish Cyprus 1191-1571‹, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 14 (1993), 151-190; Nicholas Coureas, ›Christian and Muslim captives in Lusignan Cyprus: redemption or retention?‹ in La Liberazione dei ›captivi‹ tra Christianità e Islam oltre la crociata e il gihad: tolleranza e servizio umanitario: atti del congresso interdisciplinare di studi storici a Roma, 16-19 settembre 1998, ed. Giulio Cipollone (Vatican City, 2000), 525531; Steven A. Epstein, Speaking of Slavery: Color, Ethnicity, and Human Bondage in Italy (Ithaca, 2001); Domenico Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova nel secolo XV (Genova, 1971); Iris Origo, ›The domestic enemy: the eastern slaves in Tuscany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries‹, Speculum 30/3 (1955), 321-366; Paul G. Padilla, ›The transport of Muslim slaves in fifteenth-century Valencia‹, in Iberia and the Mediterranean World of the Middle Ages, ed. P. Chevedden et al. (New York, 1996), 378-393; Wipertus H. Rudt de Collenberg, Esclavage et rançons des chrétiens en méditerranée 1570-1600 (Paris, 1987); Charles Verlinden, L’Esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale (Ghent, 1955 vol. I, 1977 vol. II); Idem, ›Esclavage et ethnographie sue les bords de la mer Noire (XIIIe et XIVe siècles)‹, in Miscellanea Historica in honorem Leonis van der Essen, ed. Leon van der Essen (Brussels, 1947), 287-298; Idem, ›La colonie vénitienne de Tana, centre de la traite des esclaves au XIVe et au début du XIVe siècle‹, in Studi in Onore di Gino Luzzatto, vol. II (Milano, 1950), 1-25; Idem, ›Orthodoxie et esclavage au bas moyen age‹, in Mélanges Eugène Tisserant, ed. E. Tisserant, vol. V (Vatican City, 1964), 427-456; Idem, ›L’origine de sclavus = esclave‹, Bulletin du Cange: Archivium Latinitatis Medii Aevi 16 (1942); Youval Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, trans. Jane Marie Todd (Cambridge, Mass, 2009); Henry Kahane and Reneé Kahane, ›Notes on the linguistic history of sclavus‹, in Studi in Onore di Ettore Lo Gatto e Giovanni Maver (Rome, 1962), 97-128. 13 Andrew Ehrenkeutz, ›Strategic implications of the slave trade between Genoa and Mamluk Egypt in the second half of the thirteenth century‹, in The Islamic Middle East, 700-1900: Studies in Economic and Social History, ed. A.L. Udovitch (Princeton, 1981), 335-346; Nur Sobers Khan, ›Slaves, wealth and fear: an episode from late Mamluk-era Egypt‹ Oriens 37 (2009), 155-161; Shaun Marmon, ›Domestic slavery in the Mamluk empire: a preliminary sketch‹, in Slavery in the Islamic East, ed. Shaun Marmon (Princeton, 1999), 1-12; Carl Petry, ›Disruptive ›others‹ as depicted in chronicles of the late Mamluk period‹ The Historiography of Islamic Egypt c. 950-1800, ed. Hugh Kennedy (Leiden, 2001), 167-194.

25

tended research on the ›Barbary coast‹, that is, North Africa under the Ottomans and the rampant piracy that led to the captivity and enslavement of numerous ›Europeans‹. While the meta-analysis of slavery on the so-called ›Barbary‹ coast in the early modern period is well advanced in the works of such authors as Nabil Matar, Daniel Vitkus and others, 14 who tend to concentrate on the narratives of English captives, other authors take a surprisingly sensationalistic and reactionary stance to the phenomenon of the enslavement of ›white Europeans‹.15 Up to the present time, there have been limited studies on the subject of slave manumissions in the central lands of the Ottoman Empire, 16 and in fact, many scholarly studies on the freeing of slaves in the Mediterranean have concentrated on the redemption and return of slaves to their native land rather than the manumission and integration of slaves into the society to which they have been forcibly relocated. However, what separates the current study is its focus on the freeing of slaves by their ›captors‹, or at least, by the institutions of the society in which they had been enslaved, and the legal process by which the post-manumission religious and ›ethnic‹ identity of the slaves were constructed. While the Ottoman court registers are a rich primary source of social and economic history, only three scholars have employed this source to examine slavery in the Ottoman Empire: Halil Sahillioğlu,17 Yvonne Seng,18 and İzzet Sak,19 whose studies are necessarily of a concentrated and narrow focus and examine specific aspects of slavery in, respectively, Bursa, Üsküdar and Konya. On a more limited level, Alan Fisher 14 Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600-1850 (London, 2003); Nabil Matar ›English accounts of captivity in North Africa and the Middle East: 1577-1625‹, Renaissance Quarterly, 54 (2001), 553-572; Idem, Britain and Barbary 1589-1689 (Gainesville, 2005); Idem, Islam in Britain 1558-1685 (Cambridge, 1998); Idem, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York, 1999). A useful compendium and commentary on primary source narrative accounts of captives in the North African coast is Daniel Vitkus, ed., Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England, with an introduction by Nabil Matar (New York, 2001). 15 Robert C. Davis, White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (New York, 2003); Idem, ›Counting European slaves on the Barbary coast‹ Past and Present 172 (2001), 87-124; Idem, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy (Basingstoke, 2004); Idem, Holy War and Human Bondage: Tales of Christian-Muslim Slavery in the Early-Modern Mediterranean (Santa Barbara, 2009). For a similarly Eurocentric account, see: Giles Milton, White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa’s One Million European Slaves (London, 2004). 16 Nihat Engin, Osmanlı Devletinde Kölelik (Istanbul, 1998); Alan Fisher, ›Studies in Ottoman slavery and slave trade II: manumission‹, in A Precarious Balance: Conflict, Trade, and Diplomacy on the Russian-Ottoman Frontier (Istanbul, 1999). 17 Halil Sahillioğlu, ›Slaves in the social and economic life of Bursa in the late 15th and early 16th centuries‹, Turcica 17 (1985). 18 Yvonne J. Seng, ›A liminal state: slavery in sixteenth-century Istanbul‹ Slavery in the Islamic East (ed.) Shaun Marmon (Princeton, 1999), 25-42; Idem, ›Fugitives and factotums: slaves in early sixteenth-century Istanbul‹, JESHO 34 (1996), 136-169. 19 İzzet Sak, ›Şer’iye Sicillerine Göre Sosyal ve Ekonomik Hayatta Köleler‹ (PhD diss., Selçuk University, 1992).

26

has used published sicils from Ankara to examine the slave sales and manumissions contained therein.20 Sahillioğlu’s study, a truly seminal work on the role of slaves in the Bursa textile industry, is necessarily limited in its scope as a result of the nature of the primary sources employed but represents nonetheless an enormous contribution to both the social and economic history of slavery in the early modern Ottoman Empire. Seng’s articles on fugitive slaves and freed slaves as ›liminal‹ persons in Üsküdar are among the first studies to attempt to create a theoretical basis for the study of Ottoman slavery in the pre-modern period of the Ottoman Empire. While exhaustively researched and very thorough, Sak’s work addressing slaves in the economic and social life of Konya is largely descriptive in nature; again, this is not so much a fault of the author as the primary sources, which lend themselves to description. While it is a valuable contribution, it leaves the central urban lands, such as the capital of the empire, unexamined and turns to the ›periphery‹ without a clear justification. Short sicil-based works by Madeline Zilfi21 and Suraiya Faroqhi22 elucidate some of the aspects of slave holding and integration into Ottoman society post-manumission, focusing primarily on perceived ›subalterns‹ in the form of women and black slaves. While occasional smaller, often numerically based, studies of slaves in the sicils exist,23 the work of these scholars remains the only inquiry into the presence of slaves in Ottoman social and economic life in the early modern period.

20 Alan Fisher, ›The sale of slaves in the Ottoman Empire: markets and state taxes on slave sales, some preliminary considerations‹, in A Precarious Balance: Conflict, Trade, and Diplomacy on the Russian-Ottoman Frontier (Istanbul, 1999), 77-104; Idem, ›Chattel slavery in the Ottoman Empire‹, in A Precarious Balance: Conflict, Trade, and Diplomacy on the Russian-Ottoman Frontier (Istanbul, 1999), 105-128, and op cit. 21 Madeleine C. Zilfi, ›Goods in the mahalle: distributional encounters in eighteenth-century Istanbul‹ Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire 1550 – 1922, ed. Donald Quataert (Albany, 2000), 289-331. 22 Suraiya Faroqhi, ›A builder as slave owner and rural moneylender: Hacı Abdullah of Bursa, campaign mimar‹, in Stories of Ottoman Men and Women: Establishing Status, Establishing Control (Istanbul, 2002), 95-112; Idem, ›From the slave market to Arafat: biographies of Bursa women in the late fifteenth century‹, in Stories of Ottoman Men and Women: Establishing Status, Establishing Control (Istanbul, 2002), 132-149; Idem, ›Black slaves and freedmen celebrating: Aydin 1576‹, in Coping with the State: Political Conflict and Crime in the Ottoman Empire 1550-1720 (Istanbul, 1995), 149-158; Idem, ›Quis custodiet custodes: controlling slave identities and slave traders in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Istanbul‹, in Stories of Ottoman Men and Women (Istanbul, 2002), 245-263; Idem, ›Labor recruitment and control in the Ottoman empire (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries)‹, in Manufacturing in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey 1500-1950, ed. Donald Quataert (Albany, 1994), 13-57. 23 For an example, see: Osman Çetin, ›Slavery and conversion of slaves to Islam in Ottoman society according to the canonical registers of Bursa between XVth and XVIIIth centuries‹ Uludağ Üniversitesi Dergisi, İlahiyat Fakültesi 10/ 1, 1-8.

27

In addition to the works on slavery discussed above, a recent publication on ransom slavery on the Hungarian border 24 contains numerous valuable contributions to the field of ›slavery‹ studies, in so far as captivity and ransom were part of the mosaic of various practices of ›slavery‹ in the Ottoman Empire, but the collection as a whole lacks a unified methodological framework. In contrast with these studies, which are limited in scope but highly focused and competent works of scholarship taken individually, a further publication by Zilfi on women and slavery in the Ottoman Empire25 is broad in its approach and paints a discursive picture of ›women‹ (the author assumes a binary biological division of gender) as the archetypal slave of the 18th and 19th-century Ottoman Empire, identifying them as victims of a ›patriarchal‹ hegemonic system. Zilfi has also recently published a series of articles on the topic of female slaves, the main contribution of which lies in identifying current gaps in the field.26 Finally, the recent doctoral dissertation by Betül İpşirli-Argıt on former female palace slaves in the eighteenth century27 represents a substantial and valuable contribution to the field of Ottoman slavery with its meticulously researched analysis of the interactions between manumitted female palace slaves (sarayîs), the palace, and the neighbourhoods in which they settled. Aside from the above topics, the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire has been examined as a colonialist construct in several enlightening works.28 Very recently, a spate of articles on the topic of slavery has emerged, attempting to arrive at a cultural history of slavery from the bottom up that allows the voice of the slave to be heard; the success of such an endeavour is however highly limited, due to the nature of the sources. 29 Despite the historical 24 Géza Dávid, Pál Fodor, eds. Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Leiden, 2007). 25 Madeline Zilfi, Women and Slavery in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, 2010). 26 Idem, ›Servants, slaves, and the domestic order in the Ottoman Middle East‹, Hawwa 2/1 (2004), 1-33; Idem, ›Thoughts on women and slavery in the Ottoman era and historical sources‹, in Beyond the Exotic: Women’s Histories in Islamic Societies, ed. Amira el-Azhary Sonbol (Syracuse, 2005), 131-138. 27 Betül İpşirli-Argıt, ›Manumitted Female Slaves of the Ottoman Imperial Harem (Sarayîs) in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul‹ (PhD diss., Boğaziçi University, 2009). 28 Y. Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and Its Demise 1800-1909 (Oxford, 1996); Ehud R. Toledano, The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression 1840-1890 (Princeton, 1982); Idem, ›The concept of slavery in Ottoman and other Muslim societies: dichotomy or continuum‹, in Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa: A Comparative Study, ed. Miura Toru and John Edward Philips (London, 2000), 159-175; Idem, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle, 1998); Kenneth M., Cuno and Terence Walz, eds. Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean (Cairo, 2011). 29 Ehud Toledano, As If Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East (Yale University, 2007); Yaron Ben-Neah, ›Blond, Tall, with Honey-Colored Eyes: Jewish Ownership of Slaves in the Ottoman Empire‹ Jewish History 20/ 3-4 (2006), 315-332; Eva Trout Powell, ›Will that subaltern ever speak? Finding African slaves in the historiography of the Middle East‹, in Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century, ed. Israel

28

philosophy that encourages the importance of examining the ›voices‹ of slaves, slaves in the Ottoman Empire have also been investigated as a silent economic commodity in the secondary literature. 30 Generally, the works on slavery in the Ottoman Empire are scattered in their methodology, geographical focus and subject matter, leaving the field of Ottoman slavery studies, particularly in the early modern period, unfocused. Up to this point, the study of slavery in sixteenth-century Istanbul has been strangely neglected. It seems odd, and improbable, that the role of slaves in the socio-economic fabric of the central metropolis of the empire at its height has been overlooked, although this is indeed the case. This study hopes to rectify this situation.

Methodology The şeriyye sicilleri as a Primary Source: Methodological Problems It is claimed that the term sicil31 originates from the Latin sigillum, referring to the seal affixed to an official legal paper; by metonymy sigillum came to stand for the entire document. The term made its way into Byzantine Greek and Aramaic, referring to official documents, whence it presumably passed into Arabic and then Ottoman.32 While this term originally referred in Arabic usage to the documents in which the judgements of a qāḍī are recorded, by the Mamluk period the term sicil referred to the records of legal dealings kept by official witnesses of the court. 33 In contrast, this term is employed in Ottoman usage to designate the records maintained by the sharīī͑a courts, which are referred to as kadı sicilleri or şeriyye sicilleri

30

31 32 33

Gershoni, Amy Singer and Y. Hakan Erdem (London, 2006), 242-261; N. Maksudyan, ›Fosterdaughter or servant, charity or abuse: beslemes in the late Ottoman Empire‹ Journal of Historical Sociology 21/4 (2008), 488-512; Y. Hakan Erdem, ›Magic, theft, and arson: the life and death of an enslaved African woman in Ottoman İzmit‹, in Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean, ed. Terrence Walz and M. Cuno (Cairo, 2010), 125-146. Halil İnalcık, ›Capital formation in the Ottoman empire‹ Journal of Economic History 29/1 (1969), 97-140; Idem, ›Bursa and the commerce of the Levant‹ JESHO 3 (1960), pp. 131-147; ›Servile labour in the Ottoman Empire‹, in The Mutual Effects of the Islamic and Judeo-Christian Worlds: The East European Patterns, ed. Abraham Ascher et al (New York, 1979), 25-52. Also, see the appendices on slaves in Kate Fleet, European and Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State: The Merchants of Genoa and Turkey (Cambridge, 2006). Transliterated as sijil according to the IJMES system, sidjil in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, and sicil according to modern Turkish orthography. The Turkish form sicil will be employed throughout. F.C. de Blois, ›Sidjil: Kurʾanic and early Arabic usage‹, EI2; Jeanette Wakin, The Function of Documents in Islamic Law, (Albany, 1972), 11. Donald P. Little, ›Sidjil: In mamluk usage‹, EI2. Another useful reference on the pre-Ottoman use of the term sicil belongs to Wael al-Hallaq, ›The qādī’s dīwān (sicil) before the Ottomans‹ BSOAS 61/3 (1998), 415-436.

29

in modern scholarship. However a renowned expert of the field of Islamic jurisprudence, Wael Hallaq, debates whether it is appropriate to employ this term when referring to the various written documents kept by scribes in the qāḍī’s employ. Hallaq prefers the term qāḍī’s dīwān, claiming that the locution ›court registers‹ is a misnomer, as there traditionally existed no fixed location of the ›court‹, in the modern sense of the word, and it was the presence of the qāḍī, scribe, and witnesses that determined where the sharīī͑a ›court‹ would be convened. Furthermore, Hallaq argues, the term sicil is overly vague, as the Arabic term can refer to anything that has been recorded or registered, and does not refer specifically to the legal archive of documents maintained by the judge or those in his employ.34 However, as it is convention in Ottoman studies to employ the term sicil when referring to a wide range of legal documents recorded by scribes in the employ of a judge, the use of this term will be maintained throughout this disserta tion, although the problems inherent in the usage of such a term are acknow ledged. For the sake of readability, the English translation ›court registers‹ or ›register‹ is often employed in place of şeriyye sicilleri or sicil, although this term admittedly shares all of the flaws of its Arabic/Turkish equivalent. That being said, this section does not consist solely of an introduction to the primary sources used to research a specific practice of slavery in Ottoman Galata. Rather, the sources themselves deserve detailed analysis as texts, both on an empirical and on a sociolinguistic level. Just as the field of ›defterology‹ exists in Ottoman studies,35 a field of ›sicilology‹ should exist, in which the style, structure, contents, and terminology of the numerous and highly disparate texts of the şeriyye sicilleri undergo analysis and comparison. While the sub-field of Ottoman history that concerns itself with writing the social and economic history of the empire from the bottom up, often basing its research on the şeriyye sicilleri, is mature and well-developed, there is a lack of studies on the şeriyye sicilleri as documents or texts in themselves, which examine the sicils’ linguistic structure, ordering of clauses, use of specific terminology and the bearing that this holds on our interpretation of history, except in the works of a handful of scholars. For in stance, Brinckley Messick, Najwa al-Qattan, and Zouhair Ghazzal have made towering contributions to what can be termed a sociolinguistic, or in the terminology of Messick, ›textual‹ reading of Islamic legal documents in various contexts, however none of their analyses focus on texts originating as early as the sixteenth century.36 Moreover, their work is firmly rooted in the Arabic language and Ar34 Hallaq, ›The qādī’s dīwān (sicil) before the Ottomans‹, 418-419. 35 For an example of this manner of exhaustive approach, see: Heath Lowry, Studies in Defterology: Ottoman Society in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Istanbul, 1992). 36 For works on the textual treatment of court registers, see: Najwa al-Qattan, ›Dhimmis in the Muslim Court: Documenting Justice in Ottoman Damascus 1775-1860‹ (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1996); Idem, ›Dhimmis in the Muslim court: legal autonomy and religious dis-

30

abic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire (respectively, Yemen and Syria) and does not take into account Ottoman linguistic impact on the text of the court registers. This is certainly not a failing on the part of these authors, whose research focus may not have necessitated such a concern; however, this dissertation is the first that attempts to account for the social implications of the interaction between these two languages in the legal documents of the Ottoman sharīī͑a court. While the studies of Ottoman social and legal history based on the şeriyye sicilleri are abundant and illuminating, 37 certain drawbacks have been identified in exploiting this genre of primary source. The Ottoman social historian Dror Ze’evi crimination‹ IJMES 31/3 (Aug., 1999), 429-444; Idem, ›Textual differentiation in the Damascus sicil: religious discrimination or politics of gender?‹ in Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History, ed., Amina El Azhary Sonbol (Syracuse, 1996), 191-201; Zouhair Ghazzal, The Grammars of Adjudication: The Economics of Judicial Decision-Making in Fin-desiècle Ottoman Beirut and Damascus (Paris, 2007); Boğaç A. Ergene, Local Court, Provincial Society and Justice in the Ottoman Empire: Legal Practice and Dispute Resolution in Çankırı and Kastamonu (1652-1744) (Leiden, 2003), particularly Chapter 7: ›The Sicil as a Text‹. Also, the works of Brinkley Messick are helpful in laying down guidelines for the analysis of Ot toman legal texts, although the author deals with documents from a much later time period: Brinckley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society (Berkeley, 1993); Idem, ›From Memory to Archive‹, Islamic Law and Society: Evidence in Islamic Law 9/2 (2002), 231-270; Idem, ›Just writing: paradox and political economy in Yemeni legal documents‹, Cultural Anthropology 4/1 (1989), 26-50; Idem, ›Kissing hands and knees: hegemony and hierarchy in shariʿa discourse‹ Law and Society Review, Special Issue: Law and Ideology 22/4 (1988), 637-660; Idem, ›Textual properties: writing and wealth in a shariʿa case‹, Anthropological Quarterly: Anthropological Analysis and Islamic Texts 68/3 (1995), 157-170; Idem, ›The Mufti, the text, and the world: legal interpretation in Yemen‹, Man, New Series 21/1 (1986), 102-119; Idem, ›Written identities: legal subjects in an Islamic state‹, History of Religions: Islam and Law 38/1 (1998), 25-51; Idem, ›Indexing the self: intent and expression in Islamic legal acts‹, Islamic Law and Society 8/2 (2001), 151-178. More general works analysing written legal proof in Islamic law are also of direct relevance, such as Émile Tyan, Le notariat et le régime de la preuve par écrit dans la pratique du droit musulman (Beirut, 1966), and Wakin, op cit. For a basic (though at times incorrect or opaque in its transcription) introduction to the transcription and translation of Ottoman language court registers, there exists Ahmet Akgündüz’s Şeriye Sicilleri: Mahiyeti, Toplu Katalogu, ve Seçme Hükümler (Istanbul, 1998); however, this particular work does not analyse the texts of the court registers beyond their basic aspects. 37 For a few examples the numerous books and articles that have contributed to the recent development of the field of Ottoman social history according to the court registers and a selection of the sort of information that can typically be derived from the registers, the following collection of titles is representative of the general trends in the historiography: Iris Agmon, ›Muslim women in the court according to the sicil of late Ottoman Jaffa and Haifa‹, in Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History, ed. Amina El-Azhary Sonbol (Syracuse, 1996), 126-142; Marc Baer, ›Islamic conversion narratives of women: social change and gendered religious hierarchy in early modern Ottoman Istanbul‹, Gender & History 16/2 (2004), 425-458; Haim Gerber, Economy and Society in an Ottoman City: Bursa 1600-1700 (Jerusalem, 1988); Rossitsa Gradeva, ›The activities of a kadi court in eighteenth-century Rūmeli: the case of Hacıoğlu Pazarcık‹, Oriente Moderno: The Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century 28/1 (1999), 161-176; Idem, ›Orthodox Christians in the kadi courts: the practice of the Sofia sheriat court, seventeenth century‹ Islamic Law and Society 4/1 (1997), 37-69;

31

has written an article of crucial importance in identifying the main problems encountered in historical research based on the şeriyye sicilleri.38 Ze’evi elucidates two methods of analysis employed by social historians basing their research on the sicils that are relevant to the study of slavery in the Galata court registers. He terms these approaches the ›quantitative‹ method and the ›narrative‹ method, the pitfalls of which are examined below. The problems identified with the ›quantitative method‹ of analysing the data contained in court registers is apposite to the current study, as the Galata court registers contain large amounts of numerical data concerning the practice of slavery and manumission. The first problem with a ›quantitative‹ approach to the court registers is that the degree to which the sample of individuals attending the court is representative of wider society is unknown, thus rendering any numerical generalisations based on patterns observed in the sicil data difficult to form. Furthermore, in many cases the amount of fees charged by each court or judge for particular services is not known; it is possible that segments of society were excluded from taking their business to the judge as a result of the prohibitive cost. Thus, the poorer members of society would not be represented in the sample at hand, and any conclusions drawn from patterns in the data would only be applicable to the social elites of Galata who could afford such services. 39 Additionally, in the field of sicil-based Ottoman social and economic history, attention is often given to quantity in research, at times (though not always) with Svetlana Ivanova, ›Muslim and Christian women before the kadi court in eighteenth century Rumeli: marriage problems‹, Oriente Moderno: The Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century 1 (1999), 161-176; Idem, ›The divorce between Zubaida Hatun and Esseid Osman Aga: women in the eighteenth-century shariʿa court of Rumelia‹, in Women, the Family, and Divorce Laws in Islamic History, ed. Amina El-Azhary Sonbol (Syracuse, 1996), 112-140. The classic studies of Ronald Jennings on the court records as a source of social history also helped lay the foundations of the field: Ronald Jennings, ›Women in the early 17 th-century Ottoman judicial records: the sharīʿa court of Anatolian Kayseri‹, Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 18/1 (1975), 53-114; Idem, ›Zimmis (Non-Muslims) in early 17thcentury Ottoman judicial records: the shariʿa court of Anatolian Kayseri‹, JESHO 21/3 (1978), 225-293; Idem, ›Kadi, court, and legal procedure in 17th-century Ottoman Kayseri: the kadi and the legal system‹, Studia Islamica 48 (1978), 133-172. Suraiya Faroqhi’s work, Approaching Ottoman History: An Introduction to the Sources (Cambridge, 1999), 55-57, also supplies a brief and general introduction for the beginning researcher to the use of the court registers as a source for social history. 38 Dror Ze’evi, ›The use of Ottoman sharīʿa court records as a source for Middle Eastern social history: a reappraisal‹ Islamic Law and Society 5/1 (1998), 35-56. For other articles that interpret that level of veracity of written law records as historical sources and the possible manipulation of loopholes by legal actors, see: Anna Würth, ›A Sanaʿa court: the family and the ability to negotiate‹ Islamic Law and Society: Marriage, Divorce and Succession in the Muslim Family 2/3 (1995), 320-340; al-Qattan, op cit. 39 Ze’evi, ›The use of Ottoman sharīī͑a court records‹, 35-56. Also, for a discussion of the effect of court fees on court accessibility, see: Boǧac A. Ergene, ›Costs of court usage in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ottoman Anatolia: court fees as recorded in estate inventories‹, JESHO 45/1 (2002), 20-39.

32

a concomitant sacrifice in quality of textual depth and detail, as hundreds of court registers may be perused to order to acquire particular and limited pieces of information.40 While mapping the overall numerical patterns and trends in the data can be a constructive exercise, these patterns in the data are only valid for the sample of persons who appear in the register, and, as stated previously, the degree of representativeness of this sample is not known and therefore any conclusions derived from it cannot be applied to the overall population of the area covered by the court. A further proviso is needed for any monetary quantities. While an examination of the values of slave labour contracts is undertaken in this dissertation, it is necessary to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that such values are to be taken with a grain of salt. We have no proof that money ever changed hands, and amounts of money recorded in the court registers could at times be symbolic of social norms rather than representing an actual fiscal transaction. More so than slave labour contracts, inheritance inventories are suspect, as it was in the interest of the family of the deceased to misrepresent the value of the goods in order to pay lower taxes. That being said, numbers present in the court registers are nonetheless used in the historical analysis of slavery in Galata, although they are employed with the awareness that they may not be accurate. However, we have no other raw economic data at hand that describe the value of labour contracts and the prices of slaves in Galata in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, so these numbers cannot be neglected merely because we are unsure of their precise value. A second approach identified by Ze’evi as both widespread in scholarly research and at the same time highly problematic is what he terms the ›narrative‹ approach to the sicils. In the ›narrative‹ method, researchers seek out exceptional cases, such as rape, theft, assault, the flight of slaves and so on. Much creative and illuminating research is written on such topics but, again, these eye-catching hüccets are largely anomalous and not representative of the vast majority of the entries in the court registers.41 Even if, as many of the authors who employ the narrative approach would claim, the court registers should be exploited in an attempt at recounting the microhistorical tales and social history of the Ottoman Empire from the ›bottom up‹ that would otherwise be lost, the exceptional cases often used for such histories are not representative of the quotidian economic exchanges and social interactions in the Ottoman Empire. In reality, most entries into the register do not involve violent disputes or any dispute at all. Often, the sicils serve the purpose of documenting notary deeds, 40 One examples of a numerically-based study that is exhaustive and impressive in its detail and organisation is Said Öztürk, Askeri Kassama Ait Onyedinci Asır İstanbul Tereke Defterleri (Sosyo-Ekonomik Tahlil) (Istanbul, 1995). However, this work understands the sicil primarily as a source of raw data, mainly of an economic nature. 41 A good example of this form of history writing based on the sicils is Leslie Pierce’s groundbreaking and engaging work on Ottoman provincial social history, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley, 1998).

33

such the official registration of property changing hands, the distribution of inheritance, assigning power of attorney or, in the case of sixteenth-century Galata, registering the manumission of slaves — all transactions that did not involve any obvious dispute or contestation as they have been recorded. While these transactions may seem to be banal or ›unexciting‹, they nonetheless represent the day-today socioeconomic realities of life in the Ottoman Empire, and it is these realities, in relation to slavery, that are examined here. Thus, the approach adopted in this work seeks to avoid the methodological pitfalls involved in the ›quantitative‹ and the ›narrative‹ approaches to the Ottoman court registers, although these pitfalls are at times unavoidable. Although some elements of quantitative research have been employed, the utmost effort has been made to clarify to the reader that the numbers derived from the data are representative of the sample of slaves and owners contained in the sicils, and only tentative generalisations have been made concerning slave ownership in Galata based on these numbers. Any other abstractions are typically of a social rather than economic nature and are based on a close reading of the sicils combined with a number of other primary sources and studies, rather than a fiction constructed from the occasional eye-catching event recorded in the sicils. Thus, the research focus falls on the bulk of the ›mundane‹ nonlitigation entries into the sicils, which, fortuitously for the purpose of researching slavery, are predominantly concerned with various forms of manumission.

Methodological Approach: Evaluating a Textual Corpus The corpus of documents examined in this dissertation consists of three şeriyye sicilleri from the Galata court of extra muros Istanbul. The defters selected to examine slavery in Istanbul are the Galata mahkemesi 14/2, Galata mahkemesi 14/3, and Galata mahkemesi 14/4 defters, which are stored in the İstanbul’un Müftülüğü Arşivi (the Archive of the Chief Jurisconsult of Istanbul). The evaluation of this corpus of texts aims at an analysis of the everyday practice of slavery and manumission in the neighbourhood of Galata, viewed through the legal texts produced by the practices of slavery and manumissions, and can be considered not as the fi nal word on the subject of slavery in early modern Istanbul but rather a microhis torical study of a specific instance of slavery in the Ottoman Empire. By laying a foundation for future studies, either based on this same corpus of documents, or building on this research to make connections with related primary sources of the period, the foremost goal at hand is to widen our understanding of the practice of slavery in the Ottoman Empire through a deeper reading of the legal texts concerned with and produced by this practice. The chronological focus of the archival documents used is intentionally narrow, covering the period of 1560 to 1572, as the wealth of information on the practice of slavery in Galata contained therein is such that it was be impossible to

34

broaden the chronological scope of the study without first analysing this corpus of texts. It is hoped that this level of thoroughness will benefit the current study of slavery and be of assistance to a wider community of scholars wishing to examine the material, social, or legal culture of Galata in the same period from perspectives other than slavery. In terms of the physical approach taken to reading the Galata sicils, an initial reading of the registers’ contents was carried out with the original copies, in the İstanbul’un Müftülüğü Arşivi. However, the majority of detailed reading, transcription, transliteration, translation, and cataloguing of the contents of these sicils was undertaken from either digital photographs provided by the İstanbul Müftülüğü Arşivi or digital copies of microfilms of the same şeriyye sicilleri held at the İslam Araştırmaları Merkezi (İSAM). The primary reason for detailing the physical approach to the sicils is that the digitisation of these documents enabled the use of image editing software to enhance the readability of certain parts of the documents that had been either obscured as a result of ink bleeding through the page, or of the darkening of paper, or in other cases of the script having been rendered illegible through faded ink. Textual Analysis A twofold approach to analysing the historical information contained in the corpus of documents contained in the Galata sicils is employed as a research methodology, which can be termed a textual approach and a numerical-empirical approach. Textual analysis in this context denotes a combined socio-linguistic, philological and paleographical approach to analysing the documents at hand. The term ›textual‹ analysis as a methodological approach is defined in the sense used by Brinckley Messick: ›The method exemplified may be described as textual ethnography, in which local documents serve as points of departure for an interrelated contextual, doctrinal, and discursive analysis.‹ 42 While socio-linguistic and anthropological approaches to history are popular in current scholarship, paleographical and philological studies have fallen deeply out fashion. My approach attempts to combine these two historiographical trends. Thus, the corpus of documents contained in the Galata şeriyye sicilleri are explored for textual and linguistic clues that illuminate aspects of the slave’s experience not provided by the extensive numerical data. Moreover, a considered analysis of the terminology, language and clausal structure of the sicils provides a solid foundation from which to interpret the numerical data. By analysing the texts of the sicils for nuances of terminology, clausal structure and orthography, concrete conclusions can be drawn about the scribal and legal written language employed in the sixteenth-century Galata court, as well as patterns of scribal employment in the court and their bureaucratic and ad42 Messick, ›Textual properties: writing and wealth in a sharīʿa case‹, 157.

35

ministrative practices. The examination of the choice of words employed, and the ordering of names and terms, may reveal a more nuanced picture of the interactions between the scribe, master, and slave. Manifold sociolinguistic conclusions can be drawn from an analysis of the wording of the manumission documents of the Galata sicils. Through this linguistic analysis, it is also possible to elucidate the textual and legal culture of Ottoman court practice dealing with slavery and their intersection with previous legal and juridical traditions and the historical practice of slavery and manumission in the same geographical and cultural area, 43 allowing for future diachronic and synchronic comparisons of the legal language in the process of manumission in particular. Numerical and Empirical Analysis Having previously detailed the pitfalls of the so-called ›quantitative‹ approach, it is with some trepidation that the numerical data gathered from the sicils is included in this dissertation. However, the approach used to interpret this data attempts to avoid the problems inherent in generalising the patterns in quantitative data far beyond the sample. Thus, this second approach, which has been tentatively (and perhaps too obviously) been termed a ›numerical-empirical‹ approach is numerical in that, quite literally, things are counted and patterns within the sample identified, and empirical in so far as the entire process of analysing the data and the conclusions drawn from it are highly evidence-based and can be verified by repeating the same meticulous process outlined below. If the same conclusions were not achieved, it would be possible to retrace the steps taken to arrive at the numbers and discover where errors may lie, rendering the analytical process and its conclusions translucent and also straightforward to check and correct. What differentiates this approach from a more traditional quantitative approach is an unwillingness to generalise any patterns beyond the sample, for reasons explained previously. The practical method employed to analyse the information derived from the Galata sicils is the identification of specific types of information provided by the hüccets and the manual entry of this material into digital spreadsheets. The benefit of using a spreadsheet program44 to organise the data derived from the sicils is that the raw information could be easily sorted into tables, quantified and rearranged if necessary. There are over 600 individual slaves in the three sicils; this preponderance of slaves and data connected to them required meticulous organisation. Furthermore, while this study does not claim to be statistically sound by 43 For instance, examining the Abbasid, Mamluk, Seljuk, Byzantine precursors the legal practice of Ottoman slavery, as well as synchronic comparisons with the legal practices employed by Genoese and Venetian merchant colonies in the Eastern Mediterranean to regulate their own practices of slavery as well as the slave trade. 44 In this case, Microsoft Excel and Numbers (the equivalent program for Mac) were the pro grams used.

36

modern standards, 600 slaves is nonetheless a more than sufficiently sizable number to identify patterns and trends at least within the sample.45 The categories chosen for entry into the spreadsheets were determined by the legal terminology employed in the sicils themselves. To illustrate this principle, the elements used to describe the slaves, such as the name, gender, origin, religion and physical description, were dictated by the language and organisational structure of the sicils. The other information recorded in the sicils, such as the name of the slave owner, type of hüccet, value of contract, length of contract, other persons involved (such as wakīls or witnesses) and the date of hüccet, were also all suggested by the language and structure of the hüccet itself, rather than imposed by the researcher. Hence, these categories were selected because they are defined by the sources. Although an empirical method involving elements of basic statistics has been employed in analysing the data from the sicils, the limits of this method ought to be outlined more clearly. As stated above at length, all trends derived from the data represent only the sample of slaves from the three court registers. Any conclusions drawn about wider slavery practices in Galata are tentative. Although this study cannot not claim to conform to modern statistical methods because of the unknown manner in which the original sample was gathered, the method of tabulating data has nonetheless been rigorously documented such that it could be recreated. Any other historian who would like to test its results would be able to perform the same analysis in order to evaluate the accuracy of the conclusions presented here. Hence, detailed attention has been given to citing the number of every page and hüccet used to arrive at a certain piece of information.46 On an additional note concerning historical methodology, every phenomenon discussed from either a linguistic or numerical perspective (such as naming, physical description/ḥilya, scarring, terminology concerning origin/cins, etcetera) is described prior to undergoing analysis. While ›description‹ is typically discouraged according to the conventions of history writing in favour of ›argument‹ and theorising, a certain amount of description is necessary in order to convey to the reader the nature of the various phenomena pertaining to the practice of slavery 45 As an illustration of this point, pharmaceutical companies release new medication having tested it on a smaller sample, so it is perhaps safe for us to draw a few limited conclusions about Ottoman slaves in Galata in the third quarter of the sixteenth century based on our sample of the slave population at hand, while keeping in mind the provisos mentioned above concerning the generalisation of trends derived from sicil-based data. Namely, we can never truly know how representative our sample is but, nonetheless, must make an effort at interpreting the trends typified by that sample. 46 For instance, the page and hüccet numbers for every male slave manumitted in the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 defters are cited, in case future researchers feel the need to test the ac curacy of particular findings on trends in the manumission of males slaves that have been identified here. Dealing with such an amount of data, mistakes are inevitable, and scholars are encouraged to recreate the same evaluation of the data in order to rectify any errors.

37

in Galata and its quotidian social realities, as this historical situation has not previously been described elsewhere. Comment on philosophy behind methodology Some final comments are in order on the contrasting ›textual‹ and ›numericalempirical‹ methodological approaches before embarking on an examination of the slaves of the Galata court registers. A question immediately springs to mind upon considering these disparate approaches to the topic: why philosophise and problematise the ›validity‹ and nature of the information provided by the sicils to such a degree over the course of the textual analysis section of the dissertation and then proceed to compile, tabulate, and graph this selfsame data in the conclusions drawn in the more descriptive numerical and empirical sections that are included in each chapter? The first reason for this seeming contradiction is that the bureaucratic terms, numbers, and other miscellaneous data reflect a certain historical ›reality‹, even if it is purely the reality of the Ottoman administrative classifications of slaves. However, in the initial stages of research, the terms, classifications, and data points provided by the sicils were so numerous and varied that the most logical way to organise such data was to tabulate it into diagrams that may run the risk of appearing to the reader to represent some sort of irrefutable, statistical ›reality‹ as opposed to a more flexible, interpretive and impressionistic ›lay of the land‹ that is the most that any historian can hope to portray from sicil data. Nonetheless, the organisation of ›hard‹ data into numbers and percentages, as has been stressed at length in this introduction, is merely a way of conveying large amounts of detailed bureaucratic information and is primarily impressionistic in its conclusions, which are applied to the sample of slaves found in the Galata court registers. How to resolve these two contradictory approaches? I would answer that there is no one ›correct‹ or ›true‹ way to interpret historical data, thus the findings resulting from both approaches are communicated here in an attempt to give a multifaceted view of the particular historical phenomenon under examination. I fully acknowledge that the employment of two opposing methodologies results in a logical impasse that the reader may find difficult to accept, as the meaning of the data is called into question, interpreted, and re-interpreted in the discussion of the language and cultural context of the legal documents. However, it is my firm conviction that a multiplicity of approaches leads to a multiplicity of findings and conclusions, which will enrich the scholarly debate surrounding the practice of slavery in the classical period of the Ottoman Empire.

38

Reasons for choosing the Galata sicils as the main primary source Having clarified the method by which the information at hand was analysed, some explanation of how the primary material was selected is in order. The decision to concentrate on manumission and slavery practices in Galata, using the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 defters, was the result of research into the political situation surrounding Ottoman seafaring and its connection with Galata during this period. Seafaring was essential to Ottoman imperial success during the mid-sixteenth century; however, few studies have broached the subject of the contribution of enslaved skilled labour to this success. Furthermore, while numerous studies concentrating on the early modern slaves and captives who returned to ›Christendom‹ exist, the other side of the story has yet to be told, namely, that of the slaves who converted, were manumitted, and remained in the Ottoman Empire. Because many of the slaves appear to be employed in some aspect of seafaring in Galata, possibly in the tersane-yi amire, it was logical to define the chronological boundaries of this study according to monumental events in Ottoman maritime history. The makeup of the slave population of Galata would have been directly affected by the vicissitudes of the Ottoman navy in the Mediterranean, as Galata was the centre of the Ottoman shipbuilding industry in this period, hence the definition of the time period by major sea battles. The first register studied, Galata 14/2, begins in 1560, the year of the Ottoman naval victory at Jerba, and the last register, Galata 14/4, ends in 1572, immediately before the conclusion of the Ottoman naval conquest of Cyprus. While the time period is limited, the depth and quantity of information provided by these sicils on slaves in Galata during this thirteen-year period is undeniably remarkable. In addition, prior to the current study, questions surrounding the texts of slavery and the sociolinguistic aspects of slave manumission documents in the Ottoman Empire have remained entirely untouched or even unidentified as areas of inquiry, despite the fact that sociolinguistic questions such as these are intimately bound up in establishing the identity and role of the Galata slaves and their impact on the seafaring neighbourhood of Galata and its patronage networks, hence the attention to language and terminology in the legal texts of slavery studied here. Furthermore, there are (to my knowledge) no detailed studies of labour markets in sixteenth-century Istanbul focusing on skilled slave labour. Hence, the study of slavery in Galata represents a contribution to the history of Ottoman labour markets. An additional reason for selecting the court registers of Galata in order to study slavery and other forms of coerced labour is that they bear witness to a striking microhistorical example of the flow of forced labour in the Eastern Mediterranean in the mid- to late sixteenth century and provide compelling parallels to scholarly studies of the Western Mediterranean during the same period. 47 47 According to Claire Norton’s work, a similar phenomenon of forced and semi-forced migration seems to be taking place between Britain and North Africa, see: Claire Norton, ›Con-

39

The general trend appears to be that labour was flowing, either through the will of the workers or through capture and piracy, toward the Islamic shores of the Mediterranean, or in other areas of the world, toward locations that provide greater opportunities for social mobility and economic advance. The phenomenon of skilled seafaring slave labour witnessed in the Galata sicils is comparable to the situation among skilled seafarers in the Indian Ocean 48 during the same period. Namely, there was a flow of technical expertise, and generally skilled and unskilled labour out of the geographical area that would today be referred to as ›Europe‹, to where bustling labour markets existed and where wealth was concentrated in the early modern period – in this case, Ottoman Istanbul. Not only is this study of the texts of slavery in Galata an original contribution to the field of Ottoman history through its use of previously unexamined sources, but the conclusions and analyses that can be drawn from these documents also contribute to filling in a noticeable gap in the field of world slavery studies. General works purporting to be ›encyclopaedias‹ of world slavery from ancient times to modern49 tend to supply a brief and superficial view of slavery in the Islamic world, with no more than an occasional nod given in the direction of the Ottoman Empire. At the most, it is acknowledged that such an empire existed, and indeed, possessed slaves. These omissions are indicative of a greater trend in the field of ›world slavery studies‹, which should perhaps be renamed ›Greco-Roman and Afro-Atlantic slavery studies‹. Although this field claims to encompass the ›worldwide‹ phenomenon of slavery, these ›worldwide‹ encyclopaedias of slavery are generally remiss in addressing slavery in the Ottoman Empire, with the excepversion to Islam in the Ottoman empire‹ Wiener Zeitschrift zur Geschichte der Neuzeit 2 (July, 2007), 25-39; Idem, ›Lust, greed, torture, and identity: narrations of conversion and the creation of the early modern renegade‹, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 29/2 (2009), 259-268. For detailed studies of the flow of manpower, often coerced, as well as cultural exchanges also at times brought about through coercion in the Western Mediterranean between the British and the Islamic world, see: Matar, op cit. 48 For incisive discussion of the flow of Ottoman seafaring labour into the Indian Ocean, see Giancarlo Casale’s incisive discussion of this topic: ›The ethnic composition of Ottoman ship crews and the ›Rūmī Challenge‹ to Portuguese identity‹, Medieval Encounters 13 (2007), 122144. For a general discussion of Ottoman involvement in the Indian Ocean and parallels to the situation in the Mediterranean, see: Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration: Spices, Maps and Conquest in the Sixteenth-Century Indian Ocean (PhD diss., University of Harvard, Cambridge, Mass, 2004), as well as: Salih Özbaran, ›Ottoman naval power in the Indian ocean in the 16th century‹, in The Kapudan Pasha: His Office and his Domain, ed. Elizabeth Zachariadou (Rethymon, 2002), 109-118. 49 John Boles, Joan Cashin, Junius P. Rodriguez, eds. The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery (Santa Barbara, 1997). The introduction, for instance, gives a extremely broad and inaccurate appraisal of slavery in the ›Islamic world‹ together with ›Western Europe‹ in the section labelled, ›Slavery in the Medieval World‹, xvii. Ottomans are given a paragraph. Further examples of this genre bearing similar faults are the following: Paul Finkelman and Jospeh Miller, eds., Macmillan Encyclopedia of World Slavery (Ann Arbor, 1998); Seymour Drescher, Stanley Engerman, eds., The Historical Guide to World Slavery (Oxford, 1998).

40

tion of superficial references to the devşirme or a prurient and rather Orientalist fascination with concubinage and eunuchs. Thus, the investigation at hand seeks to redress this wrong and begin to colour in the empty space of the early modern Ottoman Empire on the ›world map‹ of slavery.

Terminology Notoriously difficult terms to define, such as ›society‹ or ›culture‹, are employed throughout this work with reference to ›Ottoman society‹ and the ›society of Galata‹. Although the meaning of the term ›Ottoman‹ may seem obvious to most, I personally find it to be a very controversial term, at least in its usage by current historians, as the term ›Ottoman‹ as an adjective itself has come to signify something much larger and indefinite, or even altogether different, than it did in the sixteenth century. Obviously, none of these terms describes a monolithic and homogenous entity. What, then, is the subject of inquiry when one claims to examine a particular phenomenon of ›Ottoman society?‹ What in fact is under discussion when we talk about ›Ottoman society‹ or ›the society of Galata‹ or ›the culture of Ottoman elites?‹ For the sake of simplicity and clarity, the area of examination in this work will be defined as the seafaring elites who were living in or had business in the neighbourhood of Galata, Istanbul, in the mid- to late sixteenth century. When the term ›Ottoman society‹ or ›culture‹ is used, it is typically applied to this group, as it is not within my expertise to draw wider conclu sions. It should also be noted that the term ›Ottoman‹ as an adjective is occasionally, but rarely, used to describe a more widespread set of social or cultural practices of the largely Muslim elite of the geographical area defined by scholars as the ›Ottoman Empire‹ of the sixteenth century; when this more general usage is employed, it is indicated in the text. My particular use of the adjectives ›social‹ or ›cultural‹ to describe a set of practices relating to slavery in the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire has much in common with Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus: The habitus is a set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in certain ways. The dispositions generate practices, perceptions and attitudes which are ›regular‹ without being consciously coordinated or governed by any ›rule‹. The dispositions which constitute the habitus are inculcated, structured, durable, generative and transposable – features that each deserve a brief explanation. Dispositions are acquired through a gradual process of inculcation in which early childhood experiences are particularly important. Through a myriad of mundane processes of training and learning, such as those

41

involved in the inculcation of table manners (›sit up straight‹, ›don’t eat with your mouth full‹, etc.), the individual acquires a set of dispositions which literally mould the body and become second nature. The dispositions produced thereby are also structured in the sense that they unavoidably reflect the social conditions within which they were acquired.50 Thus, when I state that slaves were acculturated to Ottoman society, what I intend is that they were inculcated with the prevailing habitus of mid- to late sixteenth century urban Istanbul seafaring elite culture. As this is too much to say every time I refer to such a concept, I use shorter locutions, depending on the issue at hand, such as ›assimilation into Ottoman culture‹ or ›acculturation into Ottoman society‹ as a somewhat sloppy shorthand for a concept that is more nuanced and complex. It is also assumed (perhaps wrongly) throughout this dissertation that society was divided into groups or ›classes‹ that possessed varying levels of wealth, privilege, or prestige, and that these levels were negotiable rather than fixed, hence the use of the term ›social mobility‹ in the context of sixteenth-century Galata, implying that it was possible to move in between groups of prestige and privilege in an ›upward‹ or ›downward‹ motion. Terms such as ›acculturation‹, ›assimilation‹, ›social mobility‹, ›subjugation‹, ›domination‹, ›manipulation‹, ›personhood‹ and ›agency‹ or, at times, ›legal agency‹, ›elite‹, ›subaltern‹, ›belonging‹, ›insider‹ and ›outsider‹ are used to describe the relations between the different levels of wealth and privilege, which suggests that I have unconsciously adopted a structuralist and hierarchical approach to understanding sixteenth-century Ottoman society. This approach manifests itself in my portrayal of society as divided into strict and multiple layers, statuses and classifications, a portrayal echoed in many of the secondary studies in Ottoman social history. It is more than possible that the groupings of humans described as ›society‹ did not obey as exacting a hierarchy as it may sometimes seem over the following pages. Nonetheless, the concept of social hierarchy is a useful one for analysing the institution and practice of slavery in Ottoman Galata, as slavery was an institution whose very existence depended on legal distinctions that privileged certain groups over others and both encouraged and sanctified the dominion of certain individuals, or groups of individuals, over others. Furthermore, in this study of Ottoman textual, legal and social history, I have preserved the use of certain words that are considered archaic in the wider field of slavery studies; namely, the words ›slave‹ and ›master‹ which connote the enslaved individual and the enslaver. In addition, other terms such as ›concubine‹ and ›owner‹ are considered out-of-date and even offensive. Some have argued that 50 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 12.

42

the use of the word ›master‹ or ›owner‹ reinforces our incorrect and unjust view of the dialectic of power between a supposedly dominating authority (the master) and a hapless, helpless victim (the slave). The argument is that this terminology does not provide a fair portrayal of what was an unbalanced but nuanced relationship characterised by complicated psychological power dynamics on both sides. However, I believe that what the modern reader finds objectionable in these terms is indeed their very harshness as well as the naked and unashamed inequality they embody, for these terms quite accurately reflect a harsh social reality. Thus, these antiquated terms will be self-consciously retained throughout the text, along with neologisms such as ›enslaved person‹, depending on the sociological point that is being made. I trust the reader’s ability to understand that not all ›slaves‹ were powerless victims and not all ›masters‹ were omnipotent, cruel oppressors, without making constant reference to this fact through specialised terminology, although at times in this dissertation ›enslaved‹ is used to emphasise the personhood of the individual if such a conceptualisation is directly relevant to the discussion at hand.

Slavery That being said, a consideration and possible definition of the concept of ›slavery‹ in the Ottoman Empire is also necessary before embarking on an investigation of this phenomenon in the particular context of sixteenth-century Galata. In the Ottoman Empire, individuals bearing the legal status of ›slave‹ (ʿabd, mamlūk, kul, köle, ghulām and so on) existed at all levels of society, across a spectrum of genders (males, eunuchs, females, prepubescent boys), and their varied existence is reflected in the equally varied vocabulary applied to them in Ottoman Turkish. Thus, a facile definition is not possible. The primary issue that plagues the field of Ottoman slavery studies is that the English words ›slave‹ and ›slavery‹ are used as blanket terms to cover an assorted collection of practices of subordination that varied over the course of the Ottoman Empire’s six centuries of existence. It has been argued that there existed in the Ottoman Empire what Ehud Toledano describes as a ›continuum‹ of slavery, 51 whereby persons whose legal status was technically that of ›slave‹ could serve numerous positions and possess varying levels of political power and social standing, ranging from the miserably treated galley slave to the powerful and honoured vezir, thus rendering the task of defining Ottoman ›slavery‹ in all but the strictest legal sense very difficult indeed. 51 Ehud Toledano, ›The concept of slavery in Ottoman and other Muslim societies: dichotomy or continuum‹, in Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa: A Comparative Study, ed. Miura Toru and John Edward Philips (London, 2000), 159-175.

43

The most-studied form of Ottoman slavery, and the one that often springs to the mind of many historians and researchers is the much-discussed devşirme,52 along with palace slavery and harem slavery. In a similar fashion, and often in direct imitation of the imperial court, slaves of both genders were engaged in domestic service in affluent households throughout the empire. Skilled slaves were employed as craftsmen in the silk and textile industry of Bursa. Beautiful or talented enslaved men and women were given as gifts to dignitaries and elites. Others were exploited in prostitution or made to row in galleys or construct the monu mental buildings of the era. In the early Ottoman period, there existed almost a form of serfdom in the practice of tying peasants to the hasslar lands, even if this mode of servitude did not persist long in the history of the empire. Moreover, in the early and classical periods of the Ottomans, floods of war captives into the empire meant that slaves were owned in abundance by elites and rented out for un skilled labour in construction work, cleaning, rowing, and other menial labour. In addition, there existed Circassian refugees in the nineteenth century who brought their practice of slavery as an inherited status with them, in contrast to the previous practice of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, in which slavery rarely lasted past one generation.53 Contemporaneous with the nineteenth-century influx of Circassian slaves, there occurred an increase in the numbers of African slaves, particularly females, who served as domestics and child-minders. 54 Furthermore, there is also the entirely separate question of ransom slavery along borderlands, which of course differs entirely from the practice of, say, domestic slavery or palace slavery, which has been addressed in a recent work. 55 Each type of slave was subordinated in a different manner, served a unique purpose, and had a specific set of rights and duties and particular role or function in Ottoman society, thus rendering it difficult to arrive at a single sociological definition that encapsulates all of the varied nuances of what it meant to be a ›slave‹. In addition to the multiplicity of forms of enslavement that existed in the Ottoman Empire, the ethnic diversity of the persons who served as slaves is another important issue that has not yet been discussed in detail by the scholarly literature. Because the majority of research into Ottoman slavery so far has focused on 52 Claude Cahen, ›Note sur l’esclavage musulman et le devshirme ottoman à propos de travaux récents‹ JESHO 8/2 (1970), 211-218; V.L. Ménage, ›Some notes on the ›devshirme‹‹, BSOAS 29/1 (1966), 64-78. Paul Wittek, ›Devshirme and sharīʿa‹ BSOAS 17/2 (1955), 271-278; and the relevant sections of: Nihat Engin, Osmanlı Devletinde Kölelik (Istanbul, 1998), and Y. Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and Its Demise 1800-1909 (Oxford, 1996). 53 Ehud Toledano, ›Agricultural slavery among Ottoman Circassians‹, in Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle, 1998), 81-111 54 Ehud Toledano, As If Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East (New Haven, 2007) 55 Géza Dávid, Pál Fodor, eds. Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders, 183-191.

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the nineteenth century, limited discussions have been carried out on the subject of African slaves and the cultures that they brought with them to the Ottoman Empire.56 However, there is a complete absence of research into the possible cultural or linguistic influence of the heterogeneous flood of slaves in the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who presumably made a much larger and long-lasting impact on overall Ottoman society, to the point that this impact has been completely absorbed and internalised, and indeed has become ›Ottoman culture‹ itself. It is hoped that the field of Ottoman slavery has moved beyond the need to state at length that the form of slavery practiced in the Islamic world differed greatly from plantation slavery in the Caribbean, Brazil, and southern states of America, which is the form of slavery that seems to be foremost in the mind of Anglo-American academics. Let it be clear that plantation slavery in the American South and elsewhere was the exception to the rule of slavery practices worldwide, rather than the model of pre-modern slavery, and in fact, it should in no way be used as a standard against which to compare other practices of slavery in other parts of the world. It has been suggested that because individuals labelled ›slaves‹ in the Ottoman Empire exercised wide-ranging political and economic powers, that they are not ›slaves‹, for the simple reason that they do not ›match‹ the im age of slavery prevalent in academia as a result of the disproportional attention given to plantation slavery in English-language historical literature. Furthermore, Orlando Patterson’s famous universal definition of slavery cannot be applied to the situation of the ›slave‹ in the Ottoman Empire. 57 This definition famously establishes three main criteria for the definition of an individual as a ›slave‹. The first criterion is that slave becomes a slave in place of dying a violent death, either as a war prisoner, or condemned criminal, or from death by exposure or starvation, which condemned the slave to a state of powerlessness under the ›conditional commutation‹ of his death sentence. 58 The second criterion established by Patterson is the ›social death‹ of the slave, as the slave ›ceased to belong in his own right to any legitimate social order‹ and it was only through his master that he had a place in society. 59 Thus, the slave had a past, but not a heritage, as he was isolated from his immediate as well as more distant ancestors. The third criterion for establishing the ›slave-ness‹ of an individual is the dishonour to which he or she was subjected. According to Patterson’s definition, ›the slave could have no honour because of his status, the indignity and all-pervasiveness of his indebtedness, his absence of any independent social existence, but most of all 56 In addition to Toledano’s As If Silent and Absent, see: Erdem, ›Magic, theft, and arson: the life and death of an enslaved African woman in Ottoman İzmit‹, 125-146; Faroqhi, ›Black slaves and freedmen celebrating: Aydin 1576‹, 149-158. 57 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, Mass, 1982). 58 Ibid., 5. 59 Ibid., 5. (My italics.)

45

because he was without power except through another.‹ 60 To what degree does this characterisation of slavery fit the Ottoman practice of slavery, if a general Ottoman practice can even be identified? While the slave at any level of society in the Ottoman Empire was perhaps to a greater or lesser degree natally alienated (i.e., removed from his original blood kin, and in the Ottoman case, this removal was often substituted for integration in a new group of fictive kinship under a reified and homogenised cins relationship), he was most certainly not ›socially dead‹, or excluded from a meaningful life within Ottoman society. 61 While it is true that an Ottoman slave’s status would certainly have been elevated if his master were a powerful and important person, it is not entirely the case that the slave’s entire social existence was predicated on that of his master; there exist many examples in which this is evident. Mukātab slaves were privy to numerous freedoms (such as travel and marriage), while their social and economic worth was determined on the basis of their artisanal skills rather than their master’s status. The Ottoman slave did not always fit easily into Patterson’s ›universal‹ conceptualisation of slavery, which requires the ritual dishonouring of the slave and the complete absence of power or agency except through a free person in order to characterise an individual as a ›slave‹. As an example of the difficulties involved in inserting Ottoman slaves into Patterson’s definition, Ottoman slaves were permitted access to the legal system and could bring their masters to court for crimes committed against them; thus they had legal recourse, although it would have been somewhat curtailed in comparison to that of a free Muslim male. However, it was often the case that certain types of slaves, particularly concubines, were indeed dependant on the kindness of (legally free) neighbours for justice and remuneration in the case of mistreat ment at the hands of their owners. 62 Regardless of the degree of the access to justice that the Ottoman slave enjoyed, the fact that the sharīʿa legislated the slave’s rights vis-à-vis his owner suggests that it is difficult to fully apply Patterson’s definition of the utterly disempowered slave to the Ottoman context. The fact that Ottoman slaves cannot be easily slotted into Patterson’s definition, nor entirely excluded from it, does not imply that they are not strictly speaking ›slaves‹, rather that the ›universal‹ definition perhaps needs adjustment. While this definition is useful for situating Ottoman slaves on the world map of slavery, as some of these criteria may be applied to and identified in certain strata of slaves in the Ottoman Empire to varying degrees, it will be demonstrated through the remainder of this dissertation that the slaves of Galata were symbolic60 Ibid., 10. 61 Ibid., 9. Ehud Toledano has also identified the failure of Orlando Patterson’s universal definition to apply to the phenomenon of Ottoman slavery in his article, ›The concept of slavery in Ottoman and other Muslim societies: dichotomy or continuum‹, 159-175. 62 Ehud Toledano, ›The other face of harem bondage: abuse and redress‹, in Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle, 1998), 54-80.

