Inalcik. Servile Labor
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Halil Inalcik. "Servile Labor in the Ottoman Empire"
in A. Ascher, B. K. Kiraly, and T. Halasi-Kun (eds), The Mutual Effects
of the Islamic and Judeo-Christian Worlds: The East European Pattern, Brooklyn
College, 1979, pp. 25-43.
The long prosperity of the slave trade in Islamic lands can be attributed
to conditions peculiar to Islamic culture. First of all in medieval Islam
from the time of the Abbasid caliphs on slaves were employed in large numbers
in the militias of Muslim rulers. Slaves were also used as labor force
in the urban crafts and on the big estates belonging to the state or to
large land owners. Furthermore, following the example of the palace, the
upper class and even the well-to-do among the non-Muslims, had extended
households with large numbers of domestic slaves.
In the Service of the State and Military Class
The ghulam or kul system, in which slaves were trained as loyal servants
to be employed primarily in implementing the central power of the sultan
as agents and soldiery, had an unprecedented expansion under the typically
military centralist sultanates of the Mamluks of Egypt and the Ottomans
in the period of the thirteenth-sixteenth centuries. With the rise of their
centralist state, the Ottoman sultans were faced with a growing need for
men for their kapi-kulu, palace servants and divisions of the standing
army at the Porte, and, since war did not bring slaves in sufficient numbers,
they had to resort to the unusual method of the devshirme, a levy of boys
from among their own Christian subjects, the reaya'. In general the Ottomans
did not regard the devshirme as enslavement, but rather as one of the extraordinary
services imposed by the state in an emergency. The levied boys, attached
to the Janissary corps, were first employed as labor in a number of public
works ( construction work, transport works etc. ) in the capital and in
Gallipoli before they became Janissaries. In the classical period between
1300-1600, the Sultan's kapi-kulu, recruited from the devshirme boys as
well as from among prisoners of war and slaves bought for the Sultan, increased
in number considerably: 15-20 thousand under Mehmed II (1451-1481), 60
thousand in 1568 and about 100 thousand in 1609. The absolute power of
the ruler, we are told in contemporary Ottoman sources, rested upon his
having slaves in his service in the army and the administration.
That the members of the Ottoman ruling class, the Sultan in the first
place, took special care to increase their slave retinue can be related
to the fact that, in the frontier society of the early Ottoman state power
rested on the ability to muster as many ghazi fighters as possible from
tribal companions, adventurers from outside, or slaves. It was true the
use of warrior slaves was not confined to the state. The grandees also
tried to maintain households and retinues as large as possible since this
meant, through their patronage rights, wala, an extension of their influence
and power, in-as-much as many of their slaves were destined to get important
offices in the Empire later on. These patrimonial factions were not infrequently
the real actors in political feuds in the Ottoman Empire. In Istanbul,
capital of the Empire, at least one-fifth of the population was estimated
to be kuls of the Sultan and of the grandees. In other cities kuls, though
in smaller proportions, made an important part of the urban population.
The demand for warrior slaves in Ottoman society was intensified by
the fact that members of the ttmar holding army in the provinces, from
the beglerbegi, governor general, down to the simple sipahi, cavalryman,
were required by regulation to train and to bring to the Sultan's army
a certain number of cavalrymen in proportion to the amount of their timar
revenue (for a sipahi, one for each 2 or 3 thousand akce, for begs, one
for each 5,000 akce). These auxiliaries were in their origins mostly slaves
captured during the raids in Christian lands. A beglerbegi, governor general,
was required by regulation to maintain a military retinue of at least two
hundred men in addition to his household slaves employed in domestic services.
The begs strove to increase the number of their retinue beyond the regulation
since that brought special favor from the Sultan.
However, the ruling class did not own as many domestic slaves as military.
On the basis of a list of estates belonging to members of the ruling class
kept in Edirne between 1545 and 1659, the following data was collected:
out of 93 estates, 41 had slaves.
The total number of slaves in the estates was 140, 54 female and 86
male. 134 of them bore Muslim names, 5 were not defined, and 1 was a Christian
woman. Some of these slaves appear to have been employed on farms. In conclusion,
the ruling class, because of extensive use of warrior slaves and because
of its own high purchasing capacity, was undoubtedly the single major group
keeping the slave market alive in Ottoman empire.
In the Crafts
Concerning the slave labor employed by the crafts in the cities we have
valuable evidence from the records of the estates of the deceased kept
by the judges, kadis, in the Ottoman cities. The following observations
are based on such records of 721 estates from the second half of the fifteenth
century in Bursa.
It was an exceptional case for the rich not to have slaves either in
domestic occupations or employed as labor in certain crafts. (The rich
composed 15.9 of the cases studied.) Slaves formed the third most important
component of the estates, in value, after cash and properties. In the estates
of the silk weavers slaves frequently represented the most important part
since slave labor was extensively employed in the weaving of gold brocades,
velvets, or fine cottons in Bursa.
Slave labor was organized under the system of limited service contract
known as mukataba in Islamic jurisprudence. Here are two examples of such
a contract:
"In our presence Mahmud b. Seyyidi Ahmed, weaver of taffeta, asserted
that he agreed to emancipate his slave Iskender, of Circassian origin (with
the described features) upon the completion of one hundred pieces of taffeta
equivalent in value to ten thousand akces, and the said slave accepted
the contract."
"Khwadje Sinan had previously agreed to emancipate his slave Shirmerd
son of 'Abdallah (a convert), of Slavonian origin, upon the completion
of the weaving for him of ten brocades known as kemkha-i glistani. Now
that he has completed the work he has become free.
Here is a case of a slave weaver who was emancipated and rewarded by
his master upon his death:
"Yusuf B. 'Abdallah (a convert) previously slave of Al-Hadj Tannvermish,
asserted in our presence one day before his death to the effect that he
emancipated his slave Ayas b. 'Abdallah (a convert) of Russian origin,
weaver of velvet; and declared in his will that Ayas be given in his possession
the loom of velvet with silk and other pertinent things."
This kind of mukataba meant actually to allow the slave to exercise
certain rights such as to work independently and to own his earnings so
that he would be capable of ransoming himself. Another kind allowed emancipation
upon work for a certain period of time without specifying the work. Example:
"Mawlana Seyyid Mehmed of Konya asserted in our presence that he
agreed to set free Lutfi b. 'Abdallah (a convert) of Bosnia ( of the described
features ) upon service for him for four consecutive years; and the slave
accepted the terms
. Mukataba was widely practiced in the Ottoman Empire, as demonstrated
by the kadi records. It is recommended by the Coran. It consisted in the
master's granting his slave his freedom in return for the payment of mutually
agreed upon sums of money. According to some legists it was ransom by the
slave of his own person. As an interesting historical example, mention
can be made of Mehmed the Conqueror's allowing the Greek prisoners of war
to work at the repair of the walls of Istanbul to ransom their freedom.
The person subject to mukataba is set free only when his payments are completed.
Toward the end a rebate was normally accorded.
Mukataba was a contract binding both sides so that the owner could not
change its conditions at the expense of the slave. Since emancipation was
considered a charitable act, the owner might make modifications favorable
to the slave, such as to shorten the period of service or to give up the
work due. Of course at the same time the owner derived certain advantages
from mukataba. It guaranteed good and profitable service for a certain
period of time since, as a rule, lifetime slaves tended to run away or
to be indolent. It was particularly profitable in the silk industry as
this required continuously careful expert work especially in brocade and
velvet weaving. Wage laborers were not really suited for this kind of work,
which demanded a long period of time on the loom for the production of
a single piece.
Noteworthy also is the fact that the silk industry in Bursa had developed
to such a point that it exported its costly gold brocades and velvets,
not only to meet the growing demand of the upper class in the empire, but
also to meet orders from Italy, Poland, Russia and other European countries.
There were silk weavers in Bursa having forty or more looms at one time
who can rightly be considered as capitalist entrepreneurs, organizing a
domestic silk industry for export with slave labor: Al-Hadj Ahmed with
five looms and fifteen slaves, Hadjdjl Badr al-Din Ishak with seven looms
and eight female slaves, al-Khadje Sinan with six looms and twelve male
and three female slaves, were all active in the middle of the fifteenth
century. Twelve of the slaves of Al-Hadj Ahmed had a value estimated at
36,000 akces, median price for a slave being 2,000 akces or 50 gold ducats,
a rate equal to or below contemporary average prices of slaves in Italy
or Egypt. Since slave labor was not cheap it was only in the crafts making
high priced luxury goods in great quantity that slaves were employed. Our
Bursa documents refer to no slaves in other crafts. In the weaving of cheap
cotton goods, another Ottoman export item, peasant labor in the coun- tryside
and widows and children in the towns were used through- out Anatolia as
the cheapest labor available.
Finally, hiring out slaves was legal. H. Dernschwam, a German visitor
to Turkey in 1555, relates the widespread practice in Istanbul of hiring
out slaves: Many people made a livelihood out of hiring out their slaves
for 7 or 12 akces a day as day laborers (then 60 akces equalled one gold
ducat; a slave's daily expense was estimated at 1 1/2 or 2 akces ).
In Commerce
Bursa documents of the fifteenth century also tell us how the freed
slaves, 'atik or ma'tuk, occupied an unusually important place in the economic
life of Bursa as rich silk manufacturers and merchants engaged in distant
caravan trade, in money exchange, in usury and in tax-farming. In that
city in 1477, 61 out of 402 persons whose estates were recorded in the
kadi registers after death ( 34 male and 27 female ) were freed slaves.
Slaves and freed slaves were often employed as commercial agents by
merchants in distant trade ventures. Special guarantees under the stipulations
of Islamic law of toal, patronage rights of the former master, must be
emphasized in this connection. The following is an interesting instance:
In 1480 Balikcizade of Bursa and Khvadje Mehmed, freed slave of Khadjadj
Koci, made a partnership investing equal shares with capital in the amount
of 545,000 akces ( approximately 60,000 gold ducats) for the purpose of
an import-export trade with Egypt and Syria. The operation was conducted
mainly through their slaves who made several trips via Antalya ( Satalia)
between Bursa and Egyptian and Syrian cities. In his will Balikcizade emancipated
upon his death three of his slaves whom he had used as commercial agents
(in addition one eunuch and one female slave were to be emancipated with
grants of money, while three female slaves with children, umm al-walad,
from him were to be freed automatically at his death. Of course, as in
the case of Balihkcizade most, if not all, of these slaves were employed
in domestic occupations. The peculiar stipulations of Islamic law gave
rise to a paternalistic type of masterslave relationship which fostered
strong social ties especially where domestic slaves were involved.
In the Agricultural Sector
Here slave labor became predominant on the big estates, which were in
the form of ciftliks belonging to the state, the wealthy, or powerful members
of the ruling class, or in the form of awkaf, pious endowments. The main
reason for this was that the re'aya, free peasants registered in the state
survey books for taxation in a defined area, could not, under the law,
be used in the newly established farm lands. The majority of the privately
owned ciftliks and many of the state farms and trusts were formed on the
uncultivated waste-lands, pastures, and uninhabited lands with servile
labor. Furthermore, such ciftliks were market oriented, set up essentially
for the purpose of profit. Cattle and crops were sold to nearby peasants
in need or shipped to the ports for export or for provisionment of the
Ottoman cities. As in the Western plantation system, maximum rentability
was the main concern of the ciftlik owners or trusts; slave labor, free
of any of the restrictions to be observed under the law for the re'aya
was found to be the most suitable. Slaves besides were comparatively cheap
and readily available during the period of Ottoman expansion. It should
also be pointed out that organization of production on the ciftliks adjusted
itself to labor conditions: stock raising became predominant on most of
the ciftliks as it required a minimum amount of labor for the highest rate
of profit. Ortakdjlik/sharecropping with equal shares between the owner
and slave was a general practice on the ciftliks while if cultivated by
a peasant of the re'aya-status, the owner's share could not exceed as a
rule one-eighth of the produce. Lastly slaves constituted a capital investment
which was easily, and most of the time profitably, convertible into cash.
It should be noted that in all this members of the Ottoman ruling class
were following practices long established in the Islamic world.
