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ABSTRACT
This article, by focusing on Crimean slavery, aims to enhance our understanding of the social and economic nature of slavery that underwent a remarkable change between the conquest of Caffa (1475) and the Treaty of Karlowitz (1699), both of which marked a turning point in the history of slavery in Crimea. With the conquest of Caffa by the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Peninsula turned into a ‘slaving hub’ in Pontic-Danube steppe land for nearly 200 years. In this period, slaves became a basic commodity employed by a wide range of people in Crimea from different backgrounds from urbanites to peasants and from those who were wealthy to those who were penniless. By contrast in the aftermath of Caffa, however, the Treaty of Karlowitz caused a rapid depletion of slaves and consequently a sharp decline in revenues that Crimean Tatars derived from slavery which was accompanied by high inflation in slave prices and therefore a huge labour shortage. Using a micro-global perspective, this article examines these two political occurrences, which are described as a ‘turning point’ and ‘beginning of the transformation’ in Crimean society and explores the nexus between the political contexts and the changes in economic and social life .
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Ehud. R. Toledano, Victor Ostapchuk, Hannah Barker, Onur Usta, and Sercan Hamza Bağlama, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on my article.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Michel Balard, ‘Black Sea Slavery in Genoese Notarial Sources, 13th–15th Centuries’, in Slavery in the Black Sea Region, c.900–1900: Forms of Unfreedom at the Intersection between Christianity and Islam, ed. Felicia Roşu (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2022), 19–40; Sergei Karpov, ‘Slavery in the Black Sea Region in Venetian Notarial Sources, 14th–15th Centuries’, in Slavery in the Black Sea Region, c.900–1900: Forms of Unfreedom at the Intersection between Christianity and Islam, ed. Felicia Roşu (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2022), 41–59; in the same edited book, Daphne Penna, ‘The Role of Slaves in the Byzantine Economy, 10th–11th Centuries: Legal Aspects’, in Slavery in the Black Sea Region, c.900–1900: Forms of Unfreedom at the Intersection between Christianity and Islam, ed. Felicia Roşu (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2022), 63–89.
2 Hannah Barker, That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260–1500 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).
3 Jeffrey Fynn-Paul, ‘Empire, Monotheism and Slavery in the Greater Mediterranean Region from Antiquity to the Early Modern Era’, Past and Present no. 205 (2009): 3–40; Jeffrey Fynn-Paul, ‘Introduction. Slaving Zones in Global History: The Evaluation of a Concept’, in Slaving Zones: Cultural Identities, Ideologies, and Institutions in the Evolution of Global Slavery, ed. Jeffrey Fynn-Paul and Damian Alan Pargas (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2018), 3.
4 Hannah Barker, ‘Christianities in Conflict: The Black Sea as a Genoese Slaving Zone in the Later Middle Ages’, in Slaving Zones: Cultural Identities, Ideologies, and Institutions in the Evolution of Global Slavery, ed. Jeffrey Fynn-Paul and Damian Alan Pargas (Leiden Boston: Brill, 2018), 50–69.
5 Halil İnalcık, Devlet-i ‘Aliyye Osmanlı İmparatorluğu Üzerine Araştırmalar I [The Great State, Researches on the Ottoman Empire I] (Istanbul: İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, 2009), 69.
6 Alan W. Fisher, The Crimean Tatars (Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1978), 26.
7 Sergej Karpov, ‘The Black Sea Region Before and After the Fourth Crusade’, in Urbs Capta: The Fourth Crusade and its Consequences, ed. Angeliki Laiou (Paris: Éditions Lethielleux, 2005), 285–94.
8 Sergei Karpov, La Navigazione Veneziana nel Mar Nero XIII–XV sec. [The Venetian Navigation in the 13–15th Centuries Black Sea] (Ravenna: Edizioni del Girasole, 2000); Virgil Ciocîltan, The Mongols and the Black Sea Trade in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, trans. Samuel Willcocks (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2012); Marie Favereau, The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World (London: Belknap Press, 2021); Nicola Di Cosmo, ‘Black Sea Emporia and the Mongol Empire: A Reassessment of the Pax Mongolica’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, no. 531/2 (2010): 83–108.
