Geza David and Pal Fodor (eds.): Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Early Fifteenth-Early Eighteenth Centuries).
Scharlipp, Wolfgang-E.
Geza David and Pal Fodor (eds.): Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman
Borders (Early Fifteenth-Early Eighteenth Centuries). The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage, vol. 37. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2007. 253 p. ISBN 978
90 04 157040.
This book had been announced in an earlier volume compiled by the
same authors (Ottomans, Hungarians and Habsburgs in Central Europe. The
Military Confines in the Era of Ottoman Conquest. Leiden: Brill 2000).
All contributions are part of a project launched at the Institute of
History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Although most articles
thus concern Hungary during the time under Ottoman occupation, other
articles refer to the Habsburg Empire and to the Ottoman Empire itself.
The authors state in the introduction that "slavery is one of
the most permanent phenomena of human history" (in fact according
to UN sources the number of slaves has never been higher than at the
present time). But they remark that Islamic slavery was different from
that current in the ancient world. Muslim owners employed slaves as
eunuchs, guards, concubines or domestic sevants primarily in order to
ensure their own comfort. These "domestic slaves" often
occupied important positions in trade as well as in cultural life, as
for example as singers, dancers, musicians and actors. Also the military
use of slaves grew in importance, gaining in parts of the Turkish world
control of the political sphere in its entirety.
Fodor draws attention to the important fact that slaves in Islamic
societies generally were in a better position than the slaves of earlier
ages, as according to Islamic religious law, the natural human state is
freedom and thus it is forbidden to enslave human beings. Thus for
example a Muslim of whatever condition cannot be enslaved, a free man
cannot fall into servitude because of debt, and he cannot sell himself
into slavery. After giving a lengthy introduction into the different
kinds of slaves and their activities in the Ottoman Empire, Fodor comes
to a special kind of slavery that, as he says, has still not received
the attention that it deserves (p. XVIII). With this remark he arrives
at the topic of the book: the prisoners of war and more particularly
ransom slavery, with other words, captives acquired in wartime or even
in kidnapping operations conducted during periods of truce. Especially
in regions close to the border, the most significant and flourishing
trade was ransom slavery.
The twelve studies in this volume concentrate--in rather different
ways--on these themes: the acquisition of war prisonors, kidnapping and
ransom slavery. While the geographical focus lies on Hungary itself, the
area under scrutiny extends from the Crimea to Malta. This guarantees a
broad perspective in that the contributors do not only examine Christian
slavery in the Ottoman Empire, but, using Western sources, also provide
greater insight into the tribulations of Ottoman slaves in the Habsburg
territory.
Several of the contributions show that they are based on analyses
of one or just a few documents, treating the fate of single persons.
These are titles like: "Miraculous escapes from Ottoman
captivity" (Tringli), "A list of ransom for Ottoman captives
imprisoned in Croatian castles 1492" (Nogrady), "Catholic
missionaries as Turkish prisoners in Ottoman Hungary in the seventeenth
century" (Toth), "Ransoming Ottoman slaves from Munich
(1688)" (Varga).
While many of the contributions treat individual cases of ransom
slavery, the entirety of the articles gives an interesting insight into
a kind of slavery that has--as was mentioned in the introduction--up to
now not found the interest it deserves. In this sense the book enriches
our knowledge of the relations between the Ottoman Empire and its
neighbours.
Wolfgang-E. Scharlipp
Copenhagen
