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Chapter 17 - Slavery in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

from Part IV - The Islamic World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2021

Craig Perry
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
David Eltis
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Stanley L. Engerman
Affiliation:
University of Rochester, New York
David Richardson
Affiliation:
University of Hull
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Summary

This chapter examines the social history of slavery in the early Ottoman Empire. Arguing that the range of forms of enslavement and forced labour practiced in the Ottoman Empire cannot be described by the current ‘universal’ definitions of slavery, this chapter looks at the role of slavery in Ottoman dynastic politics, the social history of military and administrative slavery, and the slavery of skilled workers as central to the economic production of the early modern urban centres of the Ottoman Empire. The chapter concludes with an examination of the legal categories that were applied to different forms of slavery and manumission, and presents to the reader to a range of primary and secondary sources for the research of slavery in the Ottoman Empire.

Type
Chapter
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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

A Guide to Further Reading

Dávid, Géza, and Fodor, Pál (eds.), Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Leiden, 2007).Google Scholar
Erdem, Y. Hakan, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and Its Demise, 1800–1900 (London, 1996).Google Scholar
Faroqhi, Suraiya, Slavery in the Ottoman World: A Literature Survey, Otto Spies Memorial Lecture Series, ed. Conermann, Stephan and Şen, Gül (Berlin, 2017).Google Scholar
Hanna, Nelly, “Sources for the Study of Slave Women and Concubines in Ottoman Egypt,” in Sonbol, Amira el-Azhary (ed.), Beyond the Exotic: Women’s Histories in Islamic Societies (Syracuse, 2005), pp. 119130.Google Scholar
Hathaway, Jane. Beshir Aga: Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem (Oxford, 2005).Google Scholar
Pierce, Leslie, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Oxford, 1993).Google Scholar
Sahillioğlu, Halil, “Slaves in the Social and Economic Life of Bursa in the Late 15th and Early 16th centuries,” Turcica, 17 (1985): 43112.Google Scholar
Seng, Yvonne J., “Fugitives and Factotums: Slaves in Early Sixteenth-Century Istanbul,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 39 (1996): 136169.Google Scholar
Seng, Yvonne J.A Liminal State: Slavery in Sixteenth-Century Istanbul,” in Marmon, Shaun (ed.), Slavery in the Islamic Middle East (Princeton, NJ, 1999), pp. 2542.Google Scholar
Sobers-Khan, Nur, “Firasetle Nazar Edesin: Recreating the Gaze of the Ottoman Slave Owner at the Confluence of Textual Genres,” in Firges, Pascal W., Graf, Tobias P., Roth, Christian, and Tulasoğlu, Gülay (eds.), Well-Connected Domains: Towards an Entangled Ottoman History (Leiden, 2014), pp. 93109.Google Scholar
Sobers-Khan, Nur, Slaves without Shackles: Forced Labour and Manumission in the Galata Court Registers, 1560–1572 (Berlin, 2014).Google Scholar
Toledano, Ehud, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle, WA, 1998).Google Scholar
Toledano, Ehud, “The Concept of Slavery in Ottoman and other Muslim Societies: Dichotomy or Continuum?” in Toru, Miura and Philips, John Edward (eds.), Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa: A Comparative Study (London, 2000), pp. 159175.Google Scholar
Zilfi, Madeline, “Thoughts on Women and Slavery in the Ottoman Era and Historical Sources,” in Sonbol, (ed.), Beyond the Exotic, pp. 131138.Google Scholar
Zilfi, Madeline C., Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, 2010).Google Scholar

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