9 Reuven Amitai, ‘Diplomacy and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean: A Re-Examination of the Mamluk-Byzantine-Genoese Triangle in the Late Thirteenth Century in Light of the Existing Early Correspondence’, Oriente Moderno, no. 88/2 (2008), 357.
10 István Vásáry, ‘The Crimean Khanate and the Great Horde (1440s–1500s) A Fight for Primacy’, in The Crimean Khanate between East and West (15th–18th Century), ed. Denise Klein (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2012), 13–26.
11 Halil İnalcık, Studies and Sources on the Ottoman Black Sea 1: The Customs Register of Caffa, 1487–1490, (Studies in Ottoman Documents Pertaining to Ukraine and the Black Sea Countries, 2) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 110.
12 Mehmet Genç, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Devlet ve Ekonomi [State and Economy in the Ottoman Empire] (Istanbul: Ötüken Neşriyat, 2002), 208.
13 Zübeyde Güneş Yağcı, ‘H. 1015/1016 (M. 1606/1607) Tarihli İstanbul Gümrük Defteri [H. 1015/1016 (M. 1606/1607) Dated Istanbul Customs Register]’, History Studies, no. 5/2 (2013), 507–36.
14 Child slaves were taxed between 10 and 30 akçe for those up to the age of three; 100 akçe for those up to the age of eight; 200 akçe for those between the ages of eight and twelve; 250–280 akçe for those who had reached puberty; 250–270 for those with beards; and between 150 and 250 akçe for those who were old but able to work. For the full text of the Imperial Legal Code (Kanunname), see Ahmed Akgündüz, Osmanlı Kanunnâmeleri ve Hukukî Tahlilleri, II. Bâyezid Devri Kanunnâmeleri [Ottoman Legal Codes and Their Legal Analysis, The Legal Codes of the Reign of Sultan Bâyezid II] (Istanbul: Fey Vakfı Yayınları, 1990), 129–34.
15 Halil İnalcık, An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire Volume I: 1300–1600, ed. Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 283–4.
16 Regarding the Ottomans’ presence in the Black Sea, see Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, ‘Inner Lake or Frontier? The Ottoman Black Sea in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Enjeux politiques, économiques et militaires en Mer Noire (XIVe–XXIe siècles), ed. Faruk Bilici and Ionel Cândea and Anca Popescu (Brăila: Musée de Braïla, 2007), 125–39; For 16th and 17th century Cossack raids, see. Victor Ostapchuk, ‘The Human Landscape of the Ottoman Black Sea in the Face of the Cossack Naval Raids’, Oriente Moderno, no. 81/1 (2001): 23–95.
17 It would be misleading to assume that the Crimean Khanate, as a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, was independent in its internal affairs and dependent in its foreign affairs. Alan W. Fisher, ‘Muscovy and the Black Sea Slave Trade’, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, no. 4 (1972): 578. Studies showing that the Crimean Khans established various relations with neighbouring states without the knowledge of the Ottoman Empire refute this belief. For a sample study, see Fırat Yaşa and Yaroslav Pylypchuk, ‘Strategy, Diplomacy, and Actors: Relations between the Crimean Khanate and Sweden in the 17th Century’, Ukraine in Central and Eastern Europe, no. 17 (2016): 125–38.
18 Andrzej Gliwa, ‘How Captives Were Taken: The Making of Tatar Slaving Raids in the Early Modern Period’, in Slavery in the Black Sea Region, c.900–1900: Forms of Unfreedom at the Intersection between Christianity and Islam, ed. Felicia Roşu (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2022), 187–249.
19 Fisher, ‘Muscovy and the Black Sea Slave Trade’, 580–2.
20 Dariusz Kołodziejczyk, ‘Slave Hunting and Slave Redemption as a Business Enterprise: The Northern Black Sea Region in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries’, Oriente Moderno, no. 25/1 (2006), 151–2; Mikhail Kizilov, ‘Slave Trade in the Early Modern Crimea From the Perspective of Christian, Muslim and Jewish Sources’, Journal of Early Modern History, no. 11 (2007): 7; Mikhail Kizilov, ‘Slaves, Money Lenders, and Prisoner Guards: The Jews and the Trade in Slaves and Captives in the Crimean Khanate’, Journal of Jewish Studies, no. 58/2 (2007): 2; Natalia Królikowska-Jedlińska, ‘The Role of Circassian Slaves in the Foreign and Domestic Policy of the Crimean Khanate in the Early Modern Period’, in Slaves and Slave Agency in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Stefan Conermann and Gül Şen (Vandenhoeck, Göttingen: V & R Unipress GmbH, 2020), 356; Gliwa, ‘How Captives Were Taken’, 234.
