peasants, and barbarians were all identified by medieval philosophers as natural slaves.90 Medieval philosophers knew that the word barbarian signaled linguistic difference: “note that barbarians, according to certain people, are said to be those whose language differs entirely from Latin. Others indeed say that whoever is a foreigner is a barbarian to every other foreigner.… But according to he who speaks more truly [i.e., Aristotle], barbarians proper are said to be those who are strong in the strength of the body, are lacking in the strength of reason, and are almost without laws and without the rule of law.”91 In other words, although barbarians were superficially distinguished by language, they were truly set apart from civilized people by their physical strength, lack of reason, and lack of law, all qualities associated with natural slaves.
Where medieval philosophers diverged from Aristotle was their emphasis on barbarian races, characterizing the customs and bodies of entire groups of people as bestial.92 For example, according to Albertus Magnus, “we call barbarians those who neither law, nor civility, nor the rule of any other discipline disposes to virtue, whom Tullius called forest men in the beginning of Rhetorica, conversing with the wild forest beasts in the manner of wild beasts, who are not Greeks or Latins, who are disciplined and fed by a lordly and paternal rule. For such bestial people eat raw meat and drink the blood of humans, they delight to eat and drink from the skulls of humans, they find new kinds of tortures by which they delight to kill people.”93 Such bestial people were located at the far end of the racial spectrum and could be justifiably enslaved by civilized people. In this intellectual context, the long association between Greeks and civilization may have been another reason why medieval Catholics were less comfortable enslaving Greeks than Bulgars or Russians, even though all were Orthodox Christians.
Because the influx of Black Sea slaves to Italy did not begin until the late thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas and the other great scholastics of the thirteenth century did not link Aristotle’s slaves with the Tatars serving in the homes of wealthy Italians.94 Aristotle himself had identified the Scythians of the ancient Black Sea as a barbarian people prone to natural slavery on the basis of their climate, and both Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus had repeated the connection between Scythians, barbarians, and natural slaves. But it was Italian humanists who equated Scythians and Tatars with natural slaves. According to Giovanni Gioviano Pontano,
As I heard from the ancients, the custom was that Thracians and also Greeks who inhabit the Black Sea be sold: who, lest they be in the service of the barbarians, merchants sailing the Black Sea, having redeemed them from the Scythians, were offering them for sale. For it seemed more honorable to serve them for a short time, while they repaid the money paid per head, than to be the plunder of barbarians and submissive to perpetual servitude, also with the greatest disgrace of the Christian name. Because today also are saved towards those whom he calls Bulgars and Circassians.95
In other words, the Orthodox Christians of the Black Sea (Thracians, Greeks, Bulgars, and Circassians) could be enslaved by Catholics to save them from the Scythians (Tatars), the archetypical barbarians.
Other humanists also liked to use anachronistic classical terms for the contemporary population of the Black Sea. Racial categories formulated a thousand years ago in quite different historical circumstances reappeared not only in private letters but also in official government correspondence and notarial documents.96 In 1416 and 1417, for example, the Genoese notary Giuliano Canella categorized five different slaves as “Gepids or Zichs.”97 Zich was a widely recognized racial category in the fifteenth century, and it would be possible to find individuals who self-identified as members of that group. Gepid was a racial category dating from the fifth and sixth centuries, a group with no self-identifying members in the fifteenth century.
Being able to categorize slaves by race mattered especially to notaries because it was required by Roman law. The Justinianic Code stated that “those selling slaves should declare their race (natio) when making the sale; for the slave’s race may often induce or deter a purchaser; therefore, we have an interest in knowing the race; for there is a presumption that some slaves are good, coming from a race with no bad repute, while others are thought bad, since they come from a notorious race.”98 As a result, Italian notaries included race along with gender, age, and name in slave sale contracts and other types of documents. Because race had a predictable place in the boilerplate language for slave sales, it is easy to compile a list of racial categories for slaves commonly used by notaries.
Data about the racial categorization of slaves in Genoa and Venice are presented in Figures 14 and 15 in Chapter 5. Russians, Caucasians (Circassians, Zichs, Abkhaz, Mingrelians), and Tatars made up the great majority of slaves in both cities. The label of “Other” hides a very diverse population. The following racial categories were assigned by the notaries to ten or more slaves: Albanian, Black, Bosnian, Bulgar, Canary Islander, Cuman, Ethiopian, Greek, Hungarian, Jewish, Moor, Saracen,99 and Turk.100 Racial categories assigned by the notaries to fewer than ten slaves were Alan,101 Armenian, Berber, Catalan, Goth,102 Laz,103 Libyan, Majar,104 Meskh,105 Mongol, Ruthenian, Sarmatian, Serb, Slav, Spanish, Uighur, and Wallach. A few racial categories (dovagus, raamanus, and cevia) do not seem to have equivalents in modern English. Indian and Chinese racial categories appeared only in Caffa and Tana.106
When Christian observers categorized mamluks, they used many of the same racial categories as the Genoese and Venetian notaries used for slaves held locally. Mamluks were categorized as Abkhaz, Albanian, Abyssinian, Bulgarian, Circassian, Greek, Mingrelian, Russian, Tatar, Turk, and Wallach.107 But Christian travelers also noticed mamluks from Germany, Hungary, Catalonia, Aragon, Italy, and Sicily. In 1482–1483, the Dutch traveler Joos van Ghistele met Nāṣir al-Dīn, a mamluk from Danzig, who was a treasury official of the sultan.108 In 1480–1483, Felix Fabri and Paul Walther de Guglingen met a mamluk named Sefogul, a German from Basel whose relatives Felix knew.109 Two mamluks, Conrad of Basel and an unnamed Dane, guided the traveler Arnold von Harff in Cairo.110
Unfortunately for both Italian notaries and Mamluk scribes, their racial categories were not adequate to describe the complexity and diversity of the people living around the Black Sea. Their hesitation in the face of a human reality that did not fit into neat categories is evident in the sources.111 Most authors of Mamluk biographical dictionaries did not mention race. When they did, they preferred the broad categories of Turk, Circassian, Rūmī, and Tatar. In a few cases, they disagreed: the amir Bahādir al-Minjakī was either Rūmī or Frankish, and the amir Jaqmaq al-Arghūnshāwī was either Circassian or Turkman.112 The early fourteenth-century sultan Baybars al-Jashankīr might have been a Turk, or he might have been the first Circassian ruler.113 Sultan Khushqadam was consistently identified as Greek, but there was debate over whether he, Lājīn, or al-Mu’izz Aybak was the first Greek sultan.114
Some Italian notaries left a blank space where race should have appeared in their slave sale contracts.115 Others put the burden of categorization on the seller, as with a slave “of Goth origin, as she seems to that same Iohannes [the seller] to be from Gothia.”116 The same was true for a slave “who is said to be from Russia”117 and a slave “of the race of the Russians, as it is asserted by the said slave woman, and whom I sell to you as being of the race of the Russians.”118 The Genoese notary Antonio di Ponzò borrowed the phrase “as is” (talis qualis est), a formula for disclaiming responsibility for a slave’s health, and repurposed it to disclaim knowledge of a slave’s race. A woman whom he could not categorize was sold “of race as is” (de proienia talis qualis est).119 Another notary hedged by describing a slave as “of the Abkhaz or another race.”120
Notaries also made mistakes in racial categorization.
