Human enslavement in the Ottoman economy and society
Ottomans with European slaves depicted in a 1608 engraving in Salomon Schweigger's account of his 1578 journey in the Ottoman Empire.
Slavery in the Ottoman Empire was a major institution and a significant part of the Ottoman Empire's economy and traditional society.[1] The main sources of slaves were wars and politically organized enslavement expeditions in the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Southeast Europe, and Africa. It has been reported that the selling price of slaves decreased after large military operations.[2] In Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), the administrative and political center of the Ottoman Empire, about a fifth of the 16th- and 17th-century population consisted of slaves.[3] Statistics of these centuries suggest that Istanbul's additional slave imports from the Black Sea slave trade have totaled around 2.5 million from 1453 to 1700.[4]
Even after several measures to ban slavery in the late 19th century, the practice continued largely unabated into the early 20th century.
A member of the Ottoman slave class, called a kul in Turkish, could achieve high status. Eunuch harem guards and janissaries are some of the better known positions an enslaved person could hold, but enslaved women were actually often supervised by them. However, women played and held the most important roles within the harem institution.[5]
A large percentage of officials in the Ottoman government were bought as slaves,[6] raised free, and integral to the success of the Ottoman Empire from the 14th to 19th centuries. Many enslaved officials themselves owned numerous slaves, although the Sultan himself owned by far the most.[7] By raising and specially training slaves as officials in palace schools such as Enderun, where they were taught to serve the Sultan and other educational subjects, the Ottomans created administrators with intricate knowledge of government and fanatic loyalty.
^"Supply of Slaves". Archived from the original on 2017-05-04. Retrieved 2007-10-30.
^Spyropoulos Yannis, Slaves and freedmen in 17th- and early 18th-century Ottoman Crete, Turcica, 46, 2015, p. 181, 182.
^Welcome to Encyclopædia Britannica's Guide to Black History.
^The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 3, AD 1420–AD 1804
^Keddie 2012
^Fisher 1980.
^Dursteler 2006, p. 72
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