21 On this issue, see both the registers of the imperial governing bureau (mühimme defterleri) kept in the Ottoman center and the complaints in various Italian archival documents: Fırat Yaşa, Bahçesaray (1650–1675) [Bakhchysarai (1650–1675)] (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2021), 168–9.
22 Stéphane Henaut, Jani Mitchell, A Bite-Sized History of France: Gastronomic Tales of Revolution, War and Enlightenment (New York, London: The New Press, 2018), 186.
23 The earliest Crimean court register is dated 1608. This collection of 121 registries contains records from the early seventeenth century until the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The vast majority of the registers are about the city of Bakhchysarai, the center of the Khanate. However, there are a few detached registers of other Crimean cities (namely, Gözleve, Karasu, and Dip Tarhan). Halil İnalcık, ‘Kırım Hanlığı Kadı Sicilleri Bulundu’, Belleten, no. 60/227 (1996): 165–6. In this article, Crimean Court Registers will be cited as CCR.
24 CCR, vol. 1, fol. 32, a–2; CCR, vol. 1, fol. 48, a–4, b–1, b–2, b–3, b–4; CCR, vol. 3a, fol. 60, a–1; CCR, vol. 3a, fol. 61, b–1; CCR, vol. 3a, fol. 65, a–2; CCR, vol. 3a, fol. 67, b–1; CCR, vol. 3b, fol. 29, a–1; CCR, vol. 3b, fol. 49, b–1. When the heirs had problems in splitting the possessions amongst themselves, they applied to the court to register the entire probate. The qadi charged a certain amount of court fees for this procedure. For seminal work on this subject, see Zeynep Dörtok Abacı, Boğaç Ergene, ‘The Price of Justice: Revenues Generated by Ottoman Courts of Law in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, no. 81/1 (2022): 25–52.
25 CCR, vol. 21, fol. 39, b–1; There are hundreds of examples in the Crimean court registers and for a few of them, see CCR, vol. 22, fol. 14, b–2; CCR, vol. 22, fol. 58, a–7.
26 Yaşa, Bahçesaray (1650–1675), 120, 176, 191.
27 Yaşa, Bahçesaray (1650–1675), 58; Natalia Królikowska–Jedlińska, Law and Division of Power in the Crimean Khanate (1532–1774) with Special Reference to the Reing of Murad Giray (1678–1683) (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2019), 135.
28 CCR, vol. 23a, fol. 127, a–6.
29 Fırat Yaşa, ‘Kırım Hanlığı’nda Köleliğin Sosyal ve Mali Boyutları [The Social and Financial Dimensions of Slavery in Crimean Khanate]’, Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences, no. 13/3 (2014): 657–69; Yaşa, Bahçesaray (1650–1675), 185–9.
30 Ehud R. Toledano, As If Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2007), 60–107.
31 There are numerous examples in the Crimean qadi court registers. For an already published study, see Fırat Yaşa, ‘Between Life and Death: Slaves and Violence in Crimean Society in the Last Quarter of 17th Century’, Selçuk University Journal of Studies Turcology, no. 47 (2019): 433–43; Fırat Yaşa, Zeynep Dörtok Abacı, ‘Azrail’in Kara Eli: 17. Yüzyılda Kırım’da Veba Salgınları, Tacirler ve Köleler [The Black Hand of the Grim Reaper: Plague, Merchants, and Slaves in the 17th Century Crimea]’, in Bitmeyen Hikaye: Küresel Salgın Çağında Tarihe Yeniden Bakmak (Salgın Hastalıklar ve Kamu Sağlığı Pratikleri) [The Never-ending Story: Revisiting History in the Age of Global Pandemics (Epidemics and Public Health Practices)], ed. İsmail Yaşayanlar (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2022), 50–1.