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ally but not corporally subjugated, and then only temporarily. The temporary nature of subjugation is the result of the temporary nature of certain strands of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, where the sharīʿa encouraged the relatively swift manumission of slaves. This form of slavery has been termed an ›open‹ system, 63 namely, because such a system encouraged the integration of slaves into society after their manumission through intermarriage with free persons, or through other means, such as integration into a household or economic or religious community. The practice of slavery in the Ottoman Empire largely concurred with the ›open‹ model; as a result, many of the characteristics of slavery depicted by Patterson are witnessed only ephemerally, and then only in certain types of enslavement in the Ottoman Empire. Because Patterson’s universal definition of slavery, or other sociological analyses of slavery, does not fit the Ottoman case with particular precision, I will attempt to arrive at a more novel understanding of what made a slave a slave in the context of sixteenth-century Galata, without relying on a sociological lens imported from Atlantic or African slave studies.

The Social Context of Legal Documents While slavery is a problematic topic in the field of ›Mediterranean studies‹, as it suggests more of a clash than an exchange of culture, nonetheless, the research into early modern slavery presented here yields surprising revelations about the nature of labour, manumission, and the social function of slavery in the Islamic Eastern Mediterranean. While legal documents are not often seen as interesting ›texts‹, they speak volumes about contemporary social practices and assumptions and share much of their descriptive terminology with a variety of other types of text, including literary treatises and poetry, advice literature, and works on the pseudo-sciences that had their roots in neo-Platonism and were widely read and circulated among literate Ottomans. It is against a background of such texts that the manumission documents of the Galata courts will be read. While this may seem like an odd exercise, as the usual method of using legal documents in scholarship is either to treat them as a mine for particular types of data (prices, population, crime) or to try to understand to what degree the local practices of Islamic law differed from or complied with the ›theory‹ of fiqh. While these approaches to the legal records produce valid and interesting results (and such approaches are not shunned in the following study, as described previously), the innovative approach adopted here is to read the documents of the court registers in connection with contemporary texts from fields that would not normally be perceived as directly related to the genre of legal documents. Through 63 James L. Watson, ›Slavery as an institution: open and closed systems‹, Asian and African Systems of Slavery, ed. James L. Watson (Oxford, 1980), 1-15.

47

such readings, an attempt is made at recreating the social context of manumission and perhaps even providing some insight into the mentality of the slave owners and scribes who moderated the legal and social process of enslavement and manumission. Both the philological and strictly speaking ›legal‹ aspects of the manumission are examined (i.e., the source of the language of the manumission documents in Ḥanafi legal literature in the form of shurūṭ manuals), but more importantly for the possibility of reconstructing the social context of slavery and manumission in Ottoman Galata, the philology of the manumission documents is used as a springboard for social and cultural associations carried by the terms employed in the documents. For instance, how were these documents read, what images, cultural or literary associations did the terms used in these documents evoke, was there a wider context in which such terminology was used beyond the legal context? And did this reflect (or alter) the social context of slavery? And most importantly, can the reconstruction of the cultural associations of legal terminology provide insight into the ›mentality‹ of the slave owner? The possibility of capturing the ›gaze‹ of the slave-owner and/or scribe toward the manumitted slave is examined in detail in Chapter 3 using a combination of legal and literary sources, after the parsing and examination of these terms in Chapter 2. This dissertation aims to provide both a descriptive, concrete discussion of the phenomena of slavery and manumission in Galata during the final years of the reign of Suleyman I and the beginning of the reign of Selim II, while also attempting to provide insight into the social context of manumission through a detailed reading of the legal terminology of manumission documents in conjunction with a selection of complementary sources originating in genres ranging from fiqh to firaset. Through such a wide examination of the import of legal terminology, a theory of the acculturation of converted, manumitted slaves is posited in the final chapter of this dissertation.

48

Chapter 2: The Corpus of Texts Discussion of the Characteristics of the Galata şeriyye sicilleri 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 This section is a contribution to the field of ›sicilology‹, which was proposed in the introduction to this dissertation. Therefore, a close textual description of the primary source corpus follows. In addition to describing the layout and contents of the court registers, an attempt is made at analysing the scribal hands, as a con tribution to the history of the work patterns and linguistic talents of bureaucrats in the employ of the Galata court, and the effect of scribal ability on the informa tion recorded. Furthermore, a close textual analysis of the linguistic elements of these court registers suggests new information about patterns of slave ownership, fluctuations in the maritime labour market and trends in the usage of the court by Galata’s elites. Regarding the physical layout of the text of the court registers, each register consists of individual legal entries, more akin to notary deeds than court litigation, that have been written on pages bound together to form a book (singular: defter, plural: defterler), referred to throughout as ›registers‹. These deeds and entries (hüccet) into the court register were initially written on loose pieces of paper, folded vertically (like a scroll, but creased rather than rolled) and a copy of the hüccet was given to each of the actors in the contract. 64 In the case of the unilateral ›contract‹ of the slave manumission, a copy of the emancipatory hüccet was also given to the slave. Because of the court practice of producing a loose copy of the documents, one (or more, depending on the number of persons involved) of which was given to the claimant(s), while the other was retained by the court, the scribes were often late to record these loose copies in the court register. This practice has resulted in a series of entries that often comprise no more than a vague chronological order; the particularities of each court register’s chronological disorder are detailed below. These documents were not meant for a particular audience, other than the judge, in case he should need to refer back to a hüccet that had already been inscribed should any contention arise, or should the claimants lose their copy and be obligated to refer to the version held by the court. Thus, barring cases in which the hüccet was re-read in the years immediately following the case, the researcher into Ottoman social history is probably the only person who has read these documents after they were penned some five hundred 64 For an example of what these documents looked like, see the appendix to this chapter for an image of a hüccet issued by the Galata court in the 18th century and preserved in the archives of the local church of St Peter and Paul.

49

years ago.65 Furthermore, because of the low status of written testimony in Islamic law,66 the necessity of consulting the written record arose solely if the witnesses present at the time of the court transaction could no longer be found to testify as to the veracity of the claimant’s words. The text of the hüccets represent the outlines of the consonants (without, in many cases, dots or diacritical marks of any sort, much like the rasm of early Quranic manuscripts) that were meant to be read in order to jog the memory of the witnesses or legal actors in a particular claim or transaction, hence the lack of attention paid to the appearance and quality of the hüccets in all but a few cases. For the purposes of this study, the entries written in the şeriyye sicilleri have been divided into two types: muhallafat defterleri (inheritance inventories)67 and hüccets (notary deeds or legal declarations). The need for this division stems from the fact that these two categories of documents are entirely different in form, content, and purpose. The inheritance inventories record the possessions of the deceased in order to allow the court to divide these possessions among the inheritors. Taking the form of a catalogue of various material possessions and their value, followed by a list of inheritors and the worth of each share, the inheritance inventories are excellent sources for studying the material life of slave-owners. Often, slaves are included in the deceased’s inheritance, thus providing information about the value of these slaves. Hüccets, on the other hand, take the form of a prose entry into the court re gister, consisting of as little as a few lines, or as much as a page. Hüccets contain records of property sales, debts, the appointment of guardians (tawṣīʿ) and legal representatives (tawkīl), the assignment of maintenance (nafaqa) to minors and divorced wives, and, most importantly, slave work contracts (mukātaba) and manumissions (ʿitāq and tadbīr), which comprise the majority of hüccets in the three court registers under examination. 68 It should be noted that a distinction is drawn between slaves whose presence was recorded in hüccets and those recorded in muhallafat defterleri as a consequence of the divergent nature of the information contained in these two types of documentation. The hüccets provide a relatively uniform set of information on the slaves, which permit meaningful comparisons and conclusions. Therefore, the slaves present in legal hüccets, such as mukātaba 65 Messick, ›Textual properties: writing and wealth in a sharīʿa case‹, 158: ›As with many archival documents we may be virtually the only post-settlement readers‹. 66 For a discussion of the status of written evidence, see Wakin’s introduction to The Function of Documents in Islamic Law, 1-72. 67 It would seem that no obvious muhallafat defteri of a slave, i.e., an individual still subject to the legal status of ›slave‹ is preserved in the Galata court registers 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4. However, there are numerous muhallafat defterleri of individuals bearing the name ›Ibn Abdullah‹, who thus may be of former slave status (or converts). While this aspect of the Galata court registers is not directly addressed in this work, it is worth pointing out that only ›free‹ individuals’ muhallafat defterleri appear in the Galata sicils.

50

contracts and all other types of manumission, have been considered together in the general examination of trends in the slave population because of the consistent and similar nature of the data provided. In contrast, the data recorded concerning slaves in the inheritance inventories is not uniform and often leaves ambiguous the origin, name, or appearance of the slave, not to mention the length of the period or nature of servitude. Therefore, the slaves appearing in the inheritance inventories have not been taken into consideration in certain sections of this dissertation analysing general trends among slaves, as similar information (on, for instance, conversion, origin, physical appearance) was not provided. Rather, their presence in the inheritance inventories would be more useful in an examination of the role of slaves in the social life and material culture of the wealthy Istanbul household, and also offers a glimpse of how slave-trading was practised in the sixteenth century. On a further note, the monetary values attached to slaves in the hüccets versus the inheritance inventories represent distinct entities. While the monetary value attached to the slave in the mukātaba hüccet is the value associated with the slave’s labour, the value attached to the slave in the inheritance inventories is presumably the cost of his person; hence, the two values are only considered together in this work for comparative purposes. As mentioned at length in the discussion of methodology because the numbers recorded in the sicils may only be symbolic, large emphasis is not placed on actual monetary values attached to slaves or their labour. Furthermore, this important distinction between the two groups (slaves in hüccets versus inheritance inventories) is clarified and re-stated throughout this work, in order to define which group of legal entries, and which set of slaves, is under analysis. A further question arises as to whether the documents at hand can be classified as kadı sicilleri or kassam askeri defterleri. As discussed in the introduction to this section, the term kadı sicilleri is employed by modern scholars to refer to the record of the legal proceedings made by the judge or his scribes. However, the qāḍī’s presence was not required at the registration of non-litigious affairs, such as the registering of a property sale, debt payment, or slave manumission. For the purposes of recording these mundane legal affairs, an official known as the kassam (the ›divider‹ of inheritances) was appointed by the kadıasker.69 For instance, 68 Divided from each other with lines, the hüccets have been numbered separately from the muhallafat defterleri in the referencing system used in this research. When a specific hüccet is cited in the footnotes, it will be in the following form: Galata 14/2, page 2, hüccet 3. The numbering of the hüccets begins anew on each page, and muhallafat defterleri are not included in this numbering system, as they are considered a separate category. Furthermore, a single muhallafat defteri will take up at least a page, if not more; thus it is sufficient to identify it by its page number(s). In the rare case of two muhallafat defterleri appearing on the same page, they have been assigned numbers, but this happens very rarely. 69 Cengiz Orhonlu, ›Kassam‹, EI2.

51

inheritance registers of the askeri class were overseen by the kassam askeri70 in Edirne and Istanbul.71 However, the distinction between the kadı sicili and the kassam defteri is very blurred in the case of the Galata court registers, 72 as Galata’s askeri kassam defterleri do not merely contain the inheritance inventories. Rather, the Galata court registers contain a mixture of cases not requiring the presence of the qāḍī, and the occasional case that necessitated the qāḍī’s attendance, such as the rare dispute over a nafaqa payment, in addition to what could be viewed as issues falling with the traditional purview of the kassam askeri. Thus, in the case of the Galata court registers 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4, the distinction between the kadı sicilleri and kassam askeri defteri is something of a false one, depending on how strictly one chooses to apply the definitions of these two terms. A superb example of the variation that could occur across a range of documents considered within the same ›genre‹ is the question of the language used in composing these legal instruments. In contrast to numerous other Ottoman şeriyye sicilleri of the period,73 rather than Ottoman Turkish, the language of the six70 Suraiya Faroqhi, ›Sidjill: in Ottoman usage‹, EI2. 71 For example, Edirne’s kassam defterleri have been extensively studied by Ömer Lütfi Barkan, ›Edirne Askeri Kassamına Ait Tereke Defterleri 1545-1659‹ Belgeler 3/5-6 (1966), reprinted (Ankara, 1968). For a period slightly later than the one under examination here, the kassam defterleri of Istanbul have been examined in great numerical detail in the following work: Said Öztürk, Askeri Kassama Ait Onyedinci Asır İstanbul Tereke Defterleri: Sosyo-Ekonomik Tahlil (Istanbul, 1995). 72 My thanks to Betül İpşirli Argit for pointing out to me that there was a separate court, the Kismet-i Askeri as documented by Ahmed Akgündüz in his catalogue of the extant Ottoman Şeriyye Sicilleri. However, the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 registers are not included under this classification, thus reinforcing their ›in-between-ness‹ as a combination of kadı sicilleri and askeri kassam defterleri. 73 For a small sample of the typical transcribed sicils that are predominantly Turkish in language, with occasional Arabic legal terms, see: Ahmet Akgündüz, Şeriye Sicilleri: Mahiyeti, Toplu Katalogu, ve Seçme Hükümler, 2 vols., (Istanbul, 1998); H. Ongan, Ankara’nın 1 Numaralı Şerʿiye Sicili (Ankara, 1958); Idem, Ankara’nın 2 Numaralı Şerʿiye Sicili (Ankara 1974); Coşkun Yılmaz et al., İstanbul Kadı Sicilleri Üsküdar Mahkemesi 1 Numaralı Sicil (H.919-927 / M.1513 - 1521) (Istanbul, 2008); Hatice Ayyıldız Bahadır et al., İstanbul Kadı Sicilleri Üsküdar Mahkemesi 2 Numaralı Sicil (H.924-927 / M.1518 - 1521) (Istanbul, 2010), Recep Ahıshalı, İstanbul Kadı Sicilleri Üsküdar Mahkemesi 9 Numaralı Sicil (H.940-942 / M.1534-1536) (Istanbul, 2010). Numerous court registers that employ a syntactically Turkish language, hence Ottoman Turkish in contrast to Arabic, have been transcribed and analysed for graduate degrees in Turkish universities. For a sampling of this method of scholarship: Hakan Akdemir, ›2032 No’lu Trabzon Şerʿiye Sicilinin Transkripsiyonu ve Tahlili‹ (MA diss., Ondokuzmayıs University, 2008); Ergin Baş, ›62 Numaralı Amasya Şerʿiye Sicil Defteri’nin Transkripsiyon ve Değerlendirmesi‹ (MA diss., Gaziosmanpaşa University, 2008); Üsame Anlağan, ›B230 Nolu Mahkeme Siciline Göre 1789-1790 Yıllarında Bursa‹ (MA diss., Uludağ Üniversitesi, Bursa, 2006); Tahir Bilirli, ›111 Numaralı Tokat Şerʿiye Sicili’nin Transkripsiyonulu Metin ve Değerlendirmesi‹ (MA diss., Gaziosmanpaşa University, 2006) Öznur Kutluğ Bozkurt, ›Kütahya Şerʿiye Sicilleri 8 Numaralı Defterinin Transkripsiyonu ve Değerlendirmesi‹ (MA diss., Dumplupınar University, 2006); Fatih Bursa, ›Manisa’nın 14 Numaralı H.1002 Tarihli Şerʿiyye Sicil Defteri: Transkripsiyonu ve Değerlendirilmesi‹ (MA diss., Niğde University, 2002);

52

teenth-century Galata court registers can be identified as Arabic from a syntactic standpoint, through the use of a triliteral verb at the beginning of the sentence (such as, aqarra, ›he declared‹ or shahada, ›he witnessed‹). Rare instances of Ottoman language (language that can be syntactically and lexically identified as Turkic, indicated by the use of etmek and olmak paired with Arabic maṣdars) also occur, but they are infrequent. An interesting characteristic of the terminology used to describe slaves in the Galata court registers, in contrast with slave-related administrative and fiscal documentation from the period, 74 is the long and prestigious pedigree that these term possess and their attestation in Arabic legal documents dating from the earliest periods of Islam,75 especially terms relating to physical description, such as afraq al-ḥājibayn (›having two separate eyebrows‹) or afraq ḥājiban, or merely afraq. This Arabic usage stands in direct contrast to the presumably straightforward Turkish açık kaşlı (›open browed‹), a term in predominant usage in physical descriptions from other, primarily Turkish-language şeriyye sicilleri of the sixteenth century. Several questions thus arise which will be addressed in a later section on the language of slavery in the Galata court registers: Why Arabic? To what extent Hâle Demirel, ›Mahkeme Sicillerine Göre XVI. Yüzyıl İlk Yarısında Bursa Vakıflar‹ (MA diss., Uludağ University, 2006); Hüsniye Güner, ›21 Numaralı Ayıntab Şerʿiyye Sicili Defteri H.1059-1060 (M.1649-1650) Transkripsiyonu ve Değerlendirmesi‹ (MA diss., Muğla University, 2006); Turgut Uzun, ›Manisa’nın 6 Numaralı H.942-973 (M.1535-1565) Tarihli Şerʿiye Sicil Defteri Transkripsiyonu ve Değerlendirmesi‹ (MA diss., Niğde University, 2002). My thanks to Joshua White for assisting me in acquiring copies of some of the above titles from Turkish universities. These titles represent only a small selection of the total sicils in Ottoman Turkish that have been transcribed. To my knowledge, no Ottoman sicils in a primarily Arabic language (from the standpoint of syntax rather than terminology) have been transcribed, translated, published and studied, with the exception of the Bursa sicils of the 15th century, which do tend to include numerous hüccets written in a language that is both lexically and syntactically Arabic. See: Nurcan Abacı, The Ottoman Judges and their Registers: The Bursa Court Register B-90/295 (Dated AH 1081/ AD 1670-71) Vol I. Introduction and Text (Entries 1-600), Vol. II Text (Entries 601-988) and Facsimile (Cambridge, Mass, 2007). The above selection has been consulted as a means of further comparing the language, structure, and content of the Galata sicils with a wider variety of similar documents from the Ottoman Empire to gauge the uniqueness of the language of the Galata sicils. 74 Zübeyde Güneş Yağcı presented a paper entitled, ›Black Sea slave trading according to cus toms register 1606-1607‹ at the conference ›Slavery, Ransom and Liberation in Russia and the Steppe Area, 1500-2000‹ at the University of Aberdeen, UK, 15-16 June 2009, which will be part of the forthcoming volume of conference proceedings to be published by Ashgate Variorum in 2014, in which she describes the administrative language used to describe slaves in customs registers, which differed greatly from the language used in the Galata court registers but was similar to later court registers which employ a more syntactically and lexically Turkic language. Interestingly, many of the terms used to describe slaves in Yağcı’s work are of Persian origin, such as beççe to describe a child slave or marya to describe a nubile female. 75 Geoffrey Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge, 1993). The introduction of this work is particularly informative on this issue. This topic is examined in greater length in the chapter ›Identification or Subjugation‹.

53

is the use of Arabic specific to Galata or to the recording of slave manumissions and mukātaba? Rather than classifying this language as Arabic, should it be described as a ›hybrid‹ language, falling somewhere in the middle of an AraboTurkic linguistic spectrum (defined by syntax), whose employ was perhaps limited to the Ottoman courts of law in the sixteenth century? 76 While it is not possible to answer these questions based solely on the slave manumission and mukātaba documents of the Galata court registers, the linguistic analysis of these documents may be considered a contribution to arriving at feasible answers to the above questions. Furthermore, these documents may point the way to wider linguistic change taking place across Ottoman administrative practice in the sixteenth century that can only be hinted at, but not established definitively, using such a narrow range of documents. It can be surmised that sixteenth-century legal scribes in Istanbul, rather than adopting Arabic legal clauses wholesale, seem to have appended or adapted Ottoman formulations and translated them into Arabic, or adopted Arabic formulations and combined them with Ottoman terms. Whether this reflects some earlier process of translation from Arabic into Ottoman, then back into Arabic perhaps for the sake of the legal and religious prestige, cannot be ascertained here, but would be a fruitful subject for future research. While these observations are based on the comparison of the Galata court registers with earlier Arabic manumission and mukātaba documents,77 and other slave-related and non-slave related legal 76 Nelly Hanna has suggested in her comments on my paper ›Philology of the Legal Termino logy of 16th-century Ottoman Slave Manumissions‹, at the workshop ›Zukunftphilologie: Revisiting the Canons of Textual Scholarship, International Winter School for Doctoral and Postdoctoral Researchers‹ held in Cairo, December 5-16, 2011, organised by the Forum Transregionale Studien of Berlin and the American University of Cairo, that it is impossible to draw such conclusions by examining court registers. She suggests that there was indeed an empire-wide shift from Arabic to Turkish in legal documents and other fields as well, but claims that it is implausible to draw any such conclusions based on research into slave ma numissions. I am, however, not attempting to establish a theory regarding an empire-wide shift from Arabic to Turkish based on the slave manumissions of the Galata court records as evidence; rather, my intention is to point out that slave manumissions are part of a larger linguistic phenomenon occurring in the administrative and legal texts of the Ottoman empire in the 15th to 18th centuries that requires much further study of a far wider range of primary sources. 77 See the slave manumissions recorded in Geoffrey Khan, Arabic Documents: Studies in the Khalili Collection, vol. V (London, 2007). For examples of pre-Ottoman Islamic legal documents relating to slavery, see: A.R. Ar-Razik, ›Un document concernant le mariage des esclaves au temps des Mamluks‹, JESHO 8/3 (1970), 309-314; Frédéric Bauden, ›L’achat d’esclaves et la rédemption des captifs à Alexandrie d’après deux documents arabes d’époque mamelouke conservés aux Archives de l’État à Venise (ASVe)‹ Mélanges de l’Université Saint-Joseph 58 (2005), 269-325; Donald P. Little, ›Six fourteenth-century purchase deeds for slaves from al-haram aš-šarif‹ History and Historiography of the Mamluks (London, 1986), 297-337; Idem, ›Two fourteenth-century court records from Jerusalem concerning the disposition of slaves by minors‹ History and Historiography of the Mamluks (London, 1986), 16-49.

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documents of sales and contracts,78 it is safe to identify the rise of a hybrid Arabic-Ottoman legal language in the Galata court by the mid-sixteenth century, which was characterised by reliance on Arabic syntax and vocabulary with occasional Turkish interpolations. The widespread use of Arabic in the Galata court registers exemplifies the process of the transmission of legal texts and terminology in the early modern Ottoman Empire. It is perhaps a limited example of the creation of an imperial Ottoman administrative and bureaucratic culture that was taking place in the mid-sixteenth century. Just as the empire was expanding and developing its own particularly ›Ottoman‹ forms of rule, so was the capacity of the bureaucratic terminology in a process of evolution and development. 79 Later court registers exhibit a sophisticated language that can be described as ›Ottoman‹ in that it integrates numerous elements of legal terminology and description from Arabic and Persian while maintaining a Turkic syntax. The Galata court registers (and perhaps also the early Bursa court registers)80 bear witness to the process of creating the Ottoman legal idiom that would come into fruition in the more mature period of the empire. The Galata court registers a snapshot of that transformation, when Arabic syntax in legal proceedings had not yet been replaced by a syntactically Turkic language in the court registers. A possible reason why Arabic was the language of slavery and manumission in Galata could be that it bestowed an element of gravitas and religious ceremonial that Ottoman Turkish did not yet possess the prestige to impart. A ›prestige economy‹81 of language can thus be identified in sixteenth century Galata, in which 78 In addition to Jeanette Wakin’s work, for a discussion of the development of Arabic (and Turkish) legal formulary in Islamic law contracts and deeds, see: Monika Gronke, ›The Arabic Yarkand documents‹, BSOAS 49/3 (1986), 454-507; Marcel Erdal, ›The Turkish Yarkand documents‹, BSOAS 47/2 (1984), 260-301; Geoffrey Khan, Bills, Letters and Deeds: Arabic Papyri of the 7th to 11th Centuries (Oxford, 1993); Idem, ›The historical development of the structure of medieval Arabic petitions‹, BSOAS 53/1 (1990), 8-30, and op cit.; Wilhelm Hoenerbach, ›Some notes on the legal language of Christian and Islamic deeds‹, Journal of the American Oriental Society 81/1 (1961), 34-38; Émile Tyan, Le notariat et le regime de la preuve par ecrit dans la pratique du droit musulman (Beirut, 1966); Martin Hinds and Hamdi Sarkout, Arabic Documents from the Ottoman Period from Qasr Ibrim (London, 1986). 79 Sooyong Kim has pointed out to me (in a personal communication, 26 January, 2011, Cairo) that in the literary realm of sixteenth century Istanbul a similar phenomenon of poets mastering Arabic and Persian forms and integrated them into an ›Ottoman style‹ was taking place, and that typically, bureaucrats and poets formed a single class; thus it is worth sur mising that such a linguistic development was underway in the literary/administrative spheres as a result of the initiatives of poet-bureaucrats, although further research is certainly needed into how such conscious attempts at developing a more sophisticated ›Ottoman‹ language affected the language of the court registers. 80 For an example see Abacı, op cit. 81 Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley, 2009), 59, on the ›prestige economy‹ of Sanskrit in the Indian subcontinent which occupied a not dissimilar position to Arabic in the early modern Ottoman Empire.

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Arabic clearly carried weight in the legal sphere, which was inseparable from the religious sphere as a result of the nature of the sharīʿa. Perhaps future conclusions can be drawn concerning the evolving nature of the law and language in the Ottoman Empire by comparing the Galata registers to later Ottoman legal documents as well as a larger scope of textual artefacts (such as poetry, literary prose, fermans, tombstones and other monumental inscriptions). However, such conclusions clearly fall beyond the scope of the current chronological and thematic focus of this dissertation. Selection of sources Before moving on to discuss the nature and contents of the three court registers employed in this study of slavery, some words are necessary on the motivations for selecting this particular corpus of texts out of the Galata series of registers. The reasons for choosing the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 court registers for analysis of slavery in Galata, and neglecting the Galata 14/1 court register, are numerous. The registers selected are the earliest in the Galata series, which is one of the primary motives for choosing to study them. Furthermore, as mentioned previously, they document a crucial period in the development of Ottoman naval strength in the Mediterranean and provide a snapshot of the Galata maritime labour market in the third quarter of the sixteenth century. Furthermore, the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 court registers (as is demonstrated below) contain data that is comparable in structure and content, thus permitting a more reliable empirical analysis of slavery and the process of manumission. For instance, slave-related hüccets were recorded using similar language and terminology with only minor variations, which will be discussed. They also contain corresponding forms of information supplied in a similar format and order, for instance, the slave’s name and origin, appearance, owner’s name, title, and money exchanged upon the conclusion of a mukātaba contract. The relative uniformity and order of this data facilitates its accurate compilation and coherent analysis and comparison. In contrast, the Galata 14/1 court register is entirely different in its composition, structure, and the nature of the slave-related information it contains, resulting in a problematic comparison with the data from the other court registers. It consists of over five hundred pages, covering roughly forty years, and is thoroughly worm-eaten.82 It seems to be a later amalgamation of loose pages of court registers lying about the Galata courthouse and deserves a study in itself in order to decipher its contents. A cursory reading proved that it does not contain nearly the same level of detailed information about slavery in Galata in the sixteenth century, and, as mentioned above, the scattered information it contains on slavery is of a completely different nature in formulation, content and structure to that contained in the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 court registers. Thus, the decision was 82 See appendix for a sample page from the Galata 14/1 court register.

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taken to exclude this particular court register from the examination of slavery in Galata until a future point when more time can be dedicated to its decipherment and analysis. The following sections describe not only the contents of the court registers related to slavery, but also analyse the developments and changes in the practice of slavery as reflected by the manumission and mukātaba documents contained in the registers.

Description of the Galata 14/2 Court Register The earliest court register analysed is the second register in the Galata mahkemesi series, namely Galata 14/2, which covers the dates Rabīʻa I, 968 (November, 1560) to Jumāda II, 969 (February, 1562). The layout of this court register consists of 92 pages; both sides of the page have been written upon, with the exception of page 29, which is blank. In addition to the problem of the hüccets’ lack of any chronological order, some hüccets also remain undated. Completed dates in the hüccets in this court register typically contain the time of month, 83 the name of the Islamic month and the year. Some entries record only the month or, in certain cases, only the year. In the case of hüccets lacking a month, if all adjacent hüccets were recorded in a certain month, then it is usually safe to conclude that the undated hüccet was also recorded at a similar time. In other cases, however, such conclusions have remained elusive, as several hüccets and inheritance inventories in the Galata 14/2 register remain without a known date because the names of months are not listed in any of the hüccets in their proximity. In the case of single pages of hüccets from various months in no chronological order, no guesses have been hazarded as to when the undated hüccets were recorded. In addition to the undated hüccets, there also exist gaps in the period covered by this register, which are detailed here. A smattering of hüccets have been recorded in the period Shaʿbān and Ṣafar, 968 (September and October, 1560), but the record is then silent until Rabīʿa I, 968 (December, 1560). Thereafter, a relatively abundant record begins in awāsiṭ Rabīʿa II, 968 (January, 1561), continuing without gaps through to Rajab, 968 (April, 1561). The record again falls silent from Rajab, 968 (April, 1561) until Ṣafar, 969 (October, 1561), after which point it is complete for every month again until Jumādā II, 969 (February, 1562). While it is possible to speculate as to the reason for these gaps, there could be a very simple underlying cause - perhaps the hüccets from these periods were recorded in another court register that was subsequently lost. While the script could be classified as an almost illegible kırık divani at the beginning of the register, with an occasional muhallafat defteri inscribed upside 83 This is expressed using the following terms: ghurrat (very first days), awāʾil (first days of the month), awāsiṭ (middle days of the month), and awākhir (last days of the month).

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down on the same page as incomplete (or perhaps draft) hüccets inscribed sideways,84 the quality of both the hand and the organisation improves notably toward the middle of the register, with a relatively clear layout and functional scribal hand continuing to the end. The first 32 pages of this court register contain at least five different hands. The analysis and reading of this register is made easier by the occasional appearance of clearer, but disparate hands, again signalling the fact that numerous scribes had a role in recording these hüccets into the register. After page 32, it appears that primarily one scribe takes over 85 until page 53, when yet another hand appears.86 The scribe whose hand dominates pages 32 to 52 wrote with almost no diacritical marks, using the ligatures characteristic of kırık divani script; however, these were made so carelessly as to obscure the orthography at times.87 In addition, the scribe often omits the date, writing either nothing or al-mazbūr (›the above-mentioned‹), with a similar practice at times for witnesses, giving an overall impression of haste or negligence. From page 53 until the end of the Galata 14/2 court register (page 92), a much more meticulous scribe was employed by the kassam, whose hand continues into the next register in the series, the Galata 14/3, about which more information is provided below. 88 The breakdown of the juridical subjects addressed in the hüccets of the Galata 14/2 court register is as follows. There are a total of 271 entries, both hüccets and muhallafat defterleri. This includes 48 muhallafat defterleri, of which 13 contain slaves in the inventory of the deceased’s belongings. Once the muhallafat defterleri have been subtracted from the total number of entries into the court register, there remain 222 hüccets, of which exactly half, 111, relate to slaves, and the other 111 to other subjects. Immediately, the prevalence of slave-related business in the Galata court becomes evident from a preliminary examination of this court register. In the 111 hüccets on slavery in the Galata 14/2 court register, 120 individual slaves are recorded, hence each hüccet rarely contains more than one slave.89 Of these hüccets involving slaves, all are some form of manumission (beginning or ending of a mukātaba contract, tadbīr, charitable manumission or umm walad manumission), with the exception a handful of miscellaneous hüccets, two of which 84 85 86 87

See appendix to this chapter for samples of these pages. For examples of this scribe’s hand, see appendices to this chapter. Galata 14/2, page 53, hüccet 1. See appendices for an example of the scribe’s hand obscuring the orthography of the words written in the Galata 14/2 register. 88 See appendices for samples of the two distinctive scribal hands employed in the Galata 14/2 register. 89 This number does not take into the account the rare cases in which a slave is mentioned twice in the same court register. However, this is such a rare occurrence, and also very diffi cult at times to discern as a result of the widespread use of common names (e.g. Murād b. ʿAbdullah, Farhād b. ʿAbdullah, etcetera), and thus has not been accounted for here.

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seem to be an inheritance dispute over the sale or value of slaves, 90 while another appears to be related to payment for an ʿitkname, or manumission document, which cost 350 akçes.91 This suggests that there were indeed court fees involved in the processing of manumission documents, or at least in issuing a copy of such a document, as was the case in other Ottoman courts.92 In the other half of Galata 14/2 court register’s hüccets, numbering 111 that are not concerned with slaves directly, the subjects addressed are limited. No violent crime, robbery (unless disputes over inheritance are counted), or murders appear in these pages. Like many other court registers, rather than litigation, the pages of the Galata 14/2 court register contain what can be classified as notary deeds: statements of debt, inheritance claims, property claims, the occasional sale, appointments of executor of wills, power of attorney and the allotment of maintenance to minors of deceased persons, as well as the occasional sale of a share of inheritance or piece of property.

Description of Galata 14/3 Court Register In comparison to the structure and scribal hands of the Galata 14/2 court register, the 14/3 court register is a paragon of clarity and order, althouogh it has its own difficulties. However, the quality of this court register’s language, in terms of its uniformity across different hüccets of the same type, as well as the script (which is, in most places, legible) is largely superior to the previous register. The layout is better organised, and the hüccets for the most part are oriented in the same way, that is, from the top of the page moving down, from the right to left, with the exception of occasional marginalia, in contrast with the Galata 14/2 court register. The Galata 14/3 court register consists of 153 pages. Both sides of each page have been written upon, with the exception of pages 150 and 153, which are blank, and pages 112 and 113, which are missing. The script, like that of the Galata 14/2 court register, could also be characterised as kırık divani; however, it is much more clearly written than in the previous court register. 93 Consistency in recording the date of the hüccet is much improved from the previous court register, which renders the act of guessing the date of hüccets recorded, either without a month or 90 Galata 14/2, page 55, hüccet 5; Galata 14/2, page 73, hüccet 2. 91 Galata 14/2, pages 18-20. 92 There is only one mention of this in the Galata court registers, in Galata 14/2, pages 18-20, a muhallafat defteri in which, among the various costs deducted from the value of the remain ing goods, is recorded an ʿitkname for the cost of 350 akçes. Also see: Boǧac A. Ergene, ›Costs of court usage in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ottoman Anatolia: court fees as recorded in estate inventories‹, JESHO 45/1 (2002), 20-39. 93 The categorisation of certain scripts seems almost arbitrary if enormous variations within one script, such as kırık divani, are taken into account. However, as an attempt to redefine the system of classification of Ottoman scripts would fall beyond the purview of this disser tation, the current terminological conventions concerning script will be maintained.

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year, or recorded as al-mazbūr in lieu of a date, much easier. The court register covers the dates awākhir Shaʿbān, 969 (April, 1562) to awākhir Rabīʿa II, 971 (November - December, 1563). There are two outlying hüccets that do not fall within the chronological sequence, one of which is dated ghurrat Dhī al-Ḥijja, 971 (July, 1564)94 and the other only assigned a year, which appears (perhaps erroneously) as 990 AH, that is, 1582 AD. Rather than a hüccet, strictly speaking, it appears to be the declaration of instatement of a certain Fuʾādzāda (Fuadzade) Efendi as the qāḍī of Galata.95 It is the only entry on the page, and it is possible that this particular sheet was bound into the court register at a later date or included by mistake, with little consideration as to whether it was chronologically related to the rest of the court register’s contents. Otherwise, the chronological sequence of the court register is to a large extent intact, beginning with a series of hüccets from Ramāḍan and Shawwāl, 969 (May and June, 1562), which while slightly out of order are nonetheless always labelled with a month and year. After this point, the court register’s chronological sequence evens out considerably with every month accounted for, more or less in order, until Rabīʿa II, 969 (November-December, 1563) without any significant gaps. While the chronological order of the hüccets is at times disordered, every month is accounted for at some point in the court register’s pages, unlike the Galata 14/2 register, thus permitting a clearer view of seasonal and chronological patterns of slave manumissions during this period. 96 Interestingly, the fourth page of this court register, what could in many ways be considered the opening page, as it is the first page in which the hüccets’ layout becomes orderly and regular, is headed by the declaration that the greatest scholar of the scholars, Ḥāmid Çelebi Efendi, is the military judge (al-qāḍī bi’l-ʿasākir al-manṣūra) of Rumeli,97 and states that his appointment as a judge began at the beginning of Ramā ḍan, 969 (May, 1562). The Galata 14/3 is the sole court register to state clearly who the judge was at the time that the register’s contents were recorded. As for the scribal hand of the Galata 14/3 court register, the writing of the first 30 pages appears to belong to the same scribe who produced pages 53 to 92 of the Galata 14/2 court register. There exists a very small chronological gap between the two court registers, in that the Galata 14/2 court register ends in Jumādā II, 969 (February, 1562), while the Galata 14/3 court register’s earliest register is awākhir 94 Galata 14/3, page 145, hüccet 3. 95 Galata 14/3, page 2, hüccet 1. I could not find evidence of his appointment else where. 96 The proviso is necessary that the registration of a manumission at court was not necessarily coterminous with the de facto freeing of the slave. 97 Galata 14/3, page 4, top of page. (It is not counted as a hüccet.) This is corroborated by Adburrahman Atcıl, ›The route to the top in Ottoman ilmiye hierarchy of the sixteenth century‹, BSOAS 72/2 (2009), 503. A Hamit Efendi is therein identified as the Kadıasker of Rümeli.

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Shaʿbān, 969 (April, 1562).98 However, the period of time between the two court registers is not so large as to render it unlikely that the same scribe remained in the employ of the court. Furthermore, the last entry written by this scribe in the Galata 14/3 court register is dated awākhir Dhī al-Ḥijja, 969 (August, 1562).99 An interesting conclusion concerning the employment practice of scribes can be discerned from this pattern. Namely, that the same scribe was employed by the court from Ṣafar, 969 (October, 1561), when his hand first appears in the Galata 14/2 court register,100 until Dhī al-Ḥijja, 969 (August, 1562), slightly under a year later. It is possible that this rather long period of a single scribe’s hand dominating the court register is a result of two factors: the scribe’s apparent fluency in Italian or at least intimate knowledge of the pronunciation of Italianate (generally speaking, Romance-language) names,101 and his seeming specialisation in legal dealings relating to slaves. These two areas of speciality perhaps made him excellently suited for continuous employment in the court in Galata, which was experiencing an overwhelming influx of Italianate and generally Mediterranean slaves, who judging from their names were most likely Romance-speaking, in the period in which this scribe flourished. Thus, it is possible to identify two main scribal hands in the Galata 14/2 and 14/3 court registers. Scribe A’s hand occupies pages 32 to 52 of Galata 14/2, with occasional interpolations from other scribes. Scribe B’s hand occupies pages 53 to 92 of Galata 14/2, followed by pages 1 to 30 of Galata 14/3. Then, it appears that Scribe A returns for pages 31 to 152 at the end of the Galata 14/3 register, the last entry of which is dated awākhir Rabīʿa II, 971 (November, 1563).102 After the change of scribe in the Galata 14/3 court register from Scribe A back to Scribe B, there seems to occur the introduction of a new kassam askeri of Galata, Aḥmad b. Sulaymān, recorded in the register.103 The main conclusion that can be drawn regarding the scribal practice of recording slave manumissions in the early modern Galata courts is that it appears that between the years 1560 and 1563 the Galata court only employed two main 98

99 100 101

102 103

Reasons for this one-month gap can only be speculated; perhaps the records were lost, or bound into a different court register as they regarded topics unrelated to those documented in the Galata 14/3 court register. Somewhat like a filing system, it would have made sense to separate notary-like hüccets from those involving litigation. The repetitive nature of the hüccets included in these three court registers suggests that this is the case. Galata 14/3, page 30, hüccet 4. Galata 14/2, page 53, hüccet 1. It is of course more than possible that this legal specialisation resulted from his high involvement in recording the dealings of the Galata court, rather than being the cause of it. It is also worth surmising that it is his knowledge of Italian that placed him in such a posi tion, as it rendered him capable of communicating with the captives whose mukātaba and manumission documents he was recording. Galata 14/3, page 152, hüccet 3. Galata 14/3, page 35, hüccet 1.

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scribes, one of whom seems to have been fluent in Italian, or at least in possession of a detailed knowledge of Italian naming practices and orthography (or at least pronunciation), as is evident from his meticulous and accurate vowelling of Latinate names transcribed into Arabic characters. It is possible that Scribe B was employed intentionally for his knowledge of Italian names and culture, after the battle of Jerba with its rich harvest of Romance-speaking Mediterranean sailor captives, so as to more accurately record the names and information of the mukātaba slaves who washed up on the shores of Galata. It is also of significance that these two court registers seem to form a continuum, with the same two scribes employed to record the slave manumissions of Galata during the limited period covered. This suggests that perhaps there was a level of specialisation among scribes, whereby certain scribes were skilled or more practised in specific types of hüccets. In this case, it seems that the two main scribes who recorded most of the slave-related hüccets in the Galata court were specialised in registering the various forms of slave work contracts and manumissions. It is not implausible to speculate that Galata was perhaps considered the ›slave manumission‹ court of greater Istanbul, hence the surprisingly large number of slave manumissions recorded in the Galata 14/3 register. As for a breakdown of contents of the Galata 14/3 court register, the total entries number 504. Despite the fact that the Galata 14/3 court register contains over twice as many entries as the Galata 14/2 court register, the 14/3 register contains exactly the same number of muhallafat defterleri: 48. What is interesting to observe is whether, comparatively, the muhallafat defterleri registered at the court contain fewer or more slaves than previously. Although it is difficult to trace any trends accurately over the limited time period of 1560-1563, the relatively large number of total muhallafat defterleri in the two court registers should provide us with some indication of patterns of inheriting slaves and the respective value of these slaves.104 Of the Galata 14/3 court register’s 48 muhallafat defterleri, only 8 contained slaves,105 which may suggest a gradual change in patterns of slave ownership, leaning toward a preference for mukātaba contracts over domestic slave ownership, as well as increased rates of manumission prior to the death of the owner. Having subtracted the number of muhallafat defterleri from the total number of entries into the court register, there remain 406 hüccets, 240 of which deal with slaves. The 240 hüccets dealing with slavery contain a total of 314 slaves, which indicates a significant rise in the number of slaves contained in each hüccet as compared with the Galata 14/2 court register. Thus, Galata 14/3 contains 314 slaves in 240 hüccets, for an average of 1.31 slaves in each hüccet in the Galata 14/3 court re104 See the appendix of Chapter 4 for detailed charts of the monetary value in dirhams of the slaves contained in muhallafat defterleri of the Galata court registers. 105 Galata 14/3, pages 32, 42, 43, 44, 46, 66, 80, 82, 96, 109.

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gister, in contrast to the Galata 14/2 court register, which contains 120 slaves in 111 hüccets, for an average of 1.08 slaves per hüccet, a significant increase. The overwhelmingly large proportion of slaves and slave-related hüccets in the Galata 14/3 register is a strange and noteworthy phenomenon that should be addressed. It is possible that Galata as a neighbourhood contained a larger number of slaves than other neighbourhoods within close proximity, or that slave owners chose the Galata court to register their slavery-related business. The question then arises as to why Galata should contain more slaves than other neighbourhoods, or be a destination for slave-owners to register their legal business. A tentative answer is that because the slaves recorded in Galata seem to have been taken primarily from the Mediterranean and Black sea areas. As will be discussed in detail, these persons who presumably hailed from a seafaring background were taken to where their skills would be most in demand, the centre of the Ottoman shipbuilding industry, located in Galata. It is also possible that because Galata housed such a large number of slaves, the court scribes were particularly well practised at recording slave manumissions and mukātaba contracts, hence attracting slave owners from other neighbourhoods to the Galata court; but this is mere speculation. A more likely explanation, however still based mainly on conjecture, of the presence of numerous slaves in the Galata 14/3 court register is that this register was set aside specifically to record the slave manumissions that took place in the Galata court. The designation of a register for the recording of a specific type of legal dealing can be seen in other areas of the Ottoman Empire, such as in the Balkans, 106 hence the high concentration of slave related dealings in this particular defter. Thus, several tentative conclusions may be drawn regarding the contents of the Galata 14/3 register: (1) the number of people using the Galata court rose during the period 1560-1563 in the amount of time that elapses between the first entries into the Galata 14/2 register and the last of the 14/3 register; (2) the number of slaves registered in each hüccet grew over these years, perhaps as a result of historical circumstances leading to an influx of captives; (3) the overall number of slaves in Galata might have also risen, or perhaps merely the number of registered mukātaba contracts and manumissions increased. Court usage itself may have grown, perhaps indicating the importance of securing the slave’s legal rights through registration of his mukātaba contract or manumission at the court.

106 Gradeva, ›The activities of a kadi court in eighteenth-century Rūmeli: the case of Hacıoğlu Pazarcık‹, 187-188.

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Description of the Galata 14/4 Court Register The Galata 14/2 and 14/3 court registers, because of their proximity in time, and the continuity of the scribal practice between them, can almost be considered as one document. However, Galata 14/4, the next court register in the series, is separated from the preceding two registers by a gap of seven years, as its earliest hüccet is dated awāʾil Muḥarram, 978 (June, 1570).107 Despite this gap, the Galata 14/4 court register has been included in this study, as its contents are directly linked to the previous two registers. Similar to the Galata 14/2 and 14/3 registers, whose contents were recorded in the immediate aftermath of the Ottoman naval victory at Jerba, the contents of the Galata 14/4 register were recorded during and immediately after the Ottoman conquest of Cyprus, an important naval event. Like the previous two court registers, its contents were deeply influenced by a major Ottoman maritime success, providing a direct thematic, if not perfectly chronological, continuity with Galata 14/2 and 14/3. Thus, it is logical to include this court register in this analysis, as it reflects the impact of the momentous maritime events of the mid-sixteenth century on the slave population of Galata. The textual continuity, in terms of language, content, structure, layout, and legal terminology also remains intact, mirroring that of the previous two registers, providing further impetus for its inclusion in this study. As for the physical contents of the Galata 14/4 court register, it consists of 166 pages (both sides of the page written upon) of which pages 164 to 166 are blank. Chronologically, entries begin in awāʾil Muḥarram, 978 (June, 1570), extending to awākhir Dhī al-Qāʻda, 979 (April, 1572). The chronological sequence of the first half of the court register is much more ordered than the second half. Although there exist no significant gaps, the second half of the court register is somewhat more difficult to piece together. Entries for every month are extant, but they do not adhere to a linear chronological order. In contrast to the Galata 14/2 and 14/3 court registers, no one scribal hand dominates the pages of the Galata 14/4 court register. However, the script used, which again could be classified as kırık divani, is much more uniform in quality over the course of the entire court register. This may suggest an overall increase in the organisation and quality of the section (or personnel) of the Galata court dealing with property, including slavery and inheritance. It can be observed that many hüccets were recorded in the court register in a rather haphazard manner at times, involving numerous scribes at certain points and, in the second half of the register, a single scribe. It appears as though blank spaces at the end of certain pages were used to record an occasional small hüccet (in a different scribal hand), perhaps in order to save paper. Thus, it seems that the number of scribes employed by the court, or perhaps the number of court scribes 107 Galata 14/4, page 2, hüccet 3.

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competent in the drafting of manumission and other slavery-related legal business, underwent a marked increase over the seven intervening years between the Galata 14/3 and 14/4 court registers. As regards the breakdown of the contents of the court register, the total number of entries into the court register is 417, including inheritance inventories. If the total number of inheritance inventories, which is 44, along with another two waqfīyyas, are subtracted from the total number of entries, we are left with 371 hüccets, of which 113 refer to slaves. Notably, the numbers of slave-related hüccets have decreased markedly in this court register. However, of the 44 inheritance inventories, 21 contain slaves, which may suggest that the rate of private domestic slave ownership had increased compared to the previous two court registers. It is also possible to surmise that the practice of manumitting the slave before the owner’s death had declined. Moreover, the number of slaves registered in mukātaba contracts and manumission documents has decreased slightly in relation to the total number of hüccets. The Galata 14/4 court register is much closer in makeup to other court registers of the period from elsewhere in Istanbul than are the Galata 14/2 and 14/3 registers in that it contains a lower ratio of slave-related hüccets to total hüccets. For instance, the Balat108 and Besiktaş109 court registers of the same period contain a similar percentage of slave-related hüccets to Galata 14/4, as do the Tophane 24/2110 and Tophane 24/3111 court registers. Furthermore, the Galata 15/5 court register contains a similar percentage of slave-related hüccets 112 to the Galata 14/4 court register, suggesting that the makeup of the Galata 14/4 court register was more commonplace than the two registers preceding it. The question thus arises as to why there occurred such a large number of slaves in the Galata 14/2 and 14/3 court registers, in contrast to the Galata 14/4 court register (and other registers of the period from Istanbul). Do these registers document a unique case of slavery practised for a short period in Galata, or do they hint at a more general trend? Such questions are addressed in the following chapters.

108 Balat 17/1, covering the dates 964-965 AH (1556- 1557 AD), manuscript held at İstanbul’un Müftülüğü Arşivi, microfilm at İSAM. 109 Beşiktaş 23/1, covering the dates 967-971 AH (1559-1563 AD), manuscript held at İstanbul’un Müftülüğü Arşivi, microfilm at İSAM. 110 Tophane 24/2, covering the dates 966-967 AH (1558- 1559 AD), manuscript held at İstanbul’un Müftülüğü Arşivi, microfilm at İSAM. 111 Tophane 24/3, covering the dates 983-984 AH (1575-1576 AD), manuscript held at İstanbul’un Müftülüğü Arşivi, microfilm at İSAM. 112 Galata 14/5, covering the dates 983-984 AH (1575-1576 AD).

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Concluding Comments on the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 Court Registers These concluding comments discuss certain unresolved or peculiar aspects of the contents of the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 court registers. For instance, an explanation of the noticeable and surprising lack of fugitive slaves, or for that matter, the absence of any sort of slave-related crime in the Galata court registers, is attempted. Moreover, the question of the lack of dhimmī slave owners is briefly addressed as well. The question of the extremely narrow content of these three registers, namely, the absence of any deviation from the standard forms of manumission document, is a matter of much speculation. In contrast to other şeriyye sicilleri, such as those from Üsküdar113 from the same period, which contain numerous cases of fugitive slaves, or slaves receiving punishments for crimes, the Galata court registers attest to nothing of the sort. Why, then do the three Galata registers completely lack any instance of slaves misbehaving, fleeing, committing crimes, or of slave-owners committing acts of wrongdoing against their slaves, as is witnessed in court registers from other areas of Istanbul? As has been described at length in the previous section, almost every hüccet in the Galata registers involving a slave consists either of a form of canonical sharīʿa manumission (ʿitāq, mukātaba, tadbīr, umm walad), and in one or two rare cases, a sale, 114 and a single instance of nafaqa (maintenance payments) for slaves.115 The only instances of possible criminality or litigation involve inheritance disputes over slaves, but no violent ›crimes‹ were overtly committed; if they did hap pen, such crimes did not appear in the Galata court register. Furthermore, no mention exists of a single Christian or Jewish (non-Muslim, dhimmī) owner of slaves in these registers, even though contemporary legal promulgations forbidding dhimmīs from owning slaves suggest that slaves were indeed owned by this group.116 Nor do any instances of slaves being confiscated from non-Muslim owners occur. This lack of criminal cases may result from the nature of Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 court registers themselves, which are characterised both as kassam askeri defterleri and kadı sicilleri, thus suggesting that the Galata court in this period dealt primarily with property registration rather than with litigating crimes. Another aspect of slave-master bureaucratic relations noticeably absent from the Galata court registers 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 is the renegotiation of mukātaba contracts by dissatisfied slaves. Other contemporary şeriyye sicilleri, such as those

113 Seng, ›Fugitives and factotums: slaves in early sixteenth-century Istanbul‹, 136-169. 114 Galata 14/4, page 97, hüccet 1. 115 The appointment of maintenance was contained in two hüccets: Galata 14/4, page 94, hüccet 3; Galata 14/4, page 95, hüccet 1. 116 Ahmet Refik, On Altıncı Asırda Istanbul Hayatı 1553-1591 (Istanbul, 1935), 43, 50.

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from the Crimea117 and Bursa,118 that contain mukātaba contracts, often document the slaves’ renegotiation of their mukātaba contracts according to new terms and conditions. Again, no obvious re-negotiations or adjustments of mukātaba contracts occur in the Galata sicils, with one possible exception,119 and if they do exist, the fact of their renegotiation is masked by the legal terminology to make the mukātaba contract seem as though it is new, rather than based on a former contract that the slave found unsuitable. Furthermore, no instances of litigation between masters and slaves appear in the registers, with the exception of one inheritance case, in which the slave in question is not so much an agent as an object in the inheritance disagreement.120 Why did this uniformity of legal entries regarding slavery arise? It seems improbable that the system of slave-owning and manumission was such a well-oiled machine that no conflicts occurred between master and slave, no messy renegotiations of mukātaba contracts, and no abuses of power, no crimes, or flight occurred. What is more likely is that the surviving registers were dedicated to a certain type of hüccet, in this case, to slave manumissions, as mentioned previously. Rossitsa Gradeva has argued that certain registers were dedicated primarily to specific functions of the court; for instance, there often existed a register in which mainly waqfs were recorded, or property transactions, or inheritance, etcetera. 121 It seems that the Galata court may have maintained a similar practice, dedicating certain registers primarily to formulaic slave manumissions, and other straightforward notary-like business, as opposed to litigation, which, we may surmise, was recorded in a separate register that has not survived, or even taken to another court. Another possible explanation as to absence of slave fugitives, criminals, and more generally, infractions of the rules, is perhaps also that Galata was a central and prominent court, as the seat of the kadıasker of Rümeli, the head judge of the ›European‹ province, including Istanbul. It is possible that the Galata court, because of its eminent position in the Ottoman justice system, was under greater scrutiny than other courts, hence elite slave-owners were less eager to take their petty or embarrassing household disputes or criminal litigation there so as not to attract undue attention from their peers or superiors. Or perhaps, slave owners were genuinely more careful in their treatment of their domestic slaves in Galata 117 Natalia Krolikowska of the University of Warsaw imparted this information at a seminar at the University of Cambridge, October, 2008. 118 Sahillioğlu, ›Slaves in the social and economic life of Bursa in the late 15th and early 16th centuries‹, 43-112. 119 Galata 14/4, page 18, hüccet 1. 120 Galata 14/3, page 14, hüccet 3, 4, 5; page 16, hüccet 3. These hüccets contain the outline of an inheritance dispute concerning two female slaves. 121 Gradeva, ›The activities of a kadi court in eighteenth-century Rūmeli: the case of Hacıoğlu Pazarcık‹, 187; Suraiya Faroqhi, ›Sidjil: in Ottoman usage‹, EI2.

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(or at least took particular care to hide their abuses or to ensure that such issues remained beyond the purview of the court), as they were aware of their proximity to the administrative centre of imperial power and the prominent court of Galata. As a result, it is not impossible that slave-owners regulated their actions more closely and stemmed their abuses of slaves, in comparison to those slave owners who were further removed from the imperial eye of justice (for instance, in Üsküdar, a more peripheral area of greater Istanbul) 122 and perhaps felt they possessed more criminal leeway. Moreover, the lack of flight may have been the result of the nature of the slaves’ existence in Galata. Many were employed as skilled la bour under a temporary contract and paid for their toil with wages and the guar antee of freedom. Therefore, there is a strong chance that they were less tempted to flee, given that their eventual emancipation was legally guaranteed within a typical period of 2-8 years,123 depending on the particular contract and nature of the work. As to the general absence of slave sales recorded in the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 court registers, with the exception of sales of slaves from the bayt al-māl, it is probable that the sales took place in a slave market in a different part of Istanbul,124 and if it was in the registers of other neighbourhood courts that the sales were recorded, then it seems that these registers have remained unstudied up to the present time. It is also plausible that slave sales between individuals were not necessarily recorded in the court registers, as there would have been no need for a legal record of this transaction as long as the two individuals were known to each other. It is moreover not beyond the realm of the possible that slaves were actually captured by their reis owners at sea, and thus a transaction of sale never occurred, or that such a transaction took place in distant North Africa and its documentation never reached Istanbul. A further dilemma that arises is the absence of dhimmīs in the role of slave owners in the Galata court registers. It seems that non-Muslims purposely did not register their slaves’ legal matters at court in order to avoid laws forbidding them from owning Muslim slaves.125 When a slave converted to Islam, he or she could no longer be owned by a non-Muslim. Conversion to Islam could be exploited by slaves as a clever method of escaping from an unkind Jewish or Christian owner, 122 For a discussion of Üsküdar as a peripheral and liminal area of Istanbul and the corresponding actions and treatment of slaves there, see: Seng, ›A liminal state: slavery in sixteenth-century Istanbul‹, 25-42; Idem, ›Fugitives and factotums: slaves in early sixteenthcentury Istanbul‹, 136-169. 123 Hakan Erdem has also found that actual period of slavery in the devşirme system was about 7 years: Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, 10. 124 For a list of slave dealers in the 17th century and their geographical location within Istanbul, see: Mübahat Kütükoğlu, Osmanlılarda Narh Müessesesi ve 1640 Tarihli Narh Defteri (Istanbul, 1983), 84. 125 Refik, On Altıncı Asırda Istanbul Hayatı 1553-1591, 43, 50.

