Book | Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean 1550-1810

Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean 1550-1810, 1st Edition
Edited by Mario Klarer[1]
Routledge
282 pages | 15 B/W Illus.

Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean explores the early modern genre of European Barbary Coast captivity narratives from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. During this period, the Mediterranean Sea was the setting of large-scale corsairing that resulted in the capture or enslavement of Europeans and Americans by North African pirates, as well as of North Africans by European forces, turning the Barbary Coast into the nemesis of any who went to sea.

Through a variety of specifically selected narrative case studies, this book displays the blend of both authentic eye witness accounts and literary fictions that emerged against the backdrop of the tumultuous Mediterranean Sea. A wide range of other primary sources, from letters to ransom lists and newspaper articles to scientific texts, highlights the impact of piracy and captivity across key European regions, including France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Scandinavia, and Britain, as well as the United States and North Africa.

Divided into four parts and offering a variety of national and cultural vantage points, Piracy and Captivity in the Mediterranean addresses both the background from which captivity narratives were born and the narratives themselves. It is essential reading for scholars and students of early modern slavery and piracy.

[1] Mario Klarer is a professor of American Studies at the University of Innsbruck. He is the author of several Routledge textbooks, monographs on literature and the visual arts as well as literary utopias. His forthcoming publications include a primary text anthology of Barbary Coast captivity narratives and a digital edition of the Ambraser Heldenbuch.

Table of Contents
Lists of figures

Acknowledgements

Notes on Contributors

Introduction (Mario Klarer)

Part 1 Labor and Law

Trading Identities: Balthasar Sturmer’s Verzeichnis der Reise (1558) and the Making of the European Barbary Captivity Narrative
Mario Klarer

Unkind Dealings: English Captivity Narratives, Commercial Transformation, and the Economy of Unfree Labor in the Early Modern Period
Daniel Vitkus

Ambivalences of Recognition: The Position of the Barbary Corsairs in Early Modern International Law and International Politics
Walter Rech

"Free, Unfree, Captive, Slave:" António de Saldanha, a Late Sixteenth-Century Captive in Marrakesh
Peter Mark

Part 2 Home and Hybridity

"Renegades:" Converts to Islam in American Barbary Captivity Narratives of the 1790s
Anna Diamantouli

Identity Crises of Homecomers from the Barbary Coast
Robert Spindler

"Arab Speculators:" States and Ransom Slavery in the Western Sahara　
Christine E. Sears

Part 3 Diplomacy and Deliverance

Michael Heberer: A Prisoner in the Ottoman Navy
Robert Rebitsch[2]

Piracy, Diplomacy, and Cultural Circulations in the Mediterranean
Khalid Bekkaoui

A Comparison of Confraternity Models in the "Redemption of Slaves" in Europe:
The Broederschap der alderheylighste Dryvuldigheyt of Brugge/Bruges and the Scuola della Santissima Trinità of Venice

Andrea Pelizza



Part 4 Oppositions and Otherness

A Huguenot Captive in ‘Uthman Dey’s Court: Histoire chronologique du royaume de Tripoly (1685) and Its Author
Gillian Weiss

Khayr al-Din Barbarossa: Clashing Portraits of a Corsair-King
Diana de Armas Wilson

Two Arabic Accounts of Captivity in Malta: Texts and Contexts
Nabil Matar

Index



[2] One work that delineates the life and adventures of a German slave in the Muslim world is by Michael Heberer. Originally published as Aegyptiaca Servitus, Michael Heberer von Bretten’s memoirs A Slave in the Ottoman Empire (1585-1588) is a testimony of his survival at the Ottoman galleys for 3 years. Heberer travels the ports from Alexandria to Constantinople time and again, and recounts the geographical details of the journey diligently, alongside the people he meets. According to Heberer, his plight is another example of God testing his faithful, and his ultimate salvation is a clear indication of his status as one of God’s chosen, and a confirmation of his Protestant creed. 

SOURCE 

Not many details are known about Michael Heberer’s life. He studied in Wittenberg, Leipzig, and Heidelberg. In 1582, he decided to go to France and Italy. In 1585, while travelling to Egypt on a ship of the Order of Malta, he was captured by an Ottoman fleet and spent three years as a galley slave in Ottoman captivity. 

In his account Aegyptiaca Servitus, Das ist Warhafte Beschreibung einer Dreyjährigen Dienstbarkeit, so zu Alexandrien in Egypten ihren Anfang und zu Constantinopel ihr Endschaft gefunden, Heidelberg (1610), Heberer provides insight into political conditions, landscapes, traditions, and costumes of the eastern Mediterranean, and offers a perspective onto Ottoman culture and religion from a subaltern position, as well as his life as prisoner and his survival strategies. This article gives an overview of Heberer’s work and his personal impressions of the Ottoman Empire as a galley slave. In 1588, the French envoy at Constantinople redeemed Heberer out of slavery.

Heberer, Michael. Osmanlıda Bir Köle – Brettenli Michael Heberer’in Anıları 1585 -1588.  (A Slave in the Ottoman Empire – Memoirs of Michael Heberer von Bretten 1585 -1588) Trans. (from German) Turkis Noyan. Istanbul, Kitap Yayinevi, 2003.

See also: İmran TEKELİ CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN THE OTTOMAN SOCIETY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF FOREIGN TRAVELERS, pp. 183-202 In this article, the crimes and punishment methods were studied, as stated in the seyahatnames (travel books) written by foreigners who came to Turkey between the fifteenth and seventeenth century. We studied the following travel books: the Pero Tafur’s Travel Book; Philippe du Fresne-Canaye’s Travel Book ; Jean de Thévenot’s Travel Book; Joseph de Tournefort’s Travel Book; Jean Chardin’s Travel Book; Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Travel Book; Topkapı Sarayında Yaşam: Albertus Bobovius ya da Santurî Ali Ufkî Bey’in Anıları (Life at the Topkapı Palace: The Memoirs of Albertus Bobovius or Ali Ufkî Bey from Santurî); Sultanlar Kentine Yolculuk (Journey to the City of Sultans) by Salomon Schweigger; Türkiye Günlüğü (Diary of Turkey) by Stephan Gerlach; Osmanlıda Bir Köle, Brettenli Michael Heberer’in Anıları (A Slave in the Ottomans, the Memoirs of Michael Heberer von Bretten) by Michael Heberer von Bretten; Muhteşem Süleyman’ın İmparatorluğunda (In the Empire of Süleyman the Magnificent) by Nicolas de Nicolay; Crailsheimer Adam Werner, Sultan’s Presence and Reinhold Lubenau Seyahatnamesi, Osmanlı Ülkesinde 1587-1589 (Reinhold Lubenau Travel Book, In the Ottoman Country 1587-1589). Traveler books describe that punishments of clubbing that was given to those who drank alcohol, swindlers, burglars, exhibitionists, adulterers and for all kinds of crimes; unclean tripe to adulterers; plank tower for those who were fraudulent in making measurements and weights; penal servitude for tax evaders, thieves, bandits. They also mention exposing those who were false witnesses and tradesmen who sold expensively; hooking to Muslim merchants who sold alcohol; burning of spies; strangling of criminals from the Ottoman dynasty and former Byzantine nobles; and the death penalty was given to those who left (apostate) the Islamic faith. It was observed that the punishments in the Turkey in the past were very heavy and dissuasive. The punishments were at the dimension of reaching torture. It is concluded that their severity was used to facilitate the governing of the vastly large territories of the Ottoman state, with the intention to eliminate the crimes and criminals. The crimes and punishment were the subject of classical Turkish poetry in the metaphor related to beauty.  

SEE: Slavery and Manumission in Ottoman Galata | Nur Sobers-Khan

The legal and social environments surrounding slavery and manumission during the early modern period varied from place to place and profession to profession. In this episode, Nur Sobers-Khan presents her exciting research on the lives of a particular population of slaves in Ottoman Galata during the late sixteenth century, how they were classified and documented under Ottoman law, and the terms by which they were able to achieve their freedom.
Nur Sobers-Khan completed a PhD in Ottoman History at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at University of Cambridge. Dr. Sobers-Khan was formerly a curator for Persian manuscripts at the British Library. She is currently a curator at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar.
Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the social and environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East.
Nir Shafir is a doctoral candidate at UCLA focusing on the history of knowledge and science in the early modern Middle East. He also runs the website HAZİNE, which profiles different archives, libraries, and museums that house sources on the Islamic world. 
Music: İnci Çayırlı - Kıskanıyorum ; İlhan Kızılay - Örenli Gelin
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Sobers-Khan, Nur. Slaves Without Shackles Forced Labour and Manumission in the Galata Court Registers, 1560-1572. Berlin: Klaus-Schwarz-Vlg, 2014.
Heberer, Michael, Osmanlıda bir Köle: Brettenli Michael Heberer’in Anıları 1585-1588 (tr.) Türkis Noyan (Istanbul, 2003)
Faroqhi, Suraiya, “Quis Custodiet custodes: Controlling Slave Identities and Slave Traders in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-century Istanbul” in Stories of Ottoman Men and Women (Istanbul, 2002), pp. 245-263
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Sahillioğlu, Halil, ‘Slaves in the social and economic life of Bursa in the late 15th and early 16th centuries’ Turcica Vol. 17 (1985), pp. 43-112
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Zilfi, Madeline, Women and Slavery in the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge, CUP, 2010)