Under the first Ottoman Sultans servile labor appears to have been employed
to form extensive cattle and sheep ranches in Bythinia. Big farms thus
formed by the grandees were mostly turned into pious endowments. As an
inalienable part of the farms slaves were entered in the endowment documents
often by their names. In transactions they are treated in the same way
as other properties. In some endowment deeds it is made clear that slaves
settled in the farm or village were prisoners of war captured by the founder.
Over time some of the farms thus formed developed into villages and the
descendants of the slaves in them were always separately registered as
sharecropping slaves (ortakdji kul). In some other cases it is reported
that slaves ran away and farms or villages were left in ruins.
The best example of the state's use of slave labor in reclaiming an
abandoned agricultural area is Mehmed the Conqueror's attempt at settling
with slaves a large area called Khasslar encompassing 163 villages around
Istanbul and Pera between 1453 and 1480. Actually it was a part of his
larger plan for the reconstruction of Istanbul. By placing under state
ownership the arable lands under cultivation in this area he intended to
contribute to the provisioning of the city, to create new sources of revenue
for the treasury, and to keep the neighborhood of the capital in order
and safety, as is pointed out in the regulation made in 1498. Mass deportation
of enslaved peasants from enemy territories was used for this purpose.
This was not only because the Conqueror planned a rapid recovery of the
area but also because settlement of reaya deportees, surgun, from his own
territories proved to be difflcult to carry out and ruinous for the areas
from which the deportation was made. It was impossible to go too far in
this operation because it violated the basic rights of the re'aya, Muslim
and non-Muslim, by forcing them to stay in their new settlements. It should
be added that shortage of agricultural labor was a general phenomenon in
this period.
Actually, in the Khasslar, on land that belonged to the imperial treasury,
the enslaved Greek population, as well as slaves from newly conquered Bosnia,
Serbia, and the Morea, made up the majority of the population, along with
the deportees, surgun of re'aya origin, sedentary or nomadic, and the group
of the ordinary re'aya. In 110 villages out of 163, slaves were in the
majority. In 1498 there were altogether 1974 slaves left in these villages.
Since it was the prime concern of the administration to maintain the
productivity of farm units, changes leading to the freedom of slaves (even
in cases permissible in the religious law) were not tolerated in the Khasslar.
There were however, many examples of slaves who became freedmen by illegal
means, the principal one being the bribing of the emin, or official in
charge of administering the Khasslar. The money paid to emancipate a slave,
aghirlik, appears to have originally been a compensation defined by the
regulations but diverted by the emin to his own pocket.
In the survey book of 1498 there were many who claimed to have been
freed but who could not establish their emancipation by any evidence acceptable
to the surveyor-inspector. As an occupation other than agricultural work
actually made easier a change from slave status, in 1498 slaves were forbidden
to engage in jobs such as fishing or carrying wood or lime in carts to
the city, profitable occupations in the neighborhood of Istanbul.
There were greater opportunities for the female slave than for the male
slave to change her status. Marriages with the re'aya, free peasants who
paid an aghirlik to the agent to obtain his consent, frequently occurred.
In 1498 the government inspector observed that this widespread practice
and the unwillingness of the female slaves to marry the khass slaves, inhibited
the continuation of slave families and the proper cultivation of the farm
units in the Khasslar. Under religious law the children of a free man were
to be free. Even if male slaves married free women their children were
to be free. Apart from the decrease, in the long run, of the slave population
there was also a disruption of the agricultural work, which was based on
family-labor on farm units. These points were stressed by the inspector
in his report to the Sultan. In the new regulation of 1498 marriages of
slaves with free men were forbidden and forced marriages between the slaves,
which were provided for under the religious law, were enforced. Exceptions
were made for the widow whose son was able to maintain the agricultural
work and for anyone who had an acceptable excuse for not wanting to get
married. License for marriage with a free man was given only when there
were more female slaves than needed, and when the free man agreed to undertake
to continue the sharecropper's work on the land. For such marriages a specific
license of the Sultan, sureties, and payment of a marriage due called aghirlik
were demanded.
Comparable in its basic features to the Western colonate system, the
use of war captives in agriculture, however, had a limited application
in the Ottoman Empire. Under Suleyman I (1520- 1566) in the central part
of Rumeli encompassing Thrace and Macedonia, the slave agriculturists numbered
only 6021 men, including those in the Khasslar, about 2 percent of the
whole population of the region; and, in the province of Anatolia 1981 men.