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although there was certainly no guarantee that the slave’s new Muslim owner would be any less cruel. However, in the sixteenth century, several sultanic fermans were issued to the effect that any dhimmīs in possession of slaves should register the fact of their ownership with the court, and turn over any Muslim slaves to be sold to Muslims.126 A further ferman forbids the sale of Muslim slaves (even recently converted ones) to non-Muslims.127 It is rarely necessary for authorities to forbid an act that does not occur; thus, it seems evident that slaves were indeed owned by dhimmīs in sixteenth-century Istanbul. However, there was a strict curtailment on nonMuslim slave owners in sixteenth-century Istanbul under Sultans Süleyman, Selim II, and Murad III,128 such that an order to record slaves owned by dhimmīs in 1575, just after the period of our documents, only rendered a count of 32 slaves in nonMuslim households.129 Perhaps because of the centrality and prominence of the Galata court, slave-owning dhimmīs sought to keep any infractions of the law regarding slaves away from the courts and out of the public eye; it also possible that indeed, not many dhimmīs owned slaves in Istanbul in this period, as such a practice seems to have been strictly condemned. At the same time, as the ferman requiring dhimmīs to register their slaves suggests, it seems that the few dhimmīs who did own slaves were not inclined to legally acknowledge their ownership of slaves, thus dhimmīs in possession of slaves would not be tempted to appear in Ottoman sharīʿa court registers, much less those of the prominent court of Galata.

126 127 128 129

Ibid., 43. Ibid., 50. Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, 28. Ibid., 28-29.

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Typology of Manumission hüccets Found in the Galata Court Registers Because of the prevalence of hüccets involving the freeing of slaves, a precise typology of the manumissions occurring in the court registers is useful to the overall analysis of the role of slaves and slavery in Galata. A typology is particular ne cessary because the type of slavery and manumission to which the individual was subjugated affected the relationship between the slave and owner, and the type of slavery and manumission altered, and in many respects decided, the role that the individual would adopt in society post-manumission, hence the necessity of examining the various legal forms of enslavement and manumission defined by the sharīʿa and documented in the Galata court registers. The first question that arises is the term used for ›manumission‹ in the court registers. When straightforward manumission for charitable purposes (in contrast to the contractually based future promise of freedom of the mukātaba or tadbīr discussed below) is referred to in the Galata court registers, the Arabic word ʿataqa is used, typically in the form of the verbal noun (maṣdar): ʿitāq, or ʿitq. The Persian term āzād (›free‹) and Ottomanised āzād etmek are not encountered in the Galata court registers. Arabic legal terminology is employed, in contrast to the language of later sicils. The act of manumission itself may be identified as a speech act, more specifically as a performative utterance, as it was the owner’s first-person declaration of ›I have freed slave x‹ that categorically freed the slave from his official position of bondage in the case of ʿitāq, i.e., unilateral manumission.130 However, this speech act was recorded, according to legal convention, in the Arabic third person, perfect tense, thus signifying that the act had been completed and taken legal effect. Without this declaration, manumission was not effected. The categories of manumission that are employed in the rest of this study are detailed below; these divisions have been chosen to reflect the terminology and classifications employed in the primary sources. According to Islamic law of the four principle madhhabs, there are four methods of manumitting a slave: ʿitq/ʿitāq, kitāba, tadbīr, and umm walad manumission.131 A further category has been added here, which is only allowed by the 130 Ali, Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam, 136, 147. 131 For the Ḥanafī fiqh of manumission in particular, see Al-Marghīnānī, Al-Hidāyah fī Sharḥ Bidāyat al-Mubtadī, 4 vols (Beirut, 2010): Kitāb al-'Itāq, vol. II, 296-310; Bāb al-Tadbīr, vol. II, 312-313; Kitāb al-Istīlād, vol. II, 313-316; Kayfiyyat al-Makātib, vol. III, 250-267. For the rather imperfect English translation: Alī Ibn Abī Bakr Burhān al-Dīn al-Marghīnānī, The Hedaya, trans., Charles Hamilton, 4 vols (London, originally printed by T. Bensley, 1791), vol. I, 419-490. The drawbacks of using such an edition are numerous, but because alMarghīnānī was employed by Ottoman jurists, he must be consulted both in original and translation. On the centraiity of Marghīnānī’s work on fiqh to the Ottoman medrese system, see: Shahab Ahmed and Nenad Filipovic, ›The sultan’s syllabus: a curriculum for the Ottoman imperial medreses prescribed in a fermān of Qānūnī I Süleyman, dated 973 (1565)‹ Studia Islamica, 98/99 (2004), 202, 214. Another seminal text on Ḥanafī fiqh used

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Ḥanafī school, namely the freeing of a slave for a net exchange of money not paid in instalments. This type of manumission is subsumed in Ḥanafī law under the category of mukātaba. This manner of freeing a slave at times blurred the line between ransom and the mukātaba, thus rendering the distinction difficult at times to identify in the Galata court registers. However, in this dissertation, a separate category has been maintained for this type of transaction, as it is not clearly labelled as mukātaba in the court registers. Type One: ʿItq/ʿItāq This type of manumission is the most prevalent in the three court registers. Its basic structure consists of the Arabic verb aqarra (›it was declared‹), followed by the manumittor’s name, the appropriate title or honorific depending on his social status, then the statement that he has manumitted his slave. The complete locution is: ʾaqarra fūlān ibn fūlān bi-ʿitāqʿabdihi wa mamlūkihi fūlān ibn fūlān. This declaration was of paramount importance, for without the master’s performative utterance of a word or phrase essentially meaning ›you are free‹ the manumission was invalid and nonbinding.132 The declaration of manumission is followed by the slave’s name, origin, physical description and scarring.133 The location of the manumittor’s name (and the wakīl and witnesses to the wakāla, if they are present in the hüccet) well before that of the slave’s, indicated both the owner’s superior status and his full legal agency, in contrast to that of the slave who, at the time that the speech act itself was uttered, was in possession of neither free status nor full legal agency. While it is certainly obvious that the slave was in a subordinate position to his owner and extensively by Ottoman jurists is al-Qudūrī's Mukhtaṣar, which contains information about the fiqh of manumission. See printed edition, al-Qudūrī, Mukhtaṣar al-Qudūrī fī alFiqh al-Ḥanafī (Beirut, 1997): Kitāb al-'Itāq, 175-176; Kitāb al-Tadbīr, 177-178; Kitāb alMakātib, 179-181. For the fiqh of manumission across the four madhhabs, see Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid, 4 vols (Cairo, 2004): Kitāb al-'Itq, vol. IV, 149157; Kitāb al- Kitābah, vol. IV, 157-169; Kitāb al-Tadbīr: vol. IV, 170-174; Kitāb Ummahāt alAwlād, vol. IV, 175-176. For the English translation: Ibn Rūshd, The Distinguished Jurist’s Primer (Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid), vol. I and II, trans. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee (Reading, 1996), vol. II, 443-476. This work addresses the views of the four major schools of law (including, of course, the Ḥanafīs) and the differences between them. It concerns the general regulations on the types of manumissions: ʿitq, mukātaba, tadbīr, umm waladāt. 132 For the Arabic utterances that consitute and do not constitute a valid manumission see AlMarghīnānī, Al-Hidāyah fī Sharḥ Bidāyat al-Mubtadī, 4 vols (Beirut, 2010): Shurūṭ al-'Itāq, vol. II, 296-298. For the English translation, see Al-Marghinanī, Hedaya, vol. I, 420-432. These twelve pages of al-Marghīnānī contain a detailed description of the possible utterances that do and do not entail a valid emancipation. 133 Often the order of this information is changed slightly, when the slave’s name, then phy sical description, origin, and then scarring is listed.

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it is not necessary to reiterate this, as it is the nature of slavery, it is nonetheless significant that this subservient position is reinforced by the clausal structure of the hüccet.134 In cases in which the manumission is performed by a wakīl, the wakīl’s name is mentioned, then the person in whose place he is acting, followed by the witnesses to the tawkīl and the introduction of the slave. It is only in this form of manumission (ʿitāq) that the initial clauses are followed by pious invocations, which vary somewhat in length and content but convey the basic message that the manumittor is releasing his slave in order to perform a virtuous act of religious duty. The reason for this is that no conditions are placed upon the slave’s release, unlike in the other three canonical forms of manumission (mukātaba, tadbīr, and umm walad), and the act of unilaterally manumitting a slave for no recompense was considered a charitable act for which the manumittor would be rewarded in the afterlife. The shortest pious invocation, included in every instance of this form of charitable manumission, is ḥasbatan lillah. This term is used as shorthand for ›manumission for charitable/religious motives‹ throughout this work, as it is without fail the closing line of this type of manumission. It is, however, somewhat problematic to translate accurately into English and can be conveyed as ›accountable to God‹, ›being held responsible to God‹, ›taking account of God’s judgement‹ or, more loosely translated, ›out of the fear of God‹. Examples of longer, more intricate pious invocations used are: ḥasbatan li-llahi al-ʻaẓīm wa ṭalaban li-marḍat al-rabb al-raḥīm135 which, loosely translated, can be conveyed as ›accountable to God the great and requesting the satisfaction of the merciful lord.‹ Another common invocation occurring in the Galata court registers that expresses the same point is: ḥasbatan li-llahi al-ʿaẓīm wa ṭalaban limarḍat al-rabb al-raḥīm bariʾan min ʿiqābihi al-alīm,136 which is to say, ›accountable to God the Great, requesting the satisfaction of the merciful lord (for the sake of) quittance from his painful punishment.‹ These invocations are in accordance with the Quranic injunction to manumit one’s slave out of religious duty if he has converted to Islam as an act of charity. Naturally, manumission was not immediate upon the slave’s conversion; rather, the owner was encouraged to manumit his Muslim slaves relatively quickly and, before manumission, to treat them with kindness. 137 As to the ›genuine‹ motives of the slaveholder for manumitting his slaves, rather than assuming the de rigeure posture among historians who wish to assign self-consciously cynical 134 The ordering of the names could also be due to the strict rules governing the validity of a transmission involving the exchange of goods (buyūʿ) if the person selling the good did not precede the purchaser’s name. 135 For an example of this usage, see Galata 14/3, page 3, hüccet 2. 136 Galata 14/3, page 4, hüccet 1. 137 Brunschvig, ›Abd‹ EI1. Educating and marrying one’s female slave was considered especially virtuous.

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economic or material motives to every decision taken by early modern man in the name of religion, it will rather be assumed that early modern people on the whole did possess a distinct fear of God as well as a belief in the afterlife and the terrifying possibility of punishment in hell. Hence, a genuine belief, or at least fear, in spired by religion is not ruled out as a motive for manumitting slaves according to the religious command that doing so would save the manumittor’s soul from the torments of hell. The pious invocation is followed by the clause which is common to all of the manumission hüccets, namely, the declaration that the slave, ṣāra ḥurran min alaḥrār (literally, ›has become a free person of the free people‹), and bears all of the rights and responsibilities of being free. This was of course necessary to state, as slaves possessed diminished responsibility in the eyes of the law for crimes they committed. Slaves were imparted, according to the sharīʿa and the kanun, half the punishment of free persons for crimes such as theft, adultery, or assault. 138 Thus, the attainment of freedom had numerous legal ramifications for the ex-slave in addition to the obvious liberation from bondage: the newly freed person became fully accountable to the law and was able to receive full punishment for any crimes committed. Furthermore, slaves were not allowed to bear witness, or perform the role of judge or imām (although they could give the call to prayer), thus a freed male who had converted to Islam acquired these rights and responsibilities as well.

Type Two: Kitāba/Mukātaba A mukātaba139 contract is an agreement between the master and slave that the slave would work at a specific craft or engage in a trade until he had accumulated enough money to buy his freedom, typically paid to the owner in instalments specified in the original contract. The payment in instalments of what was essentially a self-ransom was required by every madhhab except the Ḥanafī, which accepted lump sum payments as well as instalment payments for the settlement of the mukātaba contract. In other cases, it could be stipulated that the slave was expected to produce a quantity of goods in order to secure his or her freedom, for instance, a certain volume of fine textiles might be produced in order to complete the terms of the contract. There also exist reports, from contemporary European 138 For examples of the punishments meted out to slaves, see: Yaşar Yücel and Selami Pulaha, I. Selim Kanunnameleri 1512-1520 (Ankara, 1995); Uriel Heyd, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law, ed. V.L. Menage (Oxford, 1973); M. Düzdağ, Şeyhulislam Ebussuud Efendi Fetvaları (Istanbul, 1972). 139 This term is a verbal noun of the third form of the Arabic root ›k-t-b‹ to write. It never occurs in the Galata court registers; rather, it is the term used in the secondary literature. In the Galata court registers, the writing of a mukātāba contract is expressed in the perfect tense verbal form, kātib. This type of contract was also termed kitāba.

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narratives, that skilled slaves in Galata were freed upon the production of a fine ship.140 In other instances, the contract could specify a period of time, rather than an amount of money, during which the slave was required to work before attaining his freedom. Thus, mukātaba contracts can be considered as a form of manumission document, as the mukātaba contract guaranteed the freedom of the slave once he (or she) fulfils certain conditions. Like the standard ʿitāq manumission, the mukātaba contract is also contingent on the speech act of the slave owner, who contracts the slave to work for a specif ic period of time or amount of money. In the act of drawing up the contract, the master must fulfil the requirements of the sharīʿa by saying to his slave: ›I have entered into kitāba with you for x dirhams, when you pay it you are free‹, after which the slave was manumitted once he paid this amount. 141 In the Galata court registers, this declaration is recorded in the third person past tense: aqarra fulan ibn fulan bi-kitābat ʿabdihi wa mamlūkihi li-mablagh muʿayyan (for instance) thalath alāf dirham (or) li-thalathat sinīn (or at times: sanawāt) mutatālīyya. In terms of the ordering of the names, it is the same as detailed above for ʿitāq-style manumissions, with the master’s name or the wakīl’s name, as well as the witnesses to the wakāla (i.e., the power of attorney), all preceding the introduction of the slave’s name. The mukātab slave boasted a number of legal rights according to the sharīʻa. The slave’s owner was forbidden to sell him during the period in which the slave was working to earn his freedom. 142 Furthermore, kitāba was not allowed for the lifetime of the owner; rather, a precise time period had to be specified. However, according to the majority of legal scholars, the mukātab slave had to seek the permission of his owner prior to marrying, as the marriage of a slave could result in a host of legal issues regarding the status any children born of the union as well as the rights and responsibilities of the enslaved husband toward his, possibly also enslaved wife, who could be owned by a different owner. The mukātab slave also had the right to travel, according to the Ḥanafī school of law; in fact, it could not be stipulated in his contract that he be forbidden to travel. There is debate over whether more than one individual can be included in a single kitāba contract (because of the risk of confusion over whether some slaves are to be held as surety

140 Wratislaw, Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz 1599, 125-126. 141 Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-Mujtahid, vol. II, 454; al-Marghīnānī, Hedaya, vol. III, 377-435. 142 Brunschvig, ›Abd‹, EI1. For a discussion of the interpretation of the four schools of law. Unlike an umm walad or female slave under a tadbīr contract, it is forbidden for the master to co-habit with a female slave who has been given a mukātāba contract. At the same time: ›the granting of a kitāba to a female slave who has no honest source of income is frowned upon.‹

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for others),143 although there exists ample evidence of this practice in the Galata court registers.144 The Islamic justification for the kitāba contract is based on the Quranic verse 24:33, ›And such of your slaves as seek a writing (of emancipation), write it out for them if ye are aware of aught of good in them‹, 145 a verse often cited to explain the use of the mukātaba contract. However, Patricia Crone has argued that the kitāba or mukātaba contract is an element of ›Near Eastern‹ law (that is to say, non-Roman, provincial legal practice), predating Roman and Islamic law. 146 Although her study of bonds of clientage and patronage in the early Islamic world has come under criticism for her misuse of sources to prove the central argument of her book,147 one of her sub-arguments is sound and directly relevant to this discussion of mukātaba slavery. Namely, the system of contractual, temporary slavery in which the slave buys his freedom in monetary instalments has been practised in more or less the same form for millennia, and can be identified in Babylonian civilisation in the second millennium BC as well as the Achaemenid period both in Mesopotamia as well as Egypt. The continuation of this practice is evident in Hellenic civilisations throughout the Mediterranean, referred to as paramone, ›remaining by‹,148 as the slave subject to such a relationship was required to remain with his owner in the owner’s old age. Although this form of manumission underwent a slight change that required the slave to perform a certain amount of labour after his manumission rather than before, the essence of the contract remained the same: freedom according to conditions of labour and/or payment. The continuity between the Byzantine and Ottoman periods in the practice of mukātaba slavery is also striking: the concept of a peculium, for instance, which was granted to slaves in the Byzantine period mirrors the later employment of skilled slaves in Ottoman Galata and Bursa. In the Byzantine system, the slave was allowed to accumulate funds that would ultimately contribute to the purchase of his freedom, much as in the Ottoman sys143 Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-Mujtahid, vol. II, 456, 464. 144 Galata 14/4, page 11, hüccet 1 includes no less than eight slaves in a single mukātāba contract. 145 Taken from Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-Mujtahid, vol. II,. 453. 146 Patricia Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate (Cambridge, 1987, paperback edition 2002), 64. Crone’s main argument is that the ›Islamic patronate‹ or system of ›walā‹ in early Islamic history is not an ›original‹ Islamic legal innovation, nor does it have its origins in ›Arabia‹ but rather stems from the Greek provincial law perpetuated by the Romans in the Near East. 147 Wael Hallaq, ›The use and abuse of evidence: the question of provincial and roman influ ences on early Islamic law‹, Journal of the American Oriental Society 110/1 (Jan.-Mar., 1990), 79-91. 148 Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law, 65-66. Similar arrangements for slaves also occur in Coptic papyri in Egypt from the 7th/8th century AD, as well as Greek parchment from Dura Europos in 121 AD, and a bilingual Arabic/Greek parchment in 687 AD.

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tem.149 Furthermore, the period of service of the paramonar slave lasted typically from 1-10 years,150 a very similar period to that of the mukātaba contract in Ottoman Istanbul. The question of legal and cultural ›influence‹ is too complicated to address with any depth at this point, but let it be said that the geographical and cultural proximity of the Byzantine and Islamic legal spheres inevitably led to mutual exchange over the centuries. These striking similarities between the practice of paramonar slavery in the Byzantine realm and kitāba in the Islamic world has led Crone to the conclusion that the two institutions are in fact versions of one another, suggesting striking continuities in the legal and textual practice of contractual slavery in the Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire, with a common root in ancient Near Eastern law. 151 A further conjecture may be posited that such a practice of indentured labour or contracted slavery survived in Istanbul in the context of maritime production until the late Byzantine period and was perhaps adopted, or continued under the Ottomans. The mukātaba contract, if indeed Crone is correct and the institution was practised in the pre-Islamic Byzantine Near East and then absorbed into Islamic law, allowed the seamless application of the sharīʿa to this practice of slavery in Ottoman courts (in its syncretic form, having developed the ›pre-Islamic‹ Greek institution for one millennium, rendering it its own) to a ›Byzantine‹ practice of organising labour, thus rendering it legitimate according to the sharīʿa and turning it into a mode of industrial production sanctioned by Islamic law and implemented by the Ottoman administration.152

Type Three: Tadbīr153 Related in its historico-legal lineage to mukātaba slavery, tadbīr was a type of manumission enacted after the death of the master, according to legal stipulations put into place while the slave owner was alive. 154 In the Galata court registers, a 149 150 151 152

Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, 100. Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law, 66. Ibid, p. 73. The issue of the definition of mukātaba-style labour as ›slave labour‹ or ›indentured‹ labour is addressed in this chapter and at the end of Chapter 4. 153 For a full discussion of tadbīr slavery and all of the issues arising from this form of manumission, see the following. For the Arabic text: Al-Marghīnānī, Al-Hidāyah fī Sharḥ Bidāyat al-Mubtadī: Bāb al-Tadbīr, vol. II, 312-313; and for the English translation, see alMarghīnānī, Hedaya, vol. I, 475-478.For the original Arabic text: Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid Kitāb al-Tadbīr: vol. IV, 170-174. For the English translation, see: Ibn Rushd, The Distinguished Jurist’s Primer, vol. II, 467-474. 154 W. Heffening, ›Tadbīr, in the sense of ›manumisson of a slave‹, EI2: ›The manumitted slave (mudabbar) is in the same legal position as the umm walad [q.v.], except that, in the calculating of a dead man’s estate for inheritance purposes, the cost of the manumission of an umm walad is to be debited wholly to the man’s assets, but only one-third of the cost of manumitting a mudabbar.‹ For more information on tadbīr contracts and a brief discussion

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tadbīr manumission was typically enacted forty days before the owner’s death retroactively,155 so that the mudabbar slave would not be included in his master’s inheritance. This type of manumission was often registered during a period of illness, or registered in the court shortly before or shortly after the death of the owner. It seems, in certain cases occurring in the Galata court registers, that the actual manumission of the slave was not recorded at times until after the owner’s demise. The clausal structure of the tadbīr manumission follows the basic structure of the ʿitāq manumission. It is the triliteral Arabic verb dabbara that occurs first, after the which, the subject of the sentence (the manumittor’s name or name of the wakīl) is introduced, possibly accompanied by honorifics, then the rest of the hüccet: dabbara fulan ibn fulan ʿabdihi wa mamlūkihi fulan ibn fulan. In addition to kitāba, it has been speculated that tadbīr manumission is also a descendent of the paramone style of manumission, as it was often specified in pre-Islamic paramone contracts that the slave remain with the master until the master’s death. 156 Arranging the emancipation of one’s slave upon one’s death, and specifying that he is not to be included in the inheritance, also had strong precedents in Byz antine practice,157 suggesting elements of continuity in both the legal and social practice of slavery and manumission.

Type Four: Umm walad Manumission Umm walad or umm al-walad (also occurring in the Galata sicils is the locution mustawlida, bearing roughly the same meaning158) is the term applied to the female slave who has born her owner a child and is therefore guaranteed her freedom upon the owner’s death. 159 Her children take the legal status of the father (that is, they are free) and are full inheritors of their father’s estate along with any other acknowledged children. Furthermore, the cost of the mother’s manumission is subtracted from the inheritance. The prophetic ḥadīth on which this practice is based is the following: ›Any woman who bears a child to her master is free when he dies‹, and, unlike the mudabbar or mukātab slave, who is only manumitted on the death of the owner if his value is less than one third of the deceased’s estate, is

155 156 157 158 159

of the approaches of the four different schools of Islamic law to the tadbīr contract, see: Brunschvig, ›Abd‹ EI1. My thanks to Y. Hakan Erdem for explaining the subtleties of the tadbīr contract to me at the history speaker’s seminar at Sabancı University, Istanbul (December, 2010). Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law, 75. Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, 121. The only subtle difference in these terms is that one is an active participle of the verb ›to give birth‹ (mustawlida); whereas the other implies possession of a child (umm walad). Joseph Schacht, ›Umm al-Walad‹ EI1, Fasciculus K, 1012-1015.

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not applicable to the umm walad, who is manumitted regardless.160 Again, there are notable parallels to the Byzantine practice, in which a man who wished to marry his female slave was required to manumit her first (this was also the case with the female slave according to Islamic law), and the children of such a union were free as well.161

Type Five: Exchange of a Lump Sum of Money for Freedom The difference between this type of hüccet and the average mukātaba contract is at times discerned with difficulty. Often, it appears that slaves were ransomed with a lump sum of money, with no mention of a work contract. In these cases in the Galata court registers, the amounts required to free the slave do not conform with the general patterns of payment for mukātaba contracts, as they are specified in gold money (dīnār; danānīr) in contrast to the typical silver money in which mukātaba contracts are stipulated (dirham; dirāham), leading one to suspect that they reflect an altogether different situation, perhaps one of ransom rather than conditional manumission through labour. It is evident how the Ḥanafī allowance of the mukātaba contract’s settlement through the payment of a single sum could be used as a convenient legal instrument to record a ransom.

Other Types of Entries in Which Slaves Occur: Pious Endowments, Inheritance Inventories In waqfīyyāt (Turkish usage: vakıfnameler), the legal instatement of a pious endowment, slaves appear as possible beneficiaries of the waqf, usually listed after the founder’s children. In the numerous muhallafat defterleri (estate inventories), slaves are often listed among the property of the deceased. Furthermore, in inheritance disputes, slaves sometimes appear as a disputed part of the inheritance, or the slave’s freedom is disputed after the death of the owner. Typically, one of the heirs wants to keep the slaves as property, but the slave claims to have a tadbīr arrangement with the deceased owner and thus claims to be free. Parallels to Byzantine practice are again present. Wills freeing slaves included the same language as the manumission document, and the practice itself is well-attested and similar to Ottoman practice.162

160 Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-Mujtahid, vol. II, 467-477; al-Marghīnānī, Hedaya, vol. I, 478-490. 161 Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, 121. 162 Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, 122.

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Appendix to Chapter 2 163 Illustration 1: Picture of individual hüccet rolled up

Hüccet issued from the Galata court to the Church of St. Peter and Paul in Galata, Istanbul; its contents have been translated into Italian and written on the outside of the hüccet. The sheet of paper issued from the court was folded several times until it was easy to carry on one’s person. It is very likely that manumitted slaves from the Galata courts carried such a document.

163 Note: all of the following reproductions were those issued to me as digital copies. These are the same documents that were employed in the research for this dissertation. Therefore, anything ›blurry‹ or ›dark‹ or ›illegible‹ is not the result of the author’s carelessness in reproducing these images; rather, it is the result of the quality of the image as issued by the archive itself that is at times poor, or the state of conservation of the original document.

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Illustration 2: Picture of individual hüccet unrolled

This is how such a hüccet appears when unrolled.

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Illustration 3: Sample page from Galata 14/1 court register

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Illustration 4: Sample page from the Galata 14/2 court register (pages 16,17)

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Illustration 5: Galata 14/2 court register: Scribe A (pages 24, 25)

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Illustration 6: Galata 14/2 court register: Scribe B (pages 26, 27)

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Illustration 7: Galata 14/2 court register: Scribe B (pages 53, 54)

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Illustration 8: Galata 14/3 court register: Scribe B (pages 28, 29)

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Illustration 9: Scribe B writes Frankish names

What follows is an example of the handiwork of Scribe B, who took particular care in transcribing the accurate pronunciation of ›Frankish‹ names through attention to vowelling. Such precision in vowelling the names of slaves is not attested to elsewhere in the Galata sicils. All of the following examples are taken from the Galata 14/3 register.

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Illustration 10: Galata 14/3 court register: Scribe A (pages 64, 65)

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Chapter 3: Categorising the Origins of Slaves ›[C]ategories and their use as labels do not only describe a prevailing reality. They also constitute that social reality[.]‹ 164 ›The Mediterranean may be considered either as a frontier, where pirates, privateers and sailors fought for centuries, and a multi-cultural region, where persons with different languages, cultures and religions shared the same environment. In particular, since the time of Ibn Khaldun, this inner sea was imagined by many as being composed of many liquid plains, communicating through large or narrow gates.‹ 165 The following section discusses the categorisation of the slave population’s origins in the sicils and more importantly, why such categorisations were employed. In discussing the groupings of slaves and the descriptors applied to them, the word ›ethnicity‹ is at times used, as a term describing a group of people who share, or who believe that they share or are described as sharing, a common ancestry and geographical origin.166 In the vast majority of cases, one word denoted the slave’s origins in the Galata court registers. From this single laconic term, the task remains to elucidate the slave’s geographical and possibly even cultural, religious and linguistic background, while also taking into account the influence of Ottoman administrative practice on the articulation and categorisation of ›origin‹ and how this affects our reading of the terms used to describe slaves in the Galata court registers. In the following discussion, a literal reading of the ethnic categories which describe the slaves’ origins is called into question in light of sixteenth-century Ottoman bureaucrats and educated elites’ perceptions of the origins of their slaves and, possibly, their own origins, as much of the Ottoman elite class emerged from a background of slavery. These categorisations of origin are also a useful lens 164 Richard Harvey Brown, ›Cultural representation and ideological domination‹, Social Forces 71/3 (March 1993), 658-659. 165 Maria Pia Pedani, ›Beyond the frontier: the Ottoman-Venetian border in the Adriatic context from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries‹, in Renaissance Medievalisms, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto, 2009), 47. 166 The definition is mine, although it is influenced by Anthony David Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations (Oxford, 1986), 32. Such a definition differs greatly from the way in which the term ›ethnicity‹ is used in current English-language discourse. On current interpretations of the term and its problematisation, see Steve Fenton, Ethnicity (Cambridge, 2003), especially page 23 for clear outline of how he understands the modern usage of the term. For a discussion of ›race‹ specifically referring to the Ottoman context, see: Baki Tezcan ›Dispelling the darkness: the politics of ›race‹ in the early seventeenth-century Ottoman empire in light of the life and work of Mullah Ali‹, in Identity and Identity Formation in the Ottoman World: A Volume of Essays in Honor of Norman Itzkowitz, ed. Baki Tezcan and Karl A. Barbir (Madison, 2007), 73-95.

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through which to examine the articulation of ›origin‹ in Ottoman legal-administrative culture, and also the process of elite identity formation. Metin Kunt has identified cins167 and solidarity among members of the same cins as a central influence on elite politics in the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire. 168 In a related manner, the descriptors applied to slaves in the court registers perhaps served the purpose of constructing a cins identity, based loosely on actual origin, for the soon-to-be manumitted slave and articulated the possibility of inserting him (or her) into a fictive kinship group. The sicils themselves refer to these descriptors by the Arabic term aṣl (i.e., ifrinjī al-aṣl), that is, origin. Hence, the term ›origin‹ will also be employed throughout the discussion, with the occasional interpolation of the word ›ethnicity‹, used in the sense supplied above. Cins (Arabic jins; Latin genus) and aṣl will be considered as equivalent terms. Although they denote different semantic concepts, with cins implying membership in an ethnic group, and aṣl denoting one’s natal origins, in the context of Ottoman bureaucratic terminology the two overlap very closely, because identification with a specific cins was clearly determined by one’s aṣl. In addition to illuminating the bureaucratic construction of identity among the population of Galata slaves, knowledge of the slaves’ origins also facilitates our ability to trace the flow of migrant populations of workers in the sixteenth century, though in this case the migration was largely forced, rather than voluntary. The implications of finding such information on the origins of a population of skilled slaves are manifold, despite any reservations (discussed at length below) about the interpretation of the classificatory terminology of origin. Using this knowledge, the flow of labour and the functioning of labour markets (coerced or otherwise) in Istanbul may be mapped through a part of the early modern world extending across the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. The spread of technical skills relating to shipbuilding and seafaring may be traced using the knowledge of where the Galata slaves originated. The following discussion of the slaves’ origins is divided into two parts. The first section parses the main terms that were chosen by court scribes to categorise the slaves’ origins in the Galata court registers. This first section also contains quantitative data conveying the proportion of slaves in each register as classified by origin, as well as a discussion of how the slaves may have come to be captured. 167 From Greek γενος (Latin genus; Syriac gensō), a word that has been used in Arabic and other Islamicate languages (such as Ottoman Turkish) to indicate ›type‹, ›group‹, or even ›nation‹ in its pre-nineteenth-century sense. For a detailed and linguistically nuanced examination of how so-called ›national‹ groups are described in pre-modern Arabic and Ottoman legal documents, see: Gladys Frantz-Murphy, ›Identity and security in the Mediterranean world ca. AD 640 - ca. 1517‹ Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth International Congress of Papyrology, Ann Arbor 2007, American Studies in Papyrology (Ann Arbor, 2010). 168 Metin Ibrahim Kunt, ›Ethnic-regional (cins) solidarity in the seventeenth-century Ottoman establishment‹, IJMES 5/3 (1974), 233-239.

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The second section is analytical in nature and calls into question what these terms of categorisation signified in the context of a sixteenth-century slave manumission and questions whether they truly reflected the origin of the slave or whether such categorisations perhaps played a role in socialising the slave into a fictive kinship group, or at least suggested the dominant mode of socialisation, while still asserting the symbolic control of the former master (and soon to be patron) over the slave.

The Terminology of Origin (cins) The geographical categories assigned to slaves in the Galata court registers follow, with a tentative translation. The feminine form of the adjective is included only if it occurs in the text of the court registers. 169 The most common appellations are: al-Abāzāwī/ Abāzāwīyya (from the Abaza tribe of the Caucasus); al-Almān/ Almānīyya (roughly speaking, German); al-Arnāwūtī (Albanian); al-Būsnāwī/ Būsnāwīyya (Bosnian); al-Ifrinjī/ Ifrinjīyya (Frankish); al-Ḥabashī/ Ḥabashīyya or Ḥabasha (Ethiopian); al-Hindī (Indian); al-Jirkasī/ al-Jirkasīyya (Circassian); al-Kurjī/ al-Jurjīyya, al-Kurja (Georgian); al-Rūsī/ al-Rūsīyya (Russian); al-Majarī/ Majarīyya, Majara (Hungarian); al-Malṭāwī/ Malṭāwīyya (Maltese); al-Mighrilī (Mingrelian); al-Rudūsī (from Rhodes); al-Rūmī/ al-Rūmīyya (Anatolian Greek); alTlimsānī170 (North African, from Tlimsān). Other tentatively identified terms relating to origin are: al-Yurūbī, al-ʿArab, al-ʿAjamī, Aflāk, Lāk, Lāz.171 However, as this last group of terms were used only once each and were also orthographically unclear, they were not included in the overall quantitative discussion of the origins of slaves. While the court scribe assigned one of the above labels to the majority of the slaves documented in the court registers, the task of reconstructing the geographical location signified by that term in the sixteenth century and ascertaining how the slave might have been captured and transported to Istanbul is not as straight169 For court register, page, and hüccet numbers for each instance of these classifications, see graphs, charts, and appendices dealing with slave origins. 170 The two Tlimsānī slaves were presumably captured at the battle of Jerba. It is possible that they were Muslim but serving the Portuguese, hence their reduction to slavery, but this is pure supposition. North Africa had a history of supplying slaves to the northern shores of the Mediterranean, from cities such as Algiers, Tunis, Oran, ›Buzea‹ and generically, ›la Barbaria‹. Also, the interior of North Africa was to a certain degree a source of slaves from the trans-Saharan trade. Other slaves came from the Moroccan cities that had been recently occupied by the Portuguese. For more information, see: Domenico Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova nel secolo XV (Genoa, 1971), 32. 171 On the history of the enslavement of the Lezghiens or Lazes, mountainous peoples of Daghestan, east of Trebizond, see: Michel Balard, La Romanie Genoise, 2 vols (Rome, 1978), vol. II, 792.

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forward as it may seem. These labels, as with any label, were not objective and were intimately tied to Ottoman elites’ perceptions, or construal, of the origins of their slaves (and by extension, their own origins). In the following discussion, the word ›elites‹ applies to educated administrators, bureaucrats, and scribes employed by the Ottoman state (ehl-i kalem),172 as well as the seafaring elites 173 who comprised the largest group of slave-owners in the Galata court registers. The following description of the terminology of slavery is grouped roughly according to the method of capture, with Mediterranean slaves, who were possibly captured in naval battles or acts of piracy, discussed as a group, followed by slaves originating on or around the Black Sea area, who presumably were seized in Tatar raids. 174 After these two groupings, which represent the vast majority of the slaves in the Galata court registers, the few remaining terms are detailed. By far the largest group of slaves was that designated Ifrinjī or Ifrinj.175 In order to explain with any amount of precision where this group of slaves originated, 172 For further detail on the composition and typical career path of the bureaucrats employed in the Ottoman legal and administrative system, see İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin İlmiye Teşkilatı (Ankara, 1965); Christine Woodhead, ›From scribe to litterateur: the career of a sixteenth-century Ottoman katib‹, Bulletin of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies 9/1 (1982), 55-74; Richard Repp, The Mufti of Istanbul: A Study in the Development of the Ottoman Learned Hierarchy (London, 1986); Halil İnalcık, ›The rūznāmçe registers of the kadıasker of Rūmeli as preserved in the Istanbul Müftülük archives‹, in Essays in Ottoman History (Istanbul, 1998), 125-154; and Atcıl, op cit. 173 İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Merkez ve Bahriye Teşkilatı (Ankara, 1948); Bostan, op cit; Imber, op cit. 174 For a discussion of the rapport between the Tatar slave raiders of the Crimean Khanate and their role in the slave trade into the Ottoman empire, see the following studies: Mária Ivanics, ›Enslavement, slave labour and the treatment of captives in the Crimean khanate‹, in Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders, ed. Géza Dávid, Pál Fodor (Leiden, 2007), 193-219; Alan Fisher, ›Les rapports entre l’Empire Ottoman et la Crimée: l’aspect financier‹, in Between Rūssians, Ottomans, and Turks: Crimea and Crimean Tatars (Istanbul, 1998), 19-34; Idem, ›Muscovy and the Black sea slave trade‹, in A Precarious Balance: Conflict, Trade, and Diplomacy on the Rūssian-Ottoman Frontier (Istanbul, 1999), 27-46; Idem, ›Ottoman sources for a study of Kefe vilayeti: the maliyeden müdevver found in the Başbakanlık arşivi in Istanbul‹, in Between Rūssians, Ottomans, and Turks: Crimea and Crimean Tatars (Istanbul, 1998), 1-18; Idem, ›Sources and perspectives for the study of Ottoman-Russian relations in the Black sea region‹ International Journal of Turkish Studies 1/2 (1980), 77-84; Idem, ›The Ottoman Crimea in the sixteenth century‹, in Between Russians, Ottomans and Turks: Crimea and Crimean Tatars (Istanbul, 1998), 35-65. An excellent, detailed and thoroughly scholarly and comprehensive account especially on the subject of Tatar slave raiding is that of Brian L. Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe 1500-1700 (New York, 2007). Useful archival evidence for the slave trade out of the Crimea includes: Halil İnalcık, Sources and Studies on the Ottoman Black Sea: Customs Register of Caffa 1487-1490 (Cambridge, Mass, 1996); Alexandre Bennigson and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, ›Le khanat de Crimée au début du XVIe siècle: de la tradition mongole à la suzerainté ottomane, d’après un document inédit des archives ottomanes‹, Cahiers du monde Russe et soviétique 3/3 (1972), 321-337. 175 In modern Turkish scholarship, the term Efrinci is used.

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the history of the term itself merits brief examination. As this adjective is privy to a prolonged and complicated existence in the geographical writings of the Islamic world, there is naturally some ambiguity as to which group of people the term Ifrinjī designated. Often translated into English as ›Frank‹, the Arabic expression Ifrinjī, originally signified the inhabitants of the Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne. Yet, by the sixteenth century, the term referred to the Catholic and sometimes even to the Protestant (but not the Orthodox Christian) inhabitants of the area that would now be called Europe. 176 Because this term is general, it is difficult to pinpoint with any precision where exactly these slaves may have originated. However, judging from the first names, patronymics and surnames of the unconverted Ifrinjī slaves in the court registers, it is clear that their origins lay primarily in the Italian peninsula, the Iberian peninsula and, possibly, the southern coast of France as well as the islands situated along these coasts. The documented existence of these individuals in the court registers demonstrates that the Ifrinjī slaves comprised the largest sub-group in the slave population recorded in the Galata court between the years 1560-1572. For a detailed breakdown of their numbers, see the appendices to chapter three, Tables 1 – 3 and Figures 1 – 3, for a description of the origins of the slaves in Galata 14/2, 14/3 and 14/4 court registers. The slaves labelled as Ifrinjī in the court registers number 259 of the total 564 slaves, therefore comprising 46% of the Galata slaves. In the Galata 14/2 court register, they represent 49% (59 out of 120 slaves), in the Galata 14/3, 53% (167 out of 313 slaves), and in the Galata 14/4, 25% (33 out of 131 slaves). No other group was so large, and a conceivable reason for its size is the wide scope of the term Ifrinjī itself, which encompassed numerous peoples from a sizable geographical area. A group closely related to the Ifrinjī and most likely co-religionists as well was the division of enslaved labourers labelled Malṭāwī. Presumably, these slaves were Catholic and, thus Frankish. However, the term Malṭāwī was often employed as an Ottoman shorthand for ›pirate‹, 177 thus rendering the distinction between persons originating from Malta and those who were committing piracy in the Mediterranean on the side of ›Christendom‹ somewhat difficult. It is also arguable that, because of their linguistic heritage, as a Romance-influenced dialect of Arabic was (and is) spoken on Malta, they were easily distinguishable from their cousins on the Italian peninsula. While the Malṭāwī slaves were not numerically significant, only comprising, respectively 2%, 2% and 1% of the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 court registers, the distinction made in the bureaucratic terminology to identify their origins is noteworthy. (See Tables 1-3 and Figures 1-3 for percentage breakdown by defter.) An176 B. Lewis and J.F.P. Hopkins, ›Ifrandj, or Firandj‹, EI2. 177 Many thanks to Joshua White, a researcher of sixteenth-century Mediterranean piracy based at of the University of Virginia, for pointing out the significance of this term to me.

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other excellent example of the ability to recognise rather fine distinctions among the slaves’ origins is the term Janūwīz (Genoese), which occurs also in the Galata court registers and is applied to exactly three slaves. The use of this very specific term signifies that the Genoese were considered, along with the Maltese and Cypriots, to be a species apart from the generic Frank. Whereas the terms Ifrinjī, Malṭāwī, and Janūwīz almost certainly referred to the enslaved persons of the Latin rite, other locutions were applied to those who professed faith in the Orthodox church. Like the term Ifrinjī, the adjective Rūm or Rūmī178 had been used for centuries in the Islamic world; while it was used to designate the ›Romans‹, in practice, the term also came to be used to describe the Greeks of Asia minor. 179 Enslavements of Greeks, that is to say, Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians, had a protracted history in the Mediterranean that knew no religious boundaries. Genoese and Venetian slave dealers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries dealt in slaves from the Byzantine Empire; the fact that the enslaved individuals could be considered coreligionists did not in any way dissuade the Italian slave dealers from plying their trade.180 After the fall of the Byzantine Empire and the expansion of the Ottomans through Anatolia and the Balkans, the enslavement of any Christians living under Ottoman rule was rendered unlawful, although the illegal enslavement of dhimmīs did occur under certain circumstances.181 However, it is nearly impossible to conclude that the term Rūmī in the Galata court registers referred to Greeks originating in Anatolia. Rather, it is probable that this term was used to classify the Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians captured from those Aegean islands not under Ottoman sovereignty, or throughout the rest of the Mediterranean, such as Greek speaking communities of Sicily or 178 For a detailed discussion of this term and its meaning in the context of Ottoman identity, see Salih Özbaran, Bir Osmanlı Kimliği: 14.-17. Yüzyıllarda Rûm/Rûmi Aidiyet ve Imgeleri (Istanbul, 2004), ›Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda ›Rûm‹, ›Rûmi‹ ve ›Türk‹ I‹, 89-98 and ›Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda ›Rûm‹, ›Rûmi‹ ve ›Türk‹ II‹, 99-108 include particularly useful and insightful commentary. While the term ›Rūmī‹ could indeed apply to Muslim Ottoman elites or even to Anatolian Turks as a geographical designation of origin, it is rather improbable that the term ›Rūmī‹ signified either of these groups in the context of maritime slavery. 179 Nadia el-Cheikh and C.E. Bosworth, ›Rūm‹, EI2. 180 On the history of the enslavement of Greeks in the Mediterranean, see Balard, La Romanie Genoise, vol. II, 797: the principle markets for Greek slaves were Crete, Cyprus, and the Aegean islands in particular Naxos. The slaves sold in these markets originated from Thessaloniki, Almyros, Negrepont, Caffa, Varna, Trebizonde, Constantinople. The status of Greek slaves could often be vague, as they in theory were Christians and thus could not be enslaved by their co-religionists; however, the Catholics often did not consider the Orthodox to be their co-religionists. 181 See Vatin, ›Une affaire interne‹, 149-190 for an insightful analysis of this phenomenon. Also: Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, 24.

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Puglia.182 The numbers of slaves bearing this appellation fluctuated from 3% in the Galata 14/2 court register to 2% in the 14/3 register to 0% in Galata 14/4 (see Tables 1-3, and Figures 1-3 for a breakdown of these percentages across the three defters). Distinct from the generic label Rūmī is the more specific locution Qubrūsī, which became prominent in the Galata 14/4 court register during the Ottomans siege of Cyprus, which lasted from 1571-73. It is also arguable that the island of Cyprus would presumably have been host to numerous inhabitants with a knowledge of sailing, hence the forced transportation of many of these captives to Galata, the Ottoman’s centre of Mediterranean seafaring and shipbuilding. While such a claim is based on supposition, the logical interpretation of the sudden appearance of a striking influx of slaves labelled as Cypriots in the Galata 14/4 court register (see Table 3 and Figure 3) in the years 1571-1572 was an effusion of captives from the long siege and eventual Ottoman victory over Cyprus. It is significant that a distinction was drawn between Qubrūsī and Rūmī. The obvious explanation for this division is Cyprus’ mixed population, comprised of Venetians, French nobles from the Lusignan period, Greek orthodox families (many members of the previous three groups had also intermarried), and presumably many Venetian citizens in Cyprus who were technically Greek - in the sense that they were Greek-speaking, born outside of Venice, and members of the Orthodox church. It would thus have been difficult at times to determine unequivocally who should be assigned the labels Ifrinjī or Rūmī. As the distinction between these two groups was thus blurred, a third moniker, Qubrūsī (a term whose presence is not witnessed in the Galata 14/2 and 14/3 court registers at all, see Figures 1-2 and Tables 1-2), was employed for recording the origins of these slaves. A related category to the ›Mediterranean‹ slaves detailed above is that of slaves originating in the Balkans, along the Adriatic coast, specifically, the slaves designated as Albanian and Bosnian. The Albanian slaves,183 labelled as Arnawūtī, comprised a tiny slice of the Galata slave population, only appearing in the Galata 14/3 register as 2% of the population of slaves occurring in that particular court register (see Table 2 and Figure 2). In addition to the slaves captured in the Medi terranean and Aegean, it may be surmised that the slaves designated as Arnawūtī were Albanian villagers captured in the course of Adriatic piracy, 184 who presum182 On Greek slaves, see: Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova, p. 43-44. The legitimacy of enslaving Orthodox Christian Greeks was disputed in many areas of the Mediterranean basin. 183 On the history of the enslavement of Albanians in the Mediterranean, see Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova, 48. 184 For a discussion of the phenomenon of piracy in the Adriatic, see: Suraiya Faroqhi, ›Ottoman views on corsairs and piracy in the Adriatic‹, in The Kapudan Pasha: His Office and his Domain, ed. Elizabeth Zachariadou (Rethymon, 2002), 357-370 and Maria Pia Pedani, ›Beyond the frontier: the Ottoman-Venetian border in the Adriatic context from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries‹ Zones of Fracture in Modern Europe: the Baltic Countries, the Balkans, and Northern Italy, ed. Almut Bues (Wiesbaden, 2005), 45-60

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ably hailed from Christian villages. Like the other groups described here, they were also historically subject to enslavement by Christian slave traders. 185 Despite the likelihood of the Arnawūtī slaves belonging to the Ottoman reaya, this does not rule out their enslavement, as the mühimme registers bear witness to cases involving the enslavement of Christian Ottoman reaya by unscrupulous pirates and raiders.186 Furthermore, these slaves could have been rebellious Albanians captured in battle, or in border raids, or even Albanian-speakers from other parts of the Mediterranean, such as Sicily or southern Italy, a location to which many Albanians fled in the late fifteenth century. 187 Similarly, Busnāwī188 (Bosnian) slaves consisted of a rather small 6% of the slaves of the Galata 14/2 court register, 9% in the Galata 14/3 court register, and 5% in the Galata 14/4 court register (see Tables 1-3 and Figures 1-3). As mentioned above, as it was illegal for Ottomans to enslave their own dhimmīs and reaya, it seems odd that Bosnian slaves were present in the Galata court records of the sixteenth century, particular as many Bosnians had converted to Islam by this period. However, the mid- to late sixteenth century did witness Ottoman military movements in Bosnia, which implied the taking of prisoners among rebellious elements, who would have forfeited their rights of protection as ahl al-dhimma.189 Unscrupulous piracy in the Adriatic, along the coast of the Bosna eyaleti, was another probable source of the Busnāwī slaves who whose fate took them to the Galata slave market. Having briefly examined how the groups of slaves taken from the Mediterranean basin were labelled, it is possible to surmise how they may have been captured. The mid- to late sixteenth century is often viewed by historians as the apex of Ottoman sea power, in both an official naval capacity and in terms of the equally influential privateers and pirates operating out of Ottoman ports. Braudel for instance argues that the victory at Prevesa in 1538 gave the Ottomans, or rather, the Islamic half of the Mediterranean, control over the seas, and that this period constituted the a great age of corsairing, famously witnessing the rise of piracy stemming from the North Africa coast. 190 It is rather more accurate to claim 185 Concerning Albanian slaves in the Mediterranean in the pre-Ottoman period, they occur in Genovese notarial records: five recorded during the period 1400-1450, and three from 1450-1475, and then 29 from 1475-1500, according to Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova, 48. 186 Vatin, ›Une affaire interne‹, 149-190. 187 S.E. Mann and Halil İnalcık, ›Arnawutluk, the Ottoman Turkish name for Albania‹, EI2. 188 On the history of the enslavement of Bosnians in the Mediterranean, see: Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova, 48-49. In the last 25 years of the fifteenth century, they make up 50% of the Balkan slaves. 189 B. Djurdjev, ›Bosna (Bosnia and Herzegovina)‹, EI2. 190 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Sian Reynolds (London, 1972 vol. I, 1973 vol. II, with continuous page numbering), 872-873.

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that piracy throughout the entire Mediterranean and Adriatic flourished during this period, as it became an important source of captives who could satisfy the constant need for manual labour in the flourishing port cities of the Ottoman Empire. Further Ottoman naval advances from this period include those of Piyale Paşa, the Ottoman Kapudan Paşa from 1559-1560, such as the Ottomans’ victory at Jerba in 1560191 against Phillip II’s admiral, Gian Andrea Doria, which successfully widened the Ottoman Empire’s sphere of influence in the central Mediterranean.192 De Busbecq described the return of the Ottoman fleet to Istanbul on September 27, 1560 as an event occasioning much pomp and parading of the numerous prisoners taken during this naval campaign. He also highlights the central role played by battles and raiding in forcibly recruiting labour into the Ottoman Empire.193 While it may seem that there is no need to reiterate the well-known facts of Ottoman naval history here, in reality, the victory in Jerba with its huge return of captives provides a possible explanation for the fluctuations in the labour market of Galata and the role that slaves played in it. Furthermore, the eventual fate of the numerous captives taken at this battle has not heretofore been identified, although the magnitude of the Spanish fleet’s loss of men has been pointed out in secondary studies of the period, worth quoting in full to clarify the value and importance of ship crews taken at sea: The outcome of the 1560 European coalition campaign near Jerba by the North African shores illustrates this point. The encounter ended in a clear Ottoman victory, and it took years before the Papal, Spanish, and Sicilian navies were restored to their former power. They lost hundreds of ships, some being captured, others sunk. The real loss, however, was in skilled manpower: hundreds of sea captains, technically proficient crew members, seasoned soldiers and sailors, as well as thousands of oarsmen. Likewise the Ottomans felt that the principal damage of their defeat at Lepanto (1571) consisted of the men they lost.194 The enormous influx of slaves with seafaring knowledge and experience bearing Spanish or Italianate names into Galata immediately after the Battle of Jerba sug191 For a contemporary account of this event, see Katip Çelebi, Tuhfetü’l-Kibar Fî Esfari’lBihar (Istanbul, 1973), 108. 192 For the Ottoman version of events, see: A. Bombaci, ›Le fonti Turche della battaglia delle Gerbe (1560)‹, Rivista degli studi orientali 19 (1941), 193-248; Rivista degli studi orientali, 20 (1942), 279-304; Rivista degli studi orientali 21 (1946), 189-218; Katip Çelebi, Tuhfetü’l-Kibar Fî Esfari’l-Bihar (Istanbul, 1973), 108. 193 Busbecq, Turkish Letters, 70. 194 Miri Shefer Mossensohn, ›Medical treatment in the Ottoman navy in the early modern period‹ JESHO 50/7 (2007), 557.

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gests that the fate and location of these captives after their transportation to the Ottoman Empire was Galata and the tersane-yi amire, the imperial Ottoman shipyard. On the tail of this maritime triumph, Sultan Süleyman ordered the governors of the North African provinces to prepare for a naval attack on Malta. 195 The preparations for an imperial campaign against Malta clearly instigated greater activity in the tersane of Istanbul, as it was the main site for the construction and repair of the Ottoman fleet that would participate in this future campaign. Hence, the Galata tersane in the period 1560-1565 was a beehive of activity, requiring much larger numbers of manual and skilled labourers in possession of shipbuilding and repairing skills, a need that may have been met by the captive crews of Gian Andrea Doria’s ships taken at Jerba. Of course, this is speculation and requires further corroboration from archival documents, but the possibility of such a concatenation of events must be highlighted. In contrast to the Ottoman success at Jerba in 1560, the siege of Malta, which began on May 19, 1565, 196 did not proceed well. While the Ottomans had sent from Istanbul a fleet of one-hundred and eighty ships, the corsairs of North Africa did not join the siege until mid-summer. The death of Turgut Reis also greatly affected the operation, and combined with the high Ottoman casualties and the arrival of Christian relief forces from Messina, was enough to cause an Ottoman withdrawal on September 12, 1565.197 However, the Ottomans were more successful in 1566 with the taking of Chios, 198 and then in 1570-1571 with the campaign against Cyprus and eventual victory. 199 As with the Ottoman victory of 1560, there was also a direct correlation between the victory in Cyprus and an increase in the number of Cypriot slaves appearing in the Galata court registers. The clearest example of this trend is the rise in the numbers, as well as the proportion relative to the rest of the slave population, of Cypriot slaves in the Galata 14/4 court register, dated 1570-1572, in which there were 23 Cypriot slaves (roughly 20% of the slave population recorded in the Galata 14/4 register, see Table 3 and Figure 3), in contrast to the earlier the Galata 14/2 register, in which only one Cypriot slave was present (roughly 1% of the slave population, see Table 1 and Figure 1), as compared with the complete absence of Cypriot slaves in the 14/3 195 Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 84. 196 Description of the attack on Malta, see Katip Çelebi, Tuhfetü’l-Kibar Fî Esfari’l-Bihar, 108119; Francisco Balbi, Diario dell’assedio di Malta 18 maggio - 8 settembre 1565 (Rome, 1965); Ibid, The Siege of Malta, 1565, trans. Ernle Bradford (London, 2005). 197 For an account of the death of Turgut Reis, see Katip Çelebi, Tuhfetü’l-Kibar Fî Esfari’lBihar, 116; Hess, Forgotten Frontier, 84-85. 198 The Ottoman naval excursion to Chios (Sakız Seferi): Katip Çelebi, Tuhfetü’l-Kibar Fî Esfari’l-Bihar, 120-122. For contemporary Genoese accounts of this event, see Phillip P. Argenti, Chius Vincta or The Occupation of Chios by the Turks (1566) and Their Administration of the Island 1566-1912 (Cambridge, 1941). 199 Katip Çelebi, Tuhfetü’l-Kibar Fî Esfari’l-Bihar, 128-146. For the other side’s account of these events, see Florio Bustron, Historia overo commentarii de Cipro (Paris, 1886).

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court register (see Table 2 and Figure 2). Thus, it is can be observed that the successfully concluded siege of Cyprus occurred at the same time as a marked increase in Cypriot slaves recorded in the Galata court registers, which gives an indication of where the captives from this conflict were taken. However, in addition to pitched naval battles that constituted officially declared imperial campaigns, the Mediterranean and the surrounding areas in the second half of the sixteenth century witnessed much piracy as well. 200 Capture at sea seems to have been a fairly common misfortune befalling maritime travellers in the sixteenth century, with famous figures such as Cervantes and Leo Africanus among the most well-known victims of this phenomenon. Several lesser known contemporary authors’ narratives describe capture at sea vividly. 201 In attempting to explain how such large number of Frankish, Maltese, Greek and Cypriot persons came to be transported to Istanbul as slaves, it is arguable that capture at sea in the sixteenth century contributed to the flow of forced migration into the Ottoman Empire. In addition to the Mediterranean slaves, several other ethnic categorisations were assigned to slaves in the Galata court registers. The plausible provenance of the slaves labelled as Abāzāwī, Jirkasī, Kurjī, Mighrilī, and Rūs was the area around the Black Sea, namely the Caucasus and the Ukrainian steppe. The reason for grouping these seemingly disparate categories of slaves together is the mode in which they were most likely captured, namely, in the slave raids carried out by the Crimean Tatars. The numerous slaves who were assigned the designation Rūs, it is arguable, came from what is now Ukraine and possibly even as far north as Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy. The geographers of the Islamic world often confused the different groups from the Caucasus, with its mosaic of tribes and languages, and thus the Black Sea slaves’ origins are at times complicated to unravel. The terms Abāzāwī, Abkhāz, Kurjī, Jirkasī, and Mighrilī were historically confounded by Islamic geographers and chroniclers.202 The label Abāzāwī can be considered to refer to a person originating in the Abaza tribe; the Abāzāwī and Abkhāz are treated as the same cat200 Braudel, The Mediterranean in the Age of Phillip II, 866-867. Braudel and many other authors distinguish between ›privateering‹, which was sanctioned officially by the authorit ies (be they Ottoman or Venetian or Hapsburg) and had an unspoken code of behaviour regarding the customs and ways of carrying out the capture of goods or persons, the socalled ›usanza del mare‹. Piracy, on the other hand, is defined by some as mere violence at sea for the sake of a profit, unregulated by any code or religio-political justification or rhetoric. However, for our purposes of understanding how persons were captured and enslaved in the early modern Mediterranean, we will consider all types of sea-bound kidnapping activities under the same umbrella, as our intention here is to understand the logistics of how the slaves recorded in the Galata court registers came to be there. 201 Menavino, I costumi, et la vita de Turchi, 5; Heberer, Osmanlıda bir Köle, 73-75. 202 W. Barthold, ›Abkhāz‹, EI2.

