Women And Slavery In The Late Ottoman Empire

This book examines gender politics through slavery and social regulation in the Ottoman Empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Slaves and Slave Agency in the Ottoman Empire offers a new contribution to slavery studies relating to the Ottoman Empire. Given the fact that the classical binary of 'slavery' and 'freedom' derives from the transatlantic experience, this volume presents an alternative approach by examining the strong asymmetric relationships of dependency documented in the Ottoman Empire. A closer look at the Ottoman social order discloses manifold and ambiguous conditions involving enslavement practices, rather than a single universal pattern. The authors examine various forms of enslavement and dependency with a particular focus on agency, i. e. the room for maneuver, which the enslaved could secure for themselves, or else the available options for action in situations of extreme individual or group dependencies.

A Moveable Empire examines the history of the Ottoman Empire through a new lens, focusing on the migrant groups that lived within its bounds and their changing relationship to the state's central authorities. Unlike earlier studies that take an evolutionary view of tribe-state relations -- casting the development of a state as a story in which nomadic tribes give way to settled populations -- this book argues that mobile groups played an important role in shaping Ottoman institutions and, ultimately, the early republican structures of modern Turkey. Over much of the empire's long history, local interests influenced the development of the Ottoman state as authorities sought to enlist and accommodate the various nomadic groups in the region. In the early years of the empire, maintaining a nomadic presence, especially in frontier regions, was an important source of strength. Cooperation between the imperial center and tribal leaders provided the center with an effective way of reaching distant parts of the empire, while allowing tribal leaders to perpetuate their own authority and guarantee the tribes' survival as bearers of distinct cultures and identities. This relationship changed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as indigenous communities discovered new possibilities for expanding their own economic and political power by pursuing local, regional, and even global opportunities, independent of the Ottoman center. The loose, flexible relationship between the Ottoman center and migrant communities became a liability under these changing conditions, and the Ottoman state took its first steps toward settling tribes and controlling migrations. Finally, in the early twentieth century, mobility took another form entirely as ethnicity-based notions of nationality led to forced migrations.

In the late nineteenth century, an active slave trade sustained social and economic networks across the Ottoman Empire and throughout Egypt, Sudan, the Caucasus, and Western Europe. Unlike the Atlantic trade, slavery in this region crossed and mixed racial and ethnic lines. Fair-skinned Circassian men and women were as vulnerable to enslavement in the Nile Valley as were teenagers from Sudan or Ethiopia. Tell This in My Memory opens up a new window in the study of slavery in the modern Middle East, taking up personal narratives of slaves and slave owners to shed light on the anxieties and intimacies of personal experience. The framework of racial identity constructed through these stories proves instrumental in explaining how countries later confronted—or not—the legacy of the slave trade. Today, these vocabularies of slavery live on for contemporary refugees whose forced migrations often replicate the journeys and stigmas faced by slaves in the nineteenth century.

This exploration of slavery from the Ottoman viewpoint is based on extensive research in British and Turkish archives and offers rich, original, and important insights into Ottoman life and thought.

Introduction: on being Osman -- Discovering Osman: a short history of the text -- A note on translation -- A note on transcription from Ottoman Turkish -- Surrender -- Ransom -- Crime and punishment -- Death and resurrection -- Respite -- Bonds of love -- To the capital -- A friend in need -- An unexpected turn of events -- Trouble on the Danube -- Grifters -- Border run -- The end -- Appendix: main characters in Osman's narrative.

Examining women as economic and political actors, prostitutes, flirts and slaves, Ottoman Women in Public Space argues that women were active participants in the public space, visible, present and an essential element in the everyday, public life of the empire.

Thirty years ago, we have published The Ottoman Harem in Turkish and I have given a copy to Şükran Vahide (Mary Weld) to evaluate and to translate to English. She has translator the Risâle-i Nur Collection completely and is a native in English. When she had completed the translation, she told me “Dr. Akgunduz! I have enjoyed translating this book and I think that this book is very important in historical and religious sense.” I have spent five years preparing this work Male and Female Slavery in Islam and the Ottoman Ḫarem. The product of those five years’ work has now been published in English. The subjects discussed in this book are as follows: Part One; the distortions and misrepresentations of male and female slavery and the Ḫarem, together with some examples. Part Two; male and female slavery in non-Muslim societies and in other religions. Part Three; the institutions of male and female slavery in Islamic law. Part Four; aspects of the practice of slavery, male and female, in the Ottoman state. Part Five; an investigation of the question: what is the Ḫarem? Part Six; a lady governess’s memoirs of the Ḫarem. Part Seven; the replies to a number of important questions on these subjects. My request of readers is that they read the sections they are interested in, and particularly that they study Parts One, Five, and Seven. I realize that Part Two is a slight digression, but I am of the opinion that the comparison is necessary in order to illuminate slavery in Islam and in the Ottoman state. “Ahmed Cevdet Pasha says: “To own slaves in Islam is to be a slave.” What should be realized here is that Islam did not introduce slavery. So how was slavery practised in other societies and religions? How did other religions and peoples act towards slaves? Since “Everything is known through it opposites,” it is essential to know this in order to understand male and female slavery in Islamic law and the Ḫarem in Ottoman society. The women in the Sultan’s Ḫarem lived under very strict discipline. They lived an enclosed life in their apartments, just as they paid great attention to these matters when they were out on trips or travelling. Since it was thus, does it conform to historical fact to show them to be immodest and overly free and easy, as in the films made recently? Does this reflect history as it was lived or is it make-belief? This should be pondered over fairly and reasonably.”