The number must have been somewhat larger in the previous period since
the state had to change slave status of some communities into that of re'aya
-- a change which seemed to take place as a result of the great difficulty
of keeping under control these slave colonies, which constantly dwindled
away through marriage and intermingling among the overwhelming re'aya majority
around. In fact, in the subsequent surveys in the sixteenth century, the
slaves in the Khasslar are referred to merely as sharecroppers. Over time
slave agriculturists everywhere in the empire were to be identified with
the re'aya masses and disappear.
Slavery, it can be safely said in conclusion, was an institution of
vital significance for Ottoman society. Not only the state organization
but also various segments of the economy -- the silk industry, ciftlik
agriculture, distant trade, as well as the extended household-type family
of the upper class -- all rested upon slavery. It must be emphasized however
that all were dependent on a regular large-scale supply of slaves from
outside, since slavery in a Muslim society could maintain itself only with
importation.
Islamic jurisprudence recognized only one category of slaves -- those
born in slavery or captured in war. Those Muslims born in slavery or converted
while slaves could remain in slavery, but no free Muslim or dhimmi, non-Muslim
subject of the Sultan could be reduced to slavery. When a slave woman had
a child by her master the child was born free. Islam also encouraged emancipation
as a work of piety. The children of a female slave are free on her emancipation.
A grant of enfranchisement taking effect at the master's death, a practice
called tadbir, favored by religious law and widely used as the Ottoman
kadi records and testaments demonstrate, was perhaps the most important
factor in eroding the slave population. Also contractual enfranchisement
as seen above was widely practiced in the Empire.
Supply of Slaves
In the period extending from about 1260 to 1390, the age of the great
expansion of the Anatolian Turks into Bvzantine territories in western
Anatolia and Thrace and into Macedonia and Bulgaria, captives flowed into
the Ottoman lands in great numbers. It can even be added that during this
period the great demand for slaves from the Islamic hinterland and rising
prices played an important part in the extension of the raids and consequently
the rise of the prosperous ghazi principalities in Western Anatolia. Paradoxically
enough not only for the slave markets in Italy but also for agricultural
labor in their Levantine colonies, Venetians and Genoese too became regular
customers of these principalities. As a result of its growing need for
slaves, especially during the periods of rapid growth such as experienced
under Bayezid I (1389-1402) and Mehmed II (1451-1481), as well as when
internal crises slowed down the flow of slaves, the Ottoman state experienced
shortages in slaves, and as explained above, had to resort to extraordinary
measures, such as the levying of boys from the non-muslim reaya, and the
conducting of mass enslavements and deportations from the newly conquered
lands.
On the other hand the rise of the Ottoman Empire affected the international
conditions of slave trade in the Mediterranean in general. The slave traffic
to Italy from the Balkans through Dubrovnik stopped. Due to the strict
control of the traffic through the straits after the Ottoman conquests
of Istanbul (1453) and Caffa ( 1475) and the prohibition of traffic in
Muslim slaves, mostly Turco-Tatars of the steppes north of the.Black Sea,
the slave trade betveen the Crimea and Egypt slacked off or changed its
early character. As is well known, this trade, first in importance in the
commerce of the Black Sea, was a Genoese monopoly. The new circumstances
resulted in the ruin of the Genoese prosperity in the Black Sea, caused
higher prices for slaves throughout the Mediterranean, and the replacement
of Turco-Tatar slaves with Caucasian and Russian slaves.
