SLAVE TRADE IN THE EARLY MODERN CRIMEA FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CHRISTIAN, MUSLIM, AND JEWISH SOURCES. MIKHAIL KIZILOV Oxford University The The Our And Old And fires are burning behind the river— Tatars are dividing their captives. village is burnt our property plundered. mother is sabred my dear is taken into captivity. (a Ukrainian folk-song)1 Abstract The Crimea, a peninsula on the border between the Christian West and the Muslim East, was a place where merchants from all over the Black Sea region, East and West Mediterranean, Anatolia, Turkey, Russia, and West European countries came to buy, sell, and exchange their goods. In this trade “live merchandise”—reluctant travellers, seized by the Tatars during their raids to adjacent countries—was one of the main objects to be negotiated. Numerous published and archival sources (accounts of European and Ottoman travellers, letters and memoirs of captives, Turkish defters [registers], Russian and Ottoman chronicles to mention some of them) composed by Muslim, Christian, and Jewish authors provide not only a detailed account of the slave trade in the region in the Early Modern times, but also a discussion of some moral implications related to this sort of commercial activity. While most of the authors expressed their disapproval of the Tatar predatory raids and cruel treatment of the captives, none of them, it seems, objected to the existence of the slave trade per se, considering it just another offshoot of the international trade. Another issue often discussed in the sources was the problem of the slaves’ conversion. Introduction: a general picture of the slave trade in the Crimea Situated at the junction of the trade routes leading from Italy, Byzantium (and, later, the Ottoman Empire) to Poland, Russia and countries of the East, Crimea had always been an attractive place for carrying out international trade. The administrative, political, and economic centre 1 Adrian Kashchenko, Opovidannia pro slavne Viis’ko Zaporoz’ke nizove (Kiev, 1992), 29. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 Also available online – www.brill.nl/jemh JEMH 11,1-2 2 mikhail kizilov of the Crimea moved from the western to the eastern shore soon after the Genoese established their trading stations (Caffa/Kaffa, Sudak/Soldaia) there in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. However, after the Ottoman conquest in 1475 this situation was completely changed. The peninsula was divided into two parts: Ottoman and Tatar. Those regions, ports and towns which were most useful from a mercantile and administrative perspective came under Ottoman jurisdiction, while the rest of the Crimea, together with the southern part of contemporary Ukraine and Northern Caucasus, was ruled by the Crimean Khan. Caffa, often called in contemporary sources Küçük Istanbul (Turkish “Small Istanbul”),2 the largest Crimean maritime town in the fourteenth—fifteenth centuries, became the centre of Caffa eyalet (Ottoman province) after 1475. Halfdependant on Turkey, the Crimean Khanate existed until 1783, when it was annexed by the Russian Empire.3 Numerous sources testify that before 1475 in addition to the Tatars, it was mostly Genoese merchants, known as merciless slave traders, who were taking large numbers of captives from the port of Caffa either to Genoa or to the Moldavian ports and then further west.4 The number of Tatar slave-raids increased considerably soon after the Ottoman conquest. The economy of the Crimean Khanate was not particularly prosperous. Plundering neighboring countries was, therefore, one of the easiest ways of keeping the economic situation in the country on the proper level—slaves had always been among the most needed and demanded commodities to be sold both within the country and without. The slave trade was a cornerstone of the Crimea’s economy in the Early Modern period—and a decrease in prices of the slaves also signified 2 Alia: Kaffa/Capha; Turk. Kefe; Russ. Theodosiia. I am using a slightly simplified system of transliteration of Turkic and Arabic names and terms. 3 See figs. 1-3 for the Early Modern and twentieth-century maps of the Crimea and Northern Black Sea Region. 4 The Tatars, however, always were the most important purveyors of this kind of “live goods.” For more details concerning the slave trade in Genoese Caffa see Michel Balard, La Romanie génoise (XII e- debut du XV e siècle), vol.1 (Rome-Genoa, 1978), 290-302; Charles Verlinden, “Esclavage et ethnographie sur les bords de la mer Noire,” in Miscellanea Historica in honorem Leonis van der Essen, vol. 1 (Brussels, 1947), 287-98; Marian Ma∑owist, Caffa—kolonia genue…ska na Krymie i problem wschodni w latach 1453-1475 (Warsaw, 1947), 83-84; for a general survey of the Genoese slave trade see Balard, La Romanie génoise, vol. 2., 785-832; S.P. Karpov, “Rabotorgovlya v Yuzhnom Prichernomor’e v pervoi polovine XV veka,” Vizantiiskii Vremennik 46 (1986): 139-45; on the slave trade in Ottoman Caffa (Kefe) see Halil Inalcik, Sources and studies on the Ottoman Black Sea. Vol. 1. The Customs Register of Caffa, 1487-1490 (Harvard, 1996), 57, 93, 134, 143, 145-46; Olexander Halenko, Skhidna Evropa u mizhnarodnii rabotorhivli (in progress). slave trade in the early modern crimea The sixteenth century map of the Crimea (from Martinus Broniovius, Tartariae Descriptio (Cologne, 1595)) 3 Fig. 1. 4 mikhail kizilov Fig. 2. The seventeenth century map of the Crimea (from Nicolaas Witsen, Noord en Oost Tartarye (Amsterdam, 1705)) slave trade in the early modern crimea The map of the Black Sea region (from Alexander Vasiliev, The Goths in the Crimea (Cambridge, MA, 1936)) 5 Fig. 3. 6 mikhail kizilov a worsening of a general economic situation in the country. Thousands of slaves—a number too large for the needs of the Crimea’s inhabitants—had been annually sold on the slave markets of the Ottoman Crimea and Crimean Khanate. The amount of slaves sold in Caffa was so large that a mid-sixteenth century Christian visitor to this city wrote in disdain that “because of this practice the city of Caffa may well be called a heathen giant who feeds on our blood.”5 The burden of the Crimean slavery is reflected also in a few proverbs.6 According to almost all written sources, the main income of the Crimean Khanate came from raids upon the territories of adjacent countries and from the trade in slaves captured during these military campaigns. The first major Tatar raid for captives took place in 1468 and was directed into Galicia.7 According to some estimates, in the first half of the seventeenth century the number of the captives taken to the Crimea was around 150,000-200,000 persons. About 100,000 of them were captured in the period between 1607 and 1617.8 The Crimean Tatars invaded Slavic lands 38 times from 1654 to 1657; 52,000 people were seized by the Tatars in the spring of 1655 in the course of a raid into the territory of Ukraine and Southern Russia.9 The number of Tatar raids seems to have diminished in the eighteenth century due to the growth of Russian strength in the southern regions and a few Russo- 5 Alan Fisher, “Muscovy and the Black Sea Slave Trade,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 6:4 (1972), 584. 6 E.g. a modern Kazakh proverb: “Ulı ırım<a, qızı Qırım<a ketti” (“The son went as a hostage and the daughter went off to the Crimea [i.e. to slavery];” cited and translated by Peter Golden in his “The Codex Cumanicus,” in Central Asian Monuments, ed. H. Paksoy (Istanbul, 1992), 40; cf. also D. Kshibekov, Kochevoe obshchestvo (Alma-Ata, 1984), 71). I am indebted to Professor Golden for this valuable reference. Cf. also Polish proverb “O how much better to lie on one’s bier, than to be a captive on the way to Tatary” (Fisher, “Muscovy,” 583). 7 Fisher, “Muscovy,” 579. 8 A.L. Yakobson, Srednevekovyi Krym (Moscow-Leningrad, 1973), 141; A.A. Novoselskii, Bor’ba moskovskogo gosudarstva s tatarami v pervoi polovine XVII veka (Moscow-Leningrad, 1948), 436. Evliya Çelebi provides impossibly exaggerated numbers of captives in the Crimea in 1666: from 400,000 up to 600,000 and even 920,000 captives! These numbers certainly should not be understood literally, but as an indication of the fact that the number of captives in the Khanate was very large (Evliya Çelebi, KsiÂega podróûy Ewliji Czelebiego, trans. Z. Abrahamowicz et al. (Warsaw, 1969), 355, 362, 367). 9 G.A. Sanin, Otnosheniya Rossii i Ukrainy s Krymskim Khanstvom v seredine XVII veka (Moscow, 1987), 243. For a full list of the Tatar slave raids into Poland and Russia see Fisher, “Muscovy,” 580-582. In spite of the usefulness of this list it is worthwhile mentioning that the author a few times relied on rather questionable sources, such as testimonies of the travellers; the archival data used by Sanin and Novosel’skii (see above) seem to be much more precise and reliable. slave trade in the early modern crimea 7 Turkish wars, which partially took place in the Crimean territory. Nevertheless, in 1758 there were around 40,000 slaves captured during a raid on Moldavia10 and in 1769, during one of the very last Tatar incursions into Russian and Polish territory, the amount of “live booty” was about 20,000 souls.11 The demographic importance of the slave trade in the Early Modern Crimea and Ottoman Empire also should not be underestimated. Thousands and thousands of Christian female slaves and children were converted to Islam annually. Soon these neophytes forgot about their non-Turkic origins and their offspring often would not even be aware of their Christian past. The descendants of the slaves in the Crimean Khanate were usually called by a generic term „çora.” One of such „çoras,” who was a slave no longer, but whose inferior social status was still remembered by the local Tatars, was met in 1916 in the Northern Crimea by Alexander Samoilovich. This çora, who spoke pure Tatar and was a faithful Muslim, had the distinctive appearance of a Russian peasant from the Riazan’ region.12 Some authors stated that the Crimean Tatars in general preferred taking foreign female slaves as wives because of rather ugly appearance of Tatar women.13 Indeed, the Circassian women, while being renowned 10 According to Charles de Peyssonel, most of them were later sent back (Charles de Peyssonel, An Appendix to the Memoires of Baron de Tott, transl from French (London, 1786), 25-26). 11 This is according to an eyewitness, French diplomat baron de Tott, who even took part in this incursion in the suite of the Khan Kırım Giray (François de Tott, Memoirs of Baron de Tott, Including the State of the Turkish Empire and the Crimea, during the Late War with Russia, transl. from French, vol. 1, pt.2 (London, 1785), 189). François Baron de Tott (1733-1793) was born in France into the family of a Hungarian noble. In 1755 he was sent to Istanbul and in 1767 to the Crimea. His account, describing the baron’s most incredible (and sometimes, as it seems, slightly exaggerated) adventures in Turkey and the Crimea, was later extensively used by the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe to create the image of the famous Baron Munchausen (see Baron Munchausen [Rudolf Erich Raspe], Gulliver Revived: or, The Vice of Lying Properly Exposed, 7th ed. (London, 1793), 157-68). When this article was already in print, I received a copy of a study by Dariusz Ko∑odziejczyk, where the author very convincingly suggested that the whole number of slaves taken from Russia and Poland-Lithuania between 1500 and 1700 might roughly be estimated at two million (Dariusz Ko∑odziejczyk, “Slave Hunting and Slave Redemption as a Business Enterprise: the Northern Black Sea Region in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries,” Oriente Moderno n.s. 25:1 (2006): 149-59, esp. 151). 12 Alexander Samoilovich, “Perezhitok rabstva u stepnykh tatar,” in Krymskie tatary, ed. M. Aradzhioni, A.G. Gertsen (Simferopol, 2005), 418. 13 This was stated by a Muslim author Ebülgazi Bahadir (1603-1663), a Khan of Khorezm (Ebülgazi Bahadir Han, A General History of the Turks, Moguls, and Tatars, Vulgarly Called Tartars. Vol. 2. An Account of the Present State of the Northern Asia [London, 1729], 602). 8 mikhail kizilov for their beauty, were often taken as concubines by the Crimean khans and Ottoman sultans; as a consequence, many of the Crimean and Ottoman princes were in fact of Circassian origin.14 A Ruthenian captive, Alexandra-Roxolana (a.k.a. Hurrem Sultan), the favorite wife of Süleyman the Magnificent, was perhaps one of the most influential women in the history of the Ottoman Empire.15 The legend about the Crimean khan who had fallen in love with the Polish captive Maria Potocka inspired the famous Russian poet Alexander Pushkin to compose a poem “The fountain of Bahçesaray” (Russ. “Bakhchisaraiskii fontan”). Instances of taking foreign female slaves as concubines and wives were equally frequent also among ordinary Crimean Tatars and Turks. Marcin Broniewski (Broniovius) described how the Crimean Tatars conducted their military raids, captured and tortured their prisoners, cunningly forcing them to make their relatives pay as much money for their release from captivity as they could afford.16 According to his account, the Crimean Tatar Khans ordered their soldiers to start preparations for a raid three or four weeks before the proposed date of a campaign. Winter, when all marches, rivers, and muddy roads were frozen solid, was the usual time for raids. Several skillful and experienced soldiers were sent to capture informers from the country which they were going to plunder in order to get information about it. After entering the territory of a rival, they avoided a direct and open confrontation, moving quickly from one place to another and trying to seize as many captives and as much booty as possible, while plundering and burning everything they met on their way.17 The Tatar army consisted mostly of horse men. During a raid, each Tatar had two or four horses for increasing the velocity of the army’s movement. As a special military feature of the Tatars, many travelers remarked on their astonishing speed and mobility.18 When the Tatar army was headed by the 14 Charles de Peyssonel, Traité sur le Commerce de la Mer Noire, vol. 1 (Paris, 1787), 177; de Peyssonel, An Appendix, 22. 15 On Hurrem Sultan (Roxolana) see Agatangel Krymskii, Istoriya Turechchyny (KievL’viv, 1996; first published in 1923), 200-13. 16 Martinus Broniovius, Martini Bronovii de Biezdzfedea bis in Tartariam nomine Stephani Primi Poloniae Regis legati Tartariae Descriptio (Cologne, 1595), 17. Martinus Broniovius (Marcin Broniewski) was an ambassador of the Polish king Stephan Bathory to the Crimean Khan Mehmed Giray in 1578-1579. 17 Ibid., 19-22. 18 Ibid., 22-23. For Early Modern visual representation of the Crimean Tatars in Europe see figs. 4-5. slave trade in the early modern crimea 9 Fig. 4. A Tatar rider. The drawing by Albrecht Dürer (from Guillaume Levasseur de Beauplan, Opys Ukrainy / Description d’Ukranie, vol.2 (Kiev-Cambridge, MA, 1990)) Fig. 5. A Crimean Tatar crossing a river (from Guillaume Levasseur de Beauplan, Description d’Ukranie (Rouen, 1660)) 10 mikhail kizilov Khan himself, its strength was 80,000 soldiers, 50,000 when headed by a kalga sultan (i.e. by the second authority after the Khan), and 40,000 when headed by a nureddin sultan (the third authority). After the completion of a campaign, the Khan received a tenth of all captives. Baron de Tott, who was a witness of the last Tatar raid into the Polish and Russian lands (1769), left the following emotional description of a Tatar coming back home with his booty: Five or six Slaves of all ages, sixty sheep, and twenty oxen . . . The children with their heads out of a bag at the Pommel of the Saddle, a young Girl sitting before him sustained by his left Arm, the Mother behind, the Father on a led Horse, the Son on another, the Sheep and Oxen before, all are watched, all managed, nothing escapes the vigilant eye of the Conductor. He assembles, directs, provides Subsistence, walks himself to give ease to his Slaves . . . the picture would be truly interesting, if Avarice, and the most cruel Injustice did not furnish the subject.19 Most of Tatar inland raids were made into the adjacent regions and countries: Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Moldavia, Georgia, Mingrelia and Circassia. On their way back they had to pass the narrow isthmus defended by the fortress of Or (Perekop).20 Customs had to be paid first there, and later in Kırk Yer (Çufut-Kale); dues were collected by special officers called tam<acı and tartnaqcı.21 Then the fates of the captives taken to the Crimea may have differed. Some remained in the hands of the Tatars, who then used them for their own purposes as domestic and agricultural workers or artisans. According to Marcin Broniewski (1578), the Tatars seldom cultivated the soil themselves, with most of their land tilled by the Hungarian, Ruthenian, Russian, and Walachian (Moldavian) slaves.22 Especially worth mentioning are the prisoners of war—Zaporozhian and Don Cossacks, undaunted pirate-brigands from Southern Ukraine and Russia, whose frequent maritime and inland raids devastated many ports and towns of the Crimea and Turkey in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.23 de Tott, Memoirs, vol. 1, pt.2, 181-82. Also: Turkish and Tatar Ferahkerman (official); Orkapı / Orkapısı or Oragzı; Slavic Perekop / Przekop. 21 This is according to soyur<al (=grant/bestowment) of Hacı Giray of 1453 (Alexander Bennigsen, Pertev Naili Boratav, Dilek Desaive, and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Le Khanat de Crimée dans les Archives du Musée du Palais de Topkapı (Paris, 1978), 33-38). 22 “Quos Ungarorum, Russorum, Moschorum, Valachorum seu Moldauorum mancipijs, quibus abundant, colunt . . .” (Broniovius, Tartariae Descriptio, 17). 23 Their raids in the Crimea started as early as in the second half of the sixteenth century (Mihnea Berindei, “Le problème des “Cosaques” dans la seconde moitié du XVI e siècle,” Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 13:3 [1972]: 338-67). Alan Fisher supposed that one of the main reasons for worsening of the demographic and economic situation 19 20 slave trade in the early modern crimea 11 Most captives were delivered to Caffa, the largest port of the region, situated in the Ottoman part of the Crimea. Among other important centers of the slave trade were such ports as Azak (Russian Azov, Venetian Tana), Ker{,24 and Gözleve (Eupatoria). The largest slave market of the Crimean Khanate was in Karasubazar (Belogorsk), which was situated close to the border with the Ottoman Crimea. Most important and costly captives were imprisoned in the mountainous fortress of ÇufutKale, not far away from the capital of the Khanate, Bahçeseray. Among the “reluctant travelers” imprisoned in Çufut-Kale were such famous persons as the Prince of Transylvania Janos Kemeny (1657), Polish hetmans Potocki and Kalinowski (1648), Russian boyar Vasilii Sheremetev (1660-1681), ambassadors V. Aytemirov (1692-1695), A. Romodanovski (1681), and many others.25 The captives were not always sold. They were very often exchanged for other goods: Pierre Chevalier (1663) mentioned that the Tatars often accepted Turkish horses, weapons, clothes and other merchandise in payment.26 Sometimes Slavic captives in Turkey or the Crimea might be exchanged for Tatar captives. It is worth mentioning that in spite of the fact that the most common way of obtaining prisoners was through military raids, there were frequent cases when family members sold their own relatives (especially children) in times of hunger or in order to avoid payment of the tribute.27 Sometimes the captives were donated to important persons as a symbolical embodiment of the humiliation of the defeated enemy. The price of the captives at different times also varied widely, depending on the number of captives caught during recent military campaigns, in the seventeenth century Crimea were frequent devastating and raids of the Don and Zaporozhian Cossacks (Alan Fisher, “The Ottoman Crimea in the Mid-Seventeenth Century,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies [1979-1980]: 135-70, esp. 216, 221). For the analysis of the Cossack naval raids in the Crimea and Turkey see E.V. Venikeev, L.T. Artemenko, Peniteli Ponta. Piratstvo v Chernom more (Simferopol’, 1992), 72-129; Victor Ostapchuk, “The Human Landscape of the Ottoman Black Sea in the Face of the Cossack Naval raids,” Oriente Moderno 20: The Ottomans and the Sea (2001): 23-95. 24 Alia: Turk. Kerç; Ital. Vosporo and Cerchio; Greek Bospor; Korchev in medieval Russian documents; at present Kerch, a port in the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea (Ukraine). 25 Mikhail Kizilov, Karaites through the Travelers’ Eyes (New York, 2003), 190-91. 26 Pierre Chevalier, Histoire de la Guerre des Cosaques contre la Pologne (Paris, 1663), 49-83; Chevalier, Istoriya viiny kozakiv proty Polshchi, trans. Y.I. Nazarenko (Kiev, 1993), 60-61. 27 See Bertold Spuler, Die Goldene Horde (Wiesbaden, 1952), 385-86; Pero Tafur, Travels and Adventures (1435-1439), transl. and ed. Malkolm Letts (London, 1926), 132-34. This work, written in Spanish, was first published only in 1874 (Pero Tafur, Andancas é Viajes de Pero Tafur por Diversas Partes del Mundo Avidos (1435-1439) (Madrid, 1874)). 12 mikhail kizilov and also on the quality, age, strength, beauty, skills, and gender of a slave. It seems, however, that at the time of successful military campaigns, when each Tatar soldier could bring with him about 10 to 20 captives, the prices rapidly decreased. More respected and important captives (wealthy merchants, military commanders, nobility and suchlike) could bring a real fortune in ransom. Thus, for a Russian boyar Vasilii Sheremetev the Crimean khan demanded from the Russian Tsar nothing less than Kazan’ and Astrakhan’—demands that were certainly too high even for such an important person as Sheremetev.28 The moral side of the Crimean slave trade What was the general picture of the slave trade in the Ottoman and Tatar Crimea as depicted in Early Modern sources? In addition to purely factual information, some of the authors gave attention to the moral side of the slave trade, often using this part of their narratives in order to extract some sort of didactic lesson for their contemporaries. Didactic interludes of this kind, penned by Christian, Muslim and Jewish authors, were usually included in a larger narrative context and played an important role in forming public opinion about the slave trade and the image of the Tatars, Turks, and Crimean Tartary in general. Contemporary European sources are full of descriptions of the Tatars as “the detestable people of Satan,” who should be “thrust down to their Tartaria (or Hell).”29 When describing the siege of Caffa in 1348, the chroniclers depicted the Crimean Tatars as one of the worst infidel nations, struck by God with a terrible decease (i.e. the plague), which they later spread to the Christians.30 Many European thinkers were contemplating reasons for the existence of such phenomena as slavery and often explained it as some sort of divine punishment for not keeping the Christian faith and morality. One of the important Crimean historians, the Armenian priest Xacatur of Caffa, who witnessed the arrival of numberless crowds of Christian captives from Poland to the Crimean 28 L.P.Kruzhko, “Tsennyi plennik krymskikh khanov,” Krymskii pushkinskii nauchnyi sbornik 1 (2001): 286. 29 Richard Wendover, “Relations touching the Tatars, taken out of the history of Richard Wendover,” in Purchas His Pilgrims, vol. 3 (London, 1625), 60-63. 30 See the chronicles of Gabrielle de Mussis and Gilles li Muisis in The Black Death, trans. and ed. Rosemary Horrox (Manchester, 1994), 14-19, 46-47. slave trade in the early modern crimea 13 slave markets in 1650s, also explained their misfortunes in the Crimean “Tartarus” by the loss of faith.31 Early modern Christian sources are full of descriptions of sufferings of Christian slaves captured by the Crimean Tatars in the course of their raids to the adjacent countries: Among these unfortunates there are many strong ones; if they [the Tatars] have not castrated them yet, they cut off their ears and nostrils, burned cheeks and foreheads with the burning iron and forced them to work with their chains and shackles during the daylight, and sit in the prisons during the night; they are sustained by the meager food consisting of the dead animals’ meat, rotten, full of worms, which even a dog would not eat. The youngest women are kept for wanton pleasures . . .32 The same source described the sorrowful position of the Polish slaves in the slave-market in Caffa.33 Blaise de Vigenere, who had never visited Tatar lands, left an even more depressing description of the Tatar captivity. He stated that the old men and children were usually given to be tortured by the young Tatars so that the latter would learn how to kill “as if the hunters give partridges to be torn to pieces by the young falcons.”34 One of the Crimean Muslim authors, Hacı Mehmed Senai, also mentioned that after a successful raid into Poland and Ukraine in the course of the Khmel’nyts’kyi (Chmielnicki) rebellion (1648) each Tatar soldier killed about 10-15 captives for his own amusement.35 It seems, however, that most European sources describing the terrible and unbearable sufferings of Christian slaves in Crimean captivity were heavily distorted by the political and didactic agenda of that time 31 See the chronicle by Xacatur Kafajeci (=of Caffa) in Edmond Schütz, “Eine armenische Chronik von Kaffa aus der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 29 (1975): 159. 32 Michalon Lituanus, “De Moribus Tartarorum, Lituanorum et Moschorum, Fragmina X,” in Russia, seu Moscovia, itemque Tartaria (Leiden, 1630), 191; Michalon Lituanus, Traktat o nravakh tatar, litovtsev i moskovitian, transl. V.I. Matuzova (Moscow, 1994), 73-74. First published in Basel in 1615, this work had appeared at the court of the Lithuanian and Polish king Sigismund II Augustus already in 1550. This valuable work, which was composed as a sort of didactic treatise for the author’s co-inhabitants, should be analysed very carefully and with a grain of salt. Its author concealed his identity under the penname of Michalon Lituanus (Mikhail/Mikhailo Litvin). 33 Ibid. Moreover, Lituanus even quoted a lengthy and sorrowful monologue of one of them. Undoubtedly, the author used this part of his narrative to show the necessity of sustaining proper moral standards, loyalty to Christian faith and to the ruler of the country. 34 “Izvlechenie iz zapisok Blaise de Vigénére,” in Memuary otnosiashchiesia k istorii Iuzhnoi Rusi (Kiev 1890), 81-82). 35 Hacı Mehmed Senai, Historia chana Islam Gereja III, transl. and ed. Z. Abrahamowicz (Warsaw, 1971), 64. Cf. also recent the Russian translation: Kırımlı Hacı Mehmed Senai, Kniga pokhodov. Istoriia khana Islam Giraya III (Simferopol, 1998), 40. 14 mikhail kizilov and were based on hearsay rather than on real first-hand observation of their authors. Thus, there arises a question: was the position of slaves really as bad as described in Christian sources? The answer is not so easy. Even the aforementioned didactic treatises are not unanimous in their evaluation of the Tatar captivity. Michalon Lituanus (Litvin), for example, a few times describes the terrible suffering of Christian slaves in mid-sixteenth century Crimea. Nevertheless, a few pages later Michalon contradicts himself and states that the Tatars treat their captives properly and release them on the seventh year of their servitude—unlike Christians, who keep slaves in eternal captivity.36 Baron de Tott, who wrote with deep compassion about the hardships of Tatar slavery, also confessed that “the Europeans, alone, ill-treat their Slaves. The Cause of this, no doubt, is, because in the East they amass Wealth to buy them; but here they buy them to amass Wealth. In the East they are the enjoyment of Avarice; in Europe its instrument.”37 Whatever the travelers said about the subject, archival and legal sources provide us with more precise information about the condition of life of the Crimean slaves. The fates of the captives who remained in the Crimea and were not ransomed were not uniform. It seems that the position and everyday conditions of a slave depended largely on his/ her owner. Some slaves indeed could spend the rest of their days doing exhausting labor: as the Crimean vizir (minister) Sefer Gazi Aga mentions in one of his letters, the slaves were often “a plough and a scythe” of their owners.38 Most terrible, perhaps, was the fate of those who became galley-slaves, whose sufferings were poeticized in many Ukrainian dumas (songs).39 Subsequently the Turkish word “kadırga” (=a galley) in the form “katorga” became a synonym for “prison” in the Russian language. However, many of the slaves were allowed to get married 40—and their offspring also often remained slaves. Some masters took real care Lituanus, Traktat, 89. de Tott, Memoirs, vol. 2, pt.2, 157-58. 38 Archiwum Glówne Akt Dawnych: Archiwum Koronne Warszawskie, Dzia∑ Tatarskie (henceforth AGAD AKW, Dz. Tatarskie), k.61, t.135, no 277 (1661, Polish). The Tatar collection of AGAD contains hundreds of other interesting documents related to redemption of the Polish captives from the Tatar and Turkish captivity. 39 See some of these dumas in: Kashchenko, Opovidannia, 29-33. 40 An English captive, Astrakan, was given a Wallachian woman to be his wife; later he took her with him after their release from the Crimean captivity (Astrakan, “A Short Description of All the Kingdoms which Encompass the Euxine and Caspian Seas,” in J.B. Tavernier, A New Relation of the Inner Part of the Grand Seignors [London, 1677], 119). 36 37 slave trade in the early modern crimea 15 of their slaves in order not to exhaust them and to keep them alive and capable of work as long as possible. Others, however, were entirely indifferent to the fate of their human possessions. The slaves, when driven to desperation, could easily turn against their masters. In the Crimea in the 1650s, because of the excessive number of slaves taken captive, there was an attempt to organize a large uprising against slave-owners. Unfortunately, this plan was discovered and its leaders severely punished.41 Like other movable and unmovable property, slaves were transferred from a deceased owner to his/her heirs. Both female and male slaves were often used for sexual purposes.42 The problem of slaves’ conversion Especially interesting for our topic is a conversation between the French ambassador to the Crimea Baron de Tott and the Crimean Khan Kırım Giray, which took place right in the midst of the last Tatar slave raid into Russia and Ukraine in 1769. The discussion started after the Khan had received his tithe of slaves (about 2,000 souls) and decided to donate six young Russian slaves to de Tott. The diplomat did not really like this idea and, in order to avoid this awkward gift, refused to accept the slaves. De Tott pretended that he could not accept Russian slaves because of the friendly relations between his country, France, and Russia. Slightly surprised, the Khan suggested that the Baron accept six Georgians instead of Russians and remarked: “War makes Slaves, Friendship gives and Friendship receives them, which is all our Concern.” The Baron, however, found another excuse saying that his religion would not allow this. The Khan found this argument to be persuasive enough and insisted no more: “I, my Friend, have my Religion likewise; which permits me to give male Slaves to the Christians, but commands me to keep the female in order to make them Converts.”43 Here both interlocutors entered a very important part of all discussions related to the problem of slavery—the religious affiliation of slaves and their conversion to the religion of their new masters. Indeed, the problem of the conversion of slaves had been often seen as the pivotal Sanin, Otnosheniya, 195. Instances of the usage of male slaves-gulams for homosexual purposes were described by Evliya Çelebi (Evliya Çelebi, Kniga puteshestviia, transl. E. Bakhrevskii (Simferopol, 1999), 34, 95-96). 43 de Tott, Memoirs, vol.1, pt.2, 196-99. 41 42 16 mikhail kizilov problem related to the trade in “live merchandise”. A few questions troubled Christian Europe of that time: could Christians use non-Christian slaves or they must first baptize them? Could Christians let their former compatriots, who were captured by Muslims, spend the rest of their lives in the Muslim religion? What should be done with a slave if he willingly (or unwillingly) accepted a new religion? Legal systems of different European countries had different answers to these questions. In most European countries the ownership of Christian slaves was limited to other Christians. According to the Spanish traveler Pero Tafur, the Christian population in fifteenth century Europe was authorized to purchase and keep Christian slaves by a special papal bull in order “to prevent their falling into the hands of the Moors and renouncing the faith.”44 In Muscovite Russia, however, Muslims were allowed to purchase Russian slaves until 1649. After 1649 only Orthodox believers were allowed to own Orthodox slaves in Russia. Any slave wishing to convert to Orthodoxy was to be freed, whereupon his owner was supposed to get fifteen rubles in compensation. Nevertheless, a group of Lithuanians and Poles (perhaps because they belonged to a nonOrthodox type of Christianity) was sold by the Russians to the Tatars as late as in 1665.45 In Moscow itself the Crimean Tatar merchants could not only sell their captives, but also buy new ones—mostly of Lithuanian, Polish, and German origin. Even as late as at the beginning of the seventeenth century the Kazan’ Tatars could come to Novgorod to buy Russian girls there. “Can one imagine Africans being permitted to purchase Southern belles?”—rhetorically asked one scholar while discussing the non-racist character of slavery in Russia.46 All of the aforementioned moral, religious and legal questions about the slave trade were reflected in the slave trade in the Crimea. Even for the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who often did not hesitate to rob the Crimea’s Christian monasteries and kill local Christians,47 the religious aspect of slavery was quite important. In 1675 Cossack ataman Ivan Sirko massacred all three thousand of the Slavic slaves who decided to return back to their Muslim lords in the Crimea. In a funeral speech over the dismembered bodies of the murdered Slavic captives he sor44 The traveller himself purchased two female and one male slave in the Crimean port of Caffa (Pero Tafur, Travels and Adventures, 133). 45 Richard Hellie, Slavery in Russia 1450-1725 (Chicago-London, 1982), 22, 73-74. 46 Ibid., 82-83. 47 Schütz, “Eine armenische Chronik,” 142-44. For visual representation of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, see figs. 6-7. slave trade in the early modern crimea 17 Fig. 6. The siege of Caffa by Zaporozhian Cossacks in 1622 (from Adrian Kashchenko, Opovidannia pro slavne Viisko Zaporoz’ke nizove (Kiev, 1992)) rowfully stated: “Forgive me, brethren, and sleep here until the Judgment Day—instead of multiplying in the Crimea among the infidels and instead of bringing ruin upon our valiant heads and your own eternal damnation without the cross.” Moreover, he later forcefully converted to Christianity about 1,500 Tatars captured in the Crimea.48 It is also worth mentioning that while seizing Jews during Chmielnicki’s rebellion of 1648, the Cossacks often suggested that they convert to Christianity.49 Those of the Jews who converted to the new religion were able to save their own lives. D.I.Yavornitskii, Istoriya Zaporozhskikh kozakov, vol. 2 (Kiev, 1990), 388. See the chronicle by Natan Hannover in Evreiskie khroniki XVII stoletiya, ed. S. Borovoi (Moscow-Jerusalem, 1997), 102. 48 49 18 mikhail kizilov Fig. 7. A Zaporozhian Cossack (from D.I. Yavornitskii, Istoriya Zaporozhskikh kozakov (Kiev, 1990)) slave trade in the early modern crimea 19 The motif of the Tatar slavery played an important role in Ukrainian folk songs, usually sung by the kobzars, the blind musicians, often victims of unsuccessful attempts to escape from bondage. Tatar and Turkish captivity (nevolia or polon) was a recurrent topos of many Cossack songsdumas. In one of them the Cossack slaves complain about impossibility of celebrating Christian holidays and curse “the Turkish land and Muslim faith.”50 Even Bohdan Khmel’nyts’kyi, the key figure in the separation of Ukraine from Poland in the course of the Cossack rebellion of 1648, was imprisoned in Istanbul for about two years.51 His son, Yurii Khmel’nyts’kyi, was also taken captive to the Crimea in 1677, where he was denounced by a Cossack renegade Nicolo (Ali).52 Not only the Zaporozhian, but also Don Cossacks attacked the Muslim Crimea. Some of them were also caught and enslaved there. Especially interesting was the case of the Don Cossack Ivashko (Ivan) Vergunenok, who, while being caught by the Tatars c.1660, claimed that he was a son of the tsarevich (prince) Dmitrii, the heir to the Russian throne. He had been sold to a Jewish merchant in Caffa, and later bought by the Crimean Khan, who apparently wanted to use him in planned war with Russia. The Khan kept him in chains in Zhidovskii Gorodok (“Jewish Town,” the Russian name of Çufut-Kale) for three years, and later (1646) sold him to the Turkish sultan.53 The audacious raids of the Cossacks, which devastated much of the Ottoman Black Sea and the Crimean Khanate, were annoying not only from an economic, but also from a religious standpoint. The Cossacks, called in the Ottoman sources by the epithet mel’un (=accursed), broke the stability of the Black Sea region and threatened the whole concept of the Darü’l-Islam, i.e. the lands governed by the Islamic laws and religion. This is why the Cossacks were often not sold as regular slaves, Kashchenko, Opovidannia, 30-31. On his captivity see commentaries to Hacı Mehmed Senai, Historia, 72-77. 52 François Pétis de la Croix (1653-1713), An Account of the Turks Wars with Poland, Muscovy, and Hungary, tr. A. Chaves (London, 1711), 103-106. Nicolo (Mykola or Nikolai) evidently was the renegade’s Christian name, whereas Ali was the name received after the conversion to Muslim faith. 53 See the Russian documents cited in S.M.Solov’ev, Istoriya Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, vol. 5, pt.9-10 (Moscow, 1961), 462-63, 466. Alan Fisher’s reading of these documents seems to be erroneous. With the reference to the same Solov’ev’s documents that I have used, he says that “the monk claimed that he [i.e., Ivashko Vergunenok] had been castrated [!] and converted to Judaism [!!!]” (Fisher, “Muscovy,” 587). Nevertheless, there is no indication of such measures applied to Vergunenok in the Russian original of the documents. Perhaps Fisher confused Solov’ev’s documents with some other Russian sources available to him? 50 51 20 mikhail kizilov but killed “with the most violent punishment”—as was the case with a few Cossacks captured during the reign of Mehmed Giray IV (1641-1644, 1654-1666) and executed in the Crimea.54 Another Cossack, who tried to organize an uprising of slaves, was impaled on the main square of Bahçesaray in 1656/1657.55 In general, however, the slaves were seldom killed—the usual punishment for misbehavior was being sold to the galleys. A group of the Russian Cossacks-Starovertsy (“Old Believers”), on the contrary, fought on the Tatar side. In the eighteenth century, headed by their leader Ignat Nekrasov, they escaped from Russia to avoid the persecutions of Peter the Great. Surprisingly enough, they found refuge among the Muslim Tatars. The Tatars called them Inat-Cossacks after the name of their leader. In spite of the fact that they took part in military actions of the Crimean Tatar army, they preserved the Christian faith and had a privilege allowing them to consume pork.56 Local Christians often tried to ransom their co-religionists from captivity. In 1650, during Chmielnicki’s uprising, the Tatars captured 300 Polish Armenians and carried them away to the Crimea. There most of them were ransomed by local Christians.57 Nevertheless, the Crimean Christian population as well as all other religious and ethnic groups inhabiting the peninsula also used slave labor.58 Surprisingly enough, a few times the Russians were aided by their Buddhist allies-the Kalmyks, who agreed to return to Russia any Russian captive acquired in the combat with the Crimean Tatars.59 Muslim sources also dedicated considerable attention to the problem of slaves’ conversion. It seems, however, that Islamic laws were much more tolerant with regard to this question than those of European countries. Adult male and female slaves were usually allowed to retain, and, moreover, even practice their non-Muslim religions.60 Nevertheless, young Ostapchuk, “The Human Landscape,” 88. Sanin, Otnosheniya, 195. 56 De Tott, Memoirs, vol. 1, pt.2, 166. For the description of the Inat Cossacks during the Tatar raid of 1769 see ibid., 173, 185-86. 57 Schütz, “Eine armenische Chronik,” 159. 58 E.g. “kazak Istefan” (a corruption of Stepan), who was owned by his own religious brethren, Dimitrios, in the Crimean maritime settlement of Sikita (Nikita) c. 1520 (Olexander Halenko, “Sikita/Nikita osman’skoho chasu,” Istoricheskoe nasledie Kryma 8 (2004), 84 and 91). 59 Hellie, Slavery, 25. 60 See the letter of the Polish captives from Bahçeseray containing complaints regarding the improper behavior of a new priest sent from Poland to the Crimea for the reli54 55 slave trade in the early modern crimea 21 females, who were supposed to produce new Muslims, were usually converted; the same fate normally awaited small children. As Kırım Giray mentioned to de Tott, women were usually much easier to convert: Man, being, by his nature, independent, even in Slavery, preserves a force which Fear scarcely can contain [. . .] The Conversion of such a man is always a Miracle; while that of Women, on the contrary, is the most natural and simple thing possible. They are always of their Lover’s Religion.61 Those males who under some circumstance converted to Islam usually received a new Muslim name. Many of these names were typical only of the slaves, such as Salur (linked to the root sal- (“to let go”)), Devlet (“good fortune”), derivations from the word gül (“rose”), and other names related to flowers. A patronymic Abd-allah (“slave of the Allah”) was usually added to the first name.62 These newly converted Muslims were treated like all other Islamic believers—and were forbidden to be ransomed by their former Christian brethren.63 Conversion to Islam was often the means to achieve a higher social status and obtain freedom, or escape capital punishment. The Russian soldier-strelets (rifleman) Timofei Akundinov, who pretended to be a son of the late Russian Tsar Vasilii, escaped from captivity in Istanbul, but was pardoned and not punished under condition of his conversion to Islam. He, nevertheless, managed to escape for the second time. Being caught again, he was forcibly circumcised and converted to the Muslim gious needs of Catholic captives (AGAD AKW, dz. Tatarskie, t.13, no 13 (Polish, 1660)). The Dominican monk Agostino Stanzione, who was imprisoned in Mangup in 1663, mentioned that many Christian slaves (a few Catholics, a Hungarian Calvinist and one Orthodox woman) secretly visited him for confession before Easter (P. Agostino Stanzione to P. Pietro Passerini da Sestola (Warsaw, 1664) in Ambrosius K. Eszer, “Neue Forschungen zur Geschichte der II. Krim-Mission der Dominikaner (1635-1665),” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 41 (1971): 238). Cf. also the account of the Jesuit father Duban, who was sent to the Crimea to minister to local captives at the beginning of the eighteenth century (Gilles Veinstein, “Missionaires jésuite et agents français en Crimée au début du XVIIIe siècle,” Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 10: 3-4 [1969]: 420-34). 