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egory for the purpose of grouping together slaves of similar geographical origins.203 This tribe in the sixteenth century inhabited lands on the Kuban river, living as nomads in this area of the north-west Caucasus, 204 along the shores of the Black Sea, south of the lands of the Circassians and west of the Georgians. 205 As with numerous other groups from this geographical area, they were traded as slaves in both Muslim and Christian lands.206 The term Abāzāwī is used to describe between 1.5% to 4% of the total slave population, depending on the time period in question, decreasing from 4% in the Galata 14/2 court register to 2% of the total slave population in the Galata 14/3 court register and finally reaching a nadir at 1.5% by the year of the Galata 14/4 court register (see Tables 1-3 and Figures 1-3). A group that was often considered to overlap with the Abaza is the Jirkasī 207 (here transliterated according to the orthography of the Galata court registers) or, alternatively in Ottoman parlance, Çerkes, translated into English as Circassian.208 Occupying the north-west Caucasus, the eastern coast of the Black Sea and peninsula of Taman, the Circassians were related to the Abaza through cultural and geographical proximity.209 The Circassians have a protracted history of enslavement in the Italian peninsula210 and forced migration into Islamic lands, extending back to their transportation as slaves into Mamluk Egypt in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to serve as slave soldiers. 211 The Circassians were also subject to forced migration into Ottoman lands as slaves in the nineteenth century, when large numbers of Circassian refugees, including agricultural slaves, flooded into the Ottoman lands after the Crimean war. 212 The proportion of Circassians relative to the rest of the Galata slave population, like that of the Abaza, decreased over 203 M. Sadık Bilge, Osmanlı Devleti ve Kafkasya: Osmanlı Varlığı Döneminde Kafkasya’nın Siyasi-Askeri Tarihi ve İdari Taksimatı 1454-1829 (Istanbul, 2005), 19. 204 A. Bennigsen, ›Beskesek-abaza (or Beshkesek Abaza)‹, EI2. 205 Bilge, Osmanlı Devleti ve Kafkasya, 19. 206 Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova, 25-26. Abkhazian Slaves (also called Avogasi or Abasii) were not particularly numerous in Genoa’s slave market in the 15th century. 207 The transcription of this term, more typically rendered as Çerkes in Turkish scholarship, reflects its orthography in the Galata court registers, which, when transcribed according to the IJMES system, results in ›Jirkasī‹. 208 Bilge, Osmanlı Devleti ve Kafkasya, 18. 209 D. Ayalon, Halil İnalcık, Ch. Quelquejay, ›Čerkes‹, EI2. 210 For a history of the enslavement of Circassians in the Mediterranean, see Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova, 22-24. According to Gioffrè, Circassians made up the majority of the Genoese slave trade in the 15th century. Circassian society was very stratified, with princes, notables, servants, and slaves, who were sold by their fellow Circassians and were a large part of the economy. Circassians constitute 53% of the ›Oriental‹ (as De Gioffre calls them) slaves in the 15th-century Genoese slave market. In the first half of the century, there are 28 men out of 130 total slaves—22.5% of the total. 211 Fisher, ›Muscovy and the Black sea slave trade‹, 29. 212 Toledano, ›Agricultural slavery among the Ottoman Circassians‹, 83-84; Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, 57.

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time, beginning at 8% of the total slaves in the Galata 14/2 court register, dropping slightly to 7% in the Galata 14/3 court register, and eventually declining to just 4% of the slave population by the time of the Galata 14/4 court register (see Tables 1-3 and Figures 1-3). The neighbours of the Abaza and Circassians, Kurjī or Georgians,213 occur as a portion of the Galata slave population, closely related, linguistically and culturally, to the Lāz and Mingrelians.214 Occupying the southern Caucasus, bordering on the Abaza and Mingrelians to the west, the Ottomans and Safavids to the south, and the Chechens and Avars to the east, the Georgians played a central role in the politics of the area. In terms of their numbers in the Ottoman lands, there were no obvious ›Georgian‹ slaves in the Galata 14/2 court register; however, Georgian slaves comprised 3% of the slave population in the Galata 14/3 court register, dwindling to slightly less than 1% of slaves in the Galata 14/4 court register. Accordingly, they were not an overly important part of the slave population in Galata and not as prevalent in Galata’s slave population as their neighbours, the Abaza and Circassians. Another Black Sea people related to the Georgians were the Mingrelians.215 Situated in the western Caucasus, living to the south of the Abaza and to the west of the Georgians, 216 this group comprised 4% of the slave population in the Galata 14/2 court register, dropping to 1% of the population in the Galata 14/4, and then rising to its former proportion of 4% in the Galata 14/4 court register (see Tables 1-3 and Figures 1-3). After Frankish slaves, the slaves designated as Rūs constituted the second largest group among the slave population documented in the Galata court registers. While they began at only 5 to 6% of the Galata slave population, in the 14/3 and 14/2 court registers respectively (see Figures 1-2 and Tables 1-2), the Rūs slaves comprised 15% of the slaves recorded in the Galata 14/4 sicil by 1571 (see Figure 3 and Table 3). This occurred in the same year that the Crimean Tatar ruler, Khan Devlet Girei, commanded a large military excursion deep into Muscovy and undertook devastating slave raids in the area.217 The Rūs, whose territory was located on the western shore of the Black Sea and extended north-west toward Muscovy and Poland-Lithuania, were a population that suffered enslavement throughout the ages, at the hands of both Christian and 213 While their name is transcribed from the court registers in Arabic as ›Kurj‹ or ›Kurji‹, it was presumably pronounced in Ottoman Turkish as Gürgi or Gürgü. 214 V. Minorsky, ›al- Kurdj , Gurdj, Gurdjistān‹, EI2. According to Hakan Erdem, Georgia was a traditional source of slaves for the Ottoman Empire: Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, 55. 215 In the court registers they are termed Mighrīlī and in modern Turkish, Meğrel. Mingrelians, who are neighbours of the Abkhazes, were also historically victims of the slave trade carried out by the Genoese: see, Balard La Romanie Genoise, vol II, 792. They are also mentioned as a source of slaves for Genoese slave-traders in the fifteenth century: Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova, 27. 216 Bilge, Osmanlı Devleti ve Kafkasya, 231. 217 Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe 1500-1700, 16.

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Muslim slave traders.218 While the term Rūs had an extensive and varied history among Arabic geographers, by the late sixteenth century in the Ottoman Empire, the appellation Rūs had come in many cases to refer to the Ukrainian cossacks. 219 Counting all of the Abaza, Circassian, Georgian, Mingrelian, and Rūs slaves in the three court registers, they number one-hundred and twelve slaves, and comprise approximately 20% of the total slave population over the period 1560-1571, suggesting that indeed this area of the world did function as a ›human reservoir‹ of forced labour for the Islamic world, which was ›harvested‹ from the areas surrounding the Black Sea by nomadic Crimean Tatar raiders.220 Just as a parallel between the increase in piracy and pitched naval battles in the Mediterranean corresponded to a marked rise in the number of specific types of Mediterranean slaves appearing in the Galata court register in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, a similar correlation can be identified between the scale of Tatar raiding activities and the increase in numbers of slaves originating from the areas around the Black Sea. Of course it is impossible to establish a direct causal relationship with the evidence at hand between those events but the correlation is striking and certainly worth observing. The ruler of the Crimean Tatars contemporaneous with the Ottoman court registers under examination was Khan Devlet Girei I (ruled 1551-1577), who attacked Poland-Lithuania in 1557-1558 but primarily concentrated on leading the Tatar army on violent incursions into Muscovy throughout the second half of the sixteenth century. However, the Crimean Tatar invasion of Muscovy in 1571 was particularly catastrophic and famous for its enormous haul of victims; the Tatars managed to reach Moscow, which was burned, and took many thousands of captives, with estimates running between 100,000 to 150,000 enslaved.221 While these numbers seem to be hyperbole, the implication that the Crimean Tatars and Nogais enslaved staggering numbers from among the peasantry of Poland-Lithuania, Ukraine, Muscovy, and Circassia is clear. Not only was slave-raiding essential to the economy of both the Crimean Khanate and the Nogai Tatar economy,222 but due to frequent droughts (in particular, the very harsh drought of 1560), the Nogai Tatars were forced to pursue slave raiding as their primary 218 Russians, who make up part of this group of ›pontic‹ slaves are widely traded until 1453, see: Balard, La Romanie Genoise, vol II, 790; Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova, 17-21. In the first fifty years of the 15th century (i.e., 1400-1450), Circassians and Rūssians are the most prevalent group of slaves in Genoa. 219 P.B. Golden, ›Rūs‹, EI2. For another view of this term and a revision of Golden’s interpretation, see: James E. Montgomery, ›Ibn Faḍlān and the Rūsiyyah‹ Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 3 (2000), 1-25. 220 Fisher, ›Muscovy and the Black Sea‹,27. 221 Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe 1500-1700, 16-17. 222 Mária Ivanics, ›Enslavement, slave labour and the treatment of captives in the Crimean khanate‹, 193, 195. Even with a small force, the Tatars could capture large numbers of Rūssian, Polish, and Circassian peasants, particularly during the winter period.

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means of making a living, for agriculture was not viable during periods of drought.223 These winter raids have been described in detail by a French engineer, Sieur de Beauplan, who was employed as an engineer in the army of the PolishLithuanian commonwealth, who travelled widely in the geographical area of Ukraine. He was an astute contemporary eye-witness to life in Ukraine, recording the manner in which both Ukrainian peasants and Tatar raiders lived, as well as how the latter raided and enslaved the former. 224 There also exist eye-witness accounts of the Tatar raids on the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth in the period at hand.225 The numerous trails which the Tatars and Nogais followed into Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth in these raids have been exhaustively researched and verify the origins of the slaves who arrived in Istanbul in the period immediately following these incursions.226 The arrival in Istanbul of slaves from Muscovy, transported by ship by Tatars, was corroborated by contemporary eyewitnesses as well.227 In addition to slaves originating in the Mediterranean and the areas surrounding the Black Sea, a rather small group of slaves were the Majarī (Hungarian)228 who were most likely were captured in land battles or border raiding 229 (by elements other than the Crimean Tatars) as the lands from which they originated lay along the western border of the Ottoman Empire. A plausible explanation for the presence of these slaves in the court registers is the Ottoman’s army activities in Hungary in the period under examination, with the occupation of Szigetvár and 223 As discussed by Gilles Veinsten in his article, ›La grande sécheresse de 1560 au nord de la mer noire: perceptions et réactions des autorités ottomans‹, in Natural disasters in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Elizabeth Zachariadou (Rethymon, 1999). 224 Sieur de Beauplan, A Description of Ukraine, 48-51. 225 Martini de Biezdzfedea Broniovii, Tartariae Descriptio acte hac in lucem numquam edita, cum tabula geographica eiusdem Chersonesus Tauricae, ed. Arnoldi Mylij (Coloniae Agrippinae, Officina Birckmannica), 21-24; Jan of Komorowo, ›Memoriales Ordiniis Fratrum Minorum Fr. Ioannes de Komorowo Compilatum‹, ed. X. Liske & A. Lorkiewicz, Monumenta Poloniae Historica 5 (Lwów, 1888), 268-273. My thanks to Natalia Nowakowska of Oxford University for directing me to this reference. 226 Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe 1500-1700, 19-20. 227 Heberer, Osmanlıda bir Köle, 312. 228 Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova, 52-53. On Hungarian and Wallachian Slaves (Gli Schiavi Ungheresi e Vallacchi): the enslavement of these individuals was the result of Turkish ›razzie‹ (raids) in Southern Hungary. During this periods were the defeats at Nicopolis in 1396, Varna 1444, and Kosovo 1448. Most of the slaves described by Gioffrè were purchased in the island of Chios. 229 For a fuller discussion of the phenomenon of border raiding and ransom slavery with a particular focus on Hungarian-Ottoman border, see: Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, eds. Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Leiden, 2007); and in particular, the relevant chapters: Géza Dávid, ›Manumitted male slaves at Galata and Istanbul around 1700‹, 183191; Klára Hegyi, ›Freed slaves as soldiers in the Ottoman fortresses in Hungary‹, 85-91, and Géza Pálffy, ›Ransom slavery along the Ottoman-Hungarian frontier in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries‹, 35-83, as well as Zsuzsanna J. Újváry, ›A Muslim captive’s vicissitudes in Ottoman Hungary mid-seventeenth century‹, 141-167.

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Gyula taking place in 1566.230 Such military undertakings provided ample captives for the Istanbul slave market, and slave raiding in battle was one of the ways for soldiers to turn a profit.231 Comprising, respectively, 3% (Galata 14/2 court register, see Table 1 and Figure 1), 5% (Galata 14/3 court register, see Table 2 and Figure 2), and 4% (Galata 14/4 court register, see Table 3 and Figure 3) of the total slaves, the Majarī were not a negligible portion of the slave population. The arrival of numerous Majar slaves into Istanbul is reported by Michael Heberer, although he claims that they were very unpopular on the slave market and no buyers were to be found.232 Having discussed the major groups of slaves and the probable methods by which they were captured and transported to Istanbul, the discussion now turns to the slaves who originated farther afield: Almān, Hindī, and Ḥabashī slaves. These three groups of slaves are difficult to fit into a particular geographical trend of slavery in Ottoman Galata, so the attempt has not been made to forcibly and artificially insert them into one of the above groups according to the method by which they were captured, which is unknown. The Ottomans seem to have continued the traditions of the Byzantines, and numerous other societies, and imported slaves from far-off locations as a form of luxury good. 233 While they are not particularly numerous, the presence of these more ›exotic‹ slaves in Galata is nonetheless meaningful, as it demonstrates the far reach of the Ottoman slave market. Occurring only in the Galata 14/3 court register (see Table 2 and Figure 2), the three slaves labelled as Almān may perhaps be tentatively identified as German. It is significant that such a distinction should have been made. As recent research has demonstrated, the awareness of theological debates taking place in Europe was not absent from Ottoman intellectual circles and resulted also in knowledge of which peoples espoused which doctrines. 234 Moreover, a sixteenth-century captive, Michael Heberer, directly affirms the Ottomans’ knowledge of the religious disputes occurring in Europe at the time, with a formerly Catholic convert to Islam characterising Germans somewhat broadly as ›Luther’s dogs‹. It is not unlikely that the Ottoman captors of the Almān slaves, and the scribes in Galata, would have made the same association between religion and origins. 235 230 231 232 233 234

T. Lewicki and Gy. Káldy-Nagy, ›Majar, Majarīstān‹, EI2. Busbecq, Turkish Letters, 70. Heberer, Osmanlıda bir Köle, 255. Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, 57. See: Tijana Krstić, ›Illuminated by the light of Islam and the glory of the Ottoman sultanate: self-narratives of conversion to Islam in the age of confessionalization‹, Comparative Studies in Society and History 51/1 (2009), 35-63. 235 Heberer, Osmanlıda bir Köle, 87-88: After being shipwrecked and captured upon reaching shore, Heberer and his companions are shackled in caves. The wali (governor) of Alexandria, a ›renegade‹, went to the caves where the Heberer and the others were being held by the ›Africans‹, to take the prisoners from these ›Africans‹, as the goverment held rights over the captives. The wali addressed the prisoners in Italian, and asked if there was a Ger-

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The remaining two groups of slaves did not figure largely in the Galata slave population, but their presence must be addressed. The few slaves labelled as Ḥabashī hailed most likely from what is now Ethiopia, and arrived in Istanbul through an organised trade network operating in East Africa that supplied the Ottoman Empire with its African slaves. Significantly, there are very few Ḥabashī, or other African, slaves mentioned in the Galata court registers. A single slave described as al-ʿArab al-Yurūbī was present, but he has not been counted in later statistics, as his presence was rare and was not indicative of any sort of greater trend in Galata.236 The even fewer slaves characterised as Hindī were most likely inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent, east of the Indus river, although the term Hindī could also be used to describe any of the populations of the Indian subcontinent and ›Malay‹.237 It is possible that these slaves, whose origins were truly distant, were brought back to Istanbul from the ḥājj, when pilgrims would often bring a slave or two to sell in Mecca so as to pay for their return journey. 238 To conclude this description of patterns of slaves’ ›ethnicity‹ across the three Galata court registers, it is immediately observable that the makeup of the origins of slaves undergoes a change over time. In the Galata 14/2 and 14/3 defters (see Figures 1 and 2), the Ifrinjī slaves dominate the slave population, with 49% and 53% of the slaves categorised as Franks (these percentages would be higher if slaves labelled as Maltese and Genoese were included in this calculation). In contrast, in the Galata 14/4 register (see Figure 3), there were fewer numbers of Franks in comparison to their previous registers and also fewer Franks in proportion to the other ethnic groups of slaves. For instance, there was a marked increase in the number of Rūs and Cypriot slaves, for possible reasons discussed above. The number of slaves whose origins could not be discerned for lack of scribal diligence (for instance, when origins were either omitted or written so carelessly as to be illegible) had also increased markedly. The correlation between Ottoman naval activities and trends in the ethnicities of Galata’s slaves is clearly evident, although greater documentary substantiation is of course necessary prior to drawing any solid conclusions. Interestingly, the male-female proportion changes markedly in Galata 14/4 in contrast to the previous two defters. In contrast to the rather low percentage of females in Galata 14/2 and 14/3 (31% and 27% man in the group, and when Heberer stepped forward, the Vali asked him whether he is ›like all Germans, one of Luther’s dogs?‹ At which point Heberer assumed that the Vali must be a Spanish renegade, and was therefore familiar about the divisions within Christianity (paraphrased from Turkish by the author). 236 Galata 14/4, page 45, hüccet 3. Meḥmed b. Meḥmed manumitted Ali b. Abdullah al-ʿarab, al-tuwil, al-afraq, al-ajrad, al-Yurūbī, on 14 Rajab, 979/ 2 December, 1571. He is described as being ʿArab and Yurūbī which would suggest that he was African, perhaps West African if my reading of the term Yurūbī is correct. By ajrad (i.e., hairless) perhaps the scribe intends to convey that the slave did not have a beard. 237 ›Hind‹, EI2 238 Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, 60.

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respectively), the percentage rises in Galata 14/4 to 44% (see Table 4 and Figure 4) many of whom were engaged in mukātaba contracts, unlike in Galata 14/2 and 14/3, in which only 10% and 2% of mukātaba contracts were held by females compared to 40% in Galata 14/4 (see appendix to Chapter 4, Tables 5, 6, and 7 for detailed information on the gender of slaves with work contracts).

Ottoman Elites and the Origins of Slaves The use of specific categories in the court registers to describe slave origins (Abāzāwī, Almān, Arnāwūt, Būsnāwī, Jirkasī, Kurjī, Ḥabashī, Hindī, Ifrinjī, Janūwīz, Majarī, Malṭāwī, Mighrīlī, Qubrūsī, Rūmī, Rūsī, and so forth) causes several questions to arise concerning the bureaucratic and legal culture that produced such forms of classification. Is not advisable to accept without question the labels assigned to the slaves in the court registers; it is possible that such terms reflected more the Ottoman understanding of where slaves should originate rather than where the slaves did originate. The above enumeration of slaves’ origins is short, considering the numerous subtleties and variations on ›ethnic‹, linguistic, and religious identity that inevitably exist even within a group that may seem to an outsider to be homogenous. The above list may be judged especially ›short‹ if the diversity of cultures and languages in the Mediterranean and Caucasus were taken into consideration. Such a truncated and homogenised list of descriptors brings to mind the current administrative fascination with ›ethnicity‹ whereby one is forced to fit oneself into a small box on a form that offers at its most generous perhaps a handful of choices describing one’s ›ethnic origins‹. Just as the current institutional list of permissible ›ethnicities‹ sheds more light on Anglo-American constructions of race and its politics than it does on a person’s origins or cultural identity, the Ottoman list of ›slave origins‹ perhaps clarifies the official sixteenth-century administrative understanding of whom it was permissible to enslave, or of who was an archetypal ›slave‹, rather than specifying where slaves genuinely originated with any precision, much less how an enslaved individual may have perceived his own origins or identity. While doubtless there was a connection between the geographical label assigned to a slave and the place where he did originate, the labels articulated a bur eaucratic and literary reality that negated much of the subtlety and detail concerning the slave’s identity. For instance, Ifrinjī or Jirkasī are terms that encompass very large geographical areas. These two terms, by way of example, also mask more about the slave’s origin than they reveal. While an Ifrinjī slave was indeed most likely from Europe, this descriptive term does not reveal anything of his local associations, i.e., which city he lived in, which family he belonged to,

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which dialect he spoke, and in this sense, it is not ›descriptive‹ but rather creates a new category. In this case, it creates a much more homogenous category, wherein the term Ifrinjī articulates a type of slave, as will be discussed below. The same could be said of Jirkasī, which like Ifrinjī, is a very general term that only gives the vaguest geographical indication of where the slave came from, and in the process, articulates a new category. As we shall see, these terms used to articulate ›types‹ of slaves are not limited to legal and bureaucratic usage, and represented ›types‹ within the literary culture of the Ottoman Empire as well, suggesting that such terms should be taken as signifiers of something more complex than ›origin‹. They signify a particularly Ottoman articulation of origin. This is not to say that these terms of origin are not ›accurate‹ – certainly, a Circassian slave actually did come from Circassia, and a Frankish slave from southern Europe, but the articulation of these categories in the Ottoman legal and literary sources of the period is more productive than descriptive, in the sense that a new category with a new meaning is created and ascribed to particular slaves. These categories of ›origin‹, which corresponded to particular topoi in Ottoman literary parlance of the period, therefore created a textual identity for the slaves more than they described slaves’ identity. Slaves already would presumably have possessed a more nuanced, less structured individual understanding of where they came from, which most likely did not correspond perfectly with the Ottoman taxonomy of origin, which will be discussed below. The need to state this difference between what terms such as Ifrinjī or Jirkasī claim to do in the court registers (to describe origin) and what they actually do (create literary and legal topoi of origin that signify a new and particularly Ottoman understanding of origin that renders the slaves readable and understandable in the context of elite Ottoman society) is important if we are to refine our conceptualisation of how processes of slavery and manumission functioned on a social level in early modern Ottoman Istanbul. Another relevant issue is whether the slave was present or not at his own manumission, or when the scribe penned his manumission document, and whether this would have affected the slave’s own articulation of his origins. Would he have adopted the new signifier of origin ascribed to him in the court document? Could this have been understood as the basis on which to seek patronage, with elites of a similar ›origin‹? Whether slaves were present or not at the writing of their manumission contract to hear (or suggest or alter) their categorisation as a particular aṣl is debatable, although certain contemporary captives indeed attended the writing of their own manumission document. 239 It can be surmised that these terms assigned the soon-to-be freed slave to a community group from which he could draw support and solidarity upon manumission; the degree to which he was 239 Michael Heberer claims to have been present at his own manumission in front of the judge and his scribe. Heberer, Osmanlıda bir Köle, 271-273.

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aware of this designation is of course debatable. 240 But nonetheless, the wide use of such categorisations hints at a social phenomenon extending beyond the court registers, as shall be seen. The possible interactions between bureaucratic and literary articulations of origin, and how these labels were used as the basis for political or social solidarity, are explored below. As is well known in the study of Ottoman social history, the process of elite formation was intimately tied to that of enslavement. The devşirme and the training of future administrators in the palace school are of course the best known examples. Giancarlo Casale, in his recent work on the Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean, has also identified slavery (as sailor rather than a galley slave) in the Ottoman navy as a route to gaining power and influence, and many of the pirates in the Mediterranean began their careers as slaves as well. 241 Slavery seems almost to be a prerequisite in the sixteenth century to becoming a notable in the service of the Ottoman state. Such patterns were indeed echoed in the dynastic politics of the era, as well as in the sultan’s increasing reliance on slave administrators in high positions and the role of the damad in government.242 In fact, it could be said that there was no true divide between these groups beyond the legal status of slave or free, and that the latter emerged to become the former with the passage of time, especially in the case of skilled slaves or talented household slaves. Rather, it can be claimed that these two groups drew on the same pool of individuals who possessed similar cultural and geographical origins, as many Ottoman elites were ex-slaves themselves. It should be specified that ›slave‹, in the way it is employed here (in its sense both as kul and köle), is given a general scope to include both persons captured haphazardly at war or sea, and those enslaved through the devşirme, as both types of slave underwent a transformative experience which served the purpose of acculturation to Ottoman social and political norms. If not the elite Ottoman himself, one or more of his parents was a slave or exslave, especially the mothers of elite men, many, if not most, of whom were concubines brought to Istanbul from the edges of the empire, thus suggesting their relative familiarity with the cultures, languages and geographical origins of many of the slaves in their own possession. As the boundaries between slaves and elites in sixteenth-century Istanbul were highly porous and even nonexistent, slaves after 240 For a further discussion of the theme of solidarity among ethno-linguistic groups, see: Kunt, ›Ethnic-regional (cins) solidarity in the seventeenth-century Ottoman establishment‹, 233-239. 241 For example, see Fray Diego de Haedo, Topografia e Historia de Argel (Madrid, 1927, revised edition of 1612 original), 89-91, for a representative list of pirates and their origins. Heber er, Osmanlıda Bir Köle, 136. Heberer’s owner was himself a Christian captive from the island of Pantelleria who converted to Islam and became an Ottoman reis. 242 Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford, 1993), 65. Damad literally means ›son-in-law‹ and referred to the administrative slaves who married Ottoman princesses.

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manumission eventually became masters themselves. Furthermore, through participation in battles, either on land or sea, slave-owning classes had some knowledge of the geography of the lands adjoining the Ottoman Empire, and would have in all likelihood participated in slave-capturing themselves.243 If slave owners were themselves former slaves and thus in many cases possessed nuanced knowledge of their slaves’ original cultures, then it is possible that the assignment of broad and facile labels such as Rūsī and Ifrinjī served the purpose of constructing a unified (or homogenous) and more inclusive identity for the specific groups of slaves and masters within Istanbul’s heterogeneous cultural and linguistic mosaic, to serve the purpose of the construction of communal identity. To examine whether the categories of ethnic origin in the Galata sicils enjoyed a wider social parlance outside of the sharīʿa court, we may turn to the literary works of the day, to identify whether such ethnic categories were maintained and what this may suggest about slave and elite identity formation and the construction of fictive kinship groups along lines of cins or aṣl in sixteenth century Istanbul. In their literary works, members of the Ottoman elite employed well defined tropes to depict the origins of their slaves, with whom they were often on terms that can only be described as intimate. The phenomenon of the ›Age of Beloveds‹ has been described at length and with great erudition by Mehmet Kalpaklı and Walter G. Andrews,244 wherein the relationship between slave boys, or generally, young men of a servile status, were the object of the affections of powerful and wealthy Ottoman men, who depicted these relationships in the poetry of the age. In addition to poetry on slaves, the advice literature of the period continues the tradition of discussing the importance for slave-owners of managing their slaves, who were often also their lovers. In particular, Mustafa Ali’s Mevāʾidün-Nefāʾis fī Kavāʿadi ’l-Mecālis provides much insight into the sixteenth-century Ottoman elite’s relationship with its slaves. Mustafa Ali, however, was drawing on a rich tradition of literature, that would also have been available to Ottomans, analysing the origins (in Arabic or Persian, jins was always the word used) of slaves and discussing the characteristics associated with various groups. We have not understood the historical depth of these cins-related terms correctly if we view them as mere geographical designations. The history of slaverelated literature demonstrates that specific tropes were employed to understand and classify slaves’ personalities and moral traits according both to a simplified topos of ›origin‹ as well as their physical traits (through ʿilm al-firāsa, or the art of reading physiognomy, which will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5). For 243 Robert Dankoff, An Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliya Çelebi (Leiden, 2006), 217. Evliya Çelebi claims to have participated in slave-raiding, in addition to taking numerous captives in other battles in which he participated. 244 Walter G. Andrews and Mehmet Kalpaklı, The Age of Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society (London, 2005), 39-40, 143.

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the time being, it will suffice that ʿilm al-firāsa was based on earlier neo-Platonic philosophies that posited a relationship between the outer form and the inner self.245 It is clear that the ability to read the physical characteristics of an individual and understand his inner qualities would have been essential knowledge to anyone in a position of authority or seeking to obtain authority. Ottoman elites read such tracts and considered firaset, as it was called, important for undertaking any administrative positions or for heading a household. The art of firāsa was also considered central to the selection of slaves and underlings;246 it is closely linked to Ottoman notions of cins, as both studying the physiognomy of a slave and reading his cins were methods of grasping what the slave’s inner qualities were and thus, controlling him better. Furthermore, a study of such literature, both firāsa and the poems and treatises on the cultural tropes associated with each cins, allows us to reconstruct how the slave owner perceived his slaves as he gazed at them with his supposed knowledge of their inner qualities gleaned from his readings in neo-Platonic and Persianate treatises on the topic of managing one’s inferiors. This trope of associating certain characteristics with servants and slaves of particular origins (cins) are evident from the earliest works of literature and science, from the 9th century, with the work of advice on purchasing slaves by the physician Ibn Buṭlān247, through the treatise of al-Jāḥiẓ, Kitāb Fakhr al-Sūdān ‛ala al-Bīḍān248, or The Boasts of the Blacks over the Whites. While the latter was primarily a work of polemic, it nonetheless illustrates the topos of associating particular characteristics with a specific cins of people. Religious scholars like the famous 15th-century Egyptian polymath Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyū ṭī engaged in such speculation on how particular traits, in this case virtuous traits, were a characteristic of a particular cins, namely the Ethiopians, in his short treatise, Rafʿ Shān alḤabashān,249 or Raising the Banner of the Ethiopians. Thus, it is clear that Mustafa Ali’s association of specific tropes of appearance and moral character with a cins

245 Robert Hoyland, ›The Islamic background to Polemon’s treatise‹ Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam, ed. Swain, Simon (Oxford, 2007), 238. 246 See Ibn Buṭlān, Trattato generale sull’acquisto degli schiavi, a translation of Risāla jamīʿa lifunūn nāfi’a fi shirāʾ al-raqīq wa taqlīb al-ʿabīd, ed. trans. Antonella Ghersetti (Catanzaro, 2001). On the importance of ›medical‹ expertise of slave’s faults upon or after purchase, see: Ron Shaham, who discusses the diagnoses of physical defects in female slaves in his recent book, Expert Witness in the Islamic Courts: Medicine and the Crafts in the Service of Islamic Law, 94-96. 247 Ibn Buṭlān, Trattato generale sull’acquisto degli schiavi. 248 For Arabic text and English translation, see: T. Khalidi, trans., ›The Boasts of the Blacks over the Whites (al-Jāḥiẓ)‹ The Islamic Quarterly 25/1-2 (1981), 3-51. 249 Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, Rafʿ Shān al-Ḥabashān, Süleymaniye Library, Reisülküttab 1148 and Reisülküttab 1149.

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was a well-established literary method of understanding and describing ethnic difference. If we examine some of the literature that may have influenced Mustafa Ali and other Ottomans that was also in circulation in the Ottoman Empire, one of the more obvious choices is the Kabusname, or Nasihatname of Keykavus b. Iskender (d. 1082 AD)250 of the Ziyarid dynasty, which ruled over Gilan, Tabaristan (Mazandaran) and Jurjan (Gurgan) on the southern shores of the Caspian sea. Keykavus wrote the Kabusname for his son, and any other interested parties, in order to share the wisdom he had gained while ruling a kingdom, which could be applied to the running of any successful household. 251 This influential literary work also associates specific characteristics with origins, suggesting that beyond understanding merely where one originated geographically, labels of origin bore a much more profound codified cultural and social significance that was understood by Ottomans educated in the traditions of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literature. The Kabusname was widely read in the Ottoman world in Turkish translation, 252 the most popular of which was the elegant translation by Mercimek Ahmed b. Ilyas.253 Mercimek Ahmed’s version of the text was translated in 1431-32, recopied many times and very well-circulated in the period at hand.254 In Şaik’s edited text of the Mercimek Ahmed Turkish translation of Kabusname, the twenty-third chapter is entirely dedicated to the buying and selling of 250 ›Keykâvus b. İskender‹, İA2. 251 Reuben Levy, trans. A Mirror for Princes: The Qābūs-nāma by Kai Kāʾūs b. Iskandar Prince of Gurgan. (London, 1951), ix. The Kabusname was also widely circulated in the Persianate world is also known as the Enderzname, Pendname, Kitāb al-Naṣīḥa, and Nasihatname. The Kabusname is obviously part of the Mirror for Princes category of literature, a very rich genre of which the tract at hand is only one example. Reuben Levy has published a critical edition of the Persian text: The Naṣīḥāt-nāma known as Qābūs-nāma of Kai Kāʾūs b. Iskandar b. Qābūs b. Washmgīr (London, 1951). Numerous manuscript versions of the Persian text are also extant and easily consulted, in particular: Kabusname, British Library, Persian MSS, Or.3252 (copy from 861 AH/1457 AD). 252 In the 14th century the Kabusname was translated into Turkish by Şeyhoğlu Sadreddin Mustafa, for the Germiyan king, Süleyman Shah. This version of the Kabusname is available in a modern critical edition: Birnbaum, Eleazar, ed., The Book of Advice by King Kay Kāʾus ibn Iskander: The earliest Old Ottoman Turkish Version of his Kābūsnāme. Text in facsimile from 14th-century manuscript, study, and vocabulary. (Mütercimi Meçhul ilk Türkçe Kābūsname. İnceleme, Sözlük, Tıpkı basım. Sources of Oriental Languages and Literatures 6 Harvard University, 1981. There is a 17th-century copy of this work (from 1079/1668) in the British Library, Turkish MSS, Or.7320. Another translation of the Kabusname was made in 1427 by Mahmud b. Mehmed (Bedr-i Dilşad) for Sultan Murad II, hence called the Muradname. 253 The Mercimek Ahmet translation of the Kabusname is available in several versions: Orhan Şaik Gökyay, ed., Mercimek Ahmet, Keykavus Kabusname (Istanbul, 1966), and Atilla Özkırımlı ed., Keykavus-Mercimek Ahmet, Kâbusname (Istanbul, 1975). 254 The Mercimek Ahmed translation is found in several major manuscript collections: Ankara Milli Kütüphane nr.H.941; TSMK, Hazine, nr.1153; Nuruosmaniye Kütüphane, nr.4096; British Library, Turkish MSS, Or.1181; Bibliothèque Nationale, Suppl. Turc., nr.530.

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slaves, and how to tell whether a slave is good or bad: ›Kul ve Karavaş Almakta ve Satmakta Eyisin ve Yaramazın Beyan Eder.‹ 255 In many ways, it echoes the themes illustrated in Ibn Buṭlān’s treatise, penned three centuries earlier, and serves as a bridge between the neo-Platonism of the Abbasid physician and the Ottoman traditions of physiognomy and tropes of cins, demonstrating a measure of continuity to the cultural context of slavery, or at least an Ottoman effort at constructing a prestigious pedigree for Ottoman society’s practice of slavery that drew on Islamic neo-Platonism and Persianate literature. But more importantly, one of conditions required for purchasing a slave is directly relevant to the discussion at hand, namely, that it should be known which cins (type/ethnicity/nation) the slave is, and where his origin (aṣl) is from, and which cins is good and bad.: ›Ve üçüncü oldur ki ne cinstir ve aslı neredendir ve kangi cins eyidir ve yatlıdır, bilesin.‹ 256 The English translation of the Persian text also affirms the Mercimek Ahmed Turkish version: ›Understand then that there are three essentials in the buying of slaves; first is the recognition of their good and bad qualities whether external or internal, by means of physiognomy; second is the awareness of diseases, whether latent or apparent, by their symptoms; third is the knowledge of the various classes [the Persian text also the word ›jins-hā‹, that is, the plural of ›jins‹ to describe the ›classes‹ of slaves 257] and the defects and merits of each.‹ 258 Naturally, the ›origins‹ of slaves in any epoch result from the geopolitical arrangements of power at the time. Every state has its hinterland from which it purchases its slaves, and the origins of many slaves of 11th and 12th-century Caspian Sea were from different places than those of 16th-century Istanbul. Nonetheless, the template of describing a cins of slave so that the householder could understand his good and bad qualities is clearly evident in this early work.259 The faults and benefits of each cins is outlined: the qualities of the Saqlab (i.e., Slav) Rus, Rum, and Alan, Ermeni, and Behremen, Keşran, Ravut, Nubi, Habeşi are detailed.260 Much like the later Ottoman works, the author’s attention is focused on to what degree each cins is suited to servitude, and what moral qualities are attached to each group. For instance, ›The defect of the Byzantines [i.e., Rum] is that they are foul-tongued, evil-hearted, cowardly, indolent, quick-tempered, covetous and greedy for worldly things. Their merits are that they are cautious, affectionate, happy, economically-minded, successful in their undertakings and careful to prevent loss.‹261 Interestingly, as is the case in the later work that is considered below, the cins term is used as a way of quickly and easily articulating difference 255 256 257 258 259 260 261

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Gökyay, Mercimek Ahmet, Keykavus Kabusname, 144-156. Ibid., 145. Levy, The Naṣīḥāt-nāma known as Qābūs-nāma (Persian critical edition), 62. Idem, A Mirror for Princes, 100. Gökyay, Mercimek Ahmet, Keykavus Kabusname, 149. Ibid., 151-152. ›Behremen‹ is Brahmin, and Kesran and Ravut are also Hindu castes. Reuben Levy, A Mirror for Princes, 105.

and also serves as a shorthand for the slave-owner, so that he can, in the slave marketplace, use his knowledge of the tropes of cins to select a suitable slave. Through an examination of Mustafa Ali’s commentary in the MevāʾidünNefāʾis fī Kavāʿidiʿl-Mecālis on slaves of various origins, a clearer picture emerges of the sixteenth-century Ottoman slave owners’ degree of perceptions of their slaves‹ origins. Furthermore, through a reading of contemporary literary sources, it can be determined whether the labels designating a slave’s origin coincided with the legal terminology employed in the Galata court registers and therefore reflect a wider significance to these exact ›ethnic‹ terms outside of strict legal and bureaucratic terminology. Such a reading allows us to reconstruct the gaze of the slave owner to a certain degree and perhaps begin to unravel the complex social and psychological relationship between the slave owner and the object of his domination and often his affections as well. Claiming that ›dishonourable men‹ who entertain the company of beardless youths have related the their adventures to him, Mustafa Ali records in truly ample detail the qualities associated with slave boys of various origins, 262 thus indicating at least a certain knowledge, or even connoisseurship, of the physical and temperamental differences among slaves from various backgrounds, or at least his ease of perception and manipulation of those invented differences. While this section of Ali’s work could be interpreted as consisting of a series of literary tropes intended to demonstrate the ways in which Ottoman society had morally decayed through its excessive attention to the corporeal delights of young male slaves, 263 the very fact that Ali established such facile and yet intricate distinctions among slave boys of assorted origins with such proficiency and detail suggests that these divisions reflect those ascribed to a specific cins by Ottoman elites. Even if the qualities associated with the slaves in Ali’s works are purely literary tropes expressing a discourse of social criticism, the terms used to distinguish the origins of slaves certainly held a wider societal significance, and also recur in the other literary works with a focus on one’s social underlings (of a gendered variety), such as the Zenannames,264 suggesting that the manumission documents should be read against the social context of the ›Age of Beloveds‹, in which slaveboys were both fêted and exploited. While in that particular work the descriptions that accom262 Mustafa Ali, The Ottoman Gentleman of the Sixteenth Century: Mustafa Ali’s Mevā’idünNefāʾis fī Kavāʿidi’l-Mecālis, ›Tables of Delicacies Concerning the Rules of Social Gatherings‹, trans. Douglas S. Brookes (Cambridge, Mass, 2003), 28-30. 263 In contrast, according to the general discussions of the work of Dror Ze’evi in his work, Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900 (Berkeley, 2006), male sexual encounters in the sixteenth century in the Ottoman world were not branded as immoral acts. This tendency to denounce such acts emerges far later in the nineteenth century. 264 Enderunlu Fazıl, Zenânnâme: Kadınlar Kitabı (The Book on Women), ed. Filiz Bingölce, trans. Kevser Demir (Ankara, 2006). Unsurprisingly, the Zenanname’s counterpart, the Gulamname, remains unpublished.

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pany each ›ethnic‹ designation are often mere pornographic fantasy, what in terests us is the term used for categorisation, which is the same as Mustafa Ali’s, as well as that of the Galata court registers. Thus, it seems clear that such terms were certainly employed in a wider field than the solely in the legal documents of the Galata court and that the lines between genres of documents – legal, poetic, administrative – is more blurred than we would expect. To explore the language of cins in sixteenth-century Istanbul, let us briefly examine the terminology of ethnic categorisation that Mustafa Ali employed in his descriptions of slaves. Mustafa Ali’s description of the youths of Bosnia-Herzegovina focused primarily on their attractiveness: ›Truly the beardless lads of not another country stay beautiful and comely as long as do they. Some of them do not sprout a hair on their face even at the age of thirty, still causing distraction of the mind to whoever sees them in the mirror of beauty.‹ And furthermore, although they are ›big and fierce-looking‹ they nonetheless, ›always provide obedient service‹,265 a characteristic that would have been, without a doubt, important to any slave-owner. In addition to describing Bosnian slave boys, Mustafa Ali depicted numerous other groups. For instance, he did not have particularly complimentary words for Albanians, and again, his main focus was on their suitability as lovers, suggesting that this section of his work is a mixture of literary trope and social commentary: ›As for boys of Albanian blood, some are worthy of taking as a lover, but far too many are terribly contentious and obstinate.‹ The problem was again with the less than obedient attitude of the Albanians, clearly not a desirable quality in a subordinate.266 For similar reasons, namely their lack of proper loyalty and obedience, Mustafa Ali’s opinion of Georgians and Russians was not very high, ›because most them betray their master‹, which constitutes ›shameful behaviour‹ that ›everyone has witnessed.‹ 267 In addition to Bosnian slaves, another group of slaves whose physical beauty was valued by Mustafa Ali were the Circassians, whom he described as strikingly handsome.268 While the author valued the Circassians and Abaza for their ›beauty and courage‹ as well as ›the delicacy in their eyes and eyebrows and eyelashes‹, he cast aspersion on their behaviour toward their owners, claiming that, ›due to lack of intelligence some occasionally behave contumaciously and perversely toward their masters.‹269 The Circassians’ supposed lack of intelligence was shared by the Rūs, as apparently both groups suffered from an inability to learn Turkish properly. Once more, it is of significance that all of the terms used by Mustafa Ali 265 Ali, Ottoman Gentleman, 29. 266 Ibid., 29. 267 Ibid., 30. One wonders if Ali suffered some romantic disappointment at the hands of a Georgian or Russian (i.e., everyone, presumably the author too, has witnesses their ›shameful behaviour‹) to impel him to have such an opinion. 268 Ibid., 29. 269 Ibid., 104.

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to refer to slave boys were present in the Galata court registers as well, implying that these terms were not mere administrative jargon, but also common literary parlance as well. Aside from the physical attributes of the slave boys, Mustafa Ali also commented on their mental and linguistic abilities. The accent of Circassian and Rūs slaves when speaking Turkish was deemed by Mustafa Ali to be ›one of the truly laughable things in the world.‹ While other slaves, who ›end up in the households of the great‹ and as a result ›learn how to read and write, more or less improve their command of the language, and at least articulate most of the sounds correctly‹, the Rūs in contrast, ›are the most hopeless group, and never quite manage to learn Turkish fluently, claimed Ali. In fact, he continued, it ›is as though their tongues are not capable of articulating the sounds.‹ 270 Ali’s ability to differentiate between the slaves of various origins comes across very clearly in his work, suggesting that if Ali could accuse two particular sub-groups of slaves of an inability to learn Turkish in contrast with the slaves from a selection of other varied origins, he possessed a clear mental division of the cultural, linguistic and geographical distinctions among slaves, and considered that these groups constituted recognisable ›types‹ in wider Ottoman elite society. While this may seem obvious, such a claim has not been substantiated elsewhere. The labels employed in the Galata sicils for slaves’ origins had a wider remit than the manumission document. Such terms were employed by bureaucrats and poets (or poet-bureaucrats, such as Mustafa Ali) to articulate difference, between elites and slaves, a notoriously difficult line to draw in Ottoman society, as well as difference among the dizzying array of slaves present in Istanbul. By simplifying cins to a relatively small number of recognisable terms with their associated tropes, literary works such as the Kabusname, Mevāʿidün-Nefāʿis Fī Kavāʿidi ’l-Mecālis, and Zenanname allowed slave owners to ›read‹ their underlings and manipulate them according to the characteristics supposed attached to their cins. While Mustafa Ali’s connoisseurship of male slaves seems to have been limited primarily to those of the Black Sea and Balkans (as these were one of the most prevalent groups of slave in early modern Ottoman society), he also commented briefly on the African portion of the slave population, again focusing on the aspects of their character that were presumably most important to him: their loyalty, manners, obedience, and suitability as lovers. While Mustafa Ali himself disdains the ›Abyssinian‹ slaves (i.e., Ḥabash), he claims that the Egyptians are quite fond of them, as they are slaves that even the common man can afford, or Ali puts it ›they’re everyone’s sable fur.‹ 271 While slaves of West African and Ethiopian origins figured prominently in the Sultan’s household, the almost complete ab270 Ibid., 146. 271 Ibid., 104.

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sence of African slaves from the Galata sicils, with the exception of a few appearances in inheritance inventories, 272 suggests that African slaves were not numerous in Galata. Zilfi has recently suggested a geographical divide of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, in which the African slaves tended to be prevalent in the southern sphere, around the latitude of Egypt, while slaves from the Caucasus and Ukrainian steppe were more common in Istanbul and its surrounding regions, 273 a divide which is reflected in the proportions of slaves and their geographical origins in the Galata sicils. Thus, through Mustafa Ali’s words, it can be demonstrated how the Ottoman elite sought to exploit the literary stereotypes associated with a slave’s origin to determine whether he would make a suitably well-mannered and obedient slave, while framing and defining the slave through a use of accepted cins labels. In this case, each label carries with it specific associations, parallel to the descriptive physical labels used in the court records, each of which, according to the art of firāsa, carries with it a deeper reading of the slave’s moral characteristics (to be discussed in detail in Chapter 5). Thus, through language and categorisation according to accepted labels and genres comes the ability of the master to ›read‹, understand, predict and control his slave’s characteristics and behaviour, hence the use of symbolic linguistic violence in place of actual physical violence or physical marking. By labelling a slave as Arnawūtī or Rūsī, certain characteristics and conduct was expected, as defined by the literary tropes of the period. Furthermore, such labels also served to articulate an Ottoman identity for a slave who, before submersion in the cultural mosaic of Istanbul, may not have applied such a simplified label to himself denoting origin. This process of constructing an ethnic identity for the slave crystallised at the moment of manumission when the slave’s cins was assigned through one of the pre-approved bureaucratic and literary labels of origins; this is not to say that the label did not roughly cor respond to the geographic origins of the slave but rather that the articulation of cins was particularly Ottoman in its language and culture. Such a classification allowed the slave’s origins to be categorised along simple, accepted tropes of cins that were relatively limited, considering the rich diversity of cultures within the early modern Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. The Ottomanised articulation of cins also rendered the manumission straightforward for the sharīʿa court to register. Unfortunately, the degree to which slaves themselves adopted such cins labels is difficult to discern. A further examination of literary sources of the period that could shed light on the degree to which ethnic identity (cins or aṣl) was a self-conscious construction and what it signified to those who bore and assigned such labels; the fact that 272 See the tables of slaves recorded in the muhallafat defterleri as ʿArab for details on African slaves. The term ʿArab referred to Africans in Ottoman parlance. 273 Zilfi, Women and Slavery in the Late Otoman Empire, 131.

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many elites themselves began their careers as slaves and perhaps adopted such cins labels would be a good place to begin such an investigation. While the previ ous discussion was framed in the context of the slave-owner’s domination of his slaves and ex-slaves, it should be remembered that even this was in many cases a temporary state as freedman presumably attached themselves to a household and attempted to negotiate an advantageous position. However, the negotiation of levels of freedom and servitude after manumission are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5.

Origins and Religious Conversion In addition to an ethnic identity, a religious identity was articulated for the slave in the Galata court registers. The following section provides a description of the patterns of religious conversion in the Galata registers by origin and type of slavery, followed by an analysis of why certain segments of the Galata slave population did or did not convert. While the terminology assigned to slaves’ origins in the Galata court registers served to articulate an ethnic identity for the slave according to Ottoman cultural paradigms, the terminology of religious conversion in the sicils also assigned a clear sectarian label to the slave. In keeping with the trend in studies of early modern religious conversion, 274 the process of belonging to a new religion is considered more of a gradual social process rather than a sudden illuminating event of self-conscious spiritual conviction. Conversion, in the context of early modern Mediterranean seafaring populations, is considered part of the process of the convert’s assimilation into the society in which he finds himself as a result of migration, forced or otherwise. Rather than any sort of ›official‹ 274 Marc Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (Oxford, 2008); Idem, ›Islamic conversion narratives of women: social change and gendered religious hierarchy in early modern Ottoman Istanbul‹ Gender and History 16/2 (2004), 425458; Idem, ›Globalization, cosmpolitanism, and the dönme in Ottoman Salonica and Turkish Istanbul‹, Journal of World History 18/2 (2007), 141-170; Zeba A. Crook, Reconceptualising Conversion: Patronage, Loyalty, and Conversion in the Religious and Ancient Mediterranean (Berlin, 2004); Selim Deringil, ››There is no compulsion in religion‹: on conversion and apostasy in the late Ottoman empire: 1839-1856‹ Comparative Studies in Society and History 42/3 (July, 2000), 547-575; Krstić, op cit.; Mary Jane Maxwell, ›Afanasii Nikitin: an Orthodox Russian’s spiritual voyage in the Dar al-Islam, 1468-1475‹ Journal of World History 17/3 (2006), 243-266; Norton, op cit.; E. Natalie Rothman, ›Becoming Venetian: conversion and transformation in the seventeenth-century Mediterranean‹, Mediterranean Historical Review 21/1 (June, 2006), 39-75; Idem, ›Self-fashioning in the Mediterranean contact zone: Giovanni Battista Salvago and his Africa overo Barbaria (1625)‹, in Renaissance Medievalisms, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto, 2009), 123-145; Idem, ›Between Venice and Istanbul: Trans-Imperial Subjects and Cultural Mediation in the Early Modern Mediterranean‹; Idem, ›Interpreting dragomans: boundaries and crossings in the early modern Mediterranean‹, 771-800.

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declaration of a conversion, the signs of becoming a Muslim could be as simple as adopting Muslim dress or greetings in public in an effort to blend in and ›belong‹,275 the desire for which is considered, in the following analysis, as basic to human nature. Religious conversion also played a central role in the slave’s integration into a household post-manumission: Points of agreement with the incorporation model are nonetheless present in the Ottoman system, at least insofar as household slavery was concerned. Enslaved outsiders were initiated into society through the medium of familial households. And enfranchised slaves, in a society that took emancipation seriously, gave birth to their own freeborn lineages, without lasting taint or stigma. More fundamentally, though, Ottoman slavery’s mode of incorporation was confessional rather than family or lineage linked. Conversion to Islam occurred more often than not when household slaves were held in bondage for any length of time.276 It is therefore assumed in the discussion at hand that conversion to Islam signified the inculcation of the slave into the customary religious and social practices of the elite Muslim households of Galata. In the Galata sicils, the process of labelling the slave as a convert to Islam was linked to naming. The taking of a Muslim forename indicated conversion to Islam, whereas the preservation of the slave’s Christian name signified his continuation in his original religion (barring a few ambiguous cases that are discussed later), which is assumed to be Christianity, at times identified in the sicils by the label alnaṣrānī.277 In any following discussions of conversion, the religion of the slave has been gauged according to his forename. In contrast to other researchers’ findings, no ›official‹ declarations of conversion or petitions to the Ottoman state were located in relation to the slaves of Galata.278 Certain trends in religious conversion across the three registers may be established, according to the slave’s origins and the type of slavery to which he was subjected. The most noticeable of these emerges upon comparing the conversion tendencies of Franks, Greeks and generally, ›Mediterranean‹ slaves with those who originated from the areas surrounding the Black Sea. While it seems that conversion levels were high, if these rates are separated according to ethnicity and type of hüccet, it becomes immediately apparent that 275 Maxwell, ›Afanasii Nikitin: an Orthodox Russian’s spiritual voyage in the Dar al-Islam‹, 253-254. 276 Zilfi, Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire, 159. 277 In contrast, the label al-yahūdī (Jewish) is nowhere encountered in the Galata 14/2, 14/3, and 14/4 court registers. 278 For a discussion of this genre of document, see: Anton Minkov, Conversion to Islam in the Balkans: Kisve Bahası Petitions and Ottoman Social Life, 1670-1730 (Leiden, 2004).

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these factors influenced the rate of conversion. The element of gender must also be taken into account, as a much higher conversion rate existed among female Franks than male Franks. In the case of the various cins groups found in the Galata court registers, Franks are considered as a group apart because there were sufficient male and female Franks such that gendered distinctions in conversion can be identified. The same cannot be said of, say, Almān or Abaza slaves. Only in cases where a sufficient number of both males and females of the same cins group can be identified have such comparisons been drawn. Accordingly, what follows is a description of trends in the religious conversion in the slave population documented in the Galata court registers, accompanied by a discussion of the possible reasons for these trends. Detailed graphs showing the number of slaves who converted by their origins, gender and type of manumission for Galata 14/2, 14/3 and 14/4 can be found in the appendix to Chapter 3, Figures 5 – 9, Figures 10 – 17 and Figures 18 – 25, respectively. All statistics used in the following discussion have been calculated using Figures 5 – 25. The references to the Galata court registers for any percentages mentioned are included in the footnotes to the relevant figure. To begin our analysis of trends in the conversion of slaves in Galata, a chronological approach is adopted, whereby each court register is examined for its specific patterns of religious conversion. The earliest register under examination is Galata 14/2, which begins in the year 1560. Conversion among the slave population recorded in this register will be examined by the following factors: the type of manumission, i.e., charitable manumission as compared with mukātaba, tadbīr, umm walad manumissions, or possible ransoms, by origin and by gender in order to ascertain any patterns resulting from these elements of the slave’s experience. Sub-patterns will also be identified, as well as the points at which religious conversion seems to have been influenced by more than one factor, for instance, on occasions when origin and type of slavery acted together to influence rates of conversion. In Galata 14/2, religious conversion was clearly affected by the type of slavery experienced by the slave. Only roughly 17% of ›money manumission‹ slaves (possible ransom) converted to Islam, and only 37% of mukātab slaves converted overall. In contrast, 100% of the tadbīr slaves converted, and 78% of the charitable manumission (ḥasbatan lillah) slaves converted to Islam (percentages were calculated based on information in Figure 9), suggesting that their rates of manumission or perhaps treatment while under slavery would have been influenced by conversion, in contrast to the mukātab and possible ransom slaves. It is obvious from the nature of their type of enslavement, which guaranteed freedom through the payment of money or serving of a set amount of time, that religious conversion would not have an immediate outcome on the speed of their manumission, so they did not convert as often as the slaves whose manumission was more subject to the whims of their master, such as the slaves released through charitable manumis-

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sion (ḥasbatan lillah) or tadbīr. Furthermore, 100% of the umm waladāt converted to Islam (see Figure 9), presumably the result of integration into a Muslim house hold through years of childbearing. Of course, the proviso is necessary that if conversion to Islam did indeed increase the possibility of manumission, then converted slaves would be over represented in the sample at hand. Similar trends are evident among the Ifrinjī (Frankish) group, who were the most numerous in the Galata 14/2 register (see Figure 5), in comparison to the overall picture of conversion. All of the tadbīr and umm walad slaves had converted to Islam by the time of their manumission (see Figure 9). The low rate of conversion among mukātab slaves was even more pronounced among this subset of slaves, however, with a rate of only 8% of Frankish mukātab slaves converting to Islam. Additionally, only 53% of the charitably manumitted ( ḥasbatan lillah) Frankish slaves converted as well, a high percentage compared to the Frankish mukātab slaves, but surprisingly low in comparison to the non-Frankish charitably manumitted (ḥasbatan lillah) slaves, who converted at a rate nearing 100% (see Figure 9). Notably, not a single Frank of the group designated as ›money manumission‹ (manumission guaranteed by the payment of a sum of money, not specified as a mukātaba contract), converted to Islam, reinforcing the theory that these may represent some form of ransom, as abstaining from conversion to Islam was a well known prerequisite for ransom. In Galata 14/2, when all ethnic groups are considered together, across the board 80% of the female slaves of Galata 14/2 converted, and only 53% of males converted (see Figure 6). Examining solely the male population of Galata 14/2, the reason for the relatively low rate of conversion seems to be that a very large proportion of male Franks did not convert, as discussed above. Only 20% of Frankish males converted to Islam, including Frankish slaves subjected to all types of slavery, in stark contrast with 100% of the other male ethnic groups, with the exception of one Cypriot and one Genoese, who also did not convert (see Figure 7). Strikingly, only 50% of Frankish females converted to Islam; clearly, not many Frankish females were umm walads, in contrast with 100% of the other female ethnic groups (see Figure 8). Similar trends can be identified in the Galata 14/3 court register, reinforcing the argument that these two registers form a continuum in their employment of a strikingly uniform set of administrative practices as well as their documentation of a very particular moment in the labour market of Istanbul. In this register, it is clear again that the most numerous group of slaves (of both genders), the Franks, were also the most reluctant to convert (see Figure 11). Much like Galata 14/2, while males are more numerous, and the majority across the board had converted by the time their manumission document was registered, females were less numerous but underwent much higher rates of religious conversion (see Figure 12). When the slaves are separated by gender and then their conversion habits ana-

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lysed by origin, it is again clear that male Franks are the least likely to convert among all the types of slaves (see Figure 13). What is interesting to note is that among the women who do not chose to convert to Islam, Frankish women feature prominently (see Figure 14). In this register, when religious conversion is analysed by type of manumission, the data suggest once more that charitably manumitted ( ḥasbatan lillah) slaves, umm walad slaves, and tadbīr slaves converted at a much higher rate to Islam than the mukātab slaves and the slaves whose freedom was guaranteed by the exchange of a lump sum of money (see Figure 15). When the Franks are isolated from the rest of the slave population of the Galata 14/3 register, the trends in conversion are very similar to those of the Frankish slaves recorded in the Galata 14/2 register. Very few of the Frankish mukātab slaves converted to Islam, and only about half of the Frankish charitably manumitted ( ḥasbatan lillah) slaves converted (see Figure 16). For the sake of comparison, the slaves originating from the Black Sea have been isolated as a separate group as well, as there exist a sufficiently significant number of them in the Galata 14/3 register to warrant comparison with the Franks. In distinct contrast to the Franks, every one of the Black Sea slaves (defined as those labelled as Abāzāwī, Rūsī, Mighrīlī, and Jirkasī) converted, except for a single man who was recorded at the start of a mukātaba contract (see Figure 17). Following in order from the Galata 14/3 register, the Galata 14/4 register witnesses some changes in the cins makeup of the slave population, and as a result, some changes in patterns of religious conversion as well. For unclear reasons, Frankish slaves convert more frequently than in the previous defters; furthermore, the influx of Cypriot slaves from the Ottoman siege tend to convert at lower rates than the other groups of slaves, even the Franks (see Figure 18). If we separate the slaves by gender, it also become apparent that men are converting at higher levels than in the previous two defters, at 78%, compared to 70% of females; this is most likely the result of the higher conversion rates among the numerous Frankish slaves (see Figure 19). While the Cypriot slaves increased their numbers, they were still outnumbered by the Franks. The male slaves of the Galata 14/4 register, when separated by cins, evince the same overall pattern identified above, namely, higher conversion rates (see Figure 20). However, an interesting pattern emerges when the female slaves of Galata 14/4 are isolated from the male population and analysed according to origin. It becomes immediately apparent that the majority of the female slaves who did not convert were of Cypriot origin (see Figure 21). If conversion rates in the Galata 14/4 register are examined by type of slavery, similar trends are apparent to those found in the previous two registers, with a very high rate of conversion among charitably manumitted (ḥasbatan lillah), tadbīr, and umm walad slaves, in contrast to a lower rate of conversion among mukātab slaves and slaves freed through ›money manumission‹ (see Figure 22). If

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the three largest ethnic groups of this register, the Franks, Rūsī, and Cypriots, are each isolated as separate groups, differing trends in religious conversion emerge for each group. For the group of Franks in the Galata 14/4 register, it becomes evident that there existed similar levels of conversion among mukātab slaves as in the previous two registers. At the same time, there occurred a significantly higher rate of conversion among Frankish slaves who were manumitted out of charitable motives (see Figure 23). An examination of the Cypriot slaves of Galata 14/4 in more detail demonstrates an overall low rate of conversion, much lower even than the rates of conversion among Franks in the same register and in the previous two registers as well (see Figure 24). Only a proportion of Cypriot tadbīr slaves and one Cypriot mukātab slave seem to have converted. Interestingly, none of the Cypriot slaves who were manumitted for charitable reasons (ḥasbatan lillah) had converted to Islam, which suggests that they may have been purchased and freed rather quickly, perhaps by their countrymen. In contrast to the Franks and Cypriots, who seem to have converted to Islam or not according to whether it would speed up their manumission, the Black Sea slaves of the Galata 14/4 register converted across the board, with no regard for type of slavery, at a rate of 100%, with the exception of one single slave (see Figure 25). While some of the overarching trends in religious conversion continued, Galata 14/4 represents a slight break with the previous trends of Galata 14/2 and 14/3, as the ethnic makeup of the slave population had shifted. A much larger group of Rūsī slaves, as well as a subsection of Cypriots were both present, and the Franks no longer represented a majority among the slave population. Perhaps as a result of the lack of Franks, the overall rates of conversion were higher in this court re gister. As witnessed in the previous two registers, Frankish male slaves, and to a lesser degree Frankish female slaves, demonstrated a marked tendency to avoid conversion to Islam, perhaps in expectation of being ransomed. In the Galata 14/4 register, the relative absence of Franks results in an overall increase in levels of conversion. As in the previous two court registers, Rūsī slaves maintained their same pattern of conversion nearing a rate of 100%. Moreover, a new trend seems to have emerged among female slaves, in which all of the female slaves of the various ethnic groups converted to Islam, with the notable exception of the Cypriot females, who tended to cling to their original faith. If it is true, as argued previously in this chapter, that these slaves were cap tured in the recent Ottoman siege of Cyprus, then it is possible that these female Cypriot slaves were awaiting (or hoping for) ransom, and hence did not convert to Islam as this would damage, or even destroy, their chances of being ransomed. The high numbers of female Christian Cypriot slaves in possession of mukātaba contracts of a lower value than average, perhaps indicating that they were not necessarily engaged in the labour market or at least not in the same labour market as

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the men, may also suggest that some sort of ransom system was at work (see Figure 21 for conversion numbers of female Cypriot slaves). The patterns in conversion in each of the court registers having been examined, the general trends in conversion should be addressed. The main phenomenon to be explained is the strikingly low conversion rate of Frankish mukātab slaves, who were mainly male, across all three court registers. There are two possible, and contradictory, explanations for the phenomenon of the low conversion rate of this particular group of slaves (see Figures 10, 16, 23). The first is that it was easier for Frankish slaves to return to their original lands after the end of their mukātaba contract, hence it was in the interest of the slave not to convert to smooth his reintegration into his original land, having remained untainted by Islam. The second possible explanation is that the Frankish slaves could remain in Galata and practice their trade post-manumission without converting, because of the large Italian merchant communities present there, which provided the manumitted slave with a community to join and a support network after his period of slavery had ended. The same theory could be suggested for the Greek slaves, who, upon conversion, would presumably have found Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian communities to receive them upon manumission, hence their relatively low rates of conversion in comparison to the Black Sea slaves. When analysing slaves’ probable motives for converting, or not converting, it is worth observing that historians generally assume that slaves always worked in their own best material interest, that they always tried to make more money, to have a higher social status, to eat more and wear luxurious clothes, and would either convert or not in order to achieve these goals as circumstances dictated. This assumption concerning early modern man’s motivations for conversion bears a striking similarity to modern attitudes concerning man’s selfish and materialistic motivations for his actions, which should immediately raise doubts as to the veracity of such assumptions. Much current research into social history seems to be based on this same underlying assumption that throughout history, human beings worked only to achieve material comfort for themselves through negotiating a higher social and economic position on a purely selfish and individual level with no genuine concern for the state of their souls beyond a superficial and cynical claim to piety for the sake of achieving some other (usually material) goal. While this view seems to underpin much research into religious conversion in particular, there are alternatives which might capture early modern realities more accurately. Perhaps Franks genuinely possessed a greater loyalty to and belief in their religion than other cins groups enslaved in Galata for a variety of psychological or sociological reasons, such as a higher penetration of religious education into their original societies or a greater saturation of the Catholic church into the life of the coastal areas of southern Europe from which most ›Frankish‹ slaves seem to have originated.