The impact on the Mamluk system has not yet been the subject of a proper
study. What is certain is that the Mamluks now offered unusual prices for
Caucasian slaves which greatly encouraged the trade in Circassians and
other Caucasian peoples. On the other hand, the new situation caused the
prices to treble in Italy, and seems to have reinforced, among other factors,
the anti-slavery feeling in Western Christendom, and undermined slavery
as an institution in sixteenth-century European society. Now the only exception
in Europe was the great need for galley slaves, who were provided mostly
by European corsairs from the territories under Ottoman rule.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, before the Crimean Tatars
became the main suppliers of slaves, the Ottoman ghazis or akindjis, raiders,
on the frontier areas in the Balkans and Central Europe met the huge demand
for slaves in the Ottoman market. Suleyman's reign ( 1520-1566 ), the zenith
of Ottoman power, witnessed also the great extension of raiding and enslavement
activities by the Ottomans. Capture and sale of slaves usually brought
to an individual akindji or Ottoman soldier a sizeable income -- a strong
incentive for him to join the raids or campaigns. It also furnished an
important source of revenue for the Sultan's treasury, since, as we know,
one-fifth, pendjik, of the captives or of their market value belonged to
the Sultan. The captives always brought a good price in the cities' slave
markets, which were organized originally and constantly supervised by the
state.
An eye witness, Konstantin Mihailovic, gives the following description
of raids organized in a frontier center in the fifteenth century:
"The Turkish raiders are voluntary -- of their own will they ride
on expeditions for their livelihood.... They live by means of livestock
and raise horses.... If any of them does not want to go on a foray himself,
he will lend his horses to others for half (of the spoils); if they win
some booty they accept it as good, but if they bring nothing, then they
say 'We have no gain, but we have great works of piety, like those who
toil with us and ride against the Christians, because we support one another.'
And whatever they seize or capture, whether male or female except for boys,
they will sell them all for money. The emperor himself will pay for the
boys."
The slave merchants, esirdjis, working in the frontier centers or following
the Ottoman armies, bought captives quite cheaply and brought them to inland
markets, the most important of which were in Iskub (Skoplje), Edirne, Bursa,
and Istanbul. By the end of the fifteenth century the Bursa slave market
appears to have been the liveliest as demonstrated by the kadi records.
Even the Sultan sent slaves to be sold at Bursa where, obviously the best
prices were expected. Persian silk merchants were among the best customers.
Apparently Bursa replaced Sivas in the slave trade in the Middle East during
the Ottoman period. Edirne appears to be the main slave market in the Balkans.
B. de La Brocquiere on his journey in Rumili in 1432 saw such a train of
25 captives led by slave merchants to Edirne. Later in the peace treaty
with the Ottoman state Austria made the Porte agree not to allow the slave
merchants to roam about the borders and buy slaves captured in violation
of agreements. Not only European visitors who met trains of slaves on their
way to the Ottoman capital, but also Ottoman historians and epic literature
furnish a vivid picture of this activity. It should be noted that the Holy
War, and distribution of booty, ghanima, played a major part in early Islamic
history, and were regulated in every detail by Islamic law. The Ottomans
followed these regulations closely, as they did those on slavery in general.
Despite the fact that the Ottomans themselves used most of these slaves,
there is documentary evidence that captives taken by Turkmens of the principalities
of western Anatolia and by the Ottomans in the period fourteenth-sixteenth
centuries became subject of an export trade to Egypt and Italy. In Venice's
Levantine possessions, for instance on Crete, slaves of Balkan origin were
employed in agriculture, and in Italy (Florence, Milan) in certain specialized
crafts. Italian notarial documents demonstrate that slaves from the Balkans,
Greeks, Wallachians, Albanians, and Serbians, appeared in Italy in the
fifteenth century (with the exception of the Bosnian slaves who appeared
earlier). The same observation is made in the Mamluk kingdom in Egypt.
An Ottoman customs register in Antalya (Satalia), on the southern coast
of Anatolia, dated 1560, also tells us that while white slaves were still
then exported to Egypt and Syria in quite substantial numbers, in return
black slaves constituted an important part of the imports from those countries.
It should be noted that particular ethnic groups among the slaves in
the Ottoman empire or among those purchased by foreigners became dominant
at given periods of time depending on where Ottoman raiding was then intense.
In the fourteenth century, Greeks and Bulgarians; in the fifteenth century,
Serbs, Albanians, Wallachians, Bosnians; and in the sixteenth century,
Hungarians, Germans, Italians, Spaniards and Georgians.
In the second half of the sixteenth century none of these sources of
supply could compete with the Black Sea, the importance of which grew in
proportion to the decline of the Ottoman akindji organization in the Central
European frontiers mainly as a result of the stiffening of Austrian resistance.
Now the Crimean Tatars supplied the larger part of the Ottoman market,
specializing, so to speak, in the business. Raids and expeditions into
Poland, Circassia, and Russia became a regular occupation of vital economic
importance for the tribal aristocracy of the khanate, so much so that often
their relations with their khans or with the Ottoman Sultans were determined
by their policies on this fundamental issue. Muscovite lands became the
main field of operations from the time of Muhammed Girey I (1514-1523);
and large scale expeditions became regular after 1534 when the legacy of
the Golden Horde in the Volga basin was the subject of a long struggle
between Muscovy and the Crimea. The Crimeans naturally considered their
actions as a Holy War against an enemy who occupied the sister Muslim khanates
in the Volga basin and threatened the Crimea itself.
The slave trade was indeed the foundation of the Crimean economy,. Essentially
it was the economic pressures resulting from immigration or from drought
and famine, a frequent occurrence in thc region, that thrust thousands
of men, tribal warriors as well as commoners, into Russia and Poland for
raids. Revenue accruing from the sale of slaves, contemporary observers
asserted, constituted a real relief for the country at such times. Nogays,
pure nomads of the steppes outside the Crimea, were absolutely dependent
on the slave trade, selling their captives wholesale to the merchants coming
to their headquarters. Most of the slaves were exported to the Ottoman
market, but an important part of the captives was employed by the Crimean
tribal aristocracy itself as agricultural slave labor to grow cereals for
the city of Istanbul. Obviously that was the reason why they sometimes
tried to capture and move whole families in their raids. If Evliya Celebi's
statement can be trusted, there were 400,000 slaves in the Crimea as against
187,000 Muslims (100,000 of the latter were, he added, commoners and 87,000
military) in 1667.
Raids by the Crimeans into Russia or Poland, usually in small parties
from 200 to 1000, were continual occurrences irrespective of the formal
peace between the Crimean Khanate and those countries. During their raids,
the Crimeans avoided as much as possible the line of defenses which consisted
of a series of the fortified towns with garrisons on the frontier. Scattered
along an extensive frontier line, the Russian forces were often powerless
before large scale Tatar invasions carefully organized under the chiefs
of the tribal aristocracy or members of the Girey dynasty. In these raids
slaves were considered as real booty, and their safe transport was always
the chief concern of the raiders: they usually tried to avoid fighting,
and doing anything which might lessen the value of their human chattel.
As under the Genoese, Caffa (Turkish Kefe) and Kerch were the principal
trade centers for slaves in the Crimea. The other less important centers
in the region were Azov (Azak), Taman, Copa and Sokhum where Tatar, Circassian
and Ottoman slave merchants met. Slave trade and taxation in the Crimea
and Azov were regulated under special laws which apparently were made on
the Genoese models. The slave tax, taken as a rule at Caffa, was quite
high: 210 akce, per slave, and with some additional dues reaching 255 akce
(about four gold ducats at the end of the fifteenth century) .
At the height of the Crimean raids into Russia and Poland between 1514-1654
captives are reported in unusually great numbers. In 1578 annual customs
revenue from the slave tax at Caffa was estimated at 4,463,196 akce. Divided
by 255, the highest tax rate, the figure 17,502 slaves per year is obtained.
In 1614 following the large-scale expedition of Djanibek Girey Khan each
Tatar soldier came, according to Russian sources, with five to ten slaves
and prices at Caffa went down as low as 10 or 20 gold ducats per adult
male slave, while average price was over forty gold ducats in Edirne during
this. About thirty major Tatar raids were recorded into Muscovite territories
between 1558-1596.
Whenever a peace with Muscovy, unpopular though it might be, was imposed
upon the tribal aristocracy they often forced the khan to lead them in
expeditions into Circassia, the second important region for slave raids
during this period. Excuses were easy to find since the majority of Circassians
were pagans at this time, and their chieftains refractory to the Crimean
suzerainty. Sahib Girey Khan (1532-1551) who intensified the anti-Muscovite
policy of the Khanate was also responsible for large scale expeditions
into Circassia which resulted in mass enslavements. In the 1530s Kansavuk,
Circassian chieftain of the Jana agreed to send a yearly tribute of one
thousand slaves to the Ottoman Sultan and five hundred to the Khan. Upon
his failure to keep his promise, Sahib Girey led an expedition against
him in 1539, and took, according to his court chronicler, 50,000 captives.
