The Hungarian école never fails to impress in the range of topics addressed in its forays into Ottoman history. In the volume under review, edited by the indefatigable team of Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor, the contributors write of the gripping, albeit tragic, misadventures of men and women kidnapped or captured for financial gain.
Slavery was a not uncommon fate for unfortunates captured early on, from the late fourteenth century, when the Ottoman westward push first jolted Hungarian sanguinity. Like their fellows in the steppelands to the north of the Black Sea, Hungarians were later sold in Ottoman slave markets such as Sarajevo and Istanbul, but even before the momentous defeat of a crusader army at Nikopolis on the Danube in 1396 the people of southern Hungary were being harried by raiders who devastated the land and carried off those unlucky enough to be in their path. Some managed to escape, recounting their ordeal in ‘registers of miracles’ and bequeathing their shackles to a shrine in gratitude. Individual cases are poignant in the detail of the hardships endured, both during captivity—some men and women were sold on several times—and in the insecurity fugitives faced as they tried to make their way home.
The parallel activity of holding captives for ransom was becoming common by the fifteenth century, but slavery, or labour for meagre reward, persisted during periods of war when there was a glut of captives who, if Ottoman, might be sold to Austrian nobles, Italian merchants and the like. The Elector of Bavaria received 345 Ottoman male prisoners after the fall of Buda in 1686, the strongest of whom were put to wage-work to build his summer palace at Schleissheim, outside Munich. By 1700, there were 36 ‘Turkish slaves’ in Munich who, having worked also on the Elector's Neues Schloss, were exchanged for Christian prisoners following the Treaty of Karlowitz of 1699. Karlowitz also brought release for some hundred men, mostly Austrian, and mostly working in the galleys in Istanbul and elsewhere, as well as some tens more men and women in private ownership.
As time went by and it became clear the Ottomans were in Hungary to stay, ransom became big business, governed by common and customary law acknowledged by both sides. The studies in this volume mainly concern prisoners of war and captives for ransom, translated in Ottoman Turkish as esir or tutsak, which, “neither in law nor in actuality” denoted a slave. Thus the discussion in the Introduction of slavery as such is perhaps too insistent because, as the contributions indicate, it is far from the case that all, or perhaps even most, captured individuals were enslaved. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that are the concern of most writers, “the main purpose of the acquisition of captives was ransom”.
For much of the time, particularly during periods of peace, captives were traded much like any other commodity and their treatment was governed by principles of reciprocity between Ottomans and Hungarians. A degree of judiciousness was required in choice of captives: ