Abstract
Slavery is a phenomenon as old as the history of humanity. In the Ottomans era a non-free person called slave or captive. As in many societies, there is not only in ottoman society slavery adult but also children and this real undeniable. In the related literature, it is not so possible to find out studies on child slaves compared to the studies on adolescent slaves. Child slaves were also the tragic fact of history like adult slaves. The employment of child slaves and the sale of them as a trade product is another problem. The child of a married slave is born as a slave. For this reason, child slaves are as old as the history of slaves. Additionally, slaves captured in the wars or gained as booty were also enslaved. One-fifth of captives gained in the war were used in palaces or army by Ottoman on the rules kul system. The rest was distributed to the war participants or the ones who succeeded in the war. Thus, slavery turned into a form of meeting the need of the state, a commodity, a money prize, or a workforce in society.This study aims to make a general assessment on child slaves in the Ottoman society. In this context, child slaves were analyzed in terms of being leakage, their physical properties, and their original homeland. For this study, court records (şer’iyye sicili) of İstanbul, Üsküdar, Galata, Balat, Kadıköy, Eyüp, Manisa, Bursa, Balıkesir, Tekirdağ (Rodoscuk) and Konya were used as main sources.
Highlights
Slavery was common in ancient Greece, which is today considered the foundation of western civilization
A part of the society, have hardly been analysed in academic studies. They did not enjoy certain rights until recently and their lives were in the hands of adults. This had been the case for a long time, even in today’s developed societies, until the 19th century
Children in the Ottoman Empire were the silent actors in life. They were mentioned in court records in the events of adoption, custody, crime, apprenticeship, or slavery
Summary
Slavery, adapted into Islamic law, remained in the Ottoman Empire. As the Ottoman Empire grew and expanded, it took the gulam system as an example from previous Turkish-Islamic states and tried to satisfy the need for slaves (in the army and the palace) by using war captives (Uzunçarşılı, 1988: 9-12). During the court cases about slaves, they were described in detail: name, father’s name, gender, nationality, skin and eye colour, scars on the eyebrows, height, occupation and age (Nalçacı, 2015: 310) Slavery was not a common phenomenon during the early years of the Ottoman state, it grew and remained a vital part of social life Rich families kept slaves as indentured servants, butlers, or nannies (see Erdem, 2004: 34/129-231 and Parlatır, 1983: 823-826 for abolition of slavery in Ottoman)
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