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However, a likely explanation for the high numbers of mukātab Frankish slaves who maintained their original religion is that they were guaranteed manumission upon completion of specific terms of their work contract and were not (in theory) subject to the whims of their owner, whims which may have been influenced favourably by a conversion to Islam. Legally guaranteed freedom according to specific conditions outlined in their mukātaba contracts, there was no need to convert to Islam in the hope of speeding up the process of attaining freedom, in contrast to the Black Sea slaves who were typically manumitted for charitable purposes or through the tadbīr contract, which depended on the length of the owner’s life or his feelings of kindness and religious duty, rather than on any well-defined financial or productive conditions fulfilled by the slave under contract. A further explanation for the extremely high conversion rates of the Black Sea groups of slaves could be that there did not exist established communities of nonMuslim Mighrīlīs or Abāzāwīs able to receive and support manumitted slaves in Galata or the surrounding areas.279 Thus, slaves of these origins and other Black Sea peoples may have viewed conversion as a more viable option for securing a place in the wider Muslim community post-manumission. Moreover, Christianity was loosing its influence over the many tribes and communities of the Caucasus in the period under examination, and many peoples of the Caucasus were in the process of gradually becoming acculturated to Islamic religious and social practices in the sixteenth century. Ascertaining which religion the peoples of the Black Sea, particularly its eastern shores, practiced in the mid- to late sixteenth century entails many difficulties, and certainly no sweeping generalisations can be made for the region. However, some limited conclusions may be drawn that affect our understanding of the phenomenon of religious conversion among the enslaved peoples of the Black Sea area in Istanbul, after an examination of the religious practices of the Abaza and Circassian peoples as indicative of wider trends in the region. It would seem that the Abaza people still largely practiced Christian or animist faiths by the seventeenth century, although those elements of the Abazas engaged in more extended contact with the Nogai and Crimean Tatars had converted to Sunni Islam. Furthermore, the Abaza were subject to a strict social structure similar to that of the Circassians, the lowest rung of which consisted of slaves. 280 Although it would seem that the Abaza were a slave-owning society, their ambiguous religious and political allegiances would have put them at risk as victims of slave raids and enslavement themselves. 279 My thanks to Hakan Erdem for corroborating my suspicion that large, established communities of Christians from the Black Sea do not seem to have existed in sixteenth-century Istanbul. (Personal communication, Istanbul, 5 February, 2011.) 280 Bennigson, ›Beskesek-Abaza‹, EI2

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Similarly to the Abazas, the Circassians began to convert to Islam in the sixteenth century under the influence of the Nogais and Crimean Tatars, though at first only the feudal nobility ascribed to the new creed. It is not until the eight eenth century that the majority of the Circassians converted to Islam. During the sixteenth century, the Circassian peoples would presumably have practiced a combination of Orthodox Christianity and their indigenous religion, akin to shamanism; although it was in this epoch that the Islamisation of the Circassians began. Much like the Abaza, the Circassians were in the grip of a very strict feudal system, consisting of, at the pinnacle of society, the princes, followed by nobles, then the free peasants, serfs and slaves.281 The Circassians who were enslaved in Ottoman (and other foreign) lands occupied a fixed, low-ranking position in the hierarchy of Circassian society and were subject to sale as slaves by the princes and nobles of the upper levels of society. This seems to have been an important element of the Circassian economy in the pre-modern period. According to Michel Balard: ›[T]he slaves constitute an inferior echelon in Circassian society, and the commerce to which they were subjected on the part of the princes and nobles constituted a characteristic trait of the economy of that people‹.282 As for the Black Sea slaves generally, it is possible to surmise that if an individual was not instilled with a particularly deeply-rooted and well-defined Christian religious identity at the beginning of his term of slavery, it would be easier for this identity to shift over the course of a period of slavery in which conversion was encouraged. Conversion to Islam was generally encouraged as a means of lightening the burden of servitude and guaranteeing better treatment, because slave owners were enjoined to treat their Muslim slaves more leniently, and speeding up manumission, as witnessed by the few contemporary captives who committed their experience to paper. 283 It is likely that conversion to Islam also would have facilitated absorption into a Muslim household post-manumission. In addition to the ethnic dimension, the decision to convert to Islam was also influenced by gender. In contrast to male slaves, female slaves seem to have converted to Islam at a higher rate, with the exception of Cypriot women in the Galata 14/4 register (Figure 21). As noted previously, all of the umm walads of the three Galata court registers converted (see Figures 9, 10 and 22). This phenomenon is to be expected, after presumably years of central involvement in the childbearing and childrearing responsibilities of a Muslim household. To briefly summarise the overarching trends in religious conversion among the slave population of Galata between the years 1560-1572, male slaves seem to have 281 Quelquejay, ›La structure social, politique et religieuse du Caucase du Nord au XVIe siè cle‹, 125-148. 282 Balard, La Romanie Genoise, vol. II, 791. The translation of this passage from French into English is mine. 283 For instance, see: Heberer, Osmanlıda bir Köle, 109. Slaves were offered the prospect of conversion to Islam to make their future brighter; some slaves accepted.

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converted to Islam only if it would assist in guaranteeing or quickening their manumission or improving their chances at belonging to a community or household post-manumission. In the case of mukātab slaves, the majority of whom were Franks, conversion would not speed up or guarantee manumission, hence the majority of slaves did not convert. Furthermore, there existed Frankish or Greek Christian communities in the vicinity of Galata to which freed slaves could turn for help and thus retain their original religion; it is also not impossible that the presence of such communities placed pressure on the slaves not to abandon Christianity. Black Sea slaves (Rūsī, Abāzāwī, Mighrīlī, etcetera) were not as commonly in possession of a mukātaba contract as the Frankish or Greek slaves and thus their manumission was often not legally guaranteed within a specific time frame or according to the fulfilment of specific conditions. Thus, conversion to Islam may have been viewed by these slaves as a means of guaranteeing or quickening the process of manumission, hence the much higher proportion of conversions to Islam among non-mukātaba slaves. Furthermore, there did not exist large, established or prosperous communities of non-Muslim Black Sea peoples in or around Galata to offer support to a newly manumitted slave, hence conversion to Islam may have offered a greater ability to integrate and turn to the wider community for support and a sense of belonging after manumission. To offer concluding remarks on the articulation of cins/aṣl and religious identity among the slave population of Galata as recorded in the court registers of the third quarter of the sixteenth century, in addition to illuminating the bureaucratic construction of identity among the population of Galata slaves (and hence, of elites, as the two groups were essentially one) knowledge of the slaves’ origins also facilitates our ability to trace roughly the migration of the skilled individuals in the sixteenth-century, which seem to have flowed from the Mediterranean basin and the areas surrounding the Black Sea into Istanbul. It is not known to what degree the slaves themselves adopted the identifying classifications applied to them in the court registers, although if Mustafa Ali and other contemporary elite informants are indicative of trends, then such labels of cins and religion where indeed commonly employed and useful in seeking and maintaining patronage, as Metin Kunt has also demonstrated.284

284 Kunt, ›Ethnic-regional establishment‹, 233-239.

126

(cins)

solidarity

in

the

seventeenth-century

Ottoman

Appendices to Chapter 3 A. Quantitative Analysis of Slaves’ Origins: Galata Court Registers 14/2, 14/3 and 14/4 Table 1: Origins and gender of slaves found in Galata 14/2 Origin Abāzāwī 285 Busnāwī 286 Jirkasī 287 Qubrūsī 288 Ifrinjī 289 Janūwīz 290 Majarī 291 Malṭāwī 292 Mighrilī 293 Rūmī 294 Rūsī 295

Male 2 1 8 1 45 1 2 1 5 1 5

Female 3 6 2 0 14 0 2 1 0 3 2

Total 5 7 10 1 59 1 4 2 5 4 7

Percentage 4% 6% 8% 1% 49% 1% 3% 2% 4% 3% 6%

285 Galata 14/2, page 35, hüccet 1; ibid, page 35, hüccet 3; ibid, page 52, hüccet 5. 286 Galata 14/2, page 4, hüccet 1, 2, 3; ibid, page 44, hüccet 3; ibid, page 55, hüccet 1; ibid, 60, hüccet 3. 287 Galata 14/2, page 51, hüccet 5; ibid, page 52, hüccet 2; ibid, page 53, hüccet 5; ibid, page 55, hüccet 3; ibid, page 60, hüccet 5; ibid, page 65, hüccet 1; ibid, page 67, hüccet 1; ibid, page 69, hüccet 2, 3; ibid, page 75, hüccet 1. 288 Galata 14/2, page 10, hüccet 2 289 Galata 14/2, page 32, hüccet 3; ibid, page 33, hüccet 1, 3; ibid, page 35, hüccet 2; ibid, page 35, hüccet 4, 5; ibid, page 37, hüccet 4, 5; ibid, page 41, hüccet 3, 5; ibid, page 42, hüccet 2, 3; ibid, page 44, hüccet 4; ibid, page 46, hüccet 1, 2, 3, 4, 6; ibid, page 47, hüccet 2, 3, 4, 5; ibid, page 50, hüccet 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; ibid, page 51, hüccet 3, 6, 7; ibid, page 52, hüccet 1, 3, 6; ibid, page 53, hüccet 4; ibid, page 55, hüccet 2; ibid, page 56, hüccet 1; ibid, page 65, hüccet 3; ibid, page 66, hüccet 1; ibid, page 69, hüccet 4; ibid, page 70 hüccet 1, 3; ibid, page 72, hüccet 2, 3, 4; ibid, page 74, hüccet 2; ibid, page 76, hüccet 1, 3, 4; ibid, page 77, hüccet 2; ibid, page 83, hüccet 4; ibid, page 84, hüccet 2, 3; ibid, page 86, hüccet 2. 290 Galata 14/2, page 51, hüccet 1. 291 Galata 14/2, page 52, hüccet 4; ibid, page 55, hüccet 4; ibid, page 60, hüccet 1; ibid, page 79, hüccet 4. 292 Galata 14/2, page 51, hüccet 2l ibid, page 89, hüccet 2. 293 Galata 14/2, page 4, hüccet 3; ibid, page 51, hüccet 2; ibid, page 73, hüccet 1; ibid, page 84, hüccet 4; ibid, page 91, hüccet 3. 294 Galata 14/2, page 32, hüccet 2; ibid, page 49, hüccet 1; ibid, page 52, hüccet 4; ibid, page 80, hüccet 3. 295 Galata 14/2, page 53, hüccet 1; ibid, page 61, hüccet 2; ibid, page 63, hüccet 1; ibid, page 69, hüccet 1; ibid, page 71, hüccet 4; ibid, page 76, hüccet 2; ibid, page 86, hüccet 3

127

Origin Tlimsānī 296 Unclear 297 Total number of slaves

Male 2 9 83

Female 0 4 37

Total 2 13 298 120

Percentage 2% 11%

Figure 1: Origins of slaves found in Galata 14/2

Figure 1 is a pie chart demonstrating the origins of the slaves found in the Galata 14/2 court register; numbers are based on Tabel 1. Note that the Ifrinjī (Frankish) were the dominant group at 49% of the slave population.

296 Galata 14/2, page 47, hüccet 1. 297 Galata 14/2, page 4, hüccet 1, 3; ibid, page 12, hüccet 1; ibid, page 28, hüccet 2, ibid, page 33, hüccet 4; ibid, page 41, hüccet 4; ibid, page 53, hüccet 3, 5; ibid, page 62, hüccet 2; ibid, page 65, hüccet 5; ibid, page 75, hüccet 3, 4; ibid, page 84, hüccet 1. 298 This hüccet also includes one child. The child is female, mentioned in the same entry as her mother, and is not counted in the total number of slaves, Galata 14/2, page 55, hüccet 5.

128

Table 2: Origins and gender of slaves found in Galata 14/3 Origin Abāzāwī 299 Arnawūṭī 300 Almān 301 Busnāwī 302 Jirkasī 303 Ifrinjī 304 Janūwīz 305

Male 1 7 2 11 19 131 1

Female 5 0 1 16 2 36 0

Total 6 7 3 27 21 167 1

Percentage 2% 2% 1% 9% 7% 53% Less than 1%

299 Galata 14/3, page 17, hüccet 2; ibid, page 59, hüccet 2; ibid, page 65, page 2; ibid, page 106, hüccet 6; ibid, page 137, hüccet 2; ibid, page 138, hüccet 4. 300 Galata 14/3, page 19, hüccet 1; ibid, page 39, hüccet 2; ibid, page 67, hüccet 6; ibid, page 73, hüccet 4. 301 Galata 14/3, page 19, hüccet 2; ibid, page 31, hüccet 6; ibid, page 133, hüccet 3. 302 Galata 14/3, page 3, hüccet 1; ibid, page 5, hüccet 5; ibid, page 24, hüccet 3; ibid, page 54, hüccet 1; ibid, page 59, hüccet 2; ibid, page 59, hüccet 1, 4; ibid, page 60, hüccet 3, 6; ibid, page 65, hüccet 2; ibid, page 67, hüccet 5; ibid, page 69, hüccet 2, 3; ibid, page 71, hüccet 3; ibid, page 89, hüccet 4; ibid, page 94 hüccet 2; ibid, page 97, hüccet 4, 6; ibid, page 101, hüccet 2; ibid, page 106, hüccet 1; ibid, page 120, hüccet 4; ibid, page 121, hüccet 2; ibid, page 127, hüccet 5; ibid, page 135, hüccet 1; ibid, page 137, hüccet 4; ibid, page 141, hüccet 2, 4. 303 Galata 14/3, page 20, hüccet 3; ibid, page 24, hüccet 1; ibid, page 38, hüccet 3; ibid, page 40, hüccet 2; ibid, page 45, hüccet 4; ibid, page 50, hüccet 2; ibid, page 52, hüccet 2; ibid, page 55, hüccet 2; ibid, page 59, hüccet 4; ibid, page 62, hüccet 1; ibid, page 63, hüccet 5; ibid, page 74, hüccet 3; ibid, page 76, hüccet 3; ibid, page 76, hüccet 4; ibid, page 84, hüccet 1; ibid, page 89, hüccet 3; ibid, page 107, hüccet 2; ibid, page 111, hüccet 2; ibid, page 119, hüccet 4; ibid, page 11, hüccet 2; ibid, page 135, hüccet 4. 304 Galata 14/3, page 4, hüccet 2, 3, 4; ibid, page 5, hüccet 1, 2, 4; ibid, page 7, hüccet 1, 2; ibid, page 8, hüccet 2; ibid, page 11, hüccet 1; page 12, hüccet 1, 3, 4; page 14, hüccet 2, 5; page 15, hüccet 2, 4; ibid, page 16, hüccet 1, 3; ibid, page 17, hüccet 3; ibid, page 18, hüccet 2, 3, 4, 5; ibid, page 19, hüccet 3, 5; ibid, page 20, hüccet 3; ibid, page 21, hüccet 2, 3; page 23, hüccet 2, 3; page 24, hüccet 4, 5; ibid, page 27, page 2, 3, 5; ibid, page 28, hüccet 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; ibid, page 29, hüccet 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; ibid, page 1, 2, 3, 4; ibid, page 31, hüccet 3, 4, 5, 7, ibid, page 35, hüccet 2; ibid, page 36, hüccet 3,4; ibid, page 38, hüccet 2; ibid, page 39, hüccet 2, 3, 4, 5; ibid, page 40, hüccet 1, 2; ibid, page 47, hüccet 5; ibid, page 50, hüccet 3,4; ibid, page 51, hüccet 2; ibid, page 52, hüccet 4; ibid, page, 55, hüccet 4; ibid, page 58, hüccet 2, 3, 4; ibid, page 60, hüccet 1, 4; ibid, page 62, hüccet 2; ibid, page 65, hüccet 3,4; ibid, page 67, hüccet 3; ibid, page 73, hüccet 4, 5; ibid, page 76, hüccet 1, 2; ibid, page 78, hüccet 1, 4; ibid, page 81, hüccet 1, 2, 5; ibid, page 91, hüccet 3; ibid, page 98, hüccet 4; ibid, page 99, hüccet 3, 5; ibid, page 100, hüccet 2; ibid, page 100, hüccet 2; ibid, page 101, hüccet 3; ibid, page 105, hüccet 2; ibid, page 106, hüccet 3, 4, 5; ibid, page 107, hüccet 3, 4; ibid, page 109, hüccet 2; ibid, page 110, hüccet 4, 5, 6; ibid, page 115, hüccet 3; ibid, page 116, hüccet 1; ibid, page 117, hüccet 2; ibid, page 119, hüccet 2; ibid, page 120, hüccet 1,2 5; ibid, page 121, hüccet 1, 4; ibid, page 124, hüccet 4; ibid, page 125, hüccet 2, 4, 5; ibid, page 127, hüccet 1, 2, 3; ibid, page 128, hüccet 3; ibid, page 129, hüccet 1; ibid, page 131, hüccet 2, 3; ibid, page 137, hüccet 1; ibid, page 138, hüccet 1; ibid, page 139, hüccet 4; ibid, page 140, hüccet 1, 3; ibid, page 144, hüccet 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6; ibid, page 146, hüccet 1, 2, 4; ibid, page 152, hüccet 3. 305 Galata 14/3, page 90, hüccet 3 records a male slave described as both Ifrinjī and Janūwīz.

129

Origin Kurjī 306 Ḥabashī 307 Hindī 308 Majarī 309 Malṭāwī 310 Mighrilī 311 Rudūsī 312 Rūmī 313 Rūsī 314 Unclear 315 Total number of slaves

Male 3 5 2 10 4 4 2 4 10 14 228

Female 5 0 0 5 1 0 0 2 4 8 85

Total 8 5 2 15 5 4 2 6 14 22 313

Percentage 3% 2% 1% 5% 2% 1% 1% 2% 4% 6%

306 Galata 14/3, page 9, hüccet 1; ibid, page 14, hüccet 3; ibid, page 41, hüccet 3; ibid, page 47, hüccet 4; ibid, page 63, hüccet 3; ibid, page 67, hüccet 4; ibid, page 87, hüccet 1; ibid, page 124, hüccet 2. 307 Galata 14/3, page 41, hüccet 4; ibid, page 47, hüccet 3; ibid, page 60, hüccet 2; ibid, page 100, hüccet 1; ibid, page 7 hüccet 3. 308 Galata 14/3, page 15, hüccet 3; ibid, page 121, hüccet 3. 309 Galata 14/3, page 28, hüccet 1; ibid, page 38, hüccet 1; ibid, page 54, hüccet 1; ibid, page 55, hüccet 3; ibid, page 59, hüccet 3; ibid, page 73, hüccet 2; ibid, page 74, hüccet 4; ibid, page 76, hüccet 1; ibid, page 91, hüccet 2; ibid, page 110, hüccet 2; ibid, page 120, hüccet 2; ibid, 120, hüccet 4; ibid, page 134, hüccet 5; ibid, page 138, hüccet 5 310 Galata 14/3, page 20, hüccet 1; ibid, page 24, hüccet 2; ibid, page 27, hüccet 1; ibid, page 55, hüccet 4; ibid, page 76, hüccet 1. 311 Galata 14/3, page 4, hüccet 1; ibid, page 27, hüccet 4; ibid, page 33, hüccet 3; ibid, page 89, hüccet 2. 312 Galata 14/3, page 5, hüccet 3. 313 Galata 14/3, page 5, hüccet 3; ibid, page 39, hüccet 1, 2; ibid, page 62, hüccet 3; ibid, page 89, hüccet 4; ibid, page 124, hüccet 3. 314 Galata 14/3, page 3, hüccet 2; ibid, page 11, hüccet 1; ibid, page 31, hüccet 1; ibid, page 54, hüccet 1; ibid, page 63, hüccet 1; ibid, page 93, hüccet 2; ibid, page 99, hüccet 4; ibid, page 104, hüccet 3; ibid, page 134, hüccet 2; ibid, page 52, hüccet 3; ibid, page 59; hüccet 2. 315 Galata 14/3, page 3, hüccet 3; ibid, page 5, hüccet 3; ibid, page 7, hüccet 3; ibid, page 14, hüccet 4; ibid, page 31, hüccet 2; ibid, page 33, hüccet 4; ibid, page 35, hüccet 3; ibid, page 36, hüccet 1; ibid, page 50, hüccet 5; ibid, page 52, hüccet 2; ibid, page 59, hüccet 2; ibid, page 63, hüccet 4; ibid, page 77, hüccet 3; ibid, page 78, hüccet 1; ibid, page 84, hüccet 1; ibid, page 98, hüccet 3; ibid, page 109, hüccet 3; ibid, page 129, hüccet 2, 5; ibid, page 137, hüccet 3; ibid, page 145, hüccet 4; ibid, page 146, hüccet 3.

130

Figure 2: Origins of slaves found in Galata 14/3

Figure 2 is a pie chart demonstrating the origins of the slaves found in the Galata 14/3 court register; numbers are based on Table 2. As in Figure 1, the Ifrinjī (Frankish) slaves were clearly the dominant group in the Galata slave population registered in the court at this point in time.

131

Table 3: Origins and gender of slaves found in Galata 14/4 Origin Abāzāwī 316 Busnāwī317 Jirkasī318 Qubrūsī 319 Ifrinjī 320 Janūwīz321 Kurjī 322 Majarī 323 Malṭāwī 324 Mighrilī 325 Rūsī 326 Unclear327

Male 0 2 2 8 26 1 0 4 1 3 12 14

Female 2 4 3 15 7 0 1 1 0 2 7 16

Total 2 6 5 23 33 1 1 5 1 5 19 30

Percentage 2% 5% 4% 18% 25% 1% 1% 4% 1% 4% 15% 23%

316 Galata 14/4, page 2, hüccet 1; ibid, page 103, hüccet 1. 317 Galata 14/4, page 16, hüccet 2; ibid, page 21, hüccet 2; ibid, page 22, hüccet 1, 2; ibid, page 116, hüccet 4; ibid, page 146, hüccet 2. 318 Galata 14/4, page 2, hüccet 2; ibid, page 100, hüccet 2; ibid, page 101, hüccet 2; ibid, page 113, hüccet 1; ibid, page 154, hüccet 1. 319 Galata 14/4, page 36, hüccet 1; ibid, page 40, hüccet 1; ibid, page 47, hüccet 2, 3, 4; ibid, page 57, hüccet 2; ibid, page 58, hüccet 1, 2; ibid, page 65, hüccet 2; ibid, page 80, hüccet 1; ibid, page 85, hüccet 1; ibid, page 91, hüccet 1; ibid, page 96, hüccet 1, 2; ibid, page 125, hüccet 2; ibid, page 143, hüccet 2; ibid, page 149, hüccet 1; ibid, page 153, hüccet 2, 3; ibid, page 155, hüccet 2, 3. 320 Galata 14/4, page 1, hüccet 2; ibid, page 6, hüccet 2; ibid, page 21, hüccet 3; ibid, page 41, hüccet 1; ibid, page 48, hüccet 1, 2; ibid page 58, hüccet 3; ibid, page 61, hüccet 2; ibid, page 74, hüccet 1; ibid, page 75, hüccet 3; ibid, page 88, hüccet 3; ibid, page 92, hüccet 3; ibid, page 99, hüccet 1, 2; ibid, page 113, hüccet 1; ibid, page 141, hüccet 3; ibid, page 143, hüccet 1, 3; ibid, page 146, hüccet 3; ibid, page 151, hüccet 1; ibid, page 152, hüccet 2; ibid, page 154, hüccet 2; ibid, page 155, hüccet 5; ibid, page 157, hüccet 1, 2, 3. 321 Galata 14/4, page 100, hüccet 1. 322 Galata 14/4, page 151, hüccet 2. 323 Galata 14/4, page 11, hüccet 1; ibid, page 59, hüccet 1; ibid, page 80, hüccet 3; ibid, page 99, hüccet 3; ibid, page 140, hüccet 2. 324 Galata 14/4, page 81, hüccet 2. 325 Galata 14/4, page 6, hüccet 1; ibid, page 10, hüccet 2; ibid, page 13, hüccet 4; ibid, page 18, hüccet 1, 2. 326 Galata 14/4, page 2, hüccet 3; ibid, page 3, hüccet 1; ibid; page 12, hüccet 2; ibid, page 15, hüccet 1; ibid, page 16, hüccet 1; ibid, page 43, hüccet 2; ibid, page 87, hüccet 1; ibid, page 97, hüccet 3; ibid, page 110, hüccet 3; ibid, page 120, hüccet 1; ibid, page 125, hüccet 1; ibid, page 146, hüccet 1; ibid, page 148, hüccet 2; ibid, page 153, hüccet 1, 4; ibid, page 156, hüccet 3; ibid, page 157, hüccet 4. 327 Galata 14/4, page 2, hüccet 2, 4, 5; ibid, page 3, hüccet 1; ibid, page 6, hüccet 2; ibid, page 17, hüccet 1; ibid, page 42, hüccet 2; ibid, page 43, hüccet 1, 3; ibid, page 44, hüccet 2; ibid, page 45, hüccet 3; ibid, page 47, hüccet 1; ibid, page 61, hüccet 1, 3; ibid, page 65, hüccet 1; ibid,

132

Origin Total number of slaves

Male 73

Female 58

Total 131

Percentage

Figure 3: Origins of slaves found in Galata 14/4

Figure 3 is a pie chart showing the origins of the slaves found in the Galata 14/4 court register; numbers are based on Table 3. The make-up of slaves from various origins has changed. Ifrinjī are no longer the dominant group, and the proportion of Rūsī and Qubrūsī slaves has risen.

page 84, hüccet 2; ibid, page 87, hüccet 1; ibid, page 92, hüccet 1; ibid, page 94, hüccet 3; ibid, page 95, hüccet 1; ibid, page 97, hüccet 1; ibid, page 102, hüccet 1; ibid, page 107, hüccet 1; ibid, page 111, hüccet 5; ibid, page 124, hüccet 2; ibid, page 141, hüccet 1; ibid, page 150, hüccet 2; ibid, page 151, hüccet 2; ibid, page 155, hüccet 4; ibid, page 57, hüccet 1.

133

Table 4: Distribution of gender for Galata 14/2, 14/3 and 14/4 (percentages calculated from Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3). Court Register Galata 14/2 Galata 14/3 Galata 14/4

Percentage Male 69% 73% 56%

Percentage Female 31% 27% 44%

Figure 4: Change in gender distribution in Galata 14/2, 14/3 and 14/4

Figure 4 is a line graph demonstrating the marked change in the gender distribu tion after the Galata 14/3 register. The numbers in this graph are based on Table 4.

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B. Graphs of Slaves’ Origins and Conversion to Islam Figure 5: Total number of slaves in Galata 14/2 organised by origin and religion

Figure 5 shows the total number of slaves in the Galata 14/2 court register arranged by origin and religion. Solid grey implies the slave was Christian; hashing implies the slave was Muslim. Note that the only slaves who did not convert were Frankish (Ifrinjī), Genoese (Janūwīz) and Cypriot (Qubrūsī).

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Figure 6: Total number of slaves in Galata 14/2 organised by gender and religion

Figure 6 shows the total number of slaves in the Galata 14/2 court register arranged by gender and religion. Note that a larger proportion of female slaves converted compared to male slaves, 80% compared to 53% respectively.

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Figure 7: Male slaves in Galata 14/2 organised by origin and religion

Figure 7 shows the male slaves in the Galata 14/2 court register arranged by origin and religion. Solid grey implies the slave was Christian; hashing implies the slave was Muslim. Note the only slaves that did not convert were Frankish (Ifrinjī), Genoese (Janūwīz) and Cypriot (Qubrūsī).

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Figure 8: Female slaves in Galata 14/2 organised by origin and religion

Figure 8 shows the female slaves in the Galata 14/2 court register arranged by origin and religion. Solid grey implies the slave was Christian; hashing implies the slave was Muslim. Note that the only slaves who did not convert were Frankish (Ifrinjī); however, a larger proportion of Frankish (Ifrinjī) females converted compared to Ifrinjī males (see Figure 7): 50% compared to a mere 20%.

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Figure 9: All slaves in Galata 14/2 organised by type of manumission and religion

Figure 9 shows the total number of slaves in the Galata 14/2 court register arranged by type of manumission and religion. Solid grey implies that the slave was Christian; hashing implies that the slave was Muslim. Note that only 37% of the mukātaba slaves converted compared to 78% of the slaves in the charitable manumission (ḥasbatan lillah) category.

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Figure 10: All Ifrinjī slaves in Galata 14/2 organised by type of manumission and religion

Figure 10 shows the total number Ifrinjī slaves in Galata 14/2 arranged by type of manumission and religion. Note only 8% (2 out of 26) mukātaba slaves converted compared to 53% (10 out of 19) of the slaves in the ḥasbatan lillah category. The lack of conversion by mukātaba slaves is more pronounced amongst the Ifrinjī slaves.

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Figure 11: Total number of slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by origin and religion

Figure 11 shows the total number of slaves in the Galata 14/3 court register arranged by origin and religion. Solid grey implies that the slave was Christian; hashing implies that the slave was Muslim. There occurs in this court register a greater variation in the ethnicity of slaves, although the trends in numbers and rate of conversion largely echo those of Figure 5

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Figure 12: Total number of slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by gender and religion

Figure 12 shows the total number of slaves in the Galata 14/3 court register arranged by gender and religion. Note that a larger proportion or female slaves converted compared to male slaves, 71% to 61% respectively.

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Figure 13: Male Slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by origin and religion

Figure 13 shows the male slaves in the Galata 14/3 court register arranged by origin and religion. Solid grey implies that the slave was Christian; hashing implies that the slave was Muslim.

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Figure 14: Female slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by origin and religion

Figure 14 shows the female slaves in Galata 14/3 arranged by origin and religion. Solid grey implies that the slave was Christian; hashing implies that the slave was Muslim. Note that the majority of female slaves who did not convert were Frankish (Ifrinjī).

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Figure 15: All slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by type of manumission and religion

Figure 15 shows the total number of slaves in the Galata 14/3 court register arranged by type of manumission and religion. Solid grey implies that the slave was Christian; hashing implies that the slave was Muslim. It is clear that only 35% of the mukātaba slaves converted compared to 75% of the slaves in the charitable manumission (ḥasbatan lillah) category.

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Figure 16: All Ifrinjī slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by type of manumission and religion

Figure 16 shows the total number of Frankish (Ifrinjī) slaves in the Galata 14/3 court register arranged by type of manumission and religion. Only 15% of mukātaba slaves converted compared to 54% of slaves in the charitable manumission (ḥasbatan lillah) category. It is clear that the lack of conversion among mukātaba slaves was even more pronounced amongst the Frankish slaves (see Figure 15 for comparison).

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Figure 17: All Black Sea slaves in Galata 14/3 organised by type of manumission and religion

Figure 17 shows the total number Black Sea slaves in the Galata 14/3 court register arranged by type of manumission and religion. All but one Black Sea slave converted, in stark contrast to the conversion patterns of Frankish slaves.

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Figure 18: Total number of slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by origin and religion

Figure 18 shows the total number of slaves in the Galata 14/4 court register arranged by origin and religion. Solid grey implies that the slave was Christian; hashing implies that the slave was Muslim. Note the increased number of Qubrūsī (Cypriot) slaves, who tend not to convert. Also, note the increased conversion rate amongst Frankish slaves at 78%.

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Figure 19: Total number of slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by gender and religion

Figure 19 shows the total number of slaves in Galata 14/4 arranged by gender and religion. The Galata 14/4 court register contains a larger proportion of males converting to Islam compared to females: 78% and 70%, respectively. Galata 14/4 also boasts a larger proportion of women among the total slaves population than the Galata 14/2 or 14/3 court registers.

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Figure 20: Male slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by origin and religion

Figure 20 shows the male slaves in the Galata 14/4 court register arranged by origin and religion. Solid grey implies the slave was Christian; hashing implies the slave was Muslim. Note that the make up of slaves in terms of religion, ethnicity and gender has shifted in the Galata 14/4 court register. Frankish (Ifrinjī) males converted more often, and in contrast to previous court registers, Galata 14/4 is marked by the complete absence of Abāzāwī or Jirkasī male slaves.

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Figure 21: Female slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by origin and religion

Figure 21 shows the female slaves in Galata 14/4 arranged by origin and religion. Solid grey implies that the slave was Christian; hashing implies that the slave was Muslim. It is worth noting that only Cypriot (Qubrūsī) females tended not to convert.

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Figure 22: All slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by type of manumission and religion

Figure 22 shows the total number of slaves in the Galata 14/4 court register arranged by type of manumission and religion. Solid grey implies that the slave was Christian; hashing implies that the slave was Muslim. It is clear to see that only 30% of the mukātaba slaves converted compared to 88% of the slaves in the charitable manumission (ḥasbatan lillah) category.

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Figure 23: All Ifrinjī slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by type of manumission and religion

Figure 23 Shows the total number of Frankish (Ifrinjī) slaves in the Galata 14/4 court register arranged by type of manumission and religion. 0nly 17% of the mukātaba slaves converted, compared to 89% of the slaves in the charitable manumission (ḥasbatan lillah) category.

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Figure 24: All Qubrūsī slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by type of manumission and religion

Figure 24 shows the total number of Cypriot (Qubrūsī) slaves in the Galata 14/4 court register arranged by type of manumission and religion. It is worth noting that the usual high levels of conversion among charitably manumitted (ḥasbatan lillah) slaves is not evidenced, nor are there any converts in the mukātaba group. The only converts are present in the tadbīr group.

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Figure 25: All Black Sea slaves in Galata 14/4 organised by type of manumission and religion

Figure 25 shows the total number Black Sea slaves in the Galata 14/4 court register arranged by type of manumission and religion. All but one slave converted, continuing the trend of high levels of religious conversion among slaves originating in the Black Sea.

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Chapter 4: The mukātaba Contract and Maritime Slave Labour ›Because Mediterranean naval operations tended to be confronted with chronic shortages of oarsmen for the galleys, ships were less valuable than their crews. It was therefore common practice to ram and board enemy ships, instead of sinking them – but not in order to take over the vessel, but to capture the crew.‹ 328 ›The attraction of the big cities is the more understandable in that sailors in the Mediterranean have always been wanderers ready to migrate.‹ 329

Seafaring and Slavery Two hypotheses are tested in this chapter. The first is that many, if not all, of the slaves whose mukātaba contracts were recorded in the Galata court registers were employed in the maritime economy in some respect, in or around the Ottoman imperial shipyard (tersane-yi amire), possibly as shipwrights or sailors. 330 The second hypothesis is that the mukātaba contract was a meritocratic system, in which the value of slave labour did not differ according to ethnic categories or religion, as gauged by the descriptors assigned to the slave in the court registers. Furthermore, because the Ottoman Empire in the mid-sixteenth century was in need of skilled labour, it is possible to surmise that these slaves were inculcated (forcibly or willingly) into the Ottoman habitus,331 and further integrated into the local maritime economy as free workers through household patronage systems after their manumission. The proof in the sicils for these hypotheses is not immediately obvious amidst the terse legal language and formulaic clauses, yet when information from the court registers is paired with evidence from contemporary narrative sources and secondary studies, a clearer picture of slave labour in Galata emerges. This analysis therefore represents a significant contribution to the overall socio-economic history of slavery in sixteenth-century Galata as well as the more general history 328 Mossensohn, ›Medical treatment in the Ottoman navy in the early modern period‹, 557. 329 Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 146. 330 The functioning of slave labour and the mukātaba contract in specific contexts of trade or industry in the Ottoman Empire has been addressed in a number of studies: Halil İnalcık, ›Capital formation in the Ottoman Empire‹, 97-114; Idem, ›Bursa and the commerce of the Levant‹, 131-147; Sahillioğlu, ›Slaves in the social and economic life of Bursa‹, 43-112. 331 Defined as the religious, cultural, and linguistic practices and customs of Galata’s large askeri households which owned skilled slaves and into which manumitted slaves were presumably destined for integration.

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of daily life in the Ottoman capital. Finally, this chapter’s conclusion addresses the pertinent question of whether the system of maritime mukātaba labour can be considered ›indentured servitude‹ or ›slavery‹. It is impossible to investigate the first hypothesis of this chapter, that slaves in Galata were skilled maritime labourers, without at least briefly introducing the background and location of the Ottoman imperial shipyards, as well as the organisation of skilled and unskilled labour in these shipyards. 332 The main shipbuilding activities of the Ottoman Empire shifted from Gallipoli to Istanbul in 1515, 333 and by the time of Süleyman the Magnificent, the neighbourhood of Galata had become the main centre of shipbuilding in the empire. 334 The Galata tersane stretched from Azap kapısı to Hasköy in the sixteenth century, and after the 1571 defeat at Lepanto/İnebahtı when the Ottoman fleet had to be rebuilt, the tersane was further expanded.335 Following the Ottoman naval victory at Jerba in 1560, Süleyman ordered further maritime campaigns, in particular against Malta, thus resulting in an increase in activity in the imperial shipyard in preparation for launching this naval attack.336 In all likelihood it was this Ottoman triumph at Jerba in 1560 that inspired the sultan to order preparations for further naval campaigns. The preparations for further campaigns, in particular the attack on Malta which was to take place in 1565, generated the need for skilled maritime-related labour that resulted in the large numbers of slaves employed in Galata in the period immediately following the victory in Jerba. While it seems that the Ottomans did not lack any material for constructing ships, the Ottoman maritime economy suffered from a distinct dearth of skilled technical labour capable of building and maintaining war galleys suitable for cam332 The tersane’s development and administrative workings have been thoroughly examined by a number of scholars: Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Merkez ve Bahriye Teşkilatı; Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Teşkilatı: XVII. Yüzyılda Tersane-i Amire; Idem, Beylikten İmparatorluğa Osmanlı Denizciliği; Idem, Osmanlılar ve Deniz, particularly the section explaining the administration of the tersane, 69-104; Idem, ›Ottoman maritime arsenals and shipbuilding technology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries‹ The Great Ottoman-Turkish Civilisation (Ankara, 2000), vol. III, 735-744; Murat Çızakça, ›Ottomans and the Mediterranean: an analysis of the Ottoman shipbuilding industry as reflected in the arsenal registers of Istanbul 1529-1650‹, Le genti del mare mediterraneo, eds. Rosalba Ragosto and Luigi de Rosa, Vol. 2 (Naples, 1981); Imber, ›The Administration of the Ottoman Navy during the Reign of Suleyman I 1520-1566‹; Idem, ›The navy of Süleyman the Magnificent‹, 170; Idem, ›The reconstruction of the Ottoman fleet after the battle of Lepanto, 1571-1572‹ Studies in Ottoman History and Law (Istanbul, 1996), 85-102. Also see two recent additions to the literature: Yusuf Alperen Aydın, Osmanlı Denizciliği (1700-1770) (PhD diss., Istanbul Üniversity, 2007); Mehmet Kuru, Relations between Ottoman Corsairs and the Imperial Navy in the 16th Century (MA diss., Sabancı University, 2009). 333 Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Teşkilatı: XVII. Yüzyılda Tersane-i Amire, 4. 334 Imber, Administration of the Ottoman Navy, 38; Bostan, Beylikten İmparatorluğa Osmanlı Denizciliği, 26. 335 Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Teşkilatı: XVII. Yüzyılda Tersane-i Amire, 7. 336 Hess, The Forgotten Frontier, 84.

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paigning.337 The lack of a stable pool of skilled shipbuilders was a problem endemic to the Mediterranean,338 and technically skilled sailors, shipbuilders, and other maritime-related craftsmen and artisans were always in demand throughout the region. By way of example, in the early modern period the shipbuilders of Venice occupied a privileged position, described as those employed as ›shipwrights, caulkers, makers of masts, pulleys, and guncarriages.‹ Trained by the Venetian state, they were considered a ›most precious human resource‹ to the city-state whose empire was based on her seafaring power. Like Istanbul and Venice, the cities of the Barbary Coast, whose cities depended on seafaring for survival, also suffered from a lack of talented shipbuilders. If craftsmen were captured, enslaved and transported to North Africa, it became nearly impossible to retrieve them, so valuable were their skills to their new owners.339 Before deriving any conclusions concerned the employment of the slaves recorded in the Galata sicils, we should first establish a clear picture of the demand for labour and the number of craftsmen required to build, maintain, and man a sixteenth-century galley. In the sixteenth century, the Ottoman fleet put enormous demands on manpower. A single galley required a crew of two hundred men, and in the mid- to late sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire operated one hundred and fifty galleys. Hence, a staggering 30,000 workers and sailors were needed to man the Ottoman fleet in the period at hand. The fleets employed in the sieges of Malta (1565) and Corfu (1566) were significantly larger, requiring upwards of 40,000 men. This large number of rowers, soldiers and sailors had to be replenished yearly, as many sailors and other maritime workers would perish at sea during the battle season.340 The problem was exacerbated by the frequent occurrences of diseases such as the plague, which decimated the urban populations of the Mediterranean, including that of Istanbul. The populations of urban centres in this period could not sustain their own numbers without immigration from outside the city. 341 Consequently, there was a constant demand for labour, especially skilled labour, in early modern Istanbul and especially in the Ottoman shipyard. This demand certainly rose even further in the second half of the sixteenth century when the Ottomans increased their naval involvement in the Mediterranean. 337 Lester J. Libby, ›Venetian views of the Ottoman empire from the peace of 1503 to the war of Cyprus‹, The Sixteenth Century Journal 9/4 (1978), 108. 338 Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 139. 339 Robert C. Davis, ›Slave redemption in Venice 1585-1797‹, in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State 1297-1797, ed. John Jeffries Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore, 2000), 461. Davis cites the specific example of a man named Giacomo Colombin, who knew how to construct ›galeotte and bergantine‹ as well as the ›galere grosse‹ and was thus kept captive for thirty-one years before apparently escaping. 340 Imber, Administration of the Ottoman Navy, 25-26. 341 Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 333-334.

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It is not unlikely that this demand for labour resulted in an increase in raiding and slaving activities in the Mediterranean undertaken by pirates. Producers of goods generally attempt to meet demand in the market if there is a profit to be made. In this case, the ›producers‹ were pirates who took captives from among the maritime populations of the shores of the Mediterranean and supplied Istanbul’s labour market with slaves. It is estimated that, ›[a]t the peak of this practice of slave-taking, which coincided with the culmination of its sixteenth-century clashes with Spain, the Ottoman Empire had somewhere between twelve and twenty thousand Christian galeotti, of whom about a third were the sultan’s, the rest belonged to individual pashas and beys.‹342 It has also been approximated that the number of captives taken in a season could reach up to eight-hundred men, which would be a sufficient number of rowers for four ships, 343 thus it is not improbable that the slaves in the Galata 14/2 and 14/3 sicils were taken in a single season of battles, most likely that of 1560. Thus it is not impossible to conclude that the presence of so many slaves in Galata in the second half of the sixteenth century was the result of an increase in piracy and coastal raiding as well as naval battles, spurred by a demand in the Istanbul labour market for skilled workers, particularly maritime craftsmen and seafarers with experience of shipbuilding and repair, as discussed above. Faroqhi suggests that the Ottoman tersane in Galata maintained only a basic administrative staff and then recruited labour as necessary in periods of high shipbuilding activity, which would concur with the evidence from the sicils, as it would seem that a large number of workers were quickly and forcibly recruited into the labour pool of Galata when the need arose in the mid-sixteenth century before the siege of Malta.344 It is even plausible that many of these slaves were the harvest from the 1560 Battle of Jerba, in which the Ottomans captured the entire Spanish fleet and its crew; however, it is nearly impossible to substantiate this claim empirically using the sicils and contemporary historical chronicles. Evidence from other contemporary archival documents would be necessary to affirm this statement, although it seems likely. It is well attested in the European travel narratives and diplomatic correspondence of the period that Ottoman sailors and soldiers took numerous captives and brought them back to Istanbul to be sold as slaves. For instance, Busbecq claims that slaves were the main source of profit to the Turkish soldier (or in the case of maritime expeditions, the Turkish sailor), and that skilled slaves were 342 Mossensohn, ›Medical treatment in the Ottoman navy‹, 556. 343 Rhoads Murphey, ›The Ottoman resurgence in the seventeenth-century Mediterranean: the gamble and its results‹, Mediterranean Historical Review 8 (1993), 191. 344 Suraiya Faroqhi, ›Labor recruitment and control in the Ottoman empire (sixteenth and seventeeth centuries)‹, in Manufacturing in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey 1500-1950, ed. Donald Quataert (Albany, 1994), 26.

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valued twice as much as unskilled, 345 indicating the relative rarity and hence elevated worth of such slaves. While in Istanbul he also witnessed the triumphal parade of captives taken after the Ottoman defeat of Gian Andrea Doria’s fleet at Jerba.346 Further evidence for the nature of the work of the numerous mukātab slaves of Galata is the prevalence of seafaring-related titles appended to the slave owners’ names, titles which are beyond a doubt indicative of some association with the Ottoman navy and other maritime endeavours, be they privateering or trade. Considering the geographical location of the court near the tersane, it is not surprising that many of the claimants were involved in the Ottoman navy and bore titles such as reis or kapudan. Moreover, what is striking is that many of these men were also slave owners, employing slaves through mukātaba contracts, owning them as capital (as is evident from the inheritance inventories of the Galata sicils), or manumitting them. However, the exact work in which these slaves were employed is never explicitly stated. As the court registers never specifically reveal whether an anonymous mukātab slave was a sailor, a rope-maker, or a caulker, we can only speculate as to the nature of his employment based on the title of his owner and the location of the court in which his work contract was registered, as well as the amount of money he was expected to pay toward his freedom and the timing of the contract. Strikingly, one-hundred and ninety-one of the total population of slaves (which, including women and children, numbered five-hundred and sixty-nine) from all three court registers were owned by men bearing the following titles: reis, reis sulṭānī, reis amīrī, kapudan, or kapudan sulṭānī. Thus, approximately 34% of the total population slaves were owned by men directly and obviously involved in seafaring. This percentage has been calculated without taking into account the slave-owners in possession of various titles, who were most likely involved in the navy as a result of their location in Galata, such as sipahi, silahdar, azap, odabaşı, kethüda, bölükbaşı, mir liva-yi Kocaeli or mir liva-yi Iskandiriyya.347 If we take into account the other titles, then more than half of the total slave population (three hundred and sixty-two slaves) were owned by men involved in Ottoman military or administration who had business in the neighbourhood of Galata between the years 1560 and 1572.348 A further indication that the mukātab slaves of the Galata court registers were employed in some form of shipbuilding, maintenance or sailing as skilled labourers is contained in contemporary travel narratives. A crucial point to be noted is 345 346 347 348

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Busbecq, Turkish Letters, 70. Ibid., 118. Imber, Administration of the Ottoman Navy, 29. These figures do not take into account slaves listed in muhallafat defterleri (inheritance inventories).

that only skilled craftsmen were given the relatively good fortune of a mukātaba contract, in contrast to unskilled slaves. A sixteenth-century captive, Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz, describes his experience in the prison for slaves in Tophane, relating that: In the principal building there are captives of various nations, artisans who construct galleys, and divers other things; for instance, carpenters, joiners, smiths, ropemakers, sailclothmakers, locksmiths, and coopers, who are conducted every day into this or that workshop. These are the best off of all, for they have it in their power to filch things, sell them secretly, and buy something to eat; nay, when they work industriously, porridge is given them on Friday (the Turkish Sunday), and, above all, they have hopes of a release before the rest. For, when they execute a handsome piece of work, whether it be a galley, a galleon, or any other boat, in a masterly and artistic style, and the pasha who commands by sea is pleased with it, he confers the following favours on the chief artizans. Taking from them a promise not to escape from Turkey for ten years, but to work faithfully till the expiration of that time, he releases them on parole, and, after that time, they can marry and settle there at their liking, or return to their own country.349 Wratislaw neatly summarises the state of the skilled slave in Galata, filling in the human details on the abundant yet dry data provided by the court registers. The technical name for the legal device that Wratislaw describes as ›a promise . . . to work faithfully till the expiration of that time‹ is indeed the mukātaba contract itself. This passage lends support to the idea that this form of work contract, followed by manumission and integration into Ottoman society, was reserved primarily for skilled slaves, who in the case he describes were employed in shipbuilding. It was common practice in many areas of the Ottoman Empire to employ skilled slaves in industry. For instance, in Ottoman Algiers, slaves were used as silk weavers, carders, shoemakers, and tailors, and skilled slaves were also drafted into large-scale building projects.350 In Bursa, slaves were employed in the luxury textile industry through the institution of the mukātaba contract.351 At one point the records of the construction of the Süleymaniye complex in Istanbul even record that an almost equal number of free labourers and slaves were employed on a daily wage. 352 349 Wratislaw, Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz 1599, 125-126. 350 Faroqhi, ›Labor recruitment and control in the Ottoman empire‹, 23-24. 351 Sahillioğlu, ›Slaves in the social and economic life of Bursa in the late 15th and early 16th centuries‹, 43-112. 352 Ömer Barkan, Süleymaniye Cami ve İmareti İnşaatı (1550-1557) I. Cilt. (Ankara, 1972), 8. De Busbecq, Turkish Letters, 70, also elaborates, ›So, too, if the State required any work of con-

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Furthermore, it is certain that the slaves whose mukātaba contracts were recorded in the Galata court registers were technically skilled, as unskilled slaves were rarely, if ever, paid anything for their labours, and received no guarantee of a speedy manumission, if any manumission at all, rendering their appearance in the Galata court records highly unlikely. 353 While we cannot be sure of the exact nature of the work undertaken by the individual slaves who were employed in the mukātaba contracts of Galata, it is safe to conclude that they most certainly were not rowers. Slave rowers, miri esirleri (gebran-i miri),354 it is almost certain, did not make an appearance among the slaves in possession of a mukātaba contract in the Galata court registers, as they were not paid for their efforts, nor was manumission guaranteed such that a contract might be registered. The miri esirler were bought by the arsenal and hired out to the Ottoman fleet; private owners also rented their slaves as rowers to the Ottoman navy when a pressing need for manpower arose, 355 or to construction projects or to be employed in other simple manual labour, such as digging ditches, or cleaning the houses of Istanbul’s elites. 356 Those rowing on the galleys of the Ottoman fleet were either captives of war, criminals under punishment 357 or those raised by the annual levy of oarsmen from Anatolia and Rumelia. 358 However, the unskilled slaves employed in such labour did not possess contracts for their back-

353

354 355 356

357 358

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struction, removal, clearance, or demolition, slave-labour is always employed to carry it out.‹ Furthermore, Faroqhi in her article, previously cited, ›Labor recruitment and control in the Ottoman Empire‹, 23, claims that slaves belonging to the Ottoman bayt al-māl completed 5% of the work-hours recorded. Menavino, I costumi, et la vita de Turchi, 213-214. Menavino describes the misery of nonmukātaba slaves in a section entitled, ›Cio, che si fa de Christiani, che non hanno arti mecchaniche‹, or ›What is done with Christians who do not have technical skills.‹ This account is echoed almost word-for-word in the English language account attributed to Bartholomeus Georgieuiz, suggesting interesting questions of intertextuality in early modern European accounts of slavery in Istanbul. Georgieuiz’s work is entitled, The Offspring of the house of Ottomano, and offices pertaining to the greate Turkes court. Whereunto is added Bartholomeus Georgieuiz Epitome, of the customes, Rytes, Ceremonies, and Religion of the Turkes: with the miserable affliction of those Christians, whiche live under their captivitie and bondage (London, 1553), 112-114. A further description of the state of the non-skilled slaves is provided by Wratislaw, Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz, 127. Bostan, Osmanlılar ve Deniz, 93-94, and on those receiving the oar as a punishment, 94-95. Mossensohn, ›Medical treatment in the Ottoman navy‹, 556. Heberer, Osmanlıda bir Köle: for examples of slaves made to row, p. 125; slaves forced to perform other chores on land p. 163; slaves rented out for menial labour, pp. 192-194. For a discussion of the relevant secondary literature on the various tasks undertaken by slaves in the Ottoman empire, see the following sections of Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It: ›The ›extra-curricular‹ labours of galley-and other-slaves‹, 131132, and ›Domestic service‹, 132-133. Mehmet İpşirli, ›XVI Asrın İkinci Yarısında Kürek Cezası İle İlgili Hükümler‹, Tarih Enstitüsü Dergisi 12 (1982), 204-148. Imber, Administration of the Ottoman Navy, 85-87, 89.

breaking manual work, which was unremunerated, and could not expect a swift manumission guaranteed by the sharīʿa, as they did not represent a scarce or irreplaceable resource as skilled craftsmen. There is further evidence for the argument that the slaves were involved in some form of work connected to seafaring or shipbuilding in Galata. Namely, the mukātaba contracts outlined in the Galata registers typically obey a seasonal instalment plan that demanded a higher payment from the slave in the summer months, implying that the slave himself may have been earning a higher wage in the summer. Significantly, the summer months between Nevruz, at the spring equinox, and late September/early October just after the vernal equinox, when the weather turned and sailing became dangerous, were the Mediterranean sailing season, the period of greatest activity for the Ottoman fleet. Of course it may also be possible that such stipulations of higher payments in the summer merely reflect the higher monetary demands on slave-owners during the battle season. The correspondence between the monthly instalments and the wages paid in the tersane suggests that slaves were either rented out or allowed to seek employment in the tersane and its environs. As for the nature of the work of the men who were expected to produce a larger instalment during the sailing season, it is possible that they were employed on the ships of the Ottoman fleet. On the other hand, if they had been craftsmen, it is possible that they may have earned more in the winter months when new ships were constructed and old ones were repaired and overhauled.359 However, craftsmen also served aboard ships to carry out repairs and maintenance at sea during the sailing season, rendering their service just as valuable, or perhaps more so, in the summer. 360 Regardless of whether the men paying for their freedom in instalments were employed on the ships themselves or in the tersane as repairmen and craftsmen, what is clear is that the instalments required for the payment of a mukātaba were stipulated according to the Mediterranean sailing season, suggesting that the work patterns of the slaves revolved around the rhythms of the maritime calendar. A further corroboration of the hypothesis that the Galata mukātab slaves were employed in naval endeavours is the origin of the slaves, who came overwhelmingly from locations with traditionally seafaring populations in possession of the requisite maritime skills, as demonstrated in the previous chapter. Many of the slaves in the Galata court registers would have originated on or near a sea, in particular the Mediterranean or Black Sea, 361 thus raising the possibility that they would have brought with them the technical skills and abilities associated with a tradition of seafaring. In his doctoral thesis on the Galata tersane under Süleyman I, 359 Ibid., 25, 27. 360 Ibid., 43. 361 This could, of course, also reflect the manner in which it is likely that most slaves were captured; see Chapter 3 for a full discussion of this phenomenon.

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Colin Imber claims that many of the craftsmen employed were Greek shipwrights from Constantinople, Galata, and the neighbouring coastal areas, but could also originate as far away as Gallipoli, Midilli, Chios and Rhodes. 362 It is possible that these areas were also targeted by pirates or naval raids to capture men skilled in maritime crafts who inhabited coastal areas or islands. So, the origin of the slaves may suggest their mode of employment in Galata. On the whole, the first of the two hypotheses to be tested in this chapter has been demonstrated as largely plausible. There is ample evidence that the mukātab slaves of Galata were indeed employed as skilled craftsmen or sailors in the nearby tersane or that their employment was at least connected to the maritime economy of sixteenth-century Galata. The second hypothesis to be tested in this chapter is that the mukātaba contract functioned as a motivating tool for the skilled slave, offering the promise of freedom in exchange for a certain amount of productive activity. Furthermore, it is argued that Ottoman Empire in its period of imperial expansion and the height of its Mediterranean dominance required skilled craftsmen and sailors to build, repair, and man its ships, and as a result of this need for labour, sought to retain its skilled slaves after manumission. Hence, the argument is posited that the period of the mukātaba contract served to insert the skilled slave into the economy of Galata. It is also reasonable to assume that the maritime labour market of Istanbul during such an intense period of Ottoman naval activity required skilled shipbuilders for an interval longer than that of the brief mukātaba contract, which typically lasted six years. It can be argued that in order to fill the demand for skilled labour and retain the freed slaves, the mukātab slaves were acculturated into the Ottoman habitus363 during the period of their mukātaba such that they could remain in Istanbul as ›Ottomans‹ after manumission, a notion which will be expanded further in the second half of this chapter (and continued in Chapter 5), in an attempt at accounting for the social function of the mukātaba contract. Essentially, this second discussion answers the question: why were slaves in Galata given mukātaba contracts rather than subjected to slavery without reprieve? Before addressing this question, the makeup of the mukātab slave population of Galata will first be examined, in distinction to the general slave population whose origins were described in Chapter 3, as well as describe the average value and length of the mukātaba contracts registered in the Galata court. Certain trends in the ethnicity of slaves engaged in mukātaba contracts in the period 1560-1572 are significant for the purposes of our discussion. The slaves engaged in mukātaba contracts were primarily Frankish in the Galata 14/2 register (see Figure 26) and 14/3 court register (see Figure 27), whereas in the Galata 14/4 register (see 362 Imber, Administration of the Ottoman Navy, 30, 43. 363 Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, 12.

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Figure 28), the largest proportion of mukātab slaves were Cypriot slaves (30%), followed by Rūsī slaves (27%). The male to female ratios of mukātab slaves also differ between the Galata 14/2 and 14/3 registers on the one hand, and the Galata 14/4 register on the other, as the former two registers contained smaller numbers of female slaves. For instance, 90% of the mukātaba contracts are held by male slaves in Galata 14/2 and 98% in Galata 14/3 (percentages have been calculated from Tables 5 and 6 in the appendix to this chapter). This is unsurprising, as the four schools of Islamic law were generally opposed to issuing female slaves with a mukātaba contract lest they turn to prostitution in order to meet the payments. 364 Indeed, the use of female slaves as prostitutes was a common problem in early modern Ottoman Istanbul, as is evident from the numerous proclamations prohibiting such practices.365 In contrast to Galata 14/2 and 14/3, a much lower 60% of mukātaba contracts were held by men in Galata 14/4 (percentage calculated from Table 7). This may be indicative of a change in the structure of the mukātaba system of labour in Galata. It is possible, for instance, that the work force was used for something other than shipbuilding by the 1570s and that greater numbers of women could be integrated into the workforce. Alternatively, the mukātaba contract may have at times been used as a tool for ransom, in this case for Cypriot women. The Galata 14/4 register also differs in that a much larger number of mukātaba contracts are specified in terms of time, rather than money, suggesting that by this period, the structure of the Galata labour market had started to change. The exact reason behind these changes, however, remains a question in need of further research. Furthermore, the length of a mukātaba contract specified in dirhams according to an instalment plan can be calculated, assuming that the slave more or less obeyed this plan. For the sake of these calculations, the ›summer months‹ as specified in the contract when slaves were responsible for paying a larger instalment of money toward their freedom, are considered as April through September (inclusive), and the ›winter months‹, when slaves were responsible for paying less, as October through March. Calculating the length of a mukātaba contract according to the instalment plan laid out in the court registers is problematic as it is possible that the slave was not able to produce the exact amount of money in the time 364 Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-Mujtahid, vol. II, 457. 365 Yaşar Yücel, 1640 Tarihli Esʿar Defteri: Metnin Türk Harlerine Çevirisi ve Değerlendirilmesi (Ankara, 1982), 75-76; Refik, On Altıncı Asırda Istanbul Hayatı 1553-1591, 42. This practice of prostituting female slaves is attested to in Anatolia in pre-Ottoman times as well: Ibn Battuta, The Travels of Ibn Battuta 1325-1354, trans. H.A.R. Gibb (Cambridge, 1958 vol. I, 1962 vol. II), vol. II, 425-426. European travel narratives also recount the use of slave-girls as prostitutes in various forms: Lithgow, The Rare Adventures of Painful Peregrinations of William Lithgow, 86-87, 129. Modern scholarship offers some accounts of prostitution in Ottoman Istanbul as well: Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, 34. And on the legal aspects of prostition see: James Baldwin, ›Prostitution, Islamic Law and Ottoman Societies‹, JESHO 55 (2012), 117-152.

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period stipulated in his original contract, thus causing his period of servitude to lengthen. For the sake of these calculations, it has been assumed that the slave had an equal number of summers and winters during his period of servitude. Otherwise, if we were to be more precise in our calculations, were a slave to begin his contract in April, for example, and his contract was set to last approximately 6.67 years (paying 8000 dirhams at a rate of 100 dirhams a month), then he would have laboured through one more summer period before reaching freedom, as he would be manumitted around September/October - if, of course, the slave had paid his dues according to the schedule laid out in the court register, and his owner also respected these terms. Yet, this assumption is only valid if the slave paid the same amount every month, which was not the case with certain instalment plans. For instance, if the slave began his contract in April (paying, as was commonly recorded, 150 dirhams in the summer months, which extended from April through September, and then only 100 dirhams in the winter, from October until March) and he was required to pay a total of, say, the common value of 8000 dirhams by the end. His contract would then end in June/July, after a period of servitude of 5 years and 3 months and 10 days. However, if the same slave started his contract in October, setting out to pay his total of 8000 dirhams according to the same instalment plan, he would finish his contract in February, after a period of 5 years and 5 months. Thus, whether the slave began his work in the summer or winter months made a slight difference to the length of the contract, provided he delivered his instalments according to schedule. Of course, because we have no way of knowing whether the slave met his payments on time, and because the difference between starting a mukātaba contract in the summer versus the winter is only slightly less than two months, we will ignore this small discrepancy when attempting to calculate the average duration of mukātaba contracts specified in dirhams with an instalment plan for payment. The objective is to establish an impression of the number of years a skilled slave was required to labour in the Galata tersane, or on the Ottoman fleet itself, before earning his freedom. In terms of the general trends that are observable among the values and lengths of mukātaba contracts, it seems that the value of a contract increased over time, and the duration of a contract lengthened slightly between 1560 and 1572. For instance, in the Galata 14/2 register, the average length of a contract (calculated using the instalment plan contracts in Table 5) was 4.97 years. In Galata 14/3, the average length of a contract was 5.30 years (calculated from Table 6), and by Galata 14/4, the average time required to complete a mukātaba contract was 6.01 years (calculated from Table 7). The average values also increased from 5600 dirhams in Galata 14/2 to 6900 dirhams in Galata 14/3 to 7300 dirhams in Galata 14/4 (see Figure 29 for graph of these values).

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Thus, when trends in the value of labour are considered across the three registers, the monetary values of mukātaba contracts seem to have increased steadily with the passage of time. There are two possible explanations for this rise in the monetary value of mukātaba contracts. The first is that the actual value of labour increased over the course of the period studied, and the second is that inflation, or other economic factors, such a growing demand for skilled labour, were at work to increase the amount of money paid during the course of a mukātaba contract. This is perhaps the result of the increase in activity in the tersane during the sieges of Malta and Cyprus which took place during this period, as well as the complete reconstruction of the Ottoman fleet required by the defeat at Lepanto. The lengthening of the mukātaba contract may also be the result of these same factors, namely, the need to retain skilled slaves for an intense period of shipbuilding activity. In contrast, the average value of the body of the slave, rather than his labour, as gauged by the price of slaves recorded in the inheritance inventories, 366 does not change over the course of the three court registers, and is significantly lower in all cases than the cost of skilled slave labour as attested in the mukātaba contracts (see Figure 29). The comparison between the value of skilled labour and the price of a slave’s person may be made by considering the monetary values attached to the mukātaba contract, which was valued according to the slave’s productive output and guaranteed his freedom once a specific output was met, and values attached to a slave’s person in the muhallafat defterleri (inheritance inventories), which listed the value of a slave as a part of the property of the deceased owner, without any mention of manumission. In addition to trends in the value and length of a mukātaba contract and its comparison with values of slaves in inheritance inventories, from an examination of the tabulated data appended to this chapter, it is immediately obvious that the average value of the mukātaba contract does not vary according to ethnicity or religion. The percentage of Christians versus Muslims engaged in mukātaba contracts remained fairly uniform over the passage of time, showing only a slight decrease in the proportion of Christians to Muslims by Galata 14/4 (see Table 7 and Figure 28), when Christians represented 70% of mukātab slaves and Muslims 30% probably as a result of the slightly lower levels of conversion among the mukātab Frankish slaves discussed at the end of Chapter 3. This is in contrast to previous proportions of 63% Christians to 37% Muslims in Galata 14/2 (see Table 5 and figure 26) and 65% Christians to 35% Muslims in Galata 14/3 (see Table 6 and figure 27). 366 Determining the price of a commodity – in this case, slaves – from inheritance inventories is problematic for a number of reasons, detailed in Ze’evi’s seminal article, ›The use of Ottoman sharīʿa court records as a source for Middle Eastern social history: a reappraisal‹, 35-56.

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Furthermore, there was no significant difference in the values of the mukātaba contracts of Christians versus those of Muslims, which reinforces the impression from Chapter 3 that conversion to Islam did not positively influence the slave’s period of mukātaba, and so conversion would not have been a necessarily attractive option to the mukātab slave. For instance, Frankish slaves were paid roughly the same amount as, say, Abaza slaves, or any other group defined by origin. Thus, the mukātaba labour market seems to be relatively egalitarian, or even meritocratic, in so far as exploitation was blind to origin and faith, as neither ethnicity nor religion seem to have influenced the value of mukātaba contracts. Having come to the unsurprising conclusion that slavery, like any system of exploitation, was undiscriminating in questions of religions or origin, we should now examine the social and psychological underpinning of such a system.

The Psychology and Sociology of the mukātaba Contract in the Ottoman Context The mukātaba contract was both a pragmatic system of exploiting the technical skills of slaves as well as a method of preparing certain groups of skilled slaves for integration into the socio-economic fabric of Ottoman Istanbul after manumission. The mukātaba system of slavery was remarkable for its fiscal practicality and psychological acuity. If a slave-owner wished to exploit the technical capacities of his slave to the fullest, what better way to do so than to promise the slave freedom at the end of a relatively brief period of servitude, a period which could be shortened in relation to how hard the slave worked or how much he produced. The mukātaba contract, and its promise of earnings and eventual freedom, motivated the slave to work more diligently than if he were faced with an indeterminate period of enslavement and no hope of release. The slave owner needed, to a certain degree, to gain the trust of the skilled slave and allow the slave to motivate himself to work, because it is not possible to whip a carpenter, rope-maker or sailor into performing his job better or faster, unlike the common galley slave. Thus, the promise of freedom, dependant on the amount of work performed, was a much more effective motive to the enslaved craftsman than the whip. In addition, the numerous naval commanders who were of Frankish or Greek origin, and were often former slaves, would have served as a model for the ambi tious mukātab slave to emulate. The examples are plentiful, but to name a few sixteenth-century slave/renegade success stories in the Ottoman maritime sphere, there is Selman Reis, and his second in command, Dimurdaş, were from Lesbos and Crete, respectively.367 Yusuf Cığalazade, was a Genoese noble from Messina 367 Casale, ›The ethnic composition of Ottoman ship crews‹, 128.

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captured by pirates,368 Melek Ahmad Pasha, was an Abaza tribesman brought to Istanbul as a slave boy, a relation of Evliya Çelebi’s mother, who was an Abaza concubine.369 Michael Heberer, the German captive who wrote of his term of slavery in Istanbul, attests that his owner was originally a Catholic from Pantelleria who had been captured in a raid and taken to Egypt as a young boy. 370 Heberer also reports that Kılıç Ali Paşa was originally from Calabria, and served as a rower on galleys before converting and climbing his way to a position of power in the Ottoman fleet, primarily for the motive of getting revenge on his cruel owner. 371 In addition, the traveller and merchant Fresne-Canaye identified the owner of his ship as courting the favours of a Spanish renegade who had joined the Ottoman army.372 Many renegades from mobile populations of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean migrated to work in the shipyard of Istanbul and on the Ottoman ships,373 and the Greek and Italian contingent in the Ottoman navy was strong in both the 15th and 16th century.374 If not a member of the Ottoman elite, former slaves had numerous models to emulate among the pirates of the Mediterranean. For instance, in his captivity account, Fray Diego de Haedo includes a list of thirty-five pirates active there in the year 1581 (see appendix for a reproduction of this list). 375 While these men had without exception converted to Islam, their origins seem to have been well-known and even significant in identifying them. The majority of the pirates were Christian renegades to Islam who originated in places such as Calabria, Genoa, Venice, Corsica, Sicily, Naples, and from countries we would now identify as Hungary, Albany, and Spain, with several pirates also labelled as Greek as well, which looks strikingly like a list of the origins of the slaves in Galata, indicating that probable enslavers/slave owners and slaves often possessed the same geographical and cultural origins. These examples demonstrate that the Mediterranean captives had an excellent vision of the station one could attain through a combination of skill, hard work, ruthlessness, and conversion. Similar circumstances have been identified for the Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean, worth quoting in full:

368 Tobias P. Graf, ›Renegades to the Ottoman Empire and Their Impact in the Early Modern Period‹ (MPhil diss., University of Cambridge, 2008), 19. 369 For a discussion of Melek Ahmed Pasha’s origins, see: Robert Dankoff, The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman: Melek Ahmed Pasha (1588-1662), As portrayed in Evliya Çelebi’s Book of Travels, with a historical introduction by Rhoads Murphey (Albany, 1991). 370 Heberer, Osmanlıda bir Köle, 136. 371 Ibid., 242-243. 372 Fresne-Canaye, Le Voyage du Levant de Philippe du Fresne-Canaye 1573, 285. 373 Imber, Administration of the Ottoman Navy, 108 374 Henry Kahane, Renée Kahane and Adreas Tietze, The Lingua Franca in the Levant: Turkish Nautical Terms of Italian and Greek Origin (Urbana, 1958), 20. 375 Haedo, Topografia e Historia Generale de Argel, 89-91.

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[I]n contrast to contemporary European fleets where captive labour was typically used only for menial and physically demanding tasks like rowing, Ottoman ships were populated by large numbers of experienced seamen who could technically be categorized as ›slaves‹ – and who may even have begun their careers as captives – but whose conditions of service could hardly be called ›slavery‹ in a European sense.376 In addition to the numerous Italian ex-slaves and converts who rose through the Ottoman ranks, there are several examples of Slavic (Rūs) ex-slaves who also achieved success after conversion as well.377 The presence of so many Franks in Galata, employed as slave labour presents plausible documentary evidence of the role of so-called Latins in the Ottoman society and economy of the sixteenth-century, especially in the area of transmission of technical seafaring knowledge and skills. This is not to say that Franks or Europeans were the so-called ›driving force‹ of the successful Ottoman sea power during this period. Rather, the documentary evidence suggests that these slaves contributed to the building of ships and widened the talent pool 378 of skilled labour and craftsmen present in Istanbul at the time. This finding marks a significant breakthrough in the documentation, description, and understanding of the flow of the Mediterranean labour market and the sharing of technical skills 379 in this geographical area in the early modern period from the point of view of Ottoman primary sources, rather than relying on European travel accounts for such information. Thus the mukātaba system of slave labour seems to have been more than merely an arrangement of economic exploitation. It allowed the skilled craftsman a period of time in which he could form social ties and integrate himself into a labour market and a household, presumably that of his owner and employer, learn the Ottoman Turkish language and possibly the basics of Islam, while guaranteed employment, food, and shelter. Furthermore, it was the interest not only of the slaves, but also of Ottoman society, to attract and integrate these craftsman slaves 376 Casale, ›The ethnic composition of Ottoman ship crews‹, 132-133. 377 Fisher, ›Muscovy and the Black Sea slave trade‹, 39. 378 This concept has been developed by Tobias Graf for identifying the employment of renegades as an Ottoman method of ›widening the pool of talent‹ in his MPhil thesis, previously cited, ›Renegades to the Ottoman Empire and Their Impact in the Early Modern Period‹. Other scholars have also identified temporary slavery in the Ottoman Empire as a means of either recruiting labour or establishing an individual on a ›career path‹: Claire Norton, ›Conversion to Islam in the Ottoman empire‹, 25-39 and Casale, ›The ethnic composition of Ottoman ship crews‹, 133. 379 For a discussion of the state of the nautical skills of Ottoman craftsmen in the early modern period, see Bostan, ›Ottoman maritime arsenals and ship-building technology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries‹, 735-744; Imber, op cit.

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into the economy of Istanbul, broadening the Ottoman society’s pool of skill and talent. Braudel has suggested that the artisan population of the Mediterranean was notoriously migratory, moving by force or by necessity toward the large cities where money and work was most abundant, 380 and in the mid sixteenth century, one of the largest labour markets, particularly for craftsmen with ship-building or seafaring skills, would have been Istanbul, as has been discussed above. Research certainly suggests that the tersane of Istanbul in the mid-sixteenth century was desperately in need of manpower, particularly of the skilled variety. 381 It would not have made much sense for a craftsman from a poor village on the rural coast of the Mediterranean or Black Sea, captured by pirates or Tatars and transported to Istanbul, employed there for 8 years, integrated into a household or community and economic network, to return to his former existence, especially if his life in Istanbul was at all prosperous. There also existed cases in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of former slaves returning to their home village only to find that their families had counted them for dead, houses and land had been sold, and wives remarried, a prospect that surely would have occurred to the newly manumitted slave in Istanbul when considering his options for the future. Not only in the Mediterranean, but also in the lands of Muscovy and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did slaves face difficulty in returning to their former existence. Slaves who had been noblemen returned to find that their estates had passed on to others, with the assumption that their original owner was dead. If a slave had been ransomed by the government, he was expected to repay this sum, and thus also found himself deeply in debt as soon as he arrived in his original land, 382 yet another deterrent to returning to one’s country rather than settling in Istanbul. Such a process of cultural and economic acclimatisation has not yet been examined among the early modern slave population of the Ottoman Empire. Rather than the term ›assimilation‹, which brings to mind modern preoccupations with a homogenous nationalist identity and the problems associated with immigration, the extended process of learning a new way of dress or manner of eating, sitting, greeting, talking, praying etcetera, and integrating oneself into a workforce is better termed a process of inculcation into the habitus of the Ottoman seafaring class. The mukātaba system of labour can therefore perhaps be best understood as a process that involved the forced (or perhaps willing) inculcation of skilled slaves

380 Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, 336-337, 416, 433, 436 381 Çızakça, ›Ottomans and the Mediterranean: an analysis of the Ottoman shipbuilding industry‹, 785. 382 Fisher, ›Muscovy and the Black Sea slave trade‹, 43.

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into social and cultural norms of Galata’s households related to seafaring and the Ottoman navy. The period the mukātaba contract also probably consisted of a process of acculturation and forming bonds on both a personal/communal and economic level, whether conscious and intentional or not. 383 There is little direct evidence of course from the Galata court registers to back this claim. Rather, it must be in ferred by examining the trends in conversion and backgrounds of the slaves and other information gleaned from Galata court registers in tandem with the available literature from the period. Parallels can also be clearly drawn to other areas of Ottoman society, in which practices of slavery served a similar purpose, namely, to harvest the best talent and groom skilled individuals to hold positions of responsibility in the state and in wider society as well. There is no reason to doubt that the experience of enslaved skilled workers in the Mediterranean would have been any different from Giancarlo Casale’s conclusion made in the context of the Ottoman fleet in the Indian Ocean, namely that Ottoman ship crews consisted of ›slaves‹ from the seafaring Mediterranean peoples for whom ›slavery‹ in the Ottoman fleet could be considered a ›career path‹. The skilled seafarers of the Mediterranean, and apparently also the Indian Ocean, seem to have comprised an itinerant labour force, going, or being forcefully taken, to where wealth, privilege, and opportunity were abundant. In the sixteenth century, this place was the Ottoman Empire. To conclude this discussion of the mukātab slaves of Galata as well as the labour market and social fabric of which they were a part, two related issues should be addressed. Firstly, should the system of labour organised around the mukātaba contract be considered as ›slavery‹ rather than ›indentured servitude‹, the slaves possessed contracts and were paid for their work? In many instances, they orally confirmed the contractual relationship with their masters by orally agreeing to the stipulations of their contracts. This dilemma over the nature of ›slavery‹ versus ›indentured labour‹ in the context of the mukātab slaves of Galata is merely a semantic one arising from the use of English to discuss phenomena that incur no confusion when discussed in the original Arabic terminology. Because the mukātaba contract has no obvious parallel in the ›Western‹ history of slavery this does not imply that it is not slavery. Although the organisation of labour documented in the Galata court registers over the period 1560-1573 resembles a system of indentured labour in which slaves are subjected to limited periods of forced toil, the mukātab slave is clearly defined as a ›slave‹ within the four madhhabs of Sunni law, including the Ḥanafī madhhab, the legal school patronised by the Ottomans. The mukātab was subject 383 Many thanks to Hülya Canbakal for pointing out to me that a temporary period of slavery, while it may indeed involve a process of assimilation, was by no means necessarily a conscious attempt on the slave-owner or slave’s part to affect assimilation.

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to the same restrictions on his rights and obligations as any other slave of any other description, the sole difference lying in the fact that his manumission was guaranteed by his ability to produce, according to stipulations recorded in a written contract. To solve what is purely an English semantic dilemma, I would suggest that a new and more sophisticated terminology is necessary in English-language scholarship to discuss what we currently refer to as ›slavery‹ in the Ottoman Empire, as the English use of this terms lacks the nuance and variation of the Ottoman vocabulary, which draws on Arabic, Greek, Persian and Turkish, dealing with a spectrum of experiences which have been subsumed under a single category in Anglo-American scholarship on Ottoman ›slavery‹. Thus, the mukātab slave, if defined according to the contemporary system of law in place in Galata, was indeed a slave (ʿabd mamlūk) and not an indentured labourer. The difference between the status of the enslaved and the free individual lies in the rights and obligations assigned to the free and unfree in the sharīʿa, whereby a slave, regardless of how limited his tenure of slavery or how exalted his position, possessed certain restrictions on his rights (he could not serve as a judge, or marry without his master’s permission, among other limitations) and reprieve from certain obligations incumbent upon the free Christian or Muslim subject (he was not liable to pay tax, including the jizya, and received only half the punishment for crimes). These were the ways in which ›free‹ and ›unfree‹ were defined according to the sharīʿa in sixteenth-century Istanbul; therefore these are the definitions that are maintained here. According to these strictures, the mukātab was unequivocally a slave.384 A further, and related, issue must be addressed concerning the slaves whose mukātaba contracts were recorded in the Galata court registers. In the discussion up to this point, it has been assumed that the slaves were subject to forced migration and coerced labour, having been captured and transported against their will to Istanbul after raids or battles. However, the possibility exists that some of these labourers may have come willingly, as economic migrants in search of work in Istanbul, the sixteenth-century centre of imperial wealth that straddled the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. There exists no unambiguous proof of this in the Galata court registers, but the possibility arises that these contracts represented some form of voluntary economic migration into the Ottoman capital from the maritime populations of the Mediterranean basin and the Black Sea. As the skilled migrant worker did not bear the status of a native dhimmī or a foreign mustaʿmin either in possession of an official pass of safe conduct or under the aegis of an established 384 Many thanks to the participants of the History Speakers’ Seminar on the 6th of October, 2009 at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Sabancı University, Istanbul who kindly and constructively discussed these ideas with me and helped to clarify the legal distinction between free and unfree in the sixteenth-century Ottoman empire.

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merchant community, the mukātaba contract would have been a convenient legal fiction to integrate the migrant craftsman into a work force and household. That is to say, a foreign non-mustaʿmin possessed neither the official permission of his government to reside in the Ottoman Empire nor the Ottoman government’s lawful protection and would therefore perhaps benefit from such an arrangement as the mukātaba contract. The legal status of foreign Christians who arrived on Ottoman soil without a safe conduct was ambiguous since they would not be classed as dhimmīs. Mustaʿmins were, at least in theory, required to pay the jizya and officially join the community of dhimmīs.385 The fact that this rule existed suggests that the occasional drifting non-Muslim must have found his way into Islamic lands and remained there. Since slaves, however, were exempt from taxes, it may have been in the workers’ interests to bear this status and thus avoid a levy on his wages, either the jizya or other taxes. While there is no concrete proof of this, it would to explain the sheer volume of mukātaba contracts found in the Galata court registers. While the situation captured in this set of Galata sicils is anomalous, as such a large number of slaves, and among them so many possessing mukātaba contracts, is extremely rare in the sicils of Istanbul during this period, the pages of the court registers nonetheless capture a watershed moment in the development of the Galata maritime labour market in the sixteenth century, including the (possibly forced) transfer of skills to the Ottoman tersane from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Such a conglomeration of slave workers is not witnessed in Galata prior to or after these dates, suggesting that there was a need for a specific type of labour. It is likely that this need for skilled labour was created in part by the imperi al ferman ordering the preparation of the Ottoman fleet for a future attack on Malta after the successful campaign of 1560. This need for sailors and shipbuilders was then satisfied with slave labour recruited from the seafaring populations of the surrounding coastal areas. By demonstrating what type of labour the slaves of Galata might have been performing, and demonstrating that they must have been skilled labour and therefore valuable contributors to the Ottoman navy or shipyard, there exists the possibility that they were easily absorbed into the economy of Galata and strengthened the maritime labour force of the Ottoman Empire. If this is the case, as has been demonstrated in the preceding chapter, then there also exists the possibility that such slaves were acculturated to Ottoman religious and social norms and in the process adopted (or were given) Ottoman identities, a possibility which is explored at length in Chapter 5, which also addresses the meaning of the legal formalities of manumission. 385 Sami A. Aldeeb Abu Sahlieh, ›The Islamic conception of migration‹ International Migration Review 30/1 (1996), 42.

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Chapter 5: Identification or Subjugation? Introduction to How Slaves are Categorised, Described and ›Read‹ in the Manumission hüccets of Galata ›There is no document of civilisation which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.‹ 429 ›Despite strong egalitarian counter-currents, the sharīʿa understanding of the social order was anchored in the distinction between knowledge and ignorance, a distinction that concerned, not differences of intelligence, but rather control of the cultural capital acquired in advanced instruction.‹ 430 These quotations, considered in tandem, could not encompass more accurately the socio-legal significance of the Galata manumission hüccets for the history of the articulation of the legal and social identity of Ottoman slaves. The manumission documents represent a transformative point in the journey from slavery to freedom, while at the same time subjecting the enslaved (and about to be freed) individual to an act of linguistic domination at the very moment of his supposed re lease. Manumission at court, rather than representing a ›liberating‹ act, reinforced the unequal nature of the relations between slave and owner, as the act of manumitting was the sole purview of the slave-owner, without whose performative utterance the manumission was invalid. 431 While this may seem obvious, it needs to be stated, as manumission is at times wrongly viewed as an act of unconditional liberation, rather than a further reinforcement of the slave-master relationship. While the process of ›social mobility‹, if this term can be assigned to the phenomenon of slave-to-elite transformation, has been examined to some degree for the boys taken into the devşirme, who were educated in the palace schools and groomed to be the future governmental and military elites of the empire, this process has not been widely examined in Istanbul outside of the palace walls. The slave-to-elite process of transformation seems to have been much more haphazard outside of the palace, when it took place in neighbourhoods such as Galata. In the following discussion, the term ›elite‹ is used to refer to those who controlled 429 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York, 1969), 256. 430 Messick. The Calligraphic State, 166. 431 Ali. Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam, 136, 147. Manumission according to Islamic law has also been identified by Kecia Ali as a ›performative utterance‹. A similar observation on the nature of Genese slave manumissions in the late medieval period has been made in: Epstein. Speaking of Slavery, 94. However, for reservations on Epstein’s use of linguistic terminology, see: N.S. Khan. ›Review of Steven Epstein’s Speaking of Slavery‹, Journal of Early Modern History 13 (2009).

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wealth in whatever form it may have taken (ships, shipbuilding, slave-dealing, mercantile goods, or property, all of which are present in the inheritance inventories of the wealthy households of this neighbourhood) and its production in Galata. This elite consisted of merchants, ship-owners, pirates, and seafarers who would also at times participate in the affairs, particularly the maritime activities, of the Ottoman state. Consequently, a transformative process was at work in Galata, turning enslaved sailors and skilled workers originating outside the bounds of the empire into the future Ottoman seafaring elites. While the existence of this socioeconomic process in the sixteenth century may be well known, the intricacies of this transformation have not yet received the scholarly treatment they deserve. This process pivoted on the experience of enslavement and manumission. This chapter will therefore focus on the texts of manumission, paying close attention to their language and usage of terminology, as such linguistic elements were manipulated to achieve specific ends at the moment of the slave’s transition from enslaved to freed person. In the case of the Galata court registers, in which the em ployment of classical Arabic legal terminology was the rule, the observation that language was used as a means of social control is particularly salient. While a broader range of individuals in Galata had access to Ottoman Turkish, knowledge of Arabic juridical and religious terminology and its appropriate application was an even more limited skill, and hence contributed a substantial element of gravitas and ceremonial to the act of manumission. The following examination of the language of the Galata manumission hüccets first describes the manner in which slaves were named, depicted, and categorised. The ways in which Arabic legal terminology was employed in the language of manumission is of great importance in this context, hence the attention to the choice of specific terms and their cultural roots and resonance in Ottoman literature of the period.432 The overlap between slave-related legal terminology and Arabic, Persian and Ottoman advice literature and the pseudo-sciences suggested in Chapter 3 is further explored in this chapter. This exploration also seeks to verify some of the speculative arguments posited in Chapter 4, namely, that many slaves in Galata, particularly the skilled slaves, underwent a process of social transformation aimed at including them in Ottoman society after their manumission. Furthermore, understanding the ways in which slaves were classified in their manumission documents is an important step towards understanding the degree of legal agency which slaves possessed during the act of manumission. While I argue that the slave was primarily subjected to an 432 A previous attempt at examining the import of Turkish-language terminology for describing the ›life-cycle‹ of litigants in the Ottoman court has been undertaken by Leslie Peirce in her article, ›Seniority, sexuality, and social order: the vocabulary of gender in early modern Ottoman society‹, in Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era, ed. Madeline Zilfi (Leiden, 1997), 169-196. No similar attempt at analysing the use of terminology in Arabic-language court registers has been made.

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act of social, legal, and linguistic domination, he was of course neither powerless nor voiceless in the process. The structure of the following section reflects the clausal structuring of the manumission433 hüccet itself and analyses the terms used to depict the appearance of slaves. This analysis proceeds in the order in which these elements of categorisation occurred in the manumission document: naming, physical description and scarring. First, the naming practices existent among slaves in Galata are demonstrated to contribute to the post-manumission anonymity of the male slave, but less so to the anonymity or ability to ›blend in‹ of the female slave or eunuch. After the discussion of onomastics, the physical descriptions of slaves encountered in the manumission documents of the Galata court registers are discussed and linked to the trends in naming practices. In the analysis of naming and physical description, the following questions will be addressed: How are slaves physically represented in the court registers? Did the Ottomans have a way of marking slaves, either verbally, by giving them slave-specific names, or physically, through mutilating them or marking them? If not, what do the names and descriptions given to slaves signify in terms of the social roles they were expected to fulfil? The acts of physical and verbal marking, description, categorisation, and labelling of humans (in this case, slaves) who occupied a subjugated legal position is examined from the perspective of how the manipulation of language and legal terminology reinforced a hierarchy in which the slave, captured in the text at the moment of his manumission, occupied a transitional position within this hierarchy. The conclusion to this chapter examines the full ramifications of this transformation, and the ways that language, classification, and description were used in the texts of manumission to clarify his new role in society as a ›free‹ legal agent.

The Onomastics of Slavery in Galata ›Masters all over the world used special rituals of enslavement upon first acquiring slaves: the symbolism of naming, of clothing, of hairstyle, of language, and of body marks.‹ 434 Discerning these ›special rituals‹ that were used to mark slaves in the Ottoman Empire necessitates an examination of the legal rites used to mark the passage to manumission. However, it is not always possible to identify a blatant pattern of physical symbolism of subjugation in the slaveholding practices of Galata. Rather, the methods employed were more subtle than straightforward physical maiming, 433 Here, ›manumission‹ is used generally to refer to all legal acts that entailed the eventual freedom of the enslaved person, including the mukātaba and tadbīr contracts. 434 Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 9.

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marking, or branding and involved the linguistic and symbolic domination of the slave. Thus, one can identify tension in Ottoman slaveholding practices between allowing the slave a certain amount of legal agency, for instance by requiring his oral consent to his labour contract or to his manumission, while at the same time employing the universal symbols of subjugation that rendered slavery possible in human society.435 One particular aspect of this tension between agency and subjugation is addressed in the following discussion of whether the mechanism of naming was employed by the Ottoman slave owners as a form of social control and coerced identity formation. In contrast to other slave-holding societies, the Ottomans did not automatically rename an individual upon his enslavement. Rather, the records demonstrate that the slave was allowed to keep his original name if he kept his original religion. Re-naming in many slave-owning societies was a means of erasing the former ›free‹ identity of the individual and imposing a new ›unfree‹ identity on the slave. However, it can be argued that this erasure of pre-slavery identity was not an integral aspect of the system of slavery in place in sixteenth-century Galata among the elite classes. Furthermore, names were only changed upon conversion to Islam. This onomastic phenomenon was not uniform in its manifestation: the choice of name was altered by the gender and origin of the slave. Thus, in cases in which the slave was renamed (or chose a name for himself upon conversion), the question arises whether the Ottoman slave-owners practiced a way of marking their slaves verbally as ›slaves‹ through distinctive naming patterns, as in other slave-owning societies, and whether the practice of naming differ according to gender and origin. Naming practices in many slave-owning societies shed light on how owners perceived and interacted with their slaves and possibly abused, subjugated, played favourites or otherwise manipulated them. For instance, prior to 1350, it was popular for slave-owning households in both Genoa and the Genoese colonies in the Levant and Black Sea to maintain the original Muslim names of their slaves, as a concrete demonstration according to the mental landscape of the slave owners of the mastery of Christianity over Islam.436 Or at least, it allowed these particular slave owners to project their insecurities about the economic or military power of the Islamic world onto their slaves. In the fifteenth century, 9.6% of the slaves in Genoa still retained their original, typically Islamic, names, perhaps for similar 435 To the numerous critics who would say that the ›slavery‹ in question here was not really slavery and, thus, that I am misinterpreting the mechanism through which Ottoman society produced its class of elites, I would answer that the definition of ›slavery‹ employed here, as pointed out in the introduction to this dissertation, is provided by the sharīʿa, and is not a sociological defintion. 436 Balard, La Romanie Genoise, vol. II, 797; Epstein, Speaking of Slavery, 26.

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ideological reasons.437 An analogous trend illustrating the same point in a slightly different manner occurs in the Italian peninsula in the late medieval and early modern periods, when slaves were often bestowed names that denoted qualities desired by the slave owner, such as diligence, obedience and loyalty.438 Slave naming practices in the Italian peninsula were often subject to such trends; however, the intention of re-naming the slave served the purpose of reinforcing his or her status as a slave, whatever the popular interpretation of who should be ›slave‹ and what his or her ›slave-like qualities‹ (i.e., a captured and subjugated Muslim, or saintly Christian obedience and docility) may have been at the time. It is significant that the Ottoman slave-owning class felt no such overwhelming urge to maintain the ›subjugated Christian‹ identity of their slaves, as the Ottoman Empire exercised actual military and economic power in the Mediterranean in this period, and as a result did not suffer from an ›inferiority complex‹ about its place in the world which it projected onto its slaves. In Genoa of the second half of the fourteenth century and into the fifteenth century, the practice of baptising slaves and renaming them became more widespread. In this instance, owners baptised their slaves with saints’ names that were the sole purview of slaves.439 These names served to differentiate the free from the un-free, an essential function of naming in a society such as late medieval Genoa, which actively discouraged the integration of slaves and ex-slaves into the ranks of the freeborn, in distinct contrast to Istanbul. The same is the case in colonial Jamaica, where slaves were given often fanciful, insulting or at times purely invented ›African‹ names, in order to confirm and perpetuate their subordinate position. Freed slaves often chose new, ›normal‹ names that on paper were indistinguishable from the names of the freeborn whites, 440 again demonstrating that in pre-modern slave-owning societies, a name could speak volumes about one’s status and origin. Such parallel examples of the significance of the naming of slaves in similar early modern societies raises the question of whether a similar phenomenon occurred in the Ottoman Empire as well. Were slaves, male or female, re-named upon enslavement? Or upon conversion? Moreover, did these names lend themselves to facile identification of the bearer of the name as a slave? To answer such questions, the type of slave must be taken into account. As explored in previous chapters, slaves even in an area as small as Galata and in as short a period as that 437 Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova, 52. The author cites, ›Macomer, Fatima, Bogoa, Mustafà, Calì‹ as examples of these names. 438 Epstein, Speaking of Slavery, 25. 439 Ibid., 25-26. Epstein cites saints names such as Caterina, Lucia, and Margherita as used popularly for slaves. 440 Trevor Burnard, ›Slave naming patterns: onomastics and the taxonomy of race in eighteenth-century Jamaica‹, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 31/3 (Winter, 2001), 325-346.

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under examination were not a monolithic group. 441 Naming practices differed along lines of gender, origin, and religion, and served different purposes in each case. Unlike in late medieval/early modern Italy or colonial Jamaica, slaves were not immediately renamed by their owners upon enslavement. In contrast, the slaves of the Galata court registers, retained their original names if they remained Christian. There is no evidence to suggest that Christian slaves who remained unconverted were renamed upon enslavement, or that anyone was coerced into conversion. As the objective of assigning the enslaved person a new name was to erase the individual’s original cultural identity and sense of personhood, the absence of this act from slavery practices in early modern Galata reinforces the overall impression that slavery in the sixteenth century of the Ottoman Empire was inclined toward the inclusion of slaves into free society, rather than excluding and isolating them as separate population (as was the practice in pre-modern Genoa or Jamaica or other slave-owning societies), or completely erasing their natal identity. Rather, the practice of naming and labelling was an act of reshaping the slave’s original identity in line with specific Ottoman cultural tropes, as with the cins labels discussed in Chapter 3. As mentioned above, in the Ottoman Empire, a slave’s name only changed in the case of conversion. Just as conversion to Islam opened the possibility of cultural assimilation, or at least the identification of assimilation into the dominant religious culture as a means of bettering one’s station or securing release in the cases of tadbīr and charitable manumission, the adoption of a new name accompanied and reinforced this transformation. The adoption of a Muslim name, which often did not differ from the names borne by free Muslim males, either those who were born Muslim or converts from Christianity or Judaism, allowed the slave to ›blend in‹ to free society. However, this degree of freedom and anonymity was only permitted to males. Female slaves, in contrast, were subject to a different set of naming practices and social strictures before and after manumission. Before examining the names carried by male Muslim slaves in the Galata court registers, a brief explanation of Islamic naming practices is necessary. Islamic male names usually included the following elements: genealogy (nasab), which typically extended back only one generation (so-and-so son of so-and-so). The kunya refers to the locution ›father of so-and-so‹ as well profession. 442 Then followed the 441 For two sophisticated and in-depth discussions of this phenomenon, see Ehud Toledano, ›The concept of slavery in Ottoman and other Muslim societies: dichotomy or continuum‹, 159-175, and Madeline Zilfi, ›Thoughts on women and slavery in the Ottoman era and his torical sources‹, 131-138. 442 An example of this phenomenon occurs in Galata 14/3, page 5, hüccet 3., with a profession rather than a title, is the slave Esteban veled-i Yani al-najjār (the carpenter) from Rhodes, who was beginning a mukātaba contract under Qīyā Çelebi b. Aḥmad al-rāʾis. However, the inclusion of a profession after the slave’s name happens so rarely as to be remarkable. The only other mention of a person’s profession that was not connected with the Ottoman

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gentilic (nisba), such as al-naṣrānī (Christian), al-dhimmī (protected non-Muslim), or al-yahūdī (Jewish). In the Galata documents, the only gentilic appearing with any frequency was al-naṣrānī. Place of origin was at times indicated in the form of a nisba, which occurs prominently in the description of slaves in the Galata court registers, a phenomenon that is discussed at length later in this chapter. Interestingly, all names in the court registers were forced into the mould of the Islamic name, including Christian names, which are plentiful in the records. The typical replacement of ibn with walad (in Turkish usage: veled), although at times present, was not uniformly applied in the Galata court registers. Furthermore, the nickname (laqab) or familiar name was at times cited; this also occurred in the Galata registers. In medieval Arabic documents, this often took the form al-maʿrūf bi- (›known as‹). In the Galata documents, the nickname is introduced by a phrase with the same meaning: al-shahīr bi-. Furthermore, place of residence was often recorded, typically introduced by the phrase, in medieval Arabic documents as in the Galata registers, al-sākin bi- (›living in‹, followed by the name of a neighbourhood). 443 Titles, which were naturally the purview of slave owners in the court registers, spanned the range of positions among the seafarers of the Ottoman establishment: reis, reis sulṭānī, kapūdan, as well as others requisitioned from the ranks of the kuls to participate in the navy: titles such as sipahi, azap, odabaşı, are common. Grander titles often appear, with the occasional sancak beyi or mir liva-yi Iskenderiyya bringing his affairs to the Galata court. 444 Titles in the Galata court registers, in keeping with the overall tenor of the text, were always written in Arabic rather than Ottoman Turkish; thus, raʾīs sulṭānī was employed rather than reis hass,445 silaḥī rather than silahdar, tūbī rather than topcu, etcetera. The forenames of converted male Muslim slaves in the Galata court registers suggest that these slaves were meant to possess a certain level of anonymity among the general free male Muslim population after manumission, as their names are in no way particularly identifiable as ›slave‹ names, in contrast to the other slave-owning societies examined above. Rather, male Muslim slaves chose or were given forenames that were roughly identical to those carried by the free male Muslim population. How much of this population was in itself ex-slave is a matter that is up for debate and requires further research. The only possible markarmy, administration, or navy occurs in Galata 14/4, page 21, hüccet 3 with the name of one of the witnesses of a hüccet, Meḥmed b. ›Abdullah al-khayyāṭ (the tailor). 443 Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, 11-14. 444 Galata 14/3, page 76, hüccet 1. 445 The term raʾīs khāṣṣ obviously consists of two Arabic words, although interestingly, it is considered an Ottoman term and only used in Turkic language contexts, in contrast to raʾīs sulṭānī, which is used primarily in what was considered in sixteenth-cenury Istanbul scribal circles to be Arabic text.

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er of one’s status as a convert to Islam was the patronymic ›ibn Abdullah‹, which signified detachment from one’s Christian forebears. Such a patronymic could also signify a former slave status, as all slaves by default were non-Muslims at the time of capture and naturally if they became Muslim would also bear such a patronymic as ›ibn Abdullah‹. However, it does not seem that such patronymics were used widely outside of official bureaucracy for purposes of identification; therefore, it seems possible that a former Christian or slave who converted to Islam would not be immediately identifiable as such if he used his forename and a title (Efendi, Çelebi) in social intercourse and whichever interactions were required of him to earn living. Therefore, in the following discussion of the practices of naming among the slaves of Galata, two control groups were compiled against which to compare converted slaves’ forenames: free males’ names occurring in the court registers bearing the patronymic ibn ʿAbdullah, and the first names of those born to a Muslim father. 446 Upon examining this inventory of names, which is included to provide examples of the names borne by men in Galata in the sixteenth-century to demonstrate the overlap with the names of slaves, as well as to aid other researchers whose work touches on Ottoman onomastics, it is possible to conclude that converted male slaves assumed (or were bestowed) forenames that were common among the free male populace as well. This is significant because it reinforces that argument posed in this chapter that male slaves were intended to be included in Ottoman society after their manumission and thus were not marked as a separate group, in contrast with other early modern societies. It is not known whether the slaves whose manumissions were recorded in the Galata court registers were able to choose his own name upon conversion, or if this name was selected for him by the men witnessing his conversion or the person under whose influence he converted, or if a ›Muslim‹ name had been adopted gradually or spontaneously for ease of pronunciation without any ›religious‹ connotations (for instance, perhaps ›Ali‹ was an easier name to pronounce than ›Francesco‹ for a slave owner). However, what is clear is that there did not exist a specific set of names borne by converted Muslim slaves in the cases recorded in Galata. The following representative selection of names of Muslim free-born male slave-owners,447 that is to say non-ibn ʿAbdullah nisbas are listed to demonstrate 446 Out of the thousands of individuals whose names occur in the Galata court registers examined for the purpose of this dissertation, only one individual bore the name Abdullah as a first name, suggesting that it was indeed extremely rare to have this name as anything but a patronymic. The example of the single slave who very uncreatively chose, or was given, the first name ›Abdullah‹ results in the full name ›Abdullah ibn Abdullah‹, and occurs in Galata 14/3, page 35, hüccet 3. Abdullah b. Abdullah was manumittd (ḥasbatan lillah) by Ibrahim b. Maḥmud in Muḥarram 970/ late August-early September, 1562. 447 For the sake of clarification, there also exist female slave owners in the Galata registers, but their names would obviously not be recorded in this particular list.

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that the fathers of the men whose names have been chosen as representative of free Muslim naming patterns were also free Muslims themselves; the most common forenames have been compiled and selected.

Table 11: Names of freeborn Muslim males in the Galata court registers ʿAbd al-Mājid Çelebi b. ʿAbd al-Juhūd Çelebi ʿAbdi b. Ḥasan al-Raʿīs ʿAbdurraḥman b. Ṣāliḥ Abu al-Ḥasan b. ʿAli al-Raʾīs Aḥmad al-Raʾīs al-Sulṭānī (deceased) ʿAlī b. Burāq Ayyūb Çelebi b. Meḥmed Bey Balī b. Ḥasan Balī Çelebi b. Ḥasan Barakat (Bereket) b. Sīdī al-Raʾīs (deceased) Darwīsh b. Muṣṭafa al-Raʾīs Dīn Raʾīs b. Muʿayyad (deceased) Dūr ʿAli b. al-Raʾīs Qiyā Çelebi b. Meḥmed Fuʾad Kethuda b. Walī (Veli) Ḥamza b. Dūr ʿAlī al-Raʾīs al-Amīrī Ḥasan Paşa b. al-marḥūm Khayr al-Dīn Ḥiḍir b. Ibrāhīm al-Raʾīs al-Sultanī Ḥusam b. Sulaymān al-Raʾīs Ḥusayn b. Meḥmed Ibrāhīm b. Ḥamza al-Raʾīs ʿIsa Çelebi b. al-marḥūm Muṣṭafa Bey Khayr al-Dīn b. Ḥiḍir al-Raʾīs Maḥmūd b. Aḥmad Akıfbaşı Meḥmed b. Ḥamza al-Raʾīs Miṣr Raʾīs b. Muṣṭafa Muṣliḥ al-Dīn b. Meḥmed al-Raʾīs Muṣṭafa b. ʿAlī Qāsim b. Yūnus al-Raʾīs Qiyā Çelebi b. Aḥmad al-Raʾīs Rajab b. Ḥilmī al-Raʾīs Ramaḍān Çelebi b. Muṣṭafa Kethüda Rawḍatullah b. al-Ḥājj

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Rūshan b. Abdullah al-Bādamī Rustam b. Ṣaliḥ al-Raʾīs Ṣafar b. Naḥḥas al-ʿAlūfawī Shaʿbān b. Muṣṭafa al-Raʾīs al-Amīrī Shujāʿa b. Hiḍir al-Raʾīs al-Sulṭānī al-maʿrūf bi-Danişmend Sīdī Aḥmad Raʾīs b. Pīrī Ṣuḥayl Bey b. ʿAbdurraḥman Sulaymān b. Ḥusayn Uways b. Muṣṭafa al-Raʾīs al-shahīr bi-danişmend Walī (Veli) b. Ḥamza Yūsuf Bey b. Mūsa

Names of free male slave-owners bearing the nasab ibn ʿAbdullah (who are converts or ex-slaves):

Table 12 Names of converted free Muslim males in the Galata court registers ʿAbd al-Mājid Çelebi b. ʿAbd al-Juhūd Çelebi ʿAbdi b. Ḥasan al-Raʾīs ʿAbdurraḥman b. Ṣāliḥ Abu al-Ḥasan b. ʿAli al-Raʾīs Aḥmad al-Raʾīs al-Sulṭānī (deceased) ʿAlī b. Burāq Ayyūb Çelebi b. Meḥmed Bey Balī b. Ḥasan Balī Çelebi b. Ḥasan Barakat (Bereket) b. Sīdī al-Raʾīs (deceased) Darwīsh b. Muṣṭafa al-Raʾīs Dīn Raʾīs b. Muʿayyad (deceased) Dūr ʿAli b. al-Raʾīs Qiyā Çelebi b. Meḥmed Fuʾad Kethuda b. Walī (Veli) Ḥamza b. Dūr ʿAlī al-Raʾīs al-Amīrī Ḥasan Paşa b. al-marḥūm Khayr al-Dīn Ḥiḍir b. Ibrāhīm al-Raʾīs al-Sultanī Ḥusam b. Sulaymān al-Raʾīs Ḥusayn b. Meḥmed

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Ibrāhīm b. Ḥamza al-Raʾīs ʿIsa Çelebi b. al-marḥūm Muṣṭafa Bey Khayr al-Dīn b. Ḥiḍir al-Raʾīs Maḥmūd b. Aḥmad Akıfbaşı Meḥmed b. Ḥamza al-Raʾīs Miṣr Raʾīs b. Muṣṭafa Muṣliḥ al-Dīn b. Meḥmed al-Raʾīs Muṣṭafa b. ʿAlī Qāsim b. Yūnus al-Raʾīs Qiyā Çelebi b. Aḥmad al-Raʾīs Rajab b. Ḥilmī al-Raʾīs Ramaḍān Çelebi b. Muṣṭafa Kethüda Rawḍatullah b. al-Ḥājj Rūshan b. Abdullah al-Bādamī Rustam b. Ṣaliḥ al-Raʾīs Ṣafar b. Naḥḥas al-ʿAlūfawī Shaʿbān b. Muṣṭafa al-Raʾīs al-Amīrī Shujāʿa b. Hiḍir al-Raʾīs al-Sulṭānī al-maʿrūf bi-Danişmend Sīdī Aḥmad Raʾīs b. Pīrī Ṣuḥayl Bey b. ʿAbdurraḥman Sulaymān b. Ḥusayn Uways b. Muṣṭafa al-Raʾīs al-shahīr bi-danişmend Walī (Veli) b. Ḥamza Yūsuf Bey b. Mūsa

The following is a representative list of the names of enslaved males who converted to Islam from all three court registers (this list considers every male Muslim slave, so no hüccet numbers have been cited, as they would be in the hundreds.

Table 13: Names of converted Muslim male slaves in the Galata court registers ʿAbdullah b. ʿAbdullah Aḥmad b. ʿAbdullah ʿAlī b. ʿAbdullah Bahram b. ʿAbdullah Bālī b. ʿAbdullah

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Bayram b. ʿAbdullah Bilāl b. ʿAbdullah Dawūd b. ʿAbdullah Dīdār b. ʿAbdullah Dūrmuş b. ʿAbdullah Faraḥ b. ʿAbdullah Farhād b. ʿAbdullah Farḥan b. ʿAbdullah Farrūkh b. ʿAbdullah Ḥabīb b. ʿAbdullah Ḥāmid b. ʿAbdullah Ḥamza b. ʿAbdullah Ḥasan b. ʿAbdullah Ḥasrat b. ʿAbdullah Ḥusayn b. ʿAbdullah Ibrāhim b. ʿAbdullah Ilyās b. ʿAbdullah ʿIsā b. ʿAbdullah Iskandar b. ʿAbdullah Ismaʿīl b. ʿAbdullah Jaʿfar b. ʿAbdullah Jaʿfar b. Abdullah Jamshīd b. ʿAbdullah Jawhar b. ʿAbdullah Kaywān (Keyvan) b. ʿAbdullah Khalīl b. ʿAbdullah Khiḍir, Surūr (identied as: mamlūkayn) Khudawardī (Hüdaverdi) b. ʿAbdullah Khulkhāl b. ʿAbdullah Khurram (Hürrem) b. ʿAbdullah Khusraw (Hüsrev) b. ʿAbdullah Maḥmūd b. ʿAbdullah Marjān b. ʿAbdullah Maqbūl b. ʿAbdullah Meḥmed b. ʿAbdullah Mimī (or Mamī) b. Abdullah Mubārak b. ʿAbdullah Muḥsin b. ʿAbdullah Murād b. ʿAbdullah

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Muṣṭafa b. ʿAbdullah Mustijāb b. ʿAbdullah Nusūḥ b. ʿAbdullah Pahlawān b. ʿAbdullah Parwāna (Pervane) b. ʿAbdullah Pīrī b. ʿAbdullah Piyāla (Piyale) b. ʿAbdullah Qabaday b. ʿAbdullah Qāsim b. ʿAbdullah Qundar b. ʿAbdullah Rajab b. ʿAbdullah Ramaḍan b. ʿAbdullah Riḍwān b. ʿAbdullah Safar b. ʿAbdullah Sarmard b. ʿAbdullah Sulayman b. ʿAbdullah Tarkhān b. ʿAbdullah ʿUthmān b. ʿAbdullah Walī (Veli) b. Abdullah Yāqūt b. ʿAbdullah Yūnus b. ʿAbdullah Yūsuf b. ʿAbdullah

As is immediately obvious from even the most cursory perusal of these lists, there did not exist a noticeable discrepancy in the forenames of free-born Muslims, free converts to Islam or freed ex-slaves, and those who were still enslaved. While certain names may have been more prevalent among the slave population (such as the names ›Iskandar‹ or ›Ismaʿīl‹ and ›Hüdaverdi‹), they also occurred in the freeborn Muslim population. Thus, it appears that there did not exist a method of permanently marking male slaves as slaves by bestowing them with specific names, in contrast to other slave-holding societies. The only exceptions were eunuchs, who were already marked as a separate category both physically and linguistically, and typically bore names such as ’Ambar (ambergris), Kāfūr (camphor), Yāqūt (ruby), and Fayrūz (turquoise). In contrast to the naming patterns of male Muslim slaves, female Muslim slaves were subject to a more mixed pattern of naming. A wide sampling of the names of converted female slaves occurring in the Galata court registers demonstrates the range from religiosity to frivolousness in the naming of females: ʿAysha, Amīna, Arshān (Erşan), Banafsha (Benefşe), Dawla (Devlet), Dilārām,

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Faraḥnāz, Faraḥshād, Farīda, Fāṭima, Ghazal, Gulaḥmar, Guldar, Gulfam, Gulnār, Gulrukh, Gulshan, Ḥusnā, Jamīla, Jānsurūr, Jānsūwār, Jisād, Khadīja, Khalāṣ, Khurshīd, Lāledār, Lālezār, Mehliqa or Muhliqa, Maryam, Mihribān, Malaksīmā, Marjān, Mimā, Nāzīfa (Nazife), Nāzshān (Nazşen), Parwāna (Pervane), Qadam, Qamar, Rābiʻāʼ, Rūshan (Ruşen), Salvār, Samā, Salvinār, Samaʼī, Shādāna, Shāhdāna, Shākira, Shamsa, Shīrīn, Sīyāda, Snūbar, Dūtī or Ṭūtī, Yasmīn or Yāsemīn, Zamāna, and Zaynab. This list contains the vast majority of converted Muslim female slaves whose names were recorded in the court registers under examination here. However, it is not completely exhaustive, as some female slaves’ names could not be deciphered, or were absent from the hüccet. The purpose of this list is to furnish a general idea of the calibre of names chosen for female slaves in Galata in the mid-sixteenth century. 448 While some of the names were religious in nature (such as ʿAysha, Amīna, Khadīja, Fā ṭima, Maryam, Rābiʿāʾ, Zaynab), most of the names bore an ornamental, flower- or fragrance-themed meanings For instance, Jisād is ›saffron flower‹, Yasmīn is, of course, ›jasmine‹, and Snūbar is ›pine blossom‹. Other names related to the physical beauty of the slave: Qamar (moon), Malaksīmā (like an angel), Marjān (coral), Jamīla (beautiful), Gulrukh (rose-face), Fara ḥnāz (joyous shyness, or joyous coquettishness), Nāzshān (either garden of coquettishness, or overflowing with coquettishness, or coquettish and smiling), Rūshan (shining), and Shamsa (sun, in the singular, as in ›a small sun‹). Other names demonstrated an element of comforting or attending the owner, such as Dilārām (roughly translatable from Persian as the ›heart’s respite‹), Jānsurūr (soul or life’s happiness), or meanings involving the delivery of merriment, Fara ḥshād (bringing joy), Mihribān (kindliness). A recent discussion of the naming of female slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenthcentury Ottoman Empire evinces a similar pattern in concubine onomastics, with flowery and fanciful names chosen for female slaves.449 A representative sampling of names was taken from among the freeborn female slave owners for the sake of comparison; their freeborn status was manifest as these women are not recorded as ›bint Abdullah‹ (the reader may check the footnotes for a record of their patronymics). To arrive at this summary of names, first names were selected that occurred frequently among the freeborn Muslim female slave-owning population. A brief comparison against the control group of female slave owners who were born as Muslims indeed suggests that the names of free-born Muslim women of a high social status originated with the names of the prophet’s family and were certainly chosen as expressions of religious piety; that 448 Perhaps it is not safe to make the assumption that female slaves were not permitted to choose their own names. It is not impossible that some of them chose their own names upon conversion; in fact, the more sober religious names, it is possible to surmise, were chosen by the slaves themselves or by their female owners in agreement with the slave. 449 Zilfi, Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire, 157-158. Zilfi comes to similar conclusions on the flowery nature of female slave names.

