Slaves and Englishmen. Michael Guasco
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 of their slaves: for little difference is there made between them.” While male slaves were “rated according to their faculties, or personal abilities,” women were valued “for their youths and beauties.” Once a woman was purchased, her buyer examined her for “assurance (if so she be said to be) of her virginitie.” Masters could then “lye with them, chastise them, exchange and sell them at their pleasure.” But Christian masters were not completely void of compassion, he claimed, for he “will not lightly sell her whom he hath layne with, but give her libertie.”33 Such were the benefits that apparently accrued to women whose fate it was to be purchased for the sexual favors they were compelled to provide for their owners.
As fascinating as the subject may have been, female slavery was something that historically minded Englishmen could easily comprehend. William of Malmesbury’s twelfth-century Chronicle recounted several examples from pre-Conquest society of the selling of female slaves out of England. Malmesbury recorded these tales as examples of the degeneracy of England before the arrival of the Normans. In one particularly offensive example, Malmesbury cited the custom, “repugnant to nature, which they adopted; namely, to sell their female servants, when pregnant by them and after they had satisfied their lust, either to public prostitution, or foreign slavery.” Likewise, in another tale, Malmesbury recounted how the sister of the early eleventh-century King Canute had been killed by a lightning strike, supposedly as punishment for the king making money off the “horrid traffic” in English youths, especially girls, who were taken against their will and sold into slavery in Denmark.34 The purchase of females had a particular symbolic power in England where, as in Islam, the significance of the enslavement of women was historically rooted in the owner’s ability to exploit women’s sexuality rather than the women’s labor value. In addition, the use of slave women could enhance the master’s power not only over slave men but also over free men because of their ability to control access to a desired commodity or destination. Male slaves never forgot that regardless of how they might define the nature of their relationship with a female slave, another man—a free male—actually exercised the ultimate authority. Within this historical context, readers needed little elaboration in the accounts printed by Hakluyt and Purchas to understand that female concubinage was an insidious form of slavery that was part and parcel of the overall interest of the male population in controlling the sexual behavior of women.35
The enslavement of women clearly fascinated English observers, but they were arguably even more intrigued, or perhaps repulsed, by the closely related subject of eunuchs, particularly in the Islamic world. Once again, the account by George Sandys is instructive. Sandys claimed that many of the children “that the Turkes doe buy … they castrate, making all smooth as the backe of the hand, (whereof divers doe dye in the cutting) who supply the uses of Nature with a Silver Quill, which they wear in their Turbants.” Sandys was fascinated that eunuchs were “heere in great repute with their Masters, trusted with their States, the Government of their Women and Houses in their absence; having for the most part beene approoved faithfull, wise, and couragious.” Robert Withers went into even greater detail in his account of the “Grand Signiors Serraglio” from 1620. Withers was struck in particular by the role played by black eunuchs, who “goe about and doe all other businesse for the Sultanaes in the Womens lodgings, which White Eunuches cannot performe.” And, in fact, black eunuchs do seem to have become especially prized possessions and influential allies by the sixteenth century in the Ottoman Empire.36