writers like Samuel Purchas did not hesitate to emphasize that slavery was an abject, dehumanizing, and physically punishing system. In the introduction to his 1625 work, he asserted that “the Devill hath sent the Moores with damnable Mahumetisme in their merchandizing quite thorow the East, to pervert so many Nations with thraldome of their states and persons.”25 Slavery was spiritually symbolic in Purchas’s telling, but it was immediate and meaningful as an all-too-real fate suffered by countless individuals. But that was only part of the story.
Most of the English and other European travelers whose accounts were published by Hakluyt and Purchas (or separately printed) during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were careful and often quite generous observers. Thus, diligent readers could learn a great deal about the particular characteristics of Mediterranean slavery and, when they were not bemoaning the plight of their own countrymen held in bondage (something that will be discussed more fully in Chapter 4), their observations could be quite instructive. From European witnesses, then, it was clear that there were aspects of human bondage as it functioned in the Mediterranean world that conformed to expectations. Slaves were, by definition, owned or in the possession of another power. Slaves in the Mediterranean also typically originated as prisoners of war and many of these captives were Christians from southern Europe. John Locke, who traveled to Jerusalem in 1553, wrote about a battle “a fewe yeeres past” in which the victorious Turks captured a fortress “from the Emperour, in which fight were slaine three hundred Spanish souldiers, besides the rest which were taken prisoners, and made gallie slaves.” George Sandys, who visited the Levant in 1610, reiterated a simple point when he noted that slaves were primarily “Christians taken in the Warres, or purchased with their money.”26 Indeed, English audiences were so familiar with this sort of observation by the seventeenth century that the point was rarely described in detail. Nothing could be less surprising than the presence of slaves who met their fate as a result of being on the losing side of a battle.
A number of subjects, however, either did not cohere with English expectations or were viewed as so fantastic that they were deemed worthy of fuller consideration. Military slavery, for example, elicited considerable attention as a distinctive form of slavery and as a peculiar practice located in one particular region of the world. English travelers in the Mediterranean world routinely commented on the large number of slave soldiers, or Janizaries, in the Ottoman Empire. The remarkably well-traveled Anthony Jenkinson, ultimately more famous for his exploits in Russia, described an elaborate procession “of Soliman the grand Turk” he witnessed into Syria in 1553 that included 16,000 Janizaries, “slaves of the Grand Signior.” On a much smaller scale, slave soldiers were also incidental characters. William Biddulph, an English cleric, noted in 1600 that a local English factor “provided us with horses to ride to Aleppo, and a Janizarie, called Paravan Bashaw … to guard us” on the dangerous three-day journey inland. Although Biddulph praised the assistance he received from this man, he later reported, while in the vicinity of Jerusalem, that the inhabitants of a village called Lacmine “fled into the Mountaynes to dwell, for feare of the Janizaries of Damascus, who travelling that way used to take from them … whatsoever things else they found in their homes.” Purchas registered his personal feelings about the subject at this juncture when he noted in the margin of this passage, simply, “Wretched slaverie.” He also more than likely agreed with Sir Anthony Sherley’s characterization from 1599 that “Janizaries (which were appointed for the safetie of the Provinces …) now obey no authoritie which calleth them to other Warres: but by combining themselves in a strength together, tyrannize the Countries committed to their charges.”27
English observers were particularly intrigued by military slaves because they wielded extraordinary power and influence. Yet, just as slaves could be found in privileged positions at the top of society, exercising their will through violence, other important English sources reveal that slavery could involve utter degradation, suffering, and poverty for individuals at the other end of the social ladder. In a discussion of charity among the Turks, George Sandys acknowledged that “I have seene but few Beggers amongst them. Yet sometimes you shall meet in the streets with couples chained together by the necke, who beg to satisfie their Creditors in part, and are at the yeeres end released of their Bonds, provided that they make satisfaction if they prove afterward able.” Purchas also published an account by Leo Africanus (often referred to in England as “John Leo” but born in Morocco as “al-Hasan al-Wazzan”) of Moroccans who found themselves pressed between the King of Portugal on one side and the King of Fez on the other. The resulting famine and scarcity brought the people “unto such misery, that they freely offered themselves as slaves” to the Portuguese, “submitting themselves to any man, that was willing to relieve their intolerable hunger.”28 If powerful slaves like the Janizaries of the Ottoman Empire were frightful, the condition of those who happened to lapse into a state of slavery as a result of debt or poverty, or perhaps even submitted to slavery voluntarily, was more lamentable than menacing.29
A slave’s chances in the world depended greatly on who owned him or her. All English travelers in the Islamic world commented on the heterogeneous nature of the local populations. William Biddulph noted that Aleppo was “inhabited by Turkes, Moores, Arabians, Jewes, Greekes, Armenians, Chelfalines, Nostranes, and people of sundry other Nations.” The enslaved population, however, was described more narrowly. Sandys claimed that slaves consisted primarily of Christians taken in war or those purchased with money at any of the weekly markets “where they are to be sold as Horses in Faires: the men being rated according to their faculties, or personal abilities, as the Women for their youths and beauties.” These slaves performed a number of services, but if they were fortunate enough to possess a useful skill, they might eventually be able to pay for their freedom. If they were exceptionally fortunate, Sandys added, they might be bought by a Christian. Thus, slaves at market “endeavour[ed] to allure the Christians to buy them, as expecting from them a more easie servitude, and continuance of Religion: when being thrall to the Turke, they are often inforced to renounce it for their better entertainment.” Regardless, Sandys suggested, quite accurately, there were well-established avenues to freedom under Islamic law. Sandys claimed that the “men-slaves may compell their Masters … to limit the time of their bondage, or set a price of their redemption, or else to sell them to another.” If slaves were owned by a Christian master and subsequently converted to Islam, “they are discharged of their bondage; but if a Slave of a Turke, he onely is the better intreated.” Those who ended up in the galleys, or in more menial tasks, seldom were released “in regard of their small number, and much employment which they have for them.”30 Slavery was an absolute condition, but there were still opportunities for manumission for the lucky few.
Some English observers were also clearly fascinated by the important role gender played in shaping the supply and use of slaves in the Islamic world. Gender influenced English impressions of contemporary slavery because, quite unlike in England, many roles prescribed for slaves in the Muslim world were conditioned by sex.31 Female slaves were most often depicted as concubines, or even wives. In 1574, Geffrey Ducket characterized “[b]ondmen and bondwomen [as] … one of the best kind of merchandise that any man may bring” to Persia. Ducket noted that when Persians purchased “any maydes or yong women, they use to feele them in all partes, as with us men doe horses.” Female slaves were the absolute servants of their masters and could be sold many times over. If these women were found by their masters “to be false to him, and give her body to any other, he may kill her if he will.” Not only Persians, but foreign merchants and travelers seem to have participated in the ownership of women. Ducket noted that when the visitors stayed for any length of time in one place, he “hireth a woman, or sometimes 2. or 3. during his abode there … for there they use to put out their women to hire, as wee doo here hackney horses.”32
Samuel Purchas published several accounts that characterized the role of enslaved women in a similar vein. Not surprisingly, George Sandys weighed in on the subject when he noted that every man could hold “as many Concubine slaves as hee is able to keepe, of what Religion soever.” From his general description of the lot of wives and concubines, Sandys concluded that he could “speake