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is to say, names such as Fā ṭima,450 Khadīja,451 Amīna,452 or saintly figures, such as Rābiʿāʾ al-ʿAdawīyya,453 or general Islamic themes, such as Sakīna, 454 Rūshan,455 Ḥusnī,456 and Ruwayda.457 There is, of course, some overlap with the chosen names for female slaves. However, the almost complete absence of ›flowery‹ or ›perfumed‹ names from the free-born elite Muslim female population is striking, suggesting that these names were not deemed appropriate for a free-born Muslim woman of a respectable family background. In general, only eunuchs and concubines received such fanciful names denoting flowers, gems, or perfumes. The motivations behind assigning such names, as well as the possible psychological effect of these ornamental names on the slave herself, operate on several levels. It is possible to argue that many of the female slaves with more extravagant and whimsical names were destined for either concubinage or light domestic labour, an attractive adornment for the elite home rather than intended for heavy work. Regardless of the division of labour among female slaves, the fact remains that the imposition of such names demonstrates the values which these slaves were expected to embody, and the physical qualities they were expected to possess: a beautiful and graceful appearance, sweet smell and a smiling and pleasant countenance. It is remarkable that no obvious moral values were assigned to female slaves as names (e.g. names like ›Chastity‹ or ›Obedience‹), in contrast with medieval Italy, or even the slave-owning societies in the southern states in America. Perhaps the few religious names, consisting of similar names given to free women drawn from the names of the female family members of the prophet were intended to bestow piety and morals on their bearers. To summarise the findings of this examination of slave onomastics, converted male Muslim slaves received names that allowed a certain level of anonymity post-manumission. In contrast, many converted Muslim female concubines were given names that expressed their purpose as ornamental or sexual objects. Consequently, the main conclusion to be drawn from the previous discussion is that the slavery practised in Galata in the sixteenth century was distinctive in its abil450 Fāṭima Hatun bt. Ḥasan: Galata 14/4, page 152, hüccet 2. Fāṭima bt. Mūsā: Galata 14/3, page 4, hüccet 2. Fāṭima bt. Pīr Alī: Galata 14/3, page 59, hüccet 3. Fāṭima bt. Ḥasan Rāʾis: Galata 14/2, page 80, hüccet 3. 451 Khadīja bt. Aḥmad: Galata 14/4, page 59, hüccet 1. Khadīja bt. Mimī al-Rāʾis al-Amīrī: Galata 14/2, page 65, hüccet 1. 452 Amīna Hatun bt. Sinān Bey: Galata 14/4, page 80, hüccet 3. Amīna Hatun bt. al-Ḥājj Ḥusayn: Galata 14/4, page 2, hüccet 2. Amīna bt. al-Khawāja Sinān; Galata 14/3, page 89, hüccet 3. 453 Rabīʿā bt. Aḥmad: Galata 14/3, page 65, hüccet 2. 454 Sakīna bt. Muṣṭafā: Galata 14/3, page 115, hüccet 3. 455 Rūshan Hatun bt. Sayyid ʿUmar: Galata 14/4, page 97, hüccet 3. 456 Husni Hatun bt. Ahmed Celebi: Galata 14/3, page 59, hüccet 4. 457 Ruwayda Hatun bt. Sayyid ʿOmar: Galata 14/4, page 6, hüccet 2.

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ity to facilitate the acculturation of male slaves who had converted to Islam. This practice lies in stark contrast to medieval Italy, or places further afield, such as the ›new‹ world, whose systems of slavery sought to perpetuate the marginality of the slave after manumission in the rare cases when manumission was even a realistic possibility in these societies. Accordingly, the significance of naming is evident in signalling the roles slaves were intended to fulfil socially before or after their manumission. Male slaves after their manumission were intended to participate as fully-fledged members of community of adult male Muslims, perhaps not at the highest position immediately after manumission, but with the prospect of social mobility. They were thus afforded a certain level of anonymity in the choice of first name, rendering them relatively indistinguishable from other free Muslim males. While this may seem selfevident, illustrating the difference between the Ottoman forms of slavery and the practice of slavery in other parts of the world, as discussed above, is essential to arriving at an accurate understanding of what it meant to be a slave in Ottoman Istanbul. Furthermore, the gendered naming practices that were used in Galata, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire, are of significant importance to elucidating the stark differences between the post-manumission social expectations imposed on male and female slaves. In contrast to males, the naming practices prevalent among female slaves suggest that they were generally intended as ornaments in elite households, even perhaps after their manumission, but in rarer cases, as respected wives, child-bearers or even domestic labourers deserving the moral respect of an ›ʿAysha‹ or a ›Khadīja‹. Among the clear-cut Muslim or Christian names of the court registers appear names that are more difficult to place, suggesting that the line between ›Christian‹ and ›Muslim‹ could be blurred at times. For example, we see that Ismaʿīl b. ʿAbdullah manumitted his slave (ʿitāq, ḥasbatan lillah) Giovan b. ʿAbdullah458 whose patronymic indicates that he was a convert to Islam who retained his original Christian forename. He is described as being of medium height, with a eyebrows that met in the middle, i.e., a monobrow (al-aqran), hazel eyes, and a scar above his left eyebrow, freed in Dhū’l Ḥijja, 969 (August, 1562). While he evidently had what can be described as a Christian first name, appended to this Christian name is ›ibn ʿAbdullah‹, which undeniably indicated conversion to Islam. Interestingly, judging by his patronymic the slave-owner seems to have been a convert to Islam as well. It is possible that he knew his slave as Giovan and never bothered to choose for him a ›Muslim‹ forename, as conversion to Islam could at times be a gradual process, signified by adopting a manner of Islamic dress (hence the term in early modern England describing converts as ›taking the turban‹) or using Islamic greetings with other male Muslims in public, rather than a formal 458 Galata 14/3, page 27, hüccet 5.

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conversion ceremony.459 It seems that Giovan b. Abdullah’s manumission occurred at some point in the midst of this process of religio-social transformation. It is not impossible that the slave owner was also Italian in origin like his slave (the slave’s name, Giovan, suggests an Italian origin), and thus it was natural for him to call his slave by his original name. A further example of the ambiguity that could at times accompany conversion and naming, is that slave of Qāsim Bey b. ʿAbdullah reis, who registered the beginning of his slave’s mukātaba contract for five years of service. 460 The slave, who was a tall Frank with hazel eyes, separate eyebrows, and a crippled finger, 461 was named Murād b. Bastardū; his contract was recorded in Mu ḥarram, 971 (September, 1563). Again, it is difficult to determine what exactly this name signified. Did the slave (or the scribe?) merely have an odd sense of humour? That is, by calling himself ›wishful‹ or ›desired‹ (e.g. ›Murad‹) son of a bastard? Could this be construed as an angry slave’s exercising of legal agency through subverting, or even mocking the legal system by the only means that was available to him, namely sarcasm or bitter self-demeaning humour? More prosaically, could this term be a reference to the slave’s employment on a specific type of ship, the bustardo or in Ottoman parlance, baştarda,462 which interestingly, is the same way that the term bastardo (with of course the same meaning as the English ›bastard‹) would be pronounced in a southern dialect of Italian? Either way, it is a clear contravention of naming practice to adopt such a patronymic, and the motives behind this choice are obscure. However, these more ambiguous names hint at the complex and messy process of gradual absorption and acculturation behind the legal articulation of identity in the court registers.

Physical Description/ḥilya: Inscribing the Slave Written Power Over the Slave’s Body: the Texts of Manumission in Galata Scholarly studies of the Ottoman şeriyye sicilleri only give a brief nod to the presence of a physical description of slaves in their sale or manumission documents, if any mention of such a phenomenon is made at all. The motivations behind the registration of the slave’s physical description in the court registers have not hereto459 Maxwell, ›Afanasii Nitikin: An Orthodox Russian’s Spiritual Voyage in the Dar al-Islam‹, 253-254; Nabil Matar, ›Piracy and captivity in the early modern Mediterranean: the perspective from Barbary‹ Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550-1650, ed Claire Jowitt (Basingstoke, 2007), 69. 460 Galata 14/3, page 140, hüccet 3. 461 Sababihi sāqiṭ (his finger is crippled). 462 On the actual ship termed the baştarda used in the Ottoman fleet, see Bostan, Osmanlılar ve Deniz: ›Kürekli Gemi: Baştarda‹, 107-114.

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fore been examined from the standpoint of the requirements of Islamic law, nor from the perspective of the social dynamics between the slave, the court, and the owner. With a view to creating the basis for further examination of this problematic topic, this discussion will address the role that the physical description, termed a ḥilya in Arabic legal nomenclature, played in the construction of the slaves’ legal and social identity and integration into a particular community or social hierarchy prior to and after manumission. In order to assess how a possible ›integration‹ into a community or household, as suggested in Chapter 4, may have been aided by the articulation of a specifically ›Ottoman‹ religious and cins identity through manumission, material from Chapter 3 will also be reconsidered and integrated into the discussion in this chapter. The questions that arise concerning these physical descriptions are of both a practical as well as a conceptual nature. Whether the stylised physical description of the slave in the court registers was a tactic of symbolic subjugation or a safe guard against mistaken identity (or both) is the central dilemma around which this discussion revolves. Furthermore, an examination of the cultural context out of which specific vocabulary arose assists us in a construction of the mental world that the slave-owner, the scribe, and the manumitted slave inhabited. So, the following discussion will attempt not just to understand the legal and social ramifications of language used in the manumission documents, but also to elucidate the wider cultural resonance of such vocabulary, in order to demonstrate that the documents contained in the court registers need to be read in a wider context than a strictly legal one. While the following discussion of slave ḥilyas does address the legal reasons for their inclusion in the manumission document, the literary associations of many of the terms included in the ḥilya is also examined for clues as to whether the legal articulation of the slave’s appearance bore a greater meaning for the slave and his owner. By situating such descriptive terminology in its cultural context as well as its legal context, it is hoped that something is revealed of the cultural world in which manumissions took place and the literary reverberations and layers of meaning possessed by what appear to be the driest of legal terms. However, before embarking on such a discussion, the legal reasons for the inclusion of the ḥilya in written contracts must be clearly stated, so that the lines are not blurred between the legal justification for the ḥilya and the later discussion of the terms used in the ḥilya and their possible role in articulating and reinforcing the rapport between slave and master. Furthermore, the justification of the sharīʿa for the inclusion of a slave’s physical description is the one which would have been acceptable to sixteenth-century Ottoman jurists and scribes and therefore must be examined. Whether the legal justification concerning physical description served, as law does in many societies, as a tool of enforcing social hierarchy is where the ambiguity lies. After an analysis of the self-declared legal func-

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tion of the ḥilya, it is then possible to move on to examine whether the wording of the manumission document was manipulated to achieve the specific ends of reinforcing the relationship between master and slave, as well as constructing a reified kinship group and religion for the manumitted slave. A valid question concerning these investigations into the nature of legal language is why the registration of a slave’s physical description should be in any way related to social dominance and the symbolic subjugation of the slave, particularly at the very moment of his manumission. The reasons for suspecting that more is at play than the recording of a pre-modern identity card is that the physical description of the person was recorded in Arabic, a language which resounded with historical and religious prestige, rather than Turkish. It was also a language presumably unknown to the slave, who likely spoke his native language, perhaps a pan-Mediterranean creole and a patois of Turkish. Thus, the terms used to depict the person of the slave were not selected by the slave, but rather by the scribe. In fact, these terms were notably unflattering, particularly when the enslaved individual’s scars, abnormal growths and various handicaps were recorded for posterity. Furthermore, the scribe was drawing on centuries of legal tradition and his own education in the law, a commodity of prestige and authority to which the slave did not have access, thus excluding the slave from the process of description and subjecting him to categorisation in a manner that was beyond his control. The power to classify in writing, through the privilege of literacy - and not any literacy, but the highly refined literacy of Arabic juridical terminology - presents strong evidence that the element of physical description was an example of the exercise of dominance over the slave in a more subtle way than through physical coercion, and that the physical description served more than its self-proclaimed function as a guarantor of the validity of the legal transaction. Even if the ḥilya were to be considered merely an early modern identity card, it must be borne in mind that identity cards reinforce a hierarchy of authority over which their bearer has little influence even today. While it may be obvious that, of course, a slave was in a position of subjugation, and hence, the reader may question the validity of a linguistic analysis of the nature of this dominance, I would argue that it is the linguistic nature of this ›capturing‹ of the slave’s physical person that sets this particular Ottoman practice of mukātaba slavery and household slavery aside from other forms of enslavement, such as galley slavery. The skilled slave in Galata was not physically restrained, he was not ›shackled‹ and forced to work; rather, he was constrained by legal terms and obligations, by a social contract agreed to by the rest of Muslim society, sanctioned by the sharīʿa, to which even the slave himself consented (perhaps unwillingly) on some level, as is evident in the numerous examples of slave’s oral agreement (which consisted in the declaration at the end of their contract that the slave had voiced his agreement ›muṣadaqqan shafihiyyan‹) to his manumission, mukātaba, and tadbīr contracts

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recorded in the Galata registers. 463 Hence, it is necessary to examine the linguistic functioning of this legal instrument and its role in the framing, defining and subjugation of the slave whose technical skills were valuable both to his owner and to the Ottoman economy. An important observation must be made concerning the nature of slavery and manumission in the Ottoman Empire that has not been outlined in other studies; namely, that although the central thesis of this dissertation is that technically skilled, male slaves were intended for eventual integration into Ottoman society as ›free‹ adult male Muslims, this does not imply that they were then ›free‹ from social domination post-manumission and no longer partook in the unequal relationship between the slave and master, now transformed into a relationship of clientship and patronage. In fact, such a misconception only arises as a result of se mantic confusion over the modern implications of the word ›free‹ in the English language. Rather, it must be clarified that the slave passed from one form of subjugation to another upon his manumission, occupying a new, and often rather low, place in the social hierarchy of Ottoman Galata. Consequently, the view adopted is that slavery in Galata was a system in which the enslaved person was subject to a hierarchy and set of social practices into which he was forcibly acculturated until his owner decided to manumit him, upon which point he became subject to a different, but equally strict, set of rules and obligations, namely those that applied to individuals belonging to the community of free adult male Muslims. Thus, at no point was anyone free in the ›modern‹ and absolute sense of the word. As has just been observed, bearing the sharīʿa status of ›free‹ in Ottoman Galata in the sixteenth century meant that one was subject to harsher punishments under both the sharīʿa and kanun, and one was required to bear greater legal and social responsibility and accountability in one’s community following manumission.

Analysis of the ḥilya: Terminology The following analysis of the terminology of physical description has a twofold objective: to sketch the primarily Arabic linguistic landscape of the Galata court records, which has not yet been examined in detail in other scholarly works, and to discuss the social and legal implications of using such terminology of physical description to document slaves. To clarify grammatical issues, the masculine form of the adjective used to depict a specific aspect of the appearance of the slave is provided first, followed by the feminine form in parentheses if it occurs in the 463 Galata 14/2, page 35, hüccet 1, 2; page 70, hüccet 1. Galata 14/3, page 11, hüccet 1; page 27, hüccet 3, 4; page 28, hüccet 1; page 29, hüccet 1. Galata 14/4, page 47, hüccet 1; page 48, hüccet 1; page 59, hüccet 1; page 61, hüccet 1; page 99, hüccet 2; page 100, hüccet 1, 2; page 153, hüccet 4; page 156, hüccet 3.

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court register. The actual terminology used in the physical description of the slave was relatively limited and had been determined by centuries of previous usage in Arabic legal documents, typically contracts, as defined by ʿilm al-shurūṭ (in Ottoman usage, ṣakk) manuals. 464 Prior to examining the tacit sociological motivations for including a physical description of the slave in the hüccet, the ostensible legal and cultural justifications are detailed and analysed below. The primary motivation for the inclusion of physical descriptions in Ottoman legal documents was the requirement of the Arabic shurūṭ manuals (contract formularies), which were essentially guides to the structure, formulation and composition of Islamic legal contracts of all types in the Arabic language. Shurūṭ manuals were used in order to guarantee that the wording of various types of contracts obeyed the conditions of transfer of property according to a given madhhab. In the Ottoman context, the contract formularies written according to the Ḥanafī madhhab trace their lineage back to Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Salāma b. ʿAbd al-Malik al-Azdī al-Ta ḥāwī (born 853 AD).465 He wrote al-Shurūṭ al-Kabīr, which survives in partial manuscript form in Cairo and was studied by Schacht; 466 al-Taḥāwī has also been studied by Jeanette Wakin.467 Unfortunately, the section of his work on manumission has not been published and is perhaps no longer extant. Another major contributor to the early development of Ḥanafī shurūṭ manuals whose work is still largely extant is Ẓahīr al-Dīn al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī Abū’l-Maḥāsin al-Marghīnānī (flourished 12th century AD), whose Fatāwā al-shurūṭ468 is held in the British Library manuscript collection in a fifteenth-century copy. The language and clausal structure employed in the Galata court records for the various forms of manumission described in Chapter 2 (ʿitāq, tadbīr, mukātaba, umm walad) are identical to the language stipulated by al-Marghīnānī’s Fatāwā al-shurūṭ,. The reason for selecting the Fatāwā al-shurūṭ in order to reconstruct the origins of the language used in the Galata court registers was indeed the fact that it was written in Arabic, like the manumission documents contained in the 464 Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, 14. For a discussion of the influence of these manuals on notarial and juridical practice, see: Wael Hallaq, ›Model shurut works and the dialectic of doctrine and practice‹ Islamic Law and Society 2/2 (1995), 109-134. For comparison with the language of the Ottoman contracts of the Galata court records, the following shurūṭ manuals were consulted in manuscript form: Ẓahīr al-Dīn al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī Abū ’l-Maḥāsin al-Marghīnānī, Fatāwā alshurūṭ, British Library, London, Arabic MSS, OR. 4305; Vehbi, Sakk-i Vehbi, British Library, London, Turkish MSS, Or. 1142. 465 ›al-Ṭaḥāwī‹, EI1. 466 Joseph Schacht, Das Kitāb aḏkār al-ḥuqūq war-ruhūn aus dem al-ǧamiʿ al-kabīr fiš-šurūṭ des Abū Čaʿfar Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī (Heidelberg, 1927). 467 Wakin, The Function of Documents in Islamic Law. 468 Ẓahīr al-Dīn al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī Abū ’l-Maḥāsin al-Marghīnānī, Fatāwā al-shurūṭ. British Library, London, Arabic MSS, Or. 4305. I would like to thank Geoffrey Khan for pointing me toward this reference.

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Galata sicils.469 For purposes of comparison, later Turkish-language works were consulted as well, such as Sakk-i Vehbi,470 in order to examine whether Arabic technical terminology was perpetuated despite the introduction of Turkish syntactic constructions. The answer is largely no; elements of description that were previously articulated in Arabic had been translated into Turkish, as described elsewhere in this thesis when discussing the difference between the Galata court registers and those from elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire. The shurūṭ manuals, from which notaries and scribes learned their trade, stipulate that all parties involved in a contract or transaction who were not personally known to the witnesses must be described. 471 Significantly for the history of the development of Ottoman legal terminology and structure, the shurūṭ manuals and chancery traditions that determined Ottoman legal formulary drew directly on previous formulae and contract structure or Arabic chancery and legal practice, stretching back from the Mamluk era to that of the Abbasids. 472 These Arabic-language legal formulae in turn drew on contract formulary from Byzantine Egypt and Syria; the later Arabic legal formulae also bear striking similarity to Babylonian, Assyrian, and Sumerian legal practices. 473 A diachronic study of the legal formulary and clausal structure of manumission deeds is sorely needed in order to understand the development and use of contracts in the sharīʿa; such an extended study can unfortunately not be attempted here. It is essential at this point to note that the shurūṭ manuals stipulate that all parties involved in a transaction must be described, or that ḥilyas are necessary if the parties involved were not known to the witnesses of the contract. Thus, in the case of the Galata sicils, one would expect the slave owners, wakīls, and slaves to be described in the hüccet. However, the particular (dis)honour of physical description was extended solely to the slaves whose presence was recorded in the court register in Galata. Another possible line of inquiry explaining the nature and language of such detailed description in the court registers is the influence of the 161 469 I am aware of the existence of 16th-century Ottoman sakk /shurūṭ manuals that would be appropriate to this study; however, I have been unable to gain access to these manuscripts in hard copy or digital form. For instance: Ebûs-Suûd Muhammed b. Muhammed el-İmâdî (889-982/1493-1574), Sakk, Milli Kütüphane, Ankara, Ankara Adnan Ötüken İl Halk Kütüphanesi Koleksiyonu, 06 Hk 3505/4 and Idem., Kitâbü’s-Sakk, Süleymaniye Yazma Eser Kütüphanesi, Istanbul, Giresun İl Halk Kütüphanesi Koleksiyonu, 28 Hk 3648/13. 470 Vehbi, Ahmed b. Mustafa Bursevi (d. 1154 AH/ 1741 AD). Sakk-i Vehbi, British Library, London, Turkish MSS, Or. 1142. 471 Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, 15, footnote 24. 472 Ibid., 15, 20. 473 On the importance of orality in legal testimony, see: Wakin, The Function of Documents in Islamic Law, 2-3. On the general value assigned to oral transmission over written documentation of Islamic tradition and law, see: Michael Cook, ›Opponents of writing in early Islam‹, Arabica 44/4 (Oct, 1997), 437-530.

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genre of ʿilm al-firāsa (physiognomy),474 referred to in shorthand as firāsa, the art of reading the inner qualities of a person by observing their outward, physical characteristics,475 as discussed briefly in Chapter 3 in the analysis of tropes of cins. ʿIlm al-firāsa was an art based on the neo-Platonic view adopted and developed in early and medieval Islamic philosophy that there existed a link between the outer form and the inner self.476 The art of firāsa was also widely employed in the buying and selling of slaves,477 and was considered particularly useful for selecting slaves in the slave market, as well as in many other areas of social interaction. In the early Ottoman Empire, firāsa (or in Ottoman term, firaset) was employed in selecting young boys for the devşirme.478 A mastery of firāsa was considered essential for controlling one’s inferiors as well as manipulating one’s superiors by grasping their hidden motives, moral characteristics and weaknesses from a detailed reading of specific aspects of their physical appearance and mannerisms. Thus, the art of firāsa enjoyed a long and distinguished philosophical pedigree in the Islamic and pre-Islamic world. 479 The use of firāsa manuals in the mid- to late sixteenth century Ottoman Empire is attested to by the presence of numerous extant manuals of firāsa in Arabic and Turkish copied during the period, 480 as well 474 According to George Boys-Stones in his chapter, ›Physiognomy and ancient psychological theory‹ in Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam, ed. Simon Swain (Oxford, 2007), 19, the logic behind firāsa is the following: ›Of all animals, human beings display the most remarkable tendency towards perversity of nature. But more than this, human beings display the most remarkable variety of perversion. It is as Aristotle said: virtue is simple, but vice takes many forms. No two people are unnatural in quite the same way (one is more cowardly, another more lecherous, and so on), and while one can generalise about the way humans ought to be, there is only a limited extent to which one can generalise about the way they are.‹ 475 Simon Swain, ›Introduction‹, Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam, ed. Swain, (Oxford, 2007), 11: ›Serious philosophical and medical interest in physiognomy explores the relation between innate psychological character and the construction or form of the body. This is the basis of the Aristotelian Physiognomy, of Galen’s suggestions in Powers of the Soul, and of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s philosophical-medical firāsa .‹ 476 Robert Hoyland, ›The Islamic background to Polemon’s treatise‹ Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam, ed. Swain, Simon (Oxford, 2007), 238. 477 Ibn Buṭlān, Trattato generale sull’acquisto degli schiavi, a translation of Risāla jamīʿa li-funūn nāfiʿa fi shirā al-raqīq wa taqlīb al-ʿabīd; Shaham, Expert Witness in the Islamic Courts, 94-96. 478 Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, 4. 479 Hoyland, ›The Islamic background to Polemon’s treatise‹, 237. Polemon is known in Arabic as ›Filimun, sāhib al-firāsa‹, i.e., the master of physiognomy. For other examples of the genre, see Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Al-Firāsa: Dalīluka ila maʿrifat ikhlāq al-nās wa ṭabāʿiʾhim wa ka-innahum kitāb maftūḥ (Riyad, 1987). 480 For a sampling of contemporary firāsa treatises in Turkish archives: Şems ed-dîn Muhammed b. Ebû Tâlib el-Ensâri, es-Siyase fi İlm il-Firase, Erzurum İl Halk Kütüphanesi 25 Hk 23964; Mustafa Balizade, Firasetname, Nuruosmaniye Yazma Eser Kütüphanesi 34 Nk 3698; Mecmua, includes Risale-i ilm-i Kıyafet ve Firâset, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi Türkçe

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as the inclusion of tracts on firāsa among mecmuas (collections of texts and treatises) compiled by the Ottoman administrative-secretarial class. Why examine the confluence of manumission documents, shurūṭ, and firāsa? To study how the theory of law (fiqh) took a codified form (shurūṭ), how it was applied in a real-life setting (the Galata court of Istanbul and its manumission documents) and how this textual practice interacted with and was influenced by the cultural and linguistic world of the judge, the kassam askeri, the scribes and slave owners, is one objective. Certainly they would have received some exposure to the literary genre of ʿilm al-firāsa, among other literary pseudo-sciences that were considered de rigeure knowledge for a sixteenth-century educated bureaucrat or householder. The examination of such tracts therefore sheds light on the social context of slavery and manumission in Galata. In further support of the importance of the genre for the social meaning of slavery, firāsa was also used in the selection of devşirme recruits, suggesting its importance in other areas of the practice of slavery in the Ottoman Empire. 481 What concerns our discussion here is not solely the reason for the inclusion of elements of physical description and cins in the manumission document, both of which were stipulated by contract formularies dating from the Ḥanafī 9th to the 19th centuries482 in order to fulfil the legal criteria for a valid sale, but why the vocabulary of the categories and descriptive elements were chosen and what this reveals about the world that slaves, slave-owners, and court scribes inhabited. When the scribe wrote ›tall, open browed, blue eyed Georgian slave, missing three fingers on his left hand and with a burn mark above his left eye‹, for example, what did this mean to the audience of the manumission document, beyond pure description? It is absolutely not the case that such descriptions were pure description and nothing else, because Ottoman (and prior Arabic and Persian) literature is replete with treatises that elaborate on what it means when a slave has a single eyebrow versus separate eyebrows, what sort of work he is suitable for if he is blue-eyed versus dark- eyed, or short or thin or fat or hairy. The rich literature on physiognomy and advice on how to run a household has a wealth of interpretation as to what it means when a slave possesses particular physical characteristics. Yazmaları 1082/1671; Hüseyin Şakir b. Hüseyin. Firasetül Hikemiyye fi Kıyafetül insaniye, Edirne Selimiye Yazma Eser Kütüphanesi, 22 Sel 1865. And contemporary treatises on firāsa emanating from the lands of the Ottoman Empire in the British Library are: Firasetname, British Library, Turkish MSS, Or. 9681; al-Dimashqī, Risāla fi ʿIlm al-Firāsa, British Library, Arabic MSS., Or. 6655; al-Ghamrī, al-Bahjah al-Insanīyya fi al-Firasa al-Insanīyya, British Library, Arabic MSS., Or. 8878; Kitāb fi al-Firāsa, British Library, Arabic MSS, Or., 9510; Kitāb al-Siyāsa, British Library, Arabic MSS., Or. 3118. 481 Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire, 4. 482 Sakk (i.e., Shurūṭ ) manuals were still being compiled and printed in the nineteenth century, according to Haim Gerber, State, Society and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective (Albany, 1994), 192, footnote 2, who cites two nineteenth-century sakk manuals among his sources used to study the application of the law.

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In Chapter 3, the discussion of cins tropes touched on the Turkish translation of the Persian Kabusname, and its extensive discussion of the philosophy behind selecting a slave. In addition to its excursus on cins, this text also emphasises the importance of firāsa to the slave-owner, a skill without which it is impossible to truly understand one’s inferiors. The Mercimek Ahmed text opens its discussion of buying and selling slaves with the declaration, ›Âdem satın almak gürbüz ilimdir‹,483 namely, ›Buying a man requires profound knowledge.‹ And continues to say that this is not merely a question of economic benefit but one of philosophy, including firaset (the Turkicised form of firāsa) or the art of reading physiognomy: ›Ve hem çok kula ola ki alıdururken bir bakımda hûb görünür, velî çünki firasetle nazar edesin, çirkin görünür.‹ 484 Rendered loosely in English, this translates as: ›Many slaves when you quickly stop and glance at them seem lovely, but if you look at them with a gaze of firāsa, they seem ugly.‹ At this point the three ›conditions‹ for selecting a slave are then mentioned. The first is that you must know the slave’s flaws and skills, inside and out. The text explicitly mentions that firāsa was essential to this: ›Birisi oldur ki aybın ve hünerin deneyesin, zâhirinde ve bâtınında var mıdır, ya yok mudur, firasetle bilesin‹,485 which rendered in English, translates as, ›The first condition [of selecting a slave] is to test his bad points [literally, faults or failings] and good points [literally, art/skill], whether such things are evident or hidden [zâhirinde ve bâtınında], it is through firāsa that such things are learned.‹ Of course, the terms zâhir and bâtın carry weighty religious and philosophical associations beyond the literal ›inside‹ and ›outside‹ of the slave’s person. A lengthy description of the hair, skin colour and texture, eye colour, eyebrow type (open or closed, açık or çatık), lips, fingers, limbs, height and build of slaves used for various purposes (for a guardsman, you can use any slave, but for a nadīm, i.e., a drinking companion, the author has very stringent specifications) 486 occupies the discussion on selecting slaves. Again, the centrality of firāsa to the slave-owner’s knowledge is emphasised: With regard to the first requirement, that of physiognomy, it consists of the close observation when buying slaves. (The buyers of slaves are of all categories: there are those who inspect the face, disregarding body and extremities; others look to the corpulence or otherwise of the slave.) Whoever it may be that inspects the slave must first look at the face, which is always open to view, whereas the body can

483 484 485 486

Gökyay, Mercimek Ahmet, Keykavus Kabusname, 144. Ibid., 144. Ibid., 145. Gökyay, Mercimek Ahmet, Keykavus Kabusname, 145-148.

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only be seen as occasion offers. Then look at the eyes and eyebrows, followed by the nose, lips, and teeth, and lastly the hair.487 The detailed discussion of how to choose a slave is primarily concerned with describing the various physical qualities that one might encounter in a slave and reading these qualities through the ›gaze of firāsa‹ (firasetle nazar). The passages discussing how the physical characteristics of slave translate into moral attributes and other talents or flaws are worth quoting: The learned say that one must know the indications and signs by which to buy the slaves suited for particular duties. The slave that you buy for your private service and conviviality should be of middle proportions, neither tall nor short, fat nor lean, pale nor florid, thickset nor slender, curly-haired nor with hair over-straight. When you see a slave soft-fleshed, fine-skinned, with regular bones and winecoloured hair, black eye-lashes, dark eyes, black eyebrows, openeyed, long-nosed, slender-waisted, round-shinned, red-lipped, with white regular teeth, and all his members such as I have described, such a slave will be decorative and companionable, loyal, of delicate character and dignified.488 While the art of reading the inner qualities of a person according to thickness of his eyelashes and the length of his nose may seem absurd to modern readers, to the sixteenth-century Ottoman grandee, such skills were considered irreplaceable. It is through such descriptions that we may arrive at an understanding of what the terms used in the physical descriptions of the Galata court registers actually signified to the slave owners and scribes who created them. For instance, the Kabusname tells us that, ›The mark of the slave who is clever and may be expected to improve is this: he must be of erect stature, medium in hair and in flesh, broad of hand and with the middle of the fingers lengthy, in complexion dark though ruddy, dark-eyed, open-faced and unsmiling. A slave of this kind would be competent to acquire learning, to act as treasurer or for any other [such] employment. 489 Further examples of the physical characteristics of slaves who are suited to various types of service are detailed in the Kabusname. For instance, a slave suited to bearing arms shouls have ›thick bones‹, ›straight limbs‹, a bald head and black eyes, among other qualities,490 while the slave who should be employed as a herdsman is his open brow (note the similarity with physical descriptions), and ›eyelids flecked with red.‹ 491 Slaves who should be put to work in the women’s 487 488 489 490 491

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Levy, A Mirror for Princes, 100. Ibid., 101. Ibid., 101. Ibid., 101-102. Ibid., 102.

quarters should be ›dark-skinned‹ and have ›scanty hair‹ with ›thick lips‹ and a ›flat nose‹. He must not, above all ›have a white skin nor a fair complexion.‹ 492 While the slave who could be used as a cook is that he should have ›feet slender, his eyes dark inclining to blue, sound in body, silent, the hair of his head winecoloured and falling forward limply.‹ 493 In the scientific and pseudo-scientific scholarly traditions of the Islamic world, ›reading‹ the physical traits of an individual was considered an obligatory skill for any holder of household or master in charge of subordinates. Thus, while it may seem trivial to us, and merely a ›rational‹ question of description and fulfilling legal requirements, questions of appearance, hair growth, eye colour, height, etc spoke volumes to early modern Ottomans. To read the manumission document in its proper cultural context, one cannot read it as an isolated legal text, but rather interpret it, and the situation in which it was composed, against a tapestry of learned texts from the same period to attempt to gain insight into world in which such practices of slavery were performed. Furthermore, the period at hand has been described as the ›Age of Beloveds‹, in which the beloved was often a slave or subservient or poor young man, seeking patronage based on a combination of personal attractiveness and wit. 494 The poetry of the age abounds in metaphors of slavery that cannot be disregarded as extraneous to the legal context. Many of the poets of the age who patronised such ›beloveds‹ of slave or servile status were themselves members of the Ottoman administration or military, the very class of slave-owners whom we are examining in Galata. Against a background of contemporary literary and scientific texts, it becomes evident that the language of slavery in the court records was indeed not limited to the legal context. So, when the court scribe recorded these facts, he was not merely describing the physical appearance of the slave in order to fulfil the legal requirements of a contact involving the exchange of goods (buyūʿ), rather, these terms consisted of a rich symbolic language denoting moral characteristics of which, perhaps because we do not possess modern equivalents, we tend to neglect the significance. The same could easily be said of cins as well, as literary treatises elaborating on the qualities associated with each cins are just as numerous and illustrious in lineage as the works on firāsa. In support of the thesis that scribes, bureaucrats, and generally urban and military elites would have had a grounding in both literary and scientific literatures of the day is a particularly striking example of a mecmua, a collection of works, (circa seventeenth century) catalogued as Miscelleneae Turcicae.495 It is not a mis492 493 494 495

Ibid., 102. Ibid., 102. Kalpaklı, Age of Beloveds, 143. Miscellanae Turcicae. British Library, London, Turkish MSS. Add. 7890.

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cellany, but a carefully compiled compendium of everything that a competent Ottoman scribe or administrator would need to know in order to fulfil his profes sional duties: examples of letters to military officers, as well friends and relatives, a list of forms of address to the Sultan, grand vizier, and other functionaries, a vocabulary of Arabic terms for use in official writings and letters, with their translation into Ottoman Turkish in varying colours of ink (for clarity and quickness of use, one would assume), a treatise on bookkeeping and accounting, a small opus on calculating calendars, a tract on the conventional notation of measures, quantities, prices, revenues and expenditures, a treatise on arithmetic, and finally, and most importantly, a treatise on the art of firāsa and its importance. While the documents examined below with few exceptions addressed the freeing of slaves, rather than their purchase, there nonetheless existed a strong correlation between the terms used to describe persons in the firāsa manuals and the Galata court registers, suggesting that at some level the genres of ʿilm al-shurūṭ and ʿilm al-firāsa must have influenced each other over many centuries of interaction in the nexus at which law meets social manipulation, a nexus occupied by scribes, clerks, and administrators who read and compiled such mecmua as the one described above. Even if a direct influence between the two genres cannot be irrefutable demonstrated here, the works on firāsa nonetheless provide insight into the mental world of the slave owner and allow the historian to understand how a sixteenthcentury slave-owner would have perceived particular physical characteristics in his slave. For instance, while for modern readers, the description of a slave’s joined eyebrows and crooked stature seems to serve the rational end of identification (or perhaps merely inject an element of comedy), to the sixteenth-century man, such a description would have spoken volumes about the slave’s moral char acteristics and trustworthiness (or lack thereof) and his suitability for various forms of work. Such a physical description also perpetuated the relationship of exploitation whereby the scribe and slave owner ›read‹ and interpreted the slave and his characteristics through their acquired cultural capital of legal and literary knowledge. Moreover, the reason for drawing a conclusion in favour of a possible historical interrelation of shurūṭ and firāsa and the influence of these legal and literary genres on the language of the court registers in the Ottoman period is that there exist a multitude of ways and terms that can be used to describe an individual’s physical appearance; however, both genres, shurūṭ and firāsa, as well as the Ottoman court registers employ the same strict and highly limited repertoire of terms to depict the selfsame aspects of a person’s appearance. In addition to the specific aspects of a person’s appearance, which did not differ from genre to genre, the terminology and manner of description shared numerous characteristics as well. Although it is not likely that the art of firāsa was the ostensible reason stated at the time as to why a relatively detailed physical description of the slaves was included

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in each manumission or mukātaba contract, it nonetheless sheds light on the social motivations for describing the specific elements of the slave’s physical appearance: to render him (or her) ›legible‹ to his owner, to allow his ›hidden‹ inner characteristics to be read by his master and the court scribe and thus, to place the slave in a subordinate position to those who are in a condition to ›read‹ and thus control him. While the legal justification for the inclusion of the ḥilya of the slave was without a doubt the stipulations of the shurūṭ manuals, there was a clear element of social manipulation shared with the tradition of firāsa. Furthermore, as was discussed in Chapter 4, manumission in the early modern context was not a weakening of the bonds of exploitation between master and slave, but often consisted in the strengthening of these bonds into a patron-client relationship. Therefore, the slave owner’s knowledge of his former slave’s physical characteristics and cins was just as valuable at the moment of manumission as at the time of purchase. Both the physical description required the shurūṭ and the ›reading‹ of the slave’s inner qualities through the rules established by the genre of firāsa share the common element of subjecting the slave to a structured form of physical and moral scrutiny over which he has little, or no, say at all. Further studies will hopefully shed more light on possible connections between the two practices. This act of reading and describing the slave subjected him to a series of categorisations concerning his origin, appearance, and even moral characteristics (if his physical traits were interpreted by the owner as indicative of his internal qualities according to firāsa). These categories were determined by the scribe and the slave-owner and their respective access to the Arabic and Ottoman philosophical and legal traditions and their complicated nomenclature, which therefore contributed to the subjugation of the slave at the moment of manumission. As an in-depth philological investigation of every term utilised in the Galata court registers to describe slaves would exceed the scope of a doctoral dissertation, only the most widespread and commonly used descriptive terms are analysed. The exemplary ḥilyas of two male and two female slaves are provided here to elucidate the lexical and clausal construction of these descriptions in the Galata court registers. The first is the physical description of Ḥasan b. ʿAbdullah, a Frankish slave whose manumission by Meḥmed Reis was recorded at court on Rajab, 979 (December, 1571) after the owner’s death. His description was as follows: alaṣfar lawnan, al-afraq ḥājiban, al-muʻtadil qāmatan (yellow of colour, separate of eyebrow, and medium of height) and fī wijhatihi al-yamīn khāl aswad (on the right side of his face there is a black mole). 496 Ḥasan’s is the only ḥilya among hundreds to slave-related hüccets to employ qualifying nouns (lawnan: of the complexion/colour, ḥājiban: of the eyebrow, qāmatan: of height) accompanying the adjectives, making the description comprehensible to even those not specific496 Galata 14/4, page 48, hüccet 1.

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ally trained in the reading of shurūṭ manuals or sixteenth-century Ottoman bureaucratic legalese. A normal hüccet only listed the adjectives without the noun they described: al-aṣfar, al-afraq, al-muʻtadil (the yellow, the separate, the medium – referring to skin, eyebrows and height). It appears that the same owner, Meḥmed Reis497 manumitted another slave before his death; the slave’s new legal status was only later recorded officially at court in Rajab, 979 (December, 1571). Named Murād b. ʿAbdullah, he is described as al-afraq, al-ḥintī, muʿtadil al-qāma.498 Interestingly, the variant construction, muʿtadil al-qāma499 in contrast to the locution muʿtadil qāmatan is used in the adjacent manumission, and written by the same scribe. Why the variation in grammatical ūorm? And why did the scribe include the qualifying nouns in one hüccet but not the other, with the exception of the term qāma or ›height‹? The subtle variation remains unaccounted for; however, it suggests that Ottoman scribal practice at this point employed a variable, if limited, range of Arabic terms in the ḥilya. Similar formulae were used to record the appearance of female slaves, but the Arabic adjectives were naturally utilised in the grammatically feminine form. For instance, the Bosnian female slave, Shākira (›thankful‹) bt. Abdullah, is described succinctly as al-wusṭa, al-farqā, al-ḥintīyya, al-shahla, fi yadiha al-yusrā athar aljurḥ. Translated roughly, this means: ›the medium (of height), the separate (of eyebrows), the golden-coloured (of skin), the hazel (eyed), on her left hand is a scar (literally, mark of a wound).‹ She was manumitted (ʿitāq, ḥasbatan lillah) in Rajab 978 (November 1570).500 The final example is that of Nāzīfā (Nazife) bt. ʿAbdullah, a Circassian slave whose tadbīr contract was recorded at court in Shawwāl, 979 (March, 1572) by her owner, Ḥasan b. ʿAbdullah. She is described as: al-wusṭa, alḥintīyya, al-daʿjāʿ, al-farqāʾ,501 that is to say, ›the medium, the golden, the dark, the separate‹, referring respectively to her height, complexion, eyes, and eyebrows. One of the first physical attributes to be mentioned was usually skin colour or complexion, and its description was typically limited to one of four adjectives: alasmar/al-samrāʾ (dark complexion); al-ḥintī/al-ḥintīyya (olive complexion); alqamḥī/al-qamḥīyya (wheatish complexion); al-abyaḍ/al-bayḍāʾ (white complexion). A further two descriptors of skin that occur rarely are al-aswad/al-sawdāʾ (black) and al-aṣfar/al-ṣafra (yellow). Interestingly, similar categories of colour are included not only in much earlier Islamic Arabic-language legal documents, 386 but 497 His laqab, or nickname, was shāṭir qulaq, perhaps to be translated as ›clever ear‹. 498 Galata 14/4, page 48, hüccet 2. 499 Written mistakenly by the scribe with the definite marker on the first term as well as the second, as al-muʿtadil al-qāma. 500 Galata 14/4, page 21, hüccet 2. 501 Galata 14/4, page 100, hüccet 2. 386 Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, 16.

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also in Latin documents regarding the sale of slaves in Genoa, 503 suggesting that the practice was central to the classification and description of slaves in the Eastern Mediterranean in the medieval and early modern period, as well as a commonly practised method of exerting the dominance of the legal structures employed by literate elites over the enslaved person. The question often arises in secondary literature504 on slavery in the Mediterranean, an area of the world in which the slave population possessed widely varying skin tones, as to whether skin colour affected the value of the slave. In Galata, information concerning the sale prices of slaves is scanty. There is, however, abundant information on the values of mukātaba contracts, consequently representing the value of the slave’s labour, rather than the cost of his physical person.505 Inheritance inventories contained in the Galata court registers also attach numerical values to the person of the slave. Considering this data (included in the appendix to chapter five), it seems that, similar to other parts of the Mediter ranean,506 variations of skin tone had little effect on the price of the Galata slaves’ labour in the form of mukātaba contracts, the majority of whom were male. No specific patterns can be discerned for the values of slaves according to skin colour in the inheritance inventories either. The reason for this is that the primarily male slaves recorded in the Galata court registers were prized for their technical skills and work abilities rather than appearance. In terms of female slaves, the majority of those present in the court registers were manumitted as an act of piety on the part of the owner, thus little economic data is available on their values that could be analysed according to skin colour. This question, which often arises, is based on outdated theories of ›race‹ that still 503 Gioffrè, Il mercato degli schiavi a Genova, 27. The author, in his section on ›Gli schiavi mori‹ (that is, ›moorish slaves‹, who are described by Gioffrè as the inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula and coasts of North Africa) received similar descriptions of their skin colour: ›albo, nero, indaco, lauro, olivegno‹, suggesting that a similar mixture of practical necessity of identifying the slave while at the same time using the notary and owner’s position of dominance to demonstrate their control over the slave through recording his appearance. 504 Furthermore, this question has been asked at every conference or seminar in which this research has been presented. 505 The cost of the physical person of the slave is found in the muhallafat defterleri but is somewhat unreliable for a variety of reasons previously analysis in the discussion on using the Ottoman court registers as a source for social history. 506 It is more difficult to grasp the influence of the slave’s colour on the price of the sale, par ticularly for female slaves. Zilfi considers this question in her recent work, Women and Slavery in the Ottoman Empire, 106, as do many historians of slavery elsewhere in the Mediterranean, such as Balard in his La Romanie Genoise, vol. II, 811, in which he claims that generally, (I paraphrase from the French): ›[W]hite slaves are better received than those of brown, olive, or black skin. But there are exceptions. Certain Tatar or Circassian subjects who are olive-skinned are more costly than their white companions of the same age. It seems that the overall beauty or physical strength of the slave was more important than the colour of the skin.‹

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have a surprisingly wide currency in the academic world. What is even more surprising is that questions commonly arising in ›scholarly‹ discourse tend to focus on whether ›white‹ slaves were more valuable, the inherent assumption being that naturally they were of a higher ›value‹. However, based on research on the market of labour and slavery in Galata, the relationship between ›skin colour‹ and the ›value‹ of the slave was certainly a more complex relationship than the linear one assumed by many ›scholars‹. A slave’s age, skills, talents, and natural intelligence generally seem to have had more bearing on the value of his (or her) person and labour than questions of skin colour. After the colour of the skin, as a rule a description of the eyebrows followed, with the scribe choosing from three main adjectives to depict the eyebrows of the slave: al-afraq; al-farqāʾ (eyebrows that do not meet in the middle); al-ablaj/ albaljāʾ (also indicating eyebrows that do not meet in the middle); al-aqran/al-qarnā (eyebrows meeting in the middle). In the Galata court registers rarely was this epithet followed by al-ḥājibayn or ḥājiban for the sake of clarity. The forehead, jabha, was only described when it has particular marks, addressed later in the commentary on scarring. These terms remained largely unchanged from Arabic documents of Fatimid and Mamluk Egypt to the sixteenth-century Ottoman practice, suggesting strong continuity in scribal and notarial practice regarding slavery and manumission in particular, as is the case with the other terms used in registering the slave manumission at court.507 Not only did such a description of the eyebrows have a strong precedent in the Islamic legal and bureaucratic literature, but such descriptions were also present in tracts on interpreting physiognomy. Therefore, while it may seem odd to dedic ate such scribal attention to the connectedness of the eyebrows, it must be re called they were one of the most prominent features of the face and used for both identifying the person as well as ›reading‹ his or her inner qualities. The military registers of the Fatimid period also contained detailed descriptions of the eyebrows, in line with the principles of both ʿilm al-firāsa and ʿilm al-shurūṭ. Great attention was given to the features of the body and the face, such as in the instructions to draw up a military register, dating from circa 320 AH (930 AD), or507 Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, 17: ›The most commonly used phrase is maqrun al-hajibayn, which refers to someone with eyebrows that are joined at the end and form an arch. This is frequently abbreviated to the single word maqrun. A modified form is maqrūn kāfī, which denotes eyebrows linked in an arch consisting of sparse hair. The adjective ʾablaj is used to describe a man with eyebrows that are not joined together. A further qualification of eyebrows found in the documents is the adjective ʾazajj, ›fine, long, extending to the side of the face[.]‹ All of these terms are replicated from al-Makhzūmī’s Kitāb al-Minhaj, which can be consulted in manuscript form in the British Library: al-Makhzūmī’s Kitāb al-Minhaj, British Library, London, Arabic Manuscripts, Add. 23,483. Sections have also been published by Claude Cahen, ›Douanes et commerce dans les ports méditerranéens de l’Égypte médiévale d’après le Minhādj d’Al-Makhzūmï‹ JESHO 7 (1964), 217-314.

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dering that: ›one should describe the eyebrows: if joined, say whether manifestly or lightly: if separated one says ablaj, and if a wrinkle line runs between them one says khaṭṭ‹, and such nuanced descriptions also have survived in a number of tax and travelling documents,508 suggesting that indeed these descriptions were used for recognition as well as for ›reading‹ the characteristics of the individual as evident in his physical traits, and also emphasise the historical context of the importance of describing the eyebrows of the individual at hand, whether he be a soldier or a slave. Eye colour was also of singular importance in both identifying a person, and interpreting that person’s moral characteristics, and the adjectives most commonly applied to the eyes were: al-adʿaj/al-daʿjāʾ (black eyes); al-azraq/al-zarqāʾ (blue eyes), and al-ashhal/al-shahlāʾ (hazel/brown).509 As the eyes were central to the identification of the individual both according to the strictures of manuals concerning shurūṭ and firāsa, particular scribal care was taken in recording their colour with the highest level of exactitude, as is evident in the case of the female Frankish slave Alfūns (presumably ›Alfonsa‹) bt. Mapūnūnī. 510 In this case, while listing her characteristics, the scribe scratched out ›hazel eyes‹ (shahla) and wrote in its place ›blue eyes‹ (zarqāʾ), suggesting that the scribe genuinely desired to convey an accurate rendering of the slave’s appearance, rather than merely going through the motions of a bureaucratic exercise. Furthermore, because a ›reading‹ of the colour and shape of an individual’s eyes was central to the art of firāsa, it is not surprising that nuanced attention was devoted to conveying the colour of the slave’s eyes accurately. After the eyes, the slave’s height was recorded, using the following three main adjectives: al-qaṣīr/alqaṣīra (short); al-awsaṭ/al-wusṭa (medium; interestingly, al-wasaṭ or al-mutawas508 Hoyland, ›The Islamic background to Polemon’s treatise‹, 246, footnote 48. 509 On a related note, interestingly, the feminine form of this adjective is used to describe women, even though, grammatically speaking, the single adjective is shorthand for ›azraq alaynayn‹ (blue of eyes), and thus probably should not be used in the feminine form, i.e. ›alzarqa‹, which would imply that the entire woman is blue. As to the precise meaning of this last term, there exists a wide range of translations, ranging from grey or black eyes to brown/hazel to dark blue. Various sources have interpreted this term in different ways, according to some, ashhal denotes dark blue (see Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, 17, footnote 14). Whereas other sources render the term as ›having bluish-black eyes, deep blue eyes‹ (see, Wehr, Arabic-English Dictionary, 573) or ›an eye’s being bluish grey, or light grey‹, and on a similar note, ›an eye of a bluish or light grey colour‹ (see, Redhouse, Turkish and English Lexicon, 1144). Geoffrey Khan, an expert on the philology and legal formulary of medieval Arabic documents explains that term ashhal ›denoted eyes with dark reddy-brown irises‹ (see: Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, 17). Thus, it is difficult to discern whether the slaves’ eyes were black or grey or blue or brown or hazel (reddish-brown), but in further discussions regarding the slave’s appearance, the term ›hazel‹ has been employed for those slaves recorded as possessing ashhal-coloured eyes. 510 Galata 14/3, page 12, hüccet 1. Alternate reading of surname: Mapononi.

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saṭ were rarely used, while al-awsaṭ was the most frequent in the Galata court registers to describe male slaves of medium height); al-ṭawīl or al-aṭwal/al-ṭawīla (tall), which were all shorthand for qaṣīr al-qāma (short of height) or ṭawīl alqāma (tall of height). Because of the importance of the beard and the style in which it was worn as a sign of social status in both ›Europe‹ and the Ottoman Empire in the pre-modern period,511 a description of the beard was included at times by the scribe. The fact that a description of the beard is only rarely included may indicate that many male slaves were not in possession of facial hair and perhaps were forcefully shaved or forced to remain without facial hair. 512 When the presence of a beard is recorded, it is the colour of the beard that is mentioned, for instance: Alī b. Sīdī alkapūdān manumits (ḥasbatan lillah) his male Russian (Rūsī) slave, with an odd name that appears as Yūnus Geldi (the orthography reads: Kaldī) b. Abdullah, who is described in Rajab, 978 (November, 1570), among other adjectives as al-aṣfar liḥyatan (yellow of beard).513 A further example is the adjective al-aswad al-liḥya (having a black beard),514 as used to describe Qus ṭanṭīn walad Batrū (Kostantin veled-i Petro), a Cypriot slave manumitted (ḥasbatan lillah) in 968 (1560).515 The term kūsaj often denoted the state of the beard (which is to say, spotty and sparse) rather than age, although it is debatable as to whether it applies to both age and beard, since a sparse beard and adolescence or early adulthood can often go hand in hand. Hair as an identifying factor took on singular importance when a particular male Frankish slave, Giacomo veled-i Luca (Jaqūmū walad Lūqā), who was being manumitted ( ḥasbatan lillah) by Ḥaydar Raʾīs b. Abdullah in awākhir Dhī al-Ḥijja, 969 (August, 1562) was described as al-awsaṭ, al-afraq, al-ashhal (medium height, separate eyebrows, hazel eyes), and fī shafatihi al-yusrā athar al-jarāḥa (scar on left side of lip). 511 Having one’s head or beard shaved was a sign of disgrace in the pre-modern Islamic world: Christian Lange, Justice, Punishment, and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge, 2008), 80, 234. Shaving the beard was viewed as a form of disgrace through mutilation. 512 Heberer, Osmanlıda bir Köle, 91. The captives’ hair and beards are shaved off, by their North African captors, which Heberer interprets as an action similar to putting the captives in chains, intending to break their spirit. The author and his Pomeranian friend want to resist the hair-cutting and shaving, but realise that there is no use, since they will just be beaten, and they resolve together not to forget the class to which they belong (as indicated by their soon-to-be shaved hair and beard styles). 513 Galata 14/4, page 12, hüccet 2. 514 Galata 14/2, page 20, hüccet 2. 515 The Arabic grammatical mistake is a common one in descriptive adjectives. If the scribe intended to describe the slave as possessing a black beard, the construction should be aswad al-liḥya, in an iḍāfa construction, without the definite article on the first term. It seems the scribe was perhaps experimenting with language, or using the Turkish method of placing the adjective before the noun rather than after, as in Arabic: Turkish siyah sakal versus Arabic liḥya sawda or al-liḥya al-sawda.

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This seems like a normal description until the line fi wijhatihi wa rāsihi mū ([there is] hair or fur all over his face and head), 516 thus this slave’s main physical characteristic seems to be that he was remarkably hairy. Although the age of a slave was not included in the physical description as a matter of course, at times the very young or the very old were indicated by the following terms: al-amrad (young man, adolescent), al-ʿadhra (young woman), and al-ʿajūz (elderly). Another term used that may be indicative of age is the abovementioned al-kūsaj, which can mean ›young man, adolescent‹, as its original meaning was ›having a thin beard.‹ 517 Examples of the rare indications of the age of the slaves supplied in the Galata court registers follow here. Iskandar b. Abdullah al-raʾīs al-sultānī came to court to arrange a tadbīr contract for his slave, ʿAbdullah b. ʿAbdullah,518 who was described as al-aswad, al-ṭawīl, al-afraq, al-amrad on 20 Rajab, 970 (15 March, 1563). Here, the term amrad gave an indication of ʿAbdullah b. ʿAbdullah’s young, pre-adolescent age. A ḥmad b. ʿAbdullah manumitted (ḥasbatan lillah) in awāsiṭ Sha‛bān, 970 (April, 1563), his Frankish female slave, Rita bt. Matomarand (Rītā bt. Mātūmūrand), who was described as an ʿadhra (young woman or virgin), suggesting that she was perhaps unusually young in relation to the average age of female slaves. 519 Thus, in terms of terminology and description, it seems that ʿadhrā was the female equivalent of amrad to describe an adolescent in the legal vocabulary of the Galata scribes. A further and extremely rare example of the indication of age in Turkish suggests that the terminology of age in bureaucratic-legal Arabic terminology was not employed often by the scribes of the Galata court. This particular case was not a straightforward formulaic ʿitq manumission, mukātaba, or tadbīr hüccet, but rather involved a dispute with the bayt al-māl after the death of the slave owner. In this instance, the slave, who is called only by his forename, Ḥusayn, is described as a küçük Rūm oğlan (small Greek boy).520 It seems possible to conclude that scribes 516 Galata 14/3, page 28, hüccet 2. And why the employment of the Persian term mū? Did it have connotations of ›fur‹ that Arabic shaʿr or Turkish saç lacked? Perhaps kıl or tüy were considered too rude to use, as these words primarily apply to animals (kıl) or body hair and feathers (tüy), hence the more sophisticated Persian euphemism was applied. 517 Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, 18-19 for description of beard terminology. In contrast to kūsaj, the most common description of the beard in the Genizah documents is mustadīr al-liḥya (with a round beard, i.e. one that extends around the edge of the face without covering all the area of the cheeks). The term kūsaj also appears, which Geoffrey Khan defines as ›with a thin beard‹. 518 Galata 14/4, page 47, hüccet 1. ʿAbdullah b. ʿAbdullah has been mentioned previously in his capacity as the only individual in the Galata court registers who bears the name ʿAbdullah as a forename. 519 Galata 14/3, page 110, hüccet 5. 520 Galata 14/4, page 57, hüccet 1. This case is recorded in as fī ghurrat Shaʻbān 975, which seems to be a mistake for Shaʻbān, 979 (December, 1571). The background story to this case is that a certain Pervane Reis was lent or given the slave, and when Ferhad, the initial owner, died in Cyprus, presumably in the siege, fighting on the Ottoman side, the emin of

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had recourse to Turkish (or Persian, in the case of amrad and kūsaj) when it was imperative that the age of the slave be described, as this was not a standard part of the Arabic description. Old age also seldom arises as a descriptor. In a rare instance, the female slave, Shahdane bt. Abdullah, a Hungarian (Majarīyya), was manumitted in Rabīʿa I, 969 (November, 1561) by Fāṭima bt. Ḥusayn, on behalf of her deceased owner, Sul ṭān bt. Ḥilmī. She is described as ›hazel-eyed, with separate eyebrows, white, of medium stature, elderly‹.521 The term used to describe her age was ʿajūz, which carried not only implications of advanced age, but also impotence or ineffectualness. It was frowned upon to manumit elderly slaves unless one had the intention of caring for them in their old age, as it was considered a religious duty of the owner to care for his slave, who had presumably spent his life serving his master, suggesting that this manumission is an odd case. One wonders in this instance why the slave was manumitted by individuals who were presumably her inheritors after the death of her original owner. Were there no provisions made in the original owner’s will for the upkeep of the slave? Or was she no longer useful, due to her age, and as a result her new owners decided to manumit her and leave her to her fate? While the manumission of an elderly slave in order to escape the responsibility of providing for the slave’s upkeep in old age was frowned upon, it seems that the hüccet at hand is an example of such an occurrence. In distinct contrast to Leslie Pierce’s findings for the age-related descriptors applied to free individuals who appear in the court records of sixteenth-century Ayntab,522 it would appear that Galata’s slaves existed in almost an ageless state. It is not impossible that most were in the prime of life, as the majority of slaves were involved in some form of manual labour or craftsmanship (for males) or childbirth, child rearing and other domestic duties (for females). The sparse examples cited above represent the only instances among the hundreds of slaves in the Galata court registers in which age was mentioned. Unlike the ›life-cycles‹ that can be identified for the litigants of Ayntab (none of whom were slaves) to whom a Turkish-language terminology of age was applied in the courts, the slaves of Galata, both male and female, seem to be outside of the ›life-cycle‹ of the normal, free individual. Only the age of the exceptionally young or elderly is mentioned, and even this occurs so rarely as to be remarkable. In contrast to the rich Turkish vocabulary which Pierce identifies as marking the transformations in life-cycle phases and hierarchies among men and women the bayt al-māl, Ali Bey, and his Katib Mustafa Çelebi, reclaimed the slave from Pervane Reis. 521 Galata 14/2, page 55, hüccet 4, Rabīʿa I, 969. 522 Peirce, ›Seniority, sexuality, and social order: the vocabulary of gender in early modern Ottoman society‹, 169-196.