32 For a few examples, see the following: CCR, vol. 1, fol. 44, b–3; CCR, vol. 3a, fol. 83, b–2; CCR, vol. 4, fol. 34, b–2; CCR, vol. 18, fol. 60, a–4; CCR, vol. 26, fol. 74, b–6.
33 Yaşa, Bahçesaray (1650–1675), 148.
34 CCR, vol. 8, fol. 77, b–2. Moreover, this situation was of course not unique to Crimea; in the Ottoman slave markets, virgin female slaves were also in higher demand and sold at higher prices. Madeline C. Zilfi, Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 192.
35 CCR, vol. 1, fol. 61, a–3; CCR, vol. 1, fol. 61, b–4; CCR, vol. 1, fol. 61, b–5.
36 Fisher, ‘Muscovy and the Black Sea Slave Trade’, 580–1.
37 Fırat Yaşa, ‘17. Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında Kırım Hanlığı’nda İaşe, Değişen Fiyatlar ve Topluma Etkisi [Subsistence and Changing Prices in the Crimean Khanate and Their Impact on Society in the Second Half of 17th Century]’, in Üçüncü İktisat Tarihi Kongresi Bildiriler-1 [Proceedings of the Third Economics History Congress], ed. Mustafa Öztürk and Ayşe Değerli (İzmir: İzmir Demokrasi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2019), 139–50.
38 CCR, vol. 18, fol. 20, a–2.
39 Kahraman Şakul, ‘Siege Warfare in Verse and Prose: The Ottoman Conquest of Kamianets-Podilsky (Kamaniçe), 1672’, in The World of the Siege: Representations of Early Modern Positional Warfare, ed. Anke Fischer-Kattner and Jamel Ostwald (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 210.
40 Gábor Ágoston, ‘The Ottoman Wars and the Chancing Balance of Power along the Danube in the Early Eighteenth Century’, in The Peace of Passarowitz, 1718, ed. Charles Ingrao, Nikola Samardžić, and Jovan Pešalj (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 2011), 93.
41 Yaşa, ‘17. Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında Kırım Hanlığı’nda İaşe, Değişen Fiyatlar ve Topluma Etkisi’, 147–8.
42 Eric J. Hobsbawm, ‘The General Crisis of the European Economy in the 17th Century’, Past and Present, no. 5 (1954), 33–53.
43 For the early period, see Yaşa, Bahçesaray (1650–1675), 193. For the period after 1675, with a few exceptions, almost all records of manumission are in the form of a contract of mükâtebe. For examples, see CCR, vol. 22, fol. 1, a–4; CCR, vol. 22, fol. 16, a–2; CCR, vol. 22, fol. 33, a–3; CCR, vol. 22, fol. 38, a–1; CCR, vol. 22, fol. 39, b–4; CCR, vol. 22, fol. 58, a–7, a–8; CCR, vol. 23a, fol. 31, b–5; CCR, vol. 23a, fol. 112, b–3; CCR, vol. 23a, fol. 127, a–7; CCR, vol. 23b, fol. 15, b–8; CCR, vol. 23b, fol. 19, b–3; CCR, vol. 23b, fol. 34, a–2; CCR, vol. 24, fol. 22, a–3; CCR, vol. 24, fol. 88, a–4; CCR, vol. 24, fol. 108, b–1; CCR, vol. 25, fol. 59, a–3; CCR, vol. 25, fol. 59, a–4; CCR, vol. 26, fol. 75, a–2; CCR, vol. 27, fol. 7, a–1; CCR, vol. 27, fol. 53, b–1; CCR, vol. 27, fol. 115, b–4; CCR, vol. 29, fol. 6, b–2; CCR, vol. 29, fol. 79, a–3. CCR, vol. 31, 36, b–2; CCR, vol. 32, fol. 33, a–1.
44 CCR, vol. 8, fol. 67, b–2; CCR, vol. 11, fol. 62, b–1; CCR, vol. 14, fol. 3, a–6; CCR, vol. 4, fol. 13, a–1, a–2, b–1; CCR, vol. 23a, fol. 122, a–4; CCR, vol. 26, fol. 93, a–1.
45 Fırat Yaşa, ‘Born and Bred in Seventeenth-century Crimea: Child Slavery, Social Reality and Cultural Identity’, in Children and Childhood in the Ottoman Empire, ed. Gulay Yılmaz and Fruma Zachs (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021): 177–95.
46 Kirill Kochegarov, ‘From the “Eternal Peace” to the Treaty of Carlowitz: Relations between Russia, the Sublime Porte and the Crimean Khanate (1686–1699)’, in The Treaties of Carlowitz (1699): Antecedents, Course and Consequences, ed. Colin Heywood and Ivan Parvev (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2020), 195–6.
47 Rifa‘at Ali Abou-El-Haj, ‘The Reisülküttab and Ottoman Diplomacy at Karlowitz’ (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1963), 9–10.
48 Brian L. Davies, Warfare, State and Society on the Black Sea Steppe, 1500–1700 (London, New York: Routledge, 2007), 193.
49 Rifa‘at Ali Abou-El-Haj, ‘The Formal Closure of the Ottoman Frontier in Europe: 1699–1703’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, no. 89/3 (1969): 471; Enachi Kogălniceanu, ‘Leatopisețul Țării Moldovei de la domnia ânteiu și până la a patra domnie a lui Constantinu Mavrocordatu V. V., scrisu în Țarigradu de Enaki Kogălniceanu, biv vătavu de aprozi (1733–1774) [The Chronicle of Moldavia from the First to the Fourth Reing of Prince Costantine Maurocordatos, Written in Istanbul by Enaki Kogălniceanu]’, in Cronicele României seu Letopiseșele Moldaviei și Valahiei, Vol. III [The Chronicles of Romania or the Chronicles of Moldavia and Wallachia, Vol. III], ed. Mihail Kogălniceanu (București: Imprimeria Națională, 1874), 266.
50 Ekkehard Eickhoff, Venedig, Wien und die Osmanen, Umbruch in Südosteuropa 1645–1700 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988), 281.
51 CCR, vol. 34, fol. 16, a–1.
52 CCR, vol. 34, fol. 25, a–2; CCR, vol. 34, fol. 26, a–1; CCR, vol. 38, fol. 24, a–1.
53 CCR, vol. 34, fol. 29, b–2.
54 CCR, vol. 38, fol. 45, a–1.
55 Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Quis Custodied Custodes? Controlling Slave Identities and Slave Traders in the Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Istanbul’, in Frontiers of Faith. Religious Exchange and the Constitution of Religious Identities, 1400–1750, ed. Eszter Andor and György István Tóth (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001), 124.
56 M. Ertuğrul Düzdağ, Şeyhülislâm Ebussuud Efendi Fetvaları Işığında 16. Asır Türk Hayatı [16th-Century Turkish Life According to Fatwās by Ebussuud Efendi, the Shaykh al-Islam] (Istanbul: Enderun Kitapevi, 1972), 162.
57 CCR, vol. 36, fol. 25, a–4.
58 Yaşa, ‘17. Yüzyılın İkinci Yarısında Kırım Hanlığı’nda İaşe, Değişen Fiyatlar ve Topluma Etkisi’, 145.
59 CCR, vol. 36, fol. 95, a–5.
60 CCR, vol. 37, fol. 41, a–2.
61 Yaşa, Bahçesaray (1650–1675), 147.
62 CCR, vol. 37, fol. 50, a–2.
63 3 Numaralı Mühimme Defteri 966–968/1558–1560 [Official Registers of Important Affairs, Numbered 3, 966–968/1558–1560] (Ankara: T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Arşivleri Genel Müdürlüğü Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı, 1993), 665.
64 Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 272–3.
65 CCR, vol. 38, fol. 18, a–5.
66 For the rest of the story, see Işık Tamdoğan, ‘La fille du meunier et l'épouse du gouverneur d’Adana, un cas d’imposture au début du XVIIIème siècle’ [The Miller’s Daughter and the Wife of the Governor of Adana (A Story of Imposture in the Early Eighteenth Century)], Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée, no. 127 (2010): 143–55.
67 CCR, vol. 38, fol. 58, a–2.
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Fırat Yaşa
Fırat Yaşa is an Associate Professor in the Department of History, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences 17020, Çanakkale, Turkey. Email: [email protected]