Children and slavery in the Ottoman Empire

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2586141_(Table of contents)

This study is focused on the enslaved children in the Ottoman Empire. More specifically, it zooms in on some elite households in the nineteenth century Ottoman Istanbul. It first briefly examines the acquisition of child slaves through the devshirme method, which was one of the pre-modern Ottoman slavery systems, and questions whether there was a possibility of a continuum between the following centuries. Moving to the nineteenth century, the present thesis intends to follow the tracks of unfree children, mainly of Caucasian and African origin, from when they were captured until they were brought to Istanbul. It contextualizes the conditions of slavery and the slave trade in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. In light of selected memoirs and observations, it discusses the areas in which some child slaves were potentially employed in some elite households of Istanbul. Through examining some selected primary sources written on the subject, the effect of gender is taken into consideration when assessing the demand for enslaved children, their employment areas in the households, and their owners. This study further examines the relationship between child slaves and their Istanbulite owners and argues that there was an interdependent rather than the traditional binary slave-master relationship. It finally argues that this dependency was asymmetrical.