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in Ayntab, the only gendered markers that are applied to the slaves of Galata are ʿabd mamlūk (literally, a slave who is owned) and jārīya (in Turkish parlance: cariye, a female slave) which indicate only biological sex and the legal status of slave, suggesting that slaves prior to manumission were not allowed the same range of identifying ›life-cycle‹ terms as free individuals. The reason for this is certainly not the Arabic-heavy language of the Galata sicils, as the scribes would borrow freely from other languages when the need or desire arose, particularly of nouns and adjectives (to cite a few non-Arabic terms that occur: mū, amrad, kūsaj, and a single instance of küçük oğlan). It is possible to conclude that slaves were excluded from certain life cycles identified by Pierce, such as kız (young girl pre-marriage), avret or karı (married women), or levend (young unmarried man), and bennak (married man, householder). 523 Certainly, the almost total lack of age-related terminology applied to slaves in the Galata sicils suggests that slaves were denied the life-cycles permitted to free individuals, and thus of necessity characterised by their physical appearance and origin rather than their stage in life.

The Terminology of Scarring in the Court Registers: Stab Wounds, Pox Scars, Burn Marks and Missing Teeth Having examined the standardised terminology employed in the physical description of the slave, let us now turn to the depiction of scarring in the Galata court registers. From a purely utilitarian perspective, maintaining an official written record of the manumitted (or mukātab) slave’s physical appearance and scars seems to be a logical course of action. If the mukātab slave were to abscond before manumission, such a record of the slave’s scars, in conjunction with the more stylised ḥilya, could be used to apprehend and identify him. Furthermore, such a detailed and unique description could in theory protect the ex-slave’s rights in case of post-manumission mistaken identity and wrongful re-enslavement. Such a description of the scars of the manumitted slave could serve to identify him and reaffirm his freedom. On the other hand, it is undeniable that the written registration of the slave’s scars was to some degree an act of degradation and subjugation, as no free individual’s ḥilya or scarring is documented at any point in the Galata court registers. If the logic of the physical description and scarring were carried to its furthest conclusion, namely, that the inclusion of such a description was meant to prevent fraud and false claims by rendering the identities of the legal actors clear and unambiguous, then it would be rational to describe the slave-owner’s appearance in 523 These are a sampling of the relevant terms identified by Peirce as applying to litigants in the Ayntab courts and describing their stage in the life-cycle and hence, the social behaviours expected of them. Peirce, ›Seniority, sexuality, and social order: the vocabulary of gender in early modern Ottoman society‹, 176, 179, 183, 185.

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such detailed terms as well. A record of the slave owner’s physical appearance would be useful in cases of mistaken identity, which could arise among slaveowners especially in cases of death abroad, inheritance disputes, or litigation involving the theft of a slave. Such cases would necessitate matching the physical description of the owner to that recorded in the court register, rather than the description of the slave. From a purely legal standpoint, if the genuine reason for such a registration of physical characteristics and scars were solely to avoid fraudulent claims then it was equally necessary to describe the owner in as much detail as the slave, as was technically required in shurūṭ manuals, as mentioned previously. However, the requirements laid out by the shurūṭ manuals were not the sole underlying motivation for recording the slave’s unique scars and appearance in the Galata registers. Again, it seems that the physical description of the slave was not merely a matter of obeying legal formulary but rather served the social purpose of reinforcing the subordinate position of the slave as well. More so than the act of recording the stylised physical description of the slave’s body, registering its scars, defects, and disabilities for posterity was degrading.524 Forced nudity was also viewed as a violation of an individual’s dignity in the pre-modern Islamic world. 525 No free individual’s physical appearance or scars were documented in such excruciating detail (or any detail at all, for that matter) elsewhere in the Galata court registers; only slaves’ physical characteristics were documented. While indeed the inclusion of the description of the slave was required in order for the contract to be valid, the act of description embodies the subordinated position of the slave. In the following discussion, examples are furnished of how scarring may give an indication of the slave’s experience prior to or during enslavement. Furthermore, the issue of whether scarring affected a slave’s value is discussed, and whether any patterns of scarring can be identified among the slave population or its segments. Because the court registers depicted only certain aspects of the slaves’ appearance, we are privy to an impression, a rough sketch, of what the individual in question may have looked like. These often unflattering portraits in the court registers give a picture of a population of slaves with scars on the face from wounds and beatings, smallpox and plague, lazy eyes and cataracts, missing ears, teeth and fingers. As well as all manner of ailments, ranging from strange swellings and eye 524 It has been pointed out to me that it is possible that I am conflating current understand ings of dignity and degradation with sixteenth-century understandings of such concepts. However, forced nudity both on the Christian and Muslim shores of the Mediterranean was seen as a dishonour, or even a criminal punishment, in the early modern period, as was the forced alteration of hair styles, such as the shaving of a beard or the head. 525 Lange, Justice, Punishment, and the Medieval Muslim Imagination, 232-234. Although, because both male and female slaves’ bodies came under different requirements for the legal covering of nudity (ʿawra) than free bodies, the status of the slave’s body at the moment of manumission is perhaps ambiguous.

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diseases to crippled legs, the slaves of Galata were also documented as bearing a number of scars on the head and face, implying that the individuals who found themselves enslaved in Galata in 1560-1572 had often led a difficult existence prior to enslavement, as well as after. To gauge the extent of scarring among the slave population and its implications, the slaves registered in both new mukātaba contracts as well as manumissions of all forms are taken into account in this section. A total of 230 slaves out of 567526 were recorded as having scars, hence 41% of the slave population’s pox scars, birthmarks, handicaps, burn marks and lazy eyes were recorded for posterity. This is not to say that the remaining slaves did not bear any scars or distinguishing marks. Rather, the absence of such descriptors from their legal documents could imply that the scribe was negligent in recording them. In fact, it occurs (though rarely) that the physical description or origin or even the name of the slave was not supplied by the scribe, which does not imply that the slave lacked any of these elements. Nonetheless, 41% is a remarkable figure, and demonstrates that recording the slave’s individual identifying scars was central to the registration of a manumission or mukātaba hüccet and a necessary part of the ḥilya. The gender breakdown of the scarred slaves indicates an obvious imbalance, with 176 males versus 54 females recorded as bearing scars or marks somewhere on their body, typically on the faces. This does not reflect the fact that fewer numbers of women were examined or possessed scars than men; rather, it reflects the gender disproportion in the data. According to the data tabulated from the Galata court registers, the most prevalent type of scar or mark occurred on the face and head of the slave. This includes scars from wounds or illness (such as plague or pox), as well as moles and birthmarks. It is unsurprising that these marks were recorded foremost, as they were situated on the most immediately visible parts of the body. Scars on the face, either wounds or traces of disease, 527 and moles (shāma, khāl)528 were the most commonly recorded distinguishing marks. A thorough evaluation of the nature of scarring on the faces of the slaves results in the important conclusion that slaves in Galata in the mid-sixteenth century were not purposely marked to distinguish them as slaves, with the notable exception of Circassians. Many of the slaves did bear scars, typically described as a ›mark left by a wound‹ (athar al-jarāḥa), as in the example, taken from the manumission of the Bosnian slave, Khusraw b. ʿAbdullah, fī ḥājibihi al-yusrā wa yadihi al-yusrā athar al-jarā ḥa (scar on left eyebrow 526 This number was reached through calculating the slaves only recorded in the hüccets, not including the slaves mentioned in the muhallafat defterleri, whose physical appearance was not usually recorded. 527 Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, 19. Marks left by wounds or disease are also mentioned in the Genizah documents. 528 Ibid, 19. Distinguishing marks, such as moles, were recorded in the Genizah documents, and the same terminology is employed in the Galata documents.

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and left hand).529 However, it is vital to note that no obvious pattern of marking emerged among the general slave population, and it seems that scars were typically acquired through accident, injury, or illness. A common method of recording the particular marks of slaves occurred in the tadbīr contract written by Iskandar b. ʿAbdullah al-raʾīs al-sultānī for his Cypriot slave, Aḥmad b. ʿAbdullah, who was described as al-ṭawīl, al-afraq, al-ḥintī, alashhal (tall, separate eyebrows, golden complexion, hazel eyes) and taḥt ʿaynihi al-yusrā khāl aswad (black mole under his eye).530 Fayrūz Agha b. ʿAbdullah (who by his forename, Fayrūz, and title Agha appears to be a eunuch), manumitted his Frankish slave, Giovan Iorli (Jūwan Yūrlī), who was described as al-ṭūwīl, alafraq, al-ashhal (tall, separate eyebrows, hazel eyes) and fī hājibihi al-yamīn min al-arb athar al-jarāḥa (scar on right eyebrow from space between eyebrows). 531 Qīyā Çelebi b. Aḥmad al-raʾīs recorded the mukātaba contract of his Greek (Rūmī) slave Yānī walad Zakarīya walad Wasīl described as al-ṭawīl, al-afraq, al-aṣfar, alashhal (tall height, separate, yellow complexion, hazel eyes) and fawqa jabhatihi athar al-jarāḥa (scar on forehead), and wa fī kafihi al-yusrā athar al-jarā ḥa (scar on his left palm)532 for five consecutive years of service in Ramadan, 969 (May, 1562). From these as well as hundreds of other examples, it seems that there did not exist a specific pattern of marking the slave as such; rather, the scars borne by the male slaves were the haphazard results of a hard life. Women were described as much as men in the court registers, and thus not spared inspection by the scribe and others present, if indeed this was the manner in which scars were recorded. The Ḥanafī madhhab did not require women to unveil themselves so that they could be identified by the notary. 533 However, female slaves in the Galata court registers were clearly required to uncover themselves to varying degrees, as they were described in equal amounts of detail as the male slaves. It is not impossible that the scribes themselves did not observe the slaves, male or female, but rather that a description was provided by the owner or other witnesses. However, there is no direct evidence of this process in the court registers for either male or female slaves. Curiously, the manumissions of female slaves also did not contain the names of any female witnesses who may have conveyed the information about the scars borne by female slaves that were not immediately observable on the hands or face. As an example of the level of detailed description to which female slaves were subjected, the slave of the deceased Ḥusayn b. ʿAbdullah, Yasmīn bt. ʿAbdullah, 529 Galata 14/4, page 16, hüccet 2. In Rajab, 978, Mawlana Ahmed Çelebi Efendi b. ʿAli manumitted his Bosnian slave, Khusraw b. ʿAbdullah. 530 Galata 14/4, page 47, hüccet 2, recorded on 20 Rajab, 979. 531 Galata 14/2, page 33, hüccet 1, recorded between Rabiʿa I and Jumādā I 968. 532 Galata 14/3, page 5, hüccet 3. 533 Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, 15, footnote 27.

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described as al-farqa, al-shahla, al-ḥintīyya, al-wusṭa, al-ifrinjīyya (separate eyebrows, hazel eyes, wheatish complexion, medium height, Frankish) and fī jabhatiha wa fawqa ḥajibiha al-yamīnī athar jurḥ (scar on forehead and over right eyebrow), wa fī rukhiha534 al-yamīnī khāl (mole on right cheek) demonstrated that she was just as subject to description as any male slave. 535 Another clear example of a female slave under inspection by the scribe is Nāzshān bt. ʿAbdullah, the Bosnian slave of Amīna Hatun bt. ʿAlī Çelebi, described as al-qarnā, al-shahlā, alḥintīyya, al-wusṭā (monobrow, hazel eyes, wheatish complexion, medium height), and fi taḥt dhiqaniha athar al-tāʿūn (plague scars under her chin). 536 Nāzshān was manumitted (ḥasbatan lillah) by her female owner who, it is not impossible to surmise, had initially selected this female slave to serve in her household specifically for her ugliness - a heavy brow, 537 plague scars - as a beautiful domestic slave was a common source of conflict in the early modern slave-owning household. More importantly, the above examples demonstrate vividly that female slaves were not spared the scrutiny exercised on male slaves. In addition to the haphazard scarring on the faces and hands of roughly half of the slave population of Galata, one particular form of scarring can be identified among a specific group in the slave population, suggesting that while most scars were the result of accidental wounds or injuries, illness, or beatings, one very specific type of scar was inflicted intentionally to the slave as a means of marking him as such, or possibly as a punishment. The sole example of this is the group of Circassian slaves in Galata, who seem to have been subject to a practice of ear mutilation and were often missing at least one ear, or at times both. Such an act was most likely carried out by their original owners, or traders, or perhaps as a way of marking them in order to prevent their flight, or identify them once they had fled and been recovered. However, the Circassians marked in this manner are as exception among the various ethnicities of slave; they appear to be the only subset of slaves who were purposefully marked in a clearly identifiable physical manner. As this particular manner of marking was not present in any other group of slaves in the Galata court registers, the fact that Frankish, Rūs or Majar slaves (or any other ›ethnicity‹) uniformly possessed intact ears implies that this practice 534 Rukh is ›cheek‹ or ›face‹ in Persian; see Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary (New Delhi, 2006): 571. 535 Galata 14/4, page 21, hüccet 3. She was completing a 5-year mukātaba contract, which was recorded before the owner’s death and came to an end in Ramadan, 978 (late January-early February, 1571). 536 Galata 14/4, page 22, hüccet 1. Awāʾil Rajab, 978 (November, 1570). 537 It should be stated, however, that the united eyebrow was considered a sign of beauty in the Georgian and Iranian poetic genres, so perhaps it is possible to extend this appraisal of female beauty to the Ottoman sphere as well; thus, perhaps this female slave was not as unattractive as she may seem in this rather frank description of her physical attributes.

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was particular to Circassian society and was conceivably enacted as a way of punishing slaves in addition to identifying them. Such practices of mutilation as a form of marking as well as punishment (for instance, branding to demonstrate ownership, or cutting the achilles tendon of the repeat runaway) were widespread in other slave-owning societies, most famously the antebellum southern states of America, and were aimed at breaking down the psychological resistance of the slave. However, it is notable in the Ottoman case that this practice was the exception to the rule, and that the slaves who did bear this manner of marking originated in a society built upon a hereditary slave class. Circassian society was characterised by a stratified and rigid structure with a hereditary class of serf-slaves at its base, in contrast to Ottoman society, in which slave status was customarily not inherited; if anything, slavery in the Ottoman Empire could be a marker of elite status. Although according to Islamic law, it was possible to inherit the status of slave if both the mother and the father of an individual were slaves, in practice this manner of acquiring slave status did not occur, and a hereditary class of slaves did not arise in the Ottoman Empire, unlike in, for example, the antebellum American South, or in pre-modern Circassia. To illustrate how information about these scars was presented in the Galata court registers, there is the example of Farhād b. ʿAbdullah, a Circassian described as ›tall of stature, with separate eyebrows, and a black beard. His ear is cut off, and he has a scar on one eye.‹ 538 He was manumitted in Rabīʿa I, 970 (October, 1562) after completing a mukātaba contract. In a further example, recorded in Rabīʿa I, 969 (November, 1561) the Circassian slave, Aḥmad b. ʿAbdullah, finishing a mukātaba contract worth six-hundred dirhams was described as having browngreen eyes, separate eyebrows, a tall stature, with his left ear cut off.539

538 Galata 14/3, page 55, hüccet 2. 539 Galata 14/2, page 60, hüccet 5.

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Table 14 does not comprise every single Circassian mentioned in the three court registers; rather, it represents the Circassians whose scars were recorded. The logic behind including the Circassian slaves whose other related scars (i.e., pox marks, knife wounds) were recorded by the scribe but not including the slaves of whose scars no mention was made, is that if the scribe took the trouble to describe the slave’s other scars, he certainly would have noticed missing or mutilated ears. If a description of the slave’s other scars was supplied, but no mention of ears was made, it seems safe to assume that the ears were intact. Hence, seventeen from a total of twenty-nine male Circassian slaves are shown in the above table. From these numbers we can calculate that 59% of the male Circassian slaves at least had scars of some form recorded in the Galata court registers. 540 Of these slaves, nine out of seventeen (53%) had either a part of an ear, an entire ear, or both ears missing.541 Although the numbers of this sample are too small to be considered statistic ally significant in a scientific sense, it is nonetheless striking that only Circassian males were marked in such a fashion and with such regularity. Furthermore, the Circassian slaves in the above table represent all types of hüccet: beginning of mukātaba, end of mukātaba, tadbīr, charitable manumission (ʿitq), and manumission in exchange for an amount of money (possible ransom). Consequently, there seems to be no clear correlation to the scarring to mark the beginning or end of a term of slavery in Galata, and it appears that Circassians could begin their documented period of slavery already missing both, which suggests that ear mutilation was a punishment or form of branding undergone in their native land prior to arrival in the Ottoman Empire. Mutilation of the face or ears was often a form of marking criminals in the late medieval and early modern world. It is not implausible to surmise a similar form of permanent marking or punishment in sixteenthcentury Circassian lands perhaps for fugitive or criminals slaves. However, further research is needed to verify these claims. Because it is only the Circassians who bear any kind of systematic and intentional marking on their physical person to distinguish their status, either as slaves, or perhaps as criminals or failed fugitive slaves, it is possible to draw conclusions concerning the hereditary slave system of Circassian society in comparison with the slavery system of Ottoman Istanbul, in which slave status was generally not inherited. While Circassian nobles seem to have expressed very obvious and direct control over the bodies of their slaves by marking them through mutilation, the Ottoman social order expressed itself through a more subtle means, 540 Including non-ear related scars. 541 Furthermore, the total number of male and female Circassian slaves appearing in the Galata court registers is thirty-six, thus there were seven female Circassian slaves who were not included in this table, as their ears were not mutilated. Mutilating the ears of a female Circassian slave would have most certainly lowered her value, as Circassian women were traditionally valued by prospective slave buyers for their beauty.

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namely by appropriating the sole right to describe the slave’s body and dictating the terms in which the description was recorded, thus establishing the legal hegemony of the Ottoman court over the slave. This contrast between the power of the Circassian (hereditary slavery) system and the Ottoman (temporary slavery) system over the slave’s body reinforces the central arguments posed throughout this discussion of how slavery functioned in Ottoman Galata. Namely, the slave was meant to shed his status; hence, he was not physically marked permanently and irrevocably. As we have seen in the previous discussion of the onomastics of slavery, it would seem that male slaves were also not permanently ›marked‹ through the bestowal of specific ›slave‹ names either; there was no permanent linguistic or physical marker to denote their (typically brief) status as a slave. Having discussed in detail scarring and marking on the face and head, the discussion now turns to a further element of identifying slaves in the early modern Galata: teeth. It appears that after scarring on the face and head, a further manner of recognising a slave consisted in the number of teeth he was missing. 542 For instance, a Rūsī slave, named Qāsim b. ʿAbdullah, who was recorded as beginning a mukātaba contract in Jumādā I, 969 (January, 1562), owned by Uways b. Mu ṣṭafa al-raʾīs, known by the epithet danishmend), is described as having blond hair, brown/green eyes, separate eyebrows, of medium stature, and missing three of his top teeth (isnānihi al-ʿālī thalatha maqlūʿa).543 A further example of teeth used as an identifier is the case of a Frankish slave, whose name is recorded as Giovan Andrea veled-i Giovan Andrea (Jūwān Andrīya walad Jūwān Andrīya) 544 beginning a mukātaba contract under Muṣṭafa b. Meḥmed al-raʾīs. He was described as having a ›wheat-coloured complexion, black eyes, separate eyebrows, and a medium stature‹, with two of his top teeth missing (isnānihi al-ʿālī ithnayn maqlūʿa).545 Various abnormalities or illnesses of the eyes were another element listed in the identification of the slaves, perhaps because, like the face and teeth, the eyes are one of the first things encountered upon looking at a person. An Indian slave (labelled as Hindī)546 named Khudāwardī (Hüdaverdi) b. ʿAbdullah was described as ›medium of stature, having separate eyebrows, black eyes, and a dark complex542 Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections, p. 19: ›A description of the teeth is generally omitted. It occurs only in a few documents.‹ For instance in the Galata court registers: maqluʻa baʻd al-asnan meaning ›with some teeth missing‹, and maqluʻ al-thanaya al-ʻulya al-yumnā, ›with right upper incisors missing‹. 543 Galata 14/2, page 76, hüccet 2. 544 There seems to have been some confusion over this man’s name, his father’s name, and his surname, unless the man’s name was actually Giovan Andrea and his father’s name was also Giovan Andrea, which is a possibility. 545 Galata 14/2, page 76, hüccet 4. 546 A.C. Mayer et al, ›Hind‹, EI2. Beause he is labelled Hindī, he thus originating somewhere on the Indian subcontinent east of the Indus river; were he labelled Sindī, he would come from west of the Indus on the South Asian subcontinent.

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ion‹, while his most distinguishing feature was ›a disease in the corner of his right eye.‹547 He was registered for a mukātaba contract for three years under ʿAlī b. Muṣṭafa, and interestingly, this illness does not seem to have prevented him from performing his duties. In another case, a man named Iskandar b. ʿAbdullah, whose sobriquet, however, was Parwāz (Pervez) Iskandar Īmānī, manumitted his female slave, Qadam bt. ʿAbdullah. Qadam is described, in Dhī al-Ḥijja, 969 (August, 1562), as Bosnian, of medium stature, separate eyebrows, blind in one eye or squint-eyed (ʿawrāʾ), with, presumably the remaining eye, coloured brown/green.548 Further adjectives that were often tagged on to the above list of descriptors to convey an individual’s disabilities: al-aṣmat (mute), and al-ʿarjā (limping, crippled). In addition to scars and marks on the face, head, teeth, and eyes, scars on the body were also registered in the court register upon manumitting a slave. Hands and arms were often the first part of the body to be described (after the head). The state of the slave’s hands and arms may have compromised his (or her) ability to perform the duties required of a slave. In an illustration of scarring on the arms or hands, on the 13th of Dhī al-Ḥijja 969 (14th of August 1562), Ṣafar Bey b. Abdullah al-sipahī arranged a mukātaba contract for years of service for his Frankish male slave, Bīyāzū (Bianco) veled-i Domenico, who is described as al-afraq, al-ashhal, al-awsaṭ, al-abyaḍ (separate eyebrows, hazel eyes, medium height, white complexion) and yadihi al-yusrā maʿwūja (his left hand is crooked or bent), 549 which does not, however, seem to have affected his ability to work for seven years to regain his freedom. Further examples of the typical scars borne by slaves in Galata consist of wounds presumably acquired in battle as well as possible beatings, thus giving some insight into the lives and experiences of the slaves. If they themselves cannot ›speak‹,550 then their scars recorded in the court registers may speak for them 547 Galata 14/3, page 15, hüccet 3. 548 Galata 14/3, page 24, hüccet 3. She is manumitted for 30 dinars, not paid in installments. The wakīl for this transaction was Ḥusayn Bey b. ʿAbdullah al-bawwāb al-sulṭānī, that is, the imperial gatekeeper, suggesting that the owner was also an important person. Could this one-eyed Bosnian Muslim woman of medium stature be worth a ransom? However, her conversion to Islam suggests that she was not being ransomed. Did she merely finish some sort of mukātaba contract, or procure a manumission payment through begging? There is no way for us to know. Perhaps it is presuming to know too much about sixteenth-century Ottoman sexual tastes to assume that no one would have wanted a oneeyed concubine, but if we make this assumption, then it follows that perhaps Qadam did earn her freedom through paying her own mukātaba contract. However, the fact that she has converted to Islam has suggested that this is not a ransom, but rather, this one-eyed lady did manage to pay her way out of slavery. 549 Galata 14/3, page 27, hüccet 3. 550 For a broader discussion of this topic, see: Toledano, As If Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East, and Eva Trout Powell, ›Will that subaltern ever speak? Finding African slaves in the historiography of the Middle East‹ Middle East His-

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about the circumstances in which they lived. For instance, Ḥasan Kethda b. Abd al-Mannān manumitted his Frankish slave after the exchange of a lump sum of money of sixty dinars, suggesting a ransom.551 The slave was named Giacomo veled-i Gianantonio (Yāqūmū walad Jamantoniyū), who is described as al-awsaṭ, al-afraq, al-azraq (medium, separate eyebrows, blue eyes) and fī shafatihi al-sufla athar al-jarāḥa (scar on his lower lip), and wa fi khadihi al-yamīn khāl (imperfection on right cheek), and wa fi rijlihi al-yamīn bi-qurb min al-kaʿb athar al-jarā ḥa (scar on foot near right heel). 552 As is evident from this description, this slave bore several scars, including a scar on his right heel. This raises the question as to whether he had attempted to run away at some point, resulting in the punishment of having one of his tendons sliced, as was the practice for repeat runaway slaves in, for instance, the antebellum American south. Or was he someone important who had been captured in battle, and this is the origin of his scars and hence his possible ransom as well? There is no way of knowing, but it is possible to surmise that his life was not easy either prior to or during enslavement. A further instance of scarring recorded in the Galata court registers that hints at the experiences of the slave is the hüccet of Ismaʿīl b. ʿAbdullah, who manumitted his Frankish slave Yūnīyū Qūlāsūz walad Jūwān Qūlāsūz (possible reading: Iunio or Giunio? Colassos veled-i Giovan Colassos), who was described as alafraq, al-ashhal, al-asmar (separate eyebrows, hazel eyes, dark skin), and fī jabhatihi athar al-jarāḥa (scar on forehead), and fī fakhdihi athar al-sahm wa athar al-jarāḥa (scar where he was shot by an arrow in his thigh), 553 suggesting that this slave had been a participant in battle. In Rabīʿa I, 969 (November, 1561), ʿAlī b. Meḥmed al-raʾīs al-amīrī recorded a mukātaba contract for his slave A ḥmad b. ʿAbdullah, who was only described as baʿḍ iṣbaʿihi maqtūʿan (suggesting that part of his finger had been cut), 554 thus causing one to question the nature of A ḥmad b. ʿAbdullah’s mukātaba contract, if one of his hands was injured. 555 A contrasting example of a scar or injury in the leg as opposed to the arm occurs in a hüccet re-

551 552 553 554 555

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toriographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century, ed. Israel Gershoni, Amy Singer and Y. Hakan Erdem (Seattle and London, 2006), 242-261. Also, the fact that a slave has not converted to Islam suggests that it is possible that this case is a ransom. Galata 14/3, page 5, hüccet 1. Galata 14/3, page 29, hüccet 4. Galata 14/2, page 62, hüccet 2. Interestingly, in the original text, ›two fingers cut off‹ is crossed out and re-written as ›some of his fingers cut off‹. It should be stated that although there are a few examples here of men with substantial injuries in their hands who are given mukātaba contracts, they represent the exception rather than the rule. Namely, it is not possible to make any generalisations about the type of work being performed by the slaves in Galata based on the fact that it was work that could be performed despite injuries to the hands, which is to say, not any sort of skilled la bour. The vast majority of the other male slaves registered with mukātaba contracts did not possess any substantial injuries to any parts of their bodies (such as their hands) that would hinder their work.

gistered in Rajab, 970 (February, 1563), in which Yūsuf b. Ḥamza manumitted (ḥasbatan lillah) his Frankish male slave, Jamshīd or Ḥamīd b. ʿAbdullah, who described as al-aṣfar, al-awsaṭ, al-afraq, al-ashhal (yellow complexion, medium height, separate eyebrows, and hazel eyes) and rijlihi al-yusrā saqaṭ (his right leg is crippled).556 Having examined the nature of the scars borne by slaves in Galata, we can answer the questions posed in the introduction to this section as to whether scarring affected the price of a slave, and if gender played in a role in how scarring may have affected the slave’s price. For male slaves, cosmetic scars would not necessarily lower their price if they were being sold as technically skilled workers. Rather, only physically disabling scars and wounds such as the loss of fingers, an arm, hand or eye could affect their price and type of enslavement. A Circassian man’s lack of ears did not seem in any way to have hampered his abilities to perform the jobs required of him, and the value of these earless slaves’ mukātaba contracts did not differ from that of other male able-bodied slaves (see Tables 5, 6, and 7 in the appendix to Chapter 4). For female slaves, again depending on the reason why they were purchased, cosmetic scars may or may not have affected their price. If the female slave was purchased to be a wealthy man’s concubine, or as an ornament to an elite house hold, then a disfigurement would in all likelihood have affected her price. If she were purchased as domestic help or wet-nurse or any number of roles whereby her basic ability to perform her work was not affected by her appearance, then perhaps her ›value‹ would not have been reduced by the presence of physical scars. Unfortunately, there do not exist numerical values attached to female slaves in the Galata sicils to arrive at any solid conclusions. The examples of facial and bodily scarring discussed above, which are representative of the diverse forms of scarring recorded throughout the Galata court registers, share only their lack of uniformity. With the exception of the Circassian slaves, no clear and intentional pattern of deliberate scarring, marking or branding of slaves in order to distinguish them from the free population seems to have existed in the Ottoman Empire. The absence of deliberate marking supports the general thesis that slaves were intended to be quickly manumitted, shed their status and join the free community, in contrast with other contemporary slave-owning societies.

556 Galata 14/3, page 100, hüccet 2.

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Slave ḥilyas: Identification or Linguistic Subjugation Revisited This concluding discussion analyses the purpose that the physical descriptions and classifications of slaves in the court registers served, in terms of social interactions and dynamics, power relations and the negotiation of relations between master, slave, and court. The first of two possible explanations offered is that, on the surface, the physical description served the purpose of identification to protect the legal rights of both the slave and the owner vis-à-vis the sharīʿa. The arguments in favour of the ›identification‹ purpose of the ḥilya are manifold. Whether registering the start of a term of slavery in the form of a mukātaba contract, or manumitting a slave, it would have been in the interests of all parties involved to possess an accurate physical description of the slave recorded in writing in a legal document. For instance, if the slave were beginning a period of labour, it was necessary to describe him such that, in the event of flight, it would be possible to recognise and apprehend the fugitive. After manumission, a written record of the slave’s physical description was important in case of re-enslavement or any other confusion over the slave’s status. Such a record rendered possible the identification of the newly freed individual according to the characterisation in his manumission document issued by the court (the ʿitkname) and allowed the judge to re-affirm his free legal status. A further argument in defence of the proposal that the ḥilya served the primary purpose of identifying the slave is the scribe’s use, at times, of extreme precision of in describing the slave at hand. For instance, the female Abaza slave Mīmā bt. ʿAbdullah, in the process of being manumitted ( ḥasbatan lillah) by Jawhar b. ʿAbdullah al-tājir (the trader) was described as al-wusṭa qāmatan (medium height), al-ablaj ḥājiban (having two separate eyebrows), al-sawdā ʿaynan (with black eyes), and fi sabābat rijliha al-yusrā athar al-jarā ḥa (having a scar on the second toe of her left foot, or possibly the big toe). 557 Thus, the nuanced descriptions of specific aspects of the slave’s person, eyes and eyebrows in particular, as well as skin colour and height recounted in detail above suggest at first glance that the ḥilya served the purpose of identification and recognition. Moreover, evidence from related slave-owning societies suggests that the risks of re-enslavement were very real, hence the necessity of producing a legal document containing a standardised description of the slave, a tradition witnessed not only in Arabic documents of the Fatimid period, 558 as well in the Latin slaverelated legal documents of Venetian Crete, 559 but in Byzantine times as well. For 557 Galata 14/3, page 137, hüccet 2. 558 Hoyland, ›The Islamic Background to Polemon’s Treatise‹, 246, footnote 48. 559 Sally McKee, ›Inherited status and slavery in late medieval Italy and Venetian Crete‹, Past and Present 182 (2004), 31-53; Idem, Uncommon Dominion: Venetian Crete and the Myth of

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example, Byzantine wills, whose legal heritage of slavery shared many aspects with Ottoman practices of slavery, documented the emancipation of slaves very carefully, stating that the slave ›so-and-so is emancipated and no one can deprive him of his freedom‹, suggesting that post-manumission the repeated loss of freedom was a distinct possibility. There also exist Byzantine papyri that document the free status of certain servants who were at risk of being mistaken for slaves, 560 suggesting that in slave-owning societies of the late medieval and early modern Eastern Mediterranean, the peril of re-enslavement represented a genuine threat to the freedom of manumitted slaves. Similar cases, particularly in the inheritance inventories of the Galata court registers, took particular care to reinforce the freedom of manumitted slaves seemingly in order to prevent their unjust re-enslavement. That the Galata court registers contain examples of mistaken identity suggests that the ḥilya was not merely an exercise in symbolic domination, but did also at times serve its ostensible purpose of identifying the newly freed individual. For example, the slaves of a deceased ʿAbd al-Jabbār Bey came to court to declare that their status had been mistaken and that they had been wrongly re-enslaved. The first slave arrived on 12 Shaʻbān, 979 (30 December, 1571), who was a Genoese man named Mimī; he produced four witnesses, Nabī b. Walī (Veli), Me ḥmed b. Abdullah, Meḥmed b. Ibrahim, Ḥasan b. Muṣṭafā, who supported his claim that his status had been mistaken after the death of his owner. The judge then affirmed Mimī’s free status.561 On the following day, 13 Shaʿbān, 979 (31 December, 1571), another of the deceased ʿAbd al-Jabbār Bey’s slaves arrived in court. This slave, named Murād, produced the exact same witnesses as Mimī, and claimed that he was manumitted prior to his owner’s death; the judge also concurred with this claim.562 It is clear from these cases that disputes over the identity and status of slaves could and did occur. In each of these cases, the slaves’ claims were accompanied by physical descriptions in the court register in Turkish, 563 suggesting that in this case, the appearance of the individual truly did play a role in determining their identity and supporting the claim to a free status. However, the fact that the description in this instance was in Turkish contributes more to the argument that the standard manumission ḥilya was more symbolic than genuinely useful in identifying the slave. In addition to the above-mentioned instances, there existed other cases of mistaken status and identity of slaves, particularly in the common occurrence of a deceased master manumitting a slave prior to dying but omitted 560 561 562 563

Ethnic Purity (Philadelphia, 2000). Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, 122. Galata 14/4, page 100, hüccet 1. Galata 14/4, page 61, hüccet 3. These are the only physical descriptions in Turkish for slaves that occur in the Galata sicils. The rest are in composed in the Arabic terminology described above.

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for whatever reason to have the manumission recorded in writing officially at court. In these cases, a physical description of the slave and supporting testimony of witnesses were necessary in order to affirm the freed status of the slave. 564 A further case of mistaken status recorded in awaʾil Rabīʿa II, 970 (November, 1562)565 involved the female slave Ḥusnī bt. ʿAbdullah, whose owner, ʿAbdī Çelebi b. al-ḥajj Ḥasan, seems to have died at sea after manumitting her informally. It is obvious from the messiness of this entry that the man who died unexpectedly at sea had not legally manumitted the slave prior to dying, though it is not impossible that had manumitted her informally, or perhaps treated her as though she were free without registering an official manumission at court. It appears from the wording of the document in the Galata court registers that the slave, Ḥusnī bt. ʿAbdullah, claimed that her owner manumitted her without any documentation, and the family concurred with this story. The hüccet contains the phrase ›he manumitted her while still alive‹, which was written and then crossed out. Nowhere was the term tadbīr mentioned, suggesting that arrangements for the freedom of a slave could often be ambiguous or messy, hence the necessity for precision in describing the slave and officially affirming his (or her) status at court according to one of the accepted forms of manumission in order to ensure the impossibility of re-enslavement or confusion arising from an informal and unregistered manumission. In contrast to the above argument that the inclusion of a slave’s ḥilya in his manumission document served the purpose of identifying him and protecting his rights and those of the slave owner as well, the motivations behind cataloguing the slave’s physical attributes in the court register were more complex than they first appear. The physical description also served the purpose of the symbolic domination of the slave through language. It is widely recognised that the act of description itself is a demonstration of power, as is the act of recording someone or something in writing, particularly when this same ability lies beyond the powers of the person described. In this case, the slave possessed no choice in the matter and possibly little understanding of the words involved, even if he were present when the document was written. Through the written description of the slave’s physical characteristics, not only was the slave’s outward appearance ›read‹ and classified, but the slave also had no defence against the ›reading‹ of his outer and inner characteristics, hence the legal hegemony of the Ottoman court was also established over the person of the slave, in addition to the de facto dominance of the slave owner. The act of encapsulating the slave’s characteristics on paper in terminology that was essentially inaccessible to him served the purpose of reinforcing the so564 For example, see case of Ḥusayn b. ʿAbdullah who is a slave with a disputed status: Galata 14/4, page 43, hüccet 2. 565 Galata 14/3, page 60, hüccet 2.

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cial and legal hegemony to which the slave was subject. However, if, as this dis sertation argues, the slave in the Ottoman Empire was not entirely abject, but rather was caught in a process of transformation that would change him from an outsider/foreigner non-Ottoman to an insider/Ottoman subject, then why the need to reinforce his status at the lowest rung of the social and legal hierarchy of Galata society at the very moment of his manumission? Paradoxically, the very reinforcement of this hegemony itself acculturated the slave to the system in which he found himself, further inculcated the slave into the socio-legal aspect of the Ottoman habitus, and demonstrated to the slave his function within the social hierarchy of Galata. While the slave was in the process of being ›freed‹, this legal act of freedom was still entirely in the hands of his master, as it was solely the master’s performative utterance that freed the slave and nothing else, thus the power dynamic was established for the post-manumission client-patron bond whose formation was expected upon the conclusion of the master-slave relationship through manumission. It furthermore seems that the slave progressively acquired personhood as he acquired the trappings of Ottoman-ness (if this may be measured through conversion to Islam, acculturation processes, adoption of Ottoman language, etcetera) from the time of enslavement to the time of manumission. The cultural, social and legal transition of the slave suggests that to be a person was to be an Ottoman, and the slave could only be manumitted once he had become an Ottoman. However, the progressive acquisition of personhood and Ottoman-ness does not imply that the soon-to-be former slave was then spared all forms of symbolic domination during the legal act of manumission. Rather, the symbolic domination reminded the individual of his former status and that he was bound by his role in a well-defined social hierarchy upon being emancipated. More specifically, the symbols and language of manumission reinforced the continued dominance of the Ottoman legal system (embodied by the court and the scribe) over the freed slave as well as the bonds of patronage with his former owner. Many scholars of slavery argue that manumission, rather than freeing the slave of obligations to his master, in truth only tightened these bonds, transforming them from legal bonds held in place by coercion and violence into socio-psychological bonds cemented by gratitude for the supposed emancipation as well the post-manumission patronage and membership in a household. The seeming contradiction only exists on the surface of the matter: how can the slave be subjected to a legal description beyond his choosing at the very moment of his manumission, even if this supposed description is, on the surface, only recorded in order to guarantee the impossibility of re-enslavement? If we delve deeper into the issue at hand, it becomes obvious that the slave, even once emancipated, was still subject to similar obligations and bonds to his owner, although these bonds were no

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longer legally dictated but rather socially determined according to an unspoken code that by the point of his manumission the slave should have grasped. It is the slave’s understanding of these social bonds of patronage-clientship that is the result of the process of the inculcation in the habitus of the Ottoman elite household. Therefore, by the point of his manumission, it should be the case that the slave was so fully integrated (economically, socially) that even if his physical or legal chains were removed, his sense of social obligation, as well as an element of economic necessity, forced him to remain in what was still a relationship of unequal dominance between the slave and his former master. It goes without saying that the primary reason for subjecting the freed individual to a kind of post-manumission slavery in the form of patronage was to maintain the social and economic fabric of Galata’s elite households. In a brief note on the terminology used to discuss slave manumissions in the Ottoman Empire, caution is necessary in applying terms such as ›freedom‹ and ›slavery‹ to the sixteenth century as though these terms implied ›absolute‹ freedom or ›absolute‹ slavery for an individual in possession of ›rights‹ in the current sense in which these words are used. This conception of ›freedom‹ is patently anachronistic and, if the situation is examined through a different lens, the contradictions and tensions in this analysis are revealed to be the result of semantic mis applications. It is obvious that, in the pre-modern world, no one was ›free‹ in the sense that an ›individual‹ believes himself to be ›free‹ in the current sense of the word; that is, having a freedom to choose one’s identity, religion, community, education, spouse, profession, etc. The distinction between the meaning of ›freedom‹ and ›slavery‹ in the context of sixteenth-century Galata can only indicate a legal distinction in obligations and responsibilities of a religious and social nature that one was denied while maintaining the status of ›slave‹ and acquired upon shedding this status. The transformation of one’s legal status from ʿabd to ḥurr did not imply that one was ›free‹ in the modern sense of the word. Rather, one had earned the prerogative of full participation in the community, either as a Muslim, or as a dhimmī, and all of the obligations that this participation entailed. This change in status implied that one received full punishment for any crimes committed (unlike reduced punishments prescribed for slaves) and also had to fulfil all of the religious, legal, financial, and social obligations of an adult Muslim (or non-Muslim Ottoman subject). It is in this sense that slavery was a process of inculcation and acculturation. Manumission did not make ›slaves‹ into ›free‹ agents of society; rather, the period of slavery accustomed a person to a new set of rules and obligations, which he or she would be prepared to fulfil after the completion of a term of slavery. Thus, it makes perfect sense that the ex-slave would still be subject to the hegemony of his former owner as well as the law courts, as evident in the act of description and classification at the moment of his manumission. He would continue to be subject

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to this order, even when he was ›free‹ - in fact, if anything, he would be much more subject to the rules and punishments of the Ottoman legal system as a ›free‹ Muslim. However, there are nonetheless fine distinctions that must be made. Upon becoming free, while the ex-slave did acquire numerous responsibilities and obligations, he at the same time acquired a higher level of dignity and honour. For example, the slave-owner was subject to the same hegemony of the courts and legal system as the slave. His position within the Ottoman social and legal hierarchy was slightly more elevated, and he was, for example, not subject to the degradation of physical description. However, the slave-owner did not escape another form of description, through his genealogy (nisba), professional title and honorifics appropriate to his station, and he also was required to provide witnesses to account for his identity. As mentioned previously, the shurūṭ manuals state that it is only if the participants in a contract are not known to the witnesses that they must be physically described in the hüccet. It is clear that the slave owners of Galata, who were primarily converts (and, it is possible to surmise, based on the evidence of contemporary travel and captivity accounts of former slaves themselves) were integrated into the Muslim community to the degree that they could provide upright free male Muslim witnesses who attested to their identity, and hence escaped the humiliation of physical description. However, if a free, adult, male Muslim slave owner could not provide witnesses to attest to his identity, then he too, in theory, would be subject to the same act of description. Thus, the issue is not one of ›slave‹ versus ›free‹, but of ›not belonging‹ versus ›belonging‹. It can be concluded that the physical description was a nuanced tool, the motivation and purpose of which was manifold. Not only did it serve the practical purpose of identifying the slave in order to guarantee the owner’s rights in case of flight, as well as the manumitted slave’s rights in case of mistaken re-enslavement, but it also reinforced the slave’s servile position prior to the moment of freedom by demonstrating to him that he was the object of the description and classification at the hands of the scribe, and the slave’s outer and inner characteristics were read and interpreted according to a long and rich legal and literary tradition according to the strictures of ʿilm al-shurūṭ and conventions of ʿilm al-firāsa. The entire act of manumission and the legal language and ceremony employed also served to reinforce the hegemony of the Ottoman court and legal system over the slave to be manumitted. It was not plausible to escape this hierarchy of dominance after manumission, as has been demonstrated in numerous studies of the Ottoman world, 566 and, more 566 Jane Hathaway, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdağlıs (Cambridge, 1997); Idem, ›The household: an alternative framework for the military society of eighteenth-century Ottoman Egypt‹, Oriente Moderno: The Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century 28/1 (1999), 59-66; Idem, A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and

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widely the Islamic world, such as the Mamluk period or the early Islamic period,567 that the post-manumission patron-client bond between manumitting owner and manumitted slave was even stronger than that of the pre-manumission relationship between owner and slave. After manumission, it became necessary for the slave to uphold both his personal honour as a freed slave and the honour of his former master-turned-patron’s household by continuing his service. Although manumission documents may not have been read again after they were initially written, nonetheless the way that their terminology may have been understood is central to gaining insight into the social function of manumission. The associations that arose when a slave-owner or scribe wrote that a slave possessed a certain colour of eye, or type of stature, or bore particular scars is possible to recreate by reading the legal texts of slavery in conjunction with the treatises on the social and cultural aspects of slavery. Furthermore, the metaphor of slave ›beloved‹ who sought patronage with a powerful master by in turn ›enslaving‹ his heart with his attractive physical and mental characteristics, which were associated (according to literary tropes) with his cins, cannot be ignored when reading a text that seems as straightforward and dry as a manumission document, particularly not when the language is directly shared with the contemporary poetry, advice literature, and scientific treatises. In this manner, the gaze of the slave owner, and the court scribe, and in fact, elite Ottoman society, toward the slave can be depicted, allowing us insight into the aspects of slavery that often are neg lected or forgotten in the scholarly literature produced on slavery today, such as the relationship between the slave-owner and slave and how this was unequal relationship was perpetuated through legal devices as well as poetry and the scientific literature of the day.

Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen (Albany, 2003); Eyal Ginio, ›Patronage, Intervention and Violence in the Legal Process in Eighteenth-Century Salonica and Its Province‹, in Law, Custom, and Statute in the Muslim World: Studies in Honor of Aharon Layish, ed. Ron Shaham (Leiden, 2007), 111-130. 567 Crone, Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law; Crook, op cit.

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Chapter 6: Conclusion The fate of the early modern captives who remained in the Ottoman lands was raised at the beginning of this dissertation. What became of those slaves who were not delivered from the clutches of ›the Turk‹? Despite the abundant secondary literature based on European sources on the return of slaves from the hands their captors, a detailed and lengthy examination of the slaves who were not ransomed but rather manumitted in the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period did not yet exist. It is hoped that the preceding pages have remedied this fault in the historiography and have contributed to the history of how captives taken at sea and land in the sixteenth century played a role in the maritime economy of Galata and more importantly, how the slaves who remained in Istanbul to be manumitted were conceptualised in the literature of the day, be it through legal, literary or pseudo-scientific genres of text, thereby providing insight into the social roles assigned to slaves and former slaves in the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, the main purpose the study presented here is to weave further threads into the tapestry of shared customs and conflict that characterised the culture of slavery the sixteenth-century Mediterranean region, complementing the extensive Latinate literature with a study emanating primarily from the Arabic, Ottoman and Persian texts of the day. Therein, both an actual population of slaves was examined based on archival sources, as were the perceptions of slavery and slaves in the contemporary literature, providing both an empirical foundation for historical claims concerning slavery in the Ottoman Empire as well as the theoretical framework for reconstructing the social meaning of slavery in sixteenth-century Istanbul. One of the most significant threads of argument pursued throughout the chapters of this dissertation was that the manumission documents of the Galata court registers provide evidence that the nature of skilled slavery in early modern Istanbul consisted of a process of socio-cultural and economic assimilation rather than exclusion. However, as was discussed in chapter 5, ›assimilation‹ into society after manumission is a problematic notion that implies the continuation of a level of servitude after attaining ›free‹ status; nonetheless, servitude disguised as freedom is itself a form of integration into a social hierarchy. In demonstrating this argument concerning the nature of slavery in sixteenth-century Istanbul, several other points were illustrated along the way in the interest of furthering the field of early modern Ottoman slavery studies, which has languished in the doldrums of historical research in comparison with its modern counterpart. For instance, new methodological approaches to standard and seemingly dry Ottoman administrative and legal sources for social history, i.e., the sicils, were proposed and attempted throughout this dissertation, and a set of sicils, those of the early Galata mahkemesi that had not previously been examined, were read as a rich primary

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source on the topic of slavery. It is hoped that this approach produced innovative results for the cultural contextualisation of legal language and its implication for ›reading‹ the slaves and their role in Ottoman society. In describing and analysing the origins of the slaves whose existence was recorded in the Galata court records, not only was the ›ethnic‹ makeup of this particular slave population described and analysed, but further illumination was cast on the social context of the cins labels themselves. Of empirical importance was the determination of the rough geographical origins of the slaves who were employed in Galata, from which a picture of the Istanbul unfree labour markets could be more clearly painted, but of greater significance is the examination of what it meant for a slave to be given a bureaucratic or literary classification describing his (or her) origin. In particular, it was demonstrated that while a slave was likely to have originated from a geographical area roughly corresponding to his cins label in the sicils, the set of cins classifications in the Galata manumission documents, when read against a selection of relevant literary texts, epitomised particular topoi that allowed slave owners to read particular cultural or moral characteristics in their slaves’ cins. This ability to read the slave is set against the literary ›Age of Beloveds‹ in which attractive men of the servile classes in Istanbul looked to masters or patrons for their upkeep, which resulted in much poetry illustrating the physical and moral qualities of the servile men and women according to tropes concerning their origins. In such a context, the cins classifications of slaves in the manumission documents take on a much more lively and profound meaning than mere geographical designations. The third chapter in particular represents a contribution not only in understanding where slaves in Istanbul originated, but also the cultural meaning attached to the particular cins label which slaves were assigned. In the pursuit of an overarching argument concerning the assimilative nature of the process of enslavement and manumission of skilled individuals in Galata, a contribution to the history of religious conversion (in Chapter 3) and the maritime history of the Ottoman Empire (in Chapter 4) was made, primarily from a reconstruction based on information from the sicils in conjunction with captivity narratives and historical chronicles. While the main arguments of the dissertation focus on the nature of slavery, it is impossible to ignore the political context of maritime slavery in the sixteenth-century Mediterranean, an arena in which empires battled for universal (religious as well as political) supremacy. While such claims may have been rhetorical, they nonetheless resulted in very real consequences for the peoples of the Mediterranean, not least of whom the men and women whose manumission documents appear in the Galata court registers. While religious conversion in some versions of history, particularly those of a nationalistic or Eurocentric leaning, has been portrayed as a changing of sides, or even a forced betrayal of one’s faith in the conflict for religious supremacy of the

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Mediterranean, and by others as a willing process of multicultural syncretism, it seems clear that the truth lies somewhere in between. If ›sides‹ did indeed exist in the early modern Mediterranean, then certainly changing one’s religion did to some extent translate into a declaration of, if nothing else, shifting political or economic loyalty. However, the actual process of conversion, particularly in the context of slavery, is understudied, perhaps as a result of the stigma attached to notions of ›forced conversion‹, implying that slaves were compelled to convert in order to secure their freedom. What Chapter 3 demonstrates in its discussion of slave conversion patterns according to the Galata records is that conversion to Islam among slaves was not as straightforward and predictable a process as portrayed in the narrative sources of the period. Conversion rates differed according to the time period, gender, origins, and type of manumission which the slave received, suggesting a rich topic for further research. This contribution, while certainly not offering the final word on processes of religious conversion among slaves in the Ottoman Empire, has created a foundation of empirical data which illustrate trends within Galata and can be used a solid basis for future studies. In terms of demonstrating the process of the possible induction of slaves into an Ottoman habitus, the final chapter of the dissertation argued that through a close reading of the names and physical description of the slaves, various conclusions about the nature of Ottoman slavery could be drawn. Like the previous chapters, an empirical core of data was provided, such as the naming practices associated with slavery and the appearances of slaves, as well as the meaning of this information in the context of Ottoman Istanbul. For instance, the information on Ottoman slave onomastics demonstrated the argument that converted slaves (particularly skilled male slaves) bore forenames that did not distinguish them from free Ottoman males, in contrast to numerous other slave-owning societies that sought to mark and separate their slave population before and after manumission with distinct names and even physical markings. Through a detailed examination of the information on naming and the physical appearance of slaves in the Galata court records, it was argued that such was not the case in Ottoman Istanbul, and in fact, while manumission was certainly a gendered process, with female slaves and eunuchs receiving distinguishing ›slave‹ names, men were not marked in any way, reinforcing the notion that slavery in Ottoman Istanbul was purely a temporary state meant to be shed after a brief period that perhaps also served as an forced period of cultural and social inculcation. While it is a commonplace in much of the slavery literature to claim that indeed the Ottoman system of slavery was largely different from that of, say, medieval Italy or early modern America, in that it quickly manumitted slaves and included them in free society, such claims are meaningless without the empirical evidence in the form of manumission documents and associated practices of socialisation attested in the contemporary sources. A solid base of evidence was presented in Chapter 5 and throughout this

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dissertation, to demonstrate the accuracy of the claim that Ottoman slavery in the early modern period was an ›open‹ rather than a ›closed‹ system. While it is difficult to demonstrate that the period of mukātaba slavery, in particular, served the aim of inculcating a skilled male slave into the Ottoman habitus, as was attempted in Chapter 4, reading the manumission documents against a selection of contemporary legal and literary sources would suggest that even if unintentionally, slavery, manumission and clientage were various forms of servitude that inserted skilled individuals originating outside of the Ottoman Empire into the social and economic networks of Istanbul. Chapter 5 also argues, similarly to Chapter 3, that the terms used to frame the slave’s appearance, religion, and origin in the manumission documents were clearly not arbitrary and drew on a rich and profound linguistic and legal history that shaped, or at least articulated, the nature of the social relationship between slave and master both in Ottoman society and in previous Islamic societies as well. Through the examination of the semantics and pragmatics of manumission documents, as well as the psychology of manumission in Chapter 4, it was argued that manumission actually reinforced the relationship between master and slave and further bound the now freed slave to a hierarchy in which his legal and social obligations were in fact increased. It is hoped that through this close reading of manumission documents in conjunction with a large, and perhaps unconventional but always relevant, selection of texts, it has been demonstrated that the enslavement and manumission of skilled individuals in the mid- to late sixteenth-century Galata was a nuanced cultural process of exploitation and assimilation that drew on a complex textual and social history. This focused and detailed study cannot claim to fully remedy the lack of attention given to early modern slavery in the Ottoman Empire - a lack of attention caused by a number of historiographical issues, not least of which is the stigma attached to studying slavery and the nationalist paranoia of surrounding the claim that enslaved and converted ›Franks‹ were responsible for the greatness of the Ottoman Empire, or that Ottomans were guilty of the ›sin‹ of slavery, a paranoia framed by the echoes of Orientalist scholarship. Enslaved or manumitted Franks, or Russian or Abazas, even if they did perhaps make a contribution to Ottoman maritime success, did not do so as Franks or Russians or Abazas, but as Ottomans, within an Ottoman cultural paradigm, firmly ensconced in an Ottoman legal and social system. It is hoped that the complex historical reality has been to some degree illuminated through the microhistorical lense of sixteenth-century Galata, in which slaves from Ottoman borderlands were manumitted by their masters, who were often themselves converts or former slaves, and situated within the dynamic and diverse metropolis of Istanbul, where the urban elites classes possessed a rich literature of legal documents, poetry, nashitnames and ’ilm al-firāsa texts to articulate, read and understand difference, both among their slaves as well as their own highly diverse ranks.

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Appendix

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Individual Slave Manumission Contracts

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Galata 3. Page 3. Hüccet 1.

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Galata 3. Page 3. Hüccet 2.

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Galata 3. Page 3. Hüccet 3.

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Galata 3. Page 4. Hüccet 1.

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Galata 3. Page 4. Hüccet 2.

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Galata 3. Page 4. Hüccet 3.

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Galata 3. Page 4. Hüccet 4.

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Galata 3. Page 4. Opening Statement.

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Galata 3. Page 5. Hüccet 1.

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Galata 3. Page 5. Hüccet 3.

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Galata 3. Page 5. Hüccet 4.

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Galata 3. Page 5. Hüccet 5.

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Galata 3. Page 7. Hüccet 1.

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Galata 3. Page 7. Hüccet 3.

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Galata 3. Page 8. Hüccet 2.

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Galata 3. Page 9. Hüccet 1.

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Galata 3. Page 11. Hüccet 1.

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Galata 3. Page 12. Hüccet 1.

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Galata 3. Page 12. Hüccet 3.

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Galata 3. Page 12. Hüccet 4.

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Galata 3. Page 14. Hüccet 2.

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Galata 3. Page 14. Hüccet 3.

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Galata 3. Page 14. Hüccet 4 in Turkish.

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Galata 3. Page 14. Hüccet 5.

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Galata 3. Page 15. Hüccet 2.

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Galata 3. Page 15. Hüccet 4.

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Galata 3. Page 16. Hüccet 1.

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Galata 3. Page 17. Hüccet 2.

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Galata 3. Page 17. Hüccet 1 in Turkish.

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Galata 3. Page 31. Hüccet 1

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Galata 3. Page 31. Hüccet 2.

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Galata 3. Page 35. Hüccet 2.

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Galata 3. Page 36. Hüccet 1.

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