61 De Tott, Memoirs, vol. 1, pt.2, 199-200. 62 Suraiya Faroqhi, Stories of Ottoman Men and Women. Establishing Status, Establishing Control (Eren, 2002), 138, 142). 63 See the Polish-Turkish peace-treaties of 1502 and 1514 (commentaries to Hacı Mehmed Senai, Historia, 76, ft.228). Consequently, sources telling about supposed conversion of Bohdan Chmielnicki to Islam, who was nevertheless ransomed in 1622/1623, should be dismissed as unreliable (ibid., 74-76). In the light of this supposition we shall also doubt the veracity of the hypotheses suggesting that Vasilii Sheremetev also converted to Islam in order to be eligible for the post of the Khan’s translator (M.N. Berezhkov, „Russkie plenniki i nevol’niki v Krymu,” Arkheologicheskii s’ezd. Trudy 6:2 (1888), 361; cf. Alan Fisher, The Russian Annexation of the Crimea 1772-1783 (Cambridge, 1970), 20-21). 22 mikhail kizilov faith (1647).64 Even more interesting was the case of a certain Draco, the Greek slave owner from Istanbul whose female Christian slave burnt his house. She testified to the vizir that she was Muslim, whereas Draco wanted to convert her to Christianity. Her evidence, as the testimony of a Muslim, was considered more solid than that of her Christian master, and Draco was soon hanged right in front of his still smoldering house.65 Highly interesting is also the opposite situation, i.e. the attitude towards the Tatar captives in Christian Europe and the problem of their conversion. Indeed, the Tatars themselves were often seized by the Russians, Poles and Cossacks in the course of military campaigns.66 To give an example, the Cossack ataman Sirko captured around 6000 Tatars during his raid in the Crimea in 1675.67 According to Pero Tafur, in the fifteenth century the slaves of Tatar origin were three times more expensive than other slaves—they had a reputation of being absolutely faithful to the master.68 In Early Modern Europe the Tatars, unlike Africans, were mostly used as a sort of “decorative slaves.” The marvelous fidelity of the captive Tatars in Poland was also mentioned by Pierre Chevalier, who remarked that the Polish nobility were accustomed to trust their Tatar servants more “than any other of their household.”69 It seems that Christian Europe was much less tolerant towards the problem of slaves’ conversion than the Muslim East. The Tatar slaves in Europe were usually forced to convert to Christianity.70 The documents testify to a very cruel treatment of the Tatar captives in Russian prisons in the sixteenth century: 73 Tatars (including seven children) died in Pskov prison in 1535. Only eight captive Tatars survived in Novgorod prison out of 84; these were beaten afterwards, whereas women were converted to Christianity and forcibly married (1535-1536). As the source says, “they [the newly converted Tatars] were very zealous in Christian faith.”71 Solov’ev, Istoriya, vol. 5, pt.9-10, 464-67. De Tott, Memoirs, vol. 1, pt.1, 196-98. 66 See a few fifteenth century cases of this kind in Bertold Spuler, Die Goldene Horde (Wiesbaden, 1952), 386. 67 Yavornitskii, Istoriya, 387-88. 68 Tafur, Travels and Adventures, 133. 69 Pierre Chevalier, A Discourse of the Original, Country, Manners, Government and Religion of the Cossacks (London, 1672), 45-46, 54. The traveller saw a few hundred captive Tatars in Warsaw in the 1660s. 70 Ma∑owist, Caffa, 84. 71 Solov’ev, Istoriya, vol. 4, pt.7-8, 139. 64 65 slave trade in the early modern crimea 23 The Crimean slave trade from the perspective of Muslim sources Muslim sources seem to dedicate much less attention to the moral aspects of the Tatar slave trade in the Crimea. In the Islamic legal system slaves were called mal-i natik (=speaking property), a category somewhat similar to the Latin instrumenti vocali.72 In the Turkic languages slaves were usually called esir (hence Russian yasyr’ and Polish jasyr —pl. “slaves”). According to Islamic law it was forbidden to enslave Muslims.73 This is why a conversion to Islam often meant release from the bondage for non-Muslim slaves. In spite of the fact that the Qur’an prescribed treating slaves humanely, it seems that this principle was not always followed in the Crimea and Turkey. Completely different was the situation in Mamluk Egypt, where the government and ruling dynasty itself consisted of converted slaves, often of Slavic or Circassian origin—there the status of slaves was sometimes even higher than that of ordinary inhabitants of the country. One of the Ottoman chroniclers tried to justify the Tatar raids by saying that the Tatars have “neither land nor trade. If they do not make raids, how are they to live?”74 The hypocrisy of this statement is obvious. The Crimea with its warm climate, plough-lands, gardens and vineyards, fruits, sea products, minerals and other natural resources was quite an advantageous place for trade and agriculture. Most of the Muslim authors admiringly described victorious raids of the Tatar and Turkish army into the lands of infidels and did not bother to think about the sufferings of the slaves. Nevertheless, some Muslim authors had a less clear-cut approach to this problem. One of them, Evliya Çelebi (1611-d.a.1679, who visited the Crimea in 1665-1666),75 had a very ambivalent attitude towards the slave trade. Halenko, “Sikita/Nikita,” 84, 91. This very strict prescription was, nevertheless, sometimes broken (as, for example, in the sixteenth century Iran: Faroqhi, Stories, 142). Cf. also complaints of the Crimean Khan Mehmed Giray I to Vasilii III concerning the capture of some Muslims by other Muslims in the Meshchera region (Hellie, Slavery, 393). 74 Fisher, “Muscovy,” 579. 75 The Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi left precious data on the history, ethnography, linguistics, and historical geography of the countries he had seen in his ten volume travel account entitled Seyahatname (The Book of Travels) (see more on his Crimean travels in Mikhail Kizilov, “Kniga i ee avtor,” afterward to Kniga puteshestvii by Evliya Çelebi (Simferopol’, 1996), 184-190; Mikhail Kizilov,“Kniga Puteshestvii Evlii Çelebi kak istochnik svedenii o byte krymskikh tatar,” Materialy po Arkheologii, Istorii i Etnografii Tavriki 3 (1993): 273-275. The Crimean part of Çelebi’s travelogue was a few times published in Turkey and also translated into Russian and Polish. 72 73 24 mikhail kizilov On the one hand, as a believing Muslim, he saw further evidence of the righteousness of his faith and power of the Ottoman Empire in the successful military campaigns of the Tatar army. This is why his descriptions of the Tatar raids and seizure of captives are full of admiration inspired by the courage of Muslim warriors, whereas the misery of Christian slaves was usually seen by him just as consequence of the weakness of Christian countries. Thus, for example, while describing the military raids of the Crimean khan Islam Giray III, Evliya Çelebi proudly stated that in the 1640s-1650s the Tatars invaded Polish lands 71 times and took 200,000 Jews there, later selling a Jew at the price of a full tobacco-pipe.76 While describing the numberless quantity of the slaves in the Crimea Evliya Çelebi mentioned that even the absence of the Tatar soldiers was not a problem—in order to control the slaves it was enough for the Tatar women to take their men’s sabers and control the captives’ work on the fields without their men.77 Moreover, the traveler himself never missed his chance to obtain a new slave or two during these raids. On the other hand, while being an intelligent person with the best Muslim education of the period, he often made contemptuous remarks about the primitiveness and harshness of the Tatar state and people. Moreover, as an educated and cultured person, he often felt compassion towards the tortured and humiliated Christians. This attitude may be especially clearly seen in Evliya’s description of the slave market in Karasubazar: A man who had not seen this market, had not seen anything in this world. A mother is severed from her son and daughter there, a son—from his father and brother, and they are sold amongst lamentations, cries of help, weeping and sorrow.78 Nevertheless, such humane expressions of disapproval of the immorality of slave trade can seldom be found on the pages of Early Modern Muslim sources. 76 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatnamesi, vol. 7, 527 as quoted in Hacı Mehmed Senai, Historia, 64, ft.192. The number of the Jewish slaves is certainly considerably exaggerated in order to show the grandeur of the Muslim military skill. 77 Evliya Çelebi, KsiÊe ga podróûy, 362. 