We learn from the same source that in his subsequent expedition against
Kabartay ( Caberda ), the Tatars captured 10,000 Circassians, and in that
against yedukh (Bjaduk) and Aliyuk 40,000 or 50,000. Circassians then came
to exchange their captured noblemen for 20 to 100 common slaves.
Let us conclude this rapid survey by asking the question whether the
Ottoman society can really be defined as a slave society in the sense that
its basic socio-economic structure was dependent for survival on an absolute
control of labor or servile labor. We tried to show that the need for control
of labor in Ottoman society varied in degree depending on the requirements
of different segments of the society and economy. Slave in its classical
sense, a person legally reduced to the nature of thing and subject to absolute
possession and use by its owner, was something urgently needed in this
traditional society in such enterprises as required large-scale, sustained
and regular manpower -- not only for an imperial army and navy, colossal
construction works, the elevation of large number of transport animals
or large-scale agricultural production for the army or palace, but also
in certain crafts, large estates and extended households in the society
at large. However, even in these segments which, as a whole, constituted
a limited area within the general socio-economic setup of the Empire, servile
labor, with the exception of the konak (the extended household), and the
large estates, disappeared over time especially from the end of the sixteenth
century on when imperial laws were discarded and centralized power declined.
We have already seen how in the second half of the fifteenth century the
imperial government had great difficulty in maintaining its slave colony
in the Khasskr. It became evident that servile labor was something extraneous
within the Islamic agricultural system, and was exposed to constant and
rapid erosion. The basic Ottoman organization of agricultural production
rested upon the re'aya -- ciftlik system, that is to say, agricultural
production was organized on the basis of small agricultural units (ciftliks)
on the state owned lands placed in the possession of free peasant families
(re'aya) -- Muslim or non-Muslimwho were under the sole obligation to cultivate
it and pay taxes regulated by the state laws (kanun). They were free as
defined by Islamic Law. No other person could force them to work or surrender
the fruits of their labor without compensation. Even the restrictions such
as the interdiction of abandoning the ciftlik land or the imposition of
certain public services, such as mandatory work in mining or guarding the
mountain passes, were not absolute, and were always mitigated by certain
exemptions granted by the state. The imperial government was alert in preventing
developments leading to the creation of personal ties of any sort over
the reaya, and from the beginning made it a general policy to abolish serfdom
or any other kind of personal tie over the rea-ya wherever it extended
its rule. Of course, such a policy aimed first of all at weakening the
power of the local lords in favor of the central authority. The Ottomans
were aware of the fact that it served the expansion of their rule, and
they utilized it as a propaganda device among the peasantry subject to
serf- dom in neighboring countries.
The ciftlik-re'aya system was the dominant regime in the Ottoman Empire
covering an overwhelming majority of the rural population along with most
of the arable lands. It was not originally an Ottoman invention, but it
was rather the re-establishment of an old system which had replaced servile
labor as the major form of agricultural labor, economically the most advantageous
and socially the safest under the demographic and economic conditions which
prevailed during late antiquity. It can even be said that the Islamic Caliphate
and the Eastern Roman Empire owed their enduring imperial existence to
the fact that they embraced and became the champions of this regime which
favored the continuance of independent peasant family units on the land.
At any rate what is known for sure is that this was the basic social
and economic structure of the Ottoman Empire, carefully watched by the
imperial government. Moreover, the Ottoman administration was ready to
change the slave status of certain groups and eventually identified them
with the re'aya when overall developments began to lead toward the disappearance
of servile labor -- the difflculties in keeping a slave community within
a majority of free peasants, the erosion of this community by frequent
runaways and marriages with free men, and, perhaps the most important of
all, the fact that slave labor became unprofitable under the new conditions
of rising prices. But still, whenever private ownership under the Sharia
stipulations was in question, especially on large estates and konaks any
government disposition was excluded. It was only under the pressure from
Western nations in the nineteenth century that the Ottoman government offlcially
abolished slavery of any kind in its territories.