78 Evliya Çelebi, KsiÊe ga podróûy, 308. Evliya also added a few highly interesting details about the skills of Karasubazar slave traders who, by employing certain physical treatment, could easily deceive anybody and even sell an old and exhausted male and female slave at a high price. He remarked, however, that these traders were not Tatars, but Turkish merchants from Anatolia. slave trade in the early modern crimea 25 The Jews and the slave trade in the Crimea Numerous European sources tell us about the Jewish slave traders as early as in the tenth to eleventh centuries.79 The Jewish population of the Crimea had also been actively involved in the slave trade. The Vita of the Kievan monk Eustratios (1096) tells about the cruel tortures and crucifixion of Eustratios in Cherson80 performed by a merciless Jewish slaver, who wanted to convert the monk and his colleagues to Judaism. In spite of the fact that some didactic parts of the story can hardly be trusted, most modern scholars consider that the story contains grains of historical data about the Jewish slave traders, who were expelled from Cherson about a year later.81 From the thirteenth century onwards the Crimean Jewish population was divided into two distinctive groups: the non-Talmudic Karaite Jews and the Rabbanite Jews, who followed the Talmud.82 These religious differences notwithstanding, both groups soon adopted the language and everyday customs of their Turkic-speaking Tatar neighbors. The Jews, being skillful and cunning merchants, took part in the trade in slaves and captives in the later periods as well. A certain Crimean Jew was the head of the custom office (teloneum) in mid-sixteenth century Or (Perekop). While observing numberless quantities of Christian captives taken to the Crimea, he asked Michalon Litvin whether his land “was still abundant in people and whence we [the Poles and Lithuanians] took such amount of mortals.”83 Marcin Broniewski (1578) mentioned that the ambassadors from Christian countries were usually trying to 79 Jacob Litman, The Economic Role of Jews in Medieval Poland: The Contribution of Yitzhak Schipper (Lanham, 1984), 94-95. 80 Cherson is the medieval name of the ancient Chersonesos (south-western Crimea, now a part of Sevastopol)—a place where the Kievan Prince Vladimir I was baptized c.988. It should not be confused with a modern city of Kherson in South Ukraine. 81 “Zhitie prepodobnogo ottsa nashego Evstratiya,” in Kievo-pecherskii Paterik (Kiev, 1903), 147-150. Thus, in Judeo-Christian discourse the motif of conversion also played important role. For a discussion of this source see Henrik Birnbaum, “On Some Evidence of Jewish Life and Anti-Jewish Sentiments in Medieval Russia,” Viator 4 (1973): 225-55; G.G. Litavrin, “Kievo-pecherskii paterik o rabotorgovtsakh-iudeyakh v Chersone i muchenichestve Evstratiya Postnika,” in Vizantiia i slaviane (St. Petersburg, 1999), 478-95; Alexander Pereswetoff-Morath, “Simulacra of Hatred,” Ad Imperio 4 (2003): 615-16. 82 See fig. 8 for the nineteenth century drawing by Auguste Raffet representing the Karaites of Caffa. 83 Lituanus, Traktat, 72-74. The reference to the Perekopian Jew, the head of the local custom office, is one of rare references to the Jews important officials in the Crimean Khanate. 26 mikhail kizilov Fig. 8. The Karaite Jews of Caffa. The drawing by Auguste Raffet (from Anatoli Demidov, Voyage dans Russie Meridionale et la Crimee par la Hongrie, la Valahie et la Moldavie execute en 1837 (Paris, 1840)) slave trade in the early modern crimea 27 bribe the Jews or Tatars ( Judaeos vel Tartaros pecunia corruptos) in order to ransom Christian captives for a lower price than that which would be offered to them in case of the trade directly with Tatar officials. In his opinion, participation of these bribed Jews and Tatars had been highly important for the successful ransoming of the captives.84 This traveler’s information about the Jewish mediators in ransoming slaves is confirmed by other sources. In 1614 a Crimean Jew (most likely a Karaite from Çufut-Kale), Abraham ben Berakhah, ransomed a Nogay prisoner Mamay bin Mohammed at the price of 120 florins, which the latter was supposed to pay him back.85 A merchant from Caffa, Hoca Bike{ Gökgöz (in Russian sources Hozia Kokoz), who was, perhaps, the most influential medieval Crimean Jew, had special dealings with the Russian tsar Ivan III concerning redemption of the Russian prisoners in the 1470s. In spite of the fact that the Russian merchants, who had been captured by the }irin bey Mamaq, were very grateful to Hoca and even donated him some money, the Jewish merchant tried to get additional money and cheat the Russian tsar. Nevertheless, he certainly played a crucial role in the release of these captives.86 Highly interesting is the destiny of another Jewish merchant, Meir Ashkenazi (d. in the second half of the sixteenth century), who was born in Poland, lived for some time in Ottoman Caffa, and was appointed Tatar ambassador to Poland c.1567. He often traveled even to such remote countries as Egypt and India, and was killed by the corsairs near Genoa while taking prisoners from Egypt there.87 According to Alan Fisher, 84 Broniovius, Tartariae Descriptio, 21-22; cf. Martin Broniewski, “Opisanie Kryma,” transl. I.G.Shershenevich, comm. N.N. Murzakevich, Zapiski Odesskogo Obshchestva Istorii i Drevnostei 6 (1867): 363-64. 85 Manuscript Department of the Library of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences (hereafter: MS LMAB), F.143-1177, fol.3v-4r. 86 Pamiatniki diplomaticheskikh snoshenii Moskovskogo gosudarstva s Krymskoyu i Nogaiskoyu ordami i s Turtsiei, vol.1: S 1474 po 1505 god, in Sbornik Imperatorskogo Russkogo Istoricheskogo Obshchestva 41 (1884), 8. Hoca Biki{/Bike{, a Jew, son of Gökgöz, an influential merchant in Kefe (also called “Biki{ son of Gökgöz”), is mentioned in the Caffa register of 1497 (Inalcik, The Customs Register of Caffa, 74, document A58). Previous scholars could not identify the proper name of this interesting person and called him according to a corrupt Russian spelling “Hozia Kokos.” Cf. Vl. Ogorodnikov, “Ivan III i zarubezhnye evrei,” Sbornik statei v chest’ Dmitriya Alexandrovicha Korsakova (Kazan’, 1913), 57-63; Regesty i nadpisi. Svod materialov dlia istorii evreev v Rossii, vol. 1 (St.Petersburg, 1899), 77-79; Yulii Gessen, Istoriya evreiskogo naroda v Rosii, vol. 1 (Petrograd, 1916), 23-24. 87 Maurycy Horn, “Udzia∑ Ûydów w kontaktach dyplomatycznych i handlowych Polski i Litwy z zagranicÁa w XV-XVII w.,” Biuletyn Ûydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego 3-4 (1990): 7; cf. I.V.Achkinazi, Krymchaki (Simferopol, 2000), 66. 28 mikhail kizilov there was a guild of Jewish slave traders in Istanbul, which consisted of 2000 Jewish merchants.88 The Crimean Jews also possessed slaves for domestic purposes. The Caffa register of 1542 mentions six females, who were slaves (esir) belonging to the members of the Karaite Jewish community of Caffa.89 A document from 1613 mentions the Russian female slave Servinaz, who was kept in slavery by a Karaite Jewess of Çufut-Kale Malkah, daughter of Elijah.90 Archival sources mentioned a curious case when a Karaite Jew, Samuel ben Daniel, received a certain “kazak” (i.e. perhaps a Zaporozhian Cossack captured by the Tatars) to be kept in his place. During the night, however, the Cossack managed to escape.91 Highly interesting is the case of an eighteenth century Crimean Jewish slave-owner, who was killed by his slave in his own vineyard. By the order of the Khan Maksud Giray the murderer was sentenced to death and delivered to the Jewish community. Nevertheless, a serious obstacle appeared: the Jews, who were not allowed to shed human blood, could not carry out this sentence. Therefore, Maksud Giray allowed the Jewish community to use Biblical precepts, and the culprit was stoned to death.92 As well as other inhabitants of the region, the Jews often became victims of the military raids and slave traders. The life and vicissitudes of the rabbi Moses ben Jakob ha-Gole (=the Exiled) of Kiev (14401520), one of the most famous European Jewish thinkers of that time, were closely related to the military campaigns of the Crimean Tatars. Already in 1482-1483 his children were taken captive during the Tatar sack of Kiev and taken to the Crimea as slaves.93 The rabbi himself was captured during the Tatar siege of Lida in 1506 and taken to the Crimean town of Eski Kırım (Sulkhat). In spite of his bitter polemics with the Karaite leaders, Moses ben Jacob was redeemed through the joint efforts of the local Rabbanite and Karaite communities. After his release the rabbi stayed in Caffa until the end of his days and became 88 Fisher, “Muscovy,” 584. Jewish slavers, who were selling the most beautiful female slaves, were also mentioned in Pitton de Tournefort, Relation d’un voyage du Levant, vol. 2 (Lyon, 1717), 233. 89 Oleksander Halenko, “Iudeiski hromady Osmanskoyi Kefy seredyny XVI st.,” Skhodoznavstvo 3-4 (1998), 59. 90 MS LMAB F.143-1177, fol.1. 91 MS LMAB F.143-1177, fol.4. 92 de Tott, Memoirs, vol. 1, pt.2, 95-96). 93 See the introduction to Kaleb Afendopulo’s critique of Moses ben Jacob’s antiKaraite treatise (1487) (Bod. MSS Opp. Add. 120, fols. 81-85). slave trade in the early modern crimea 29 the leader of the local Rabbanite community.94 It is only through his spiritual authority and introduction of this new amalgamated tradition that a local community, hitherto consisting of a few rival groups, became a united group with common religious identity.95 Thus, paradoxically enough, in this case the Tatar slave trade unwillingly played a decisive role in the forming of the local Jewish community. Equally paradoxical was the fate of a Karaite pilgrim to Jerusalem, Joseph ben Jeshuah from Deraûno (Poland), who composed a sorrowful piyut (=poem) in the Karaimo-Kipchak language entitled “Karanhy bulut” (=Black cloud). The poem was dedicated to his stay in the Crimea in 1666, where he was thrown into a terrible prison in Bahçesaray “in the Khan’s palace with the chain on the neck.” Joseph ben Jeshuah’s prayer for delivery from “harsh captivity” was soon heard. Nevertheless, the Khan (most likely, Mehmed Giray IV) confiscated the money which the Jewish pilgrim needed to travel to Jerusalem. Therefore, Joseph ben Jeshuah could not realize his plans and was forced to stay in ÇufutKale for three years, where he studied the Torah with local sages. Thus, for him the Crimean imprisonment turned out to be a very important part of his life and religious education.96 In general, however, Jewish sources tell us much less about the moral side of the problem of the slave trade97—it was Christianity and Islam, 94 S.Zinberg, “Avraam Krymskii i Moisei Kievskii,” Evreiskaya starina 11 (1924): 101-109; Golda Akhiezer, “The History of the Crimean Karaites during the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” in Karaite Judaism. A Guide to Its History and Literary Sources, ed. Meira Polliack (Leiden, 2003), 747-48. 95 Later the Crimean Rabbanite Jews started to be culturally Tatarized, and felt themselves very different from the Ashkenazic Jewish settlers, who started emigrating to the Crimea from the end of the eighteenth century onwards. In the second half of the nineteenth century this group started to be called “the Krimchaks,” i.e. the Crimean Jews. 96 The collection of the Hebrew manuscripts in the Bodleian library of Oxford contains a very interesting version of “Karanhy bulut” of the Crimean provenance (BOD MS. Heb. F.5, fols.5-8; cf. Adolf Neubauer, and Arthur Cowley, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1886), 140, no.2725, “Hymns in the Tatar language”). The slightly different version of this poem was found by me in the macuma (Turk. “copybook”) of Rafael ben Joshua Grigulewicz in MS LMAB, F.305, no220, fols.17r-20v. See also Jan Grzegorzewski, “Caraimica. JÊezyk „ach-Karaitów,”Rocznik Orientalistyczny 2:2 (1916-1918), 268-270, 274-270; M.Nosonovskii, V.Shabarovskii, “Karaimy v Derazhno: stikhotvornyi rasskaz o razrushenii obshchiny.” http://www.coe.neu.edu/ ~mnosonov/kar/ 97 More on the role of the Jews in the Crimean slave trade see in Mikhail Kizilov, “Jewish Population and the Trade in Slaves and Captives in the Crimean Khanate in the Seventeenth Century,” in The Proceedings of the Thirteenth World Congress of Jewish Studies ( Jerusalem, 2005) (in press). 30 mikhail kizilov the two main rival forces, that were the main participants of the debates related to this issue. Conclusion To conclude, we should say that especially severe critique of the Crimean slave trade was expressed by Eastern European Christian authors (Russian, Polish-Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Armenian). They could not tolerate the idea of thousands of their co-religionists being constantly belittled and humiliated by the infidel-Muslims and exposed to the “vicious” influence of Islam. Nevertheless, it seems that not too many Christian authors of that time expressed equal disapproval of the European slave trade in Tatar and African slaves. Muslim authors, who considered the slave trade to be a usual phenomenon of the every day life in their countries, certainly cared much less about the fate of the Christian slaves seized by the Tatars. Nevertheless, most educated and enlightened Muslim men of letters (e.g. Evliya Çelebi) wrote with deep compassion about the sufferings of unfortunate slaves, carried away from their homeland, friends, and relatives. The position of Jewish sources seems to be as pragmatic as that of Muslim and Christian ones—while criticizing the cases of enslavement of their brethren-in-faith, the Jewish population of the Crimea took an active part in the slave trade in the region as the slave owners, traders, guards, and mediators in ransoming. Thus, while reproaching the slave trade in their countrymen, Early Modern sources did not object to the existence of the slave trade per se and considered it to be just another offshoot of commercial activity. The idea of a total and absolute conviction and condemnation of the slave trade as a phenomenon not compatible with human morality was born a bit later, at the end of the eighteenth-beginning of the nineteenth century. The most essential part of the didactic discourse pertaining to the problem of the Tatar slave of the Early Modern period was a religious one—the question of the conversion of the slaves into their new masters’ religion. Muslim and Christian Early Modern sources were rather inconsistent when discussing this problem—while considering a conversion of their fellow-countrymen into an alien religion to be an utter evil, they certainly approved opposite cases, namely, a conversion of the slaves from other countries into their religion. Nevertheless, many Crimean Christian captives converted to Islam in order to acquire a higher social status. Similarly, numerous captive Tatars continued their life in Russia slave trade in the early modern crimea 31 as the so-called “kriashcheny” (Russ. “baptized”). After conversion they usually received a new social status and were normally integrated into regular everyday life of Russian state with the same rights as other lower social strata of Russian society of that time. In fact, many of such kriashcheny became founders of the famous Russian aristocratic clans (e.g. Nabokovs, Naryshkins, Sheremetevs, Nashchokins etc.).98 For the Jews the idea of conversion to another religion was, perhaps, less acceptable—and thousands of the Jews preferred death to baptism in the course of Chmielnicki’s rebellion of 1648-1654. Nevertheless, we know of a few cases when some converted Jews, who joined the Cossack forces, became distinguished Cossack military leaders. We do not have any data about the conversion of the Crimean captives to Judaism— unlike Christianity and Islam, Early Modern Judaism did not welcome any newcomers of non-Jewish descent.99 Even in the eighteenth century, at the time of European Enlightenment and emancipation, the Crimea continued to be a symbol of dark Muslim power, a slave trade, captivity and humiliation in the eyes of Christian Europe. It was only in 1774-1783 that the Russian annexation of the peninsula stopped for good this inhuman trade of live objects. The slave trade was never again resurrected in the region and now only Ukrainian folk-songs, like the one quoted as the epigraph to this article, remind us of the fact that once this land could hear the laments and cries of sorrow of the Crimea’s most unhappy visitors—slaves, captives, and prisoners of war—taken without their will faraway from home to be sold as a sort of “live implements” and spend the end of their days in misery and exhaustive physical labor. 98 Even some members of the Girays, the Crimean Tatar ruling dynasty, converted at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Hazan Kırımlı, “Crimean Tatars, Nogays, and Scottish Missionaries. The Story of Kattı Geray and Other Baptised Descendants of the Crimean Khans,” Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique 45 (1-2): 61-108). 99 Perhaps, the last large wave of Jewish proselyzation was in the Middle Ages, when Judaism was accepted as the main state religion by the ruling dynasty of the nomadic Khazars (see more in Omeljan Pritsak, “The Khazar Kingdom’s Conversion to Judaism,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 2 (1978): 261-81; Peter Golden, Khazar Studies. An HistoricoPhilological Inquiry into the Origins of the Khazars, 2 vols (Budapest, 1980)). In the nineteenth century, nevertheless, there also was a large group of Russian peasants and Cossacks, who accepted Rabbinic and Karaite Judaism and were called “Subbotniki” (Russ. “keepers of the Sabbath”) (Alexander L‘vov, “Subbotniki i evrei,” Paralleli 2-3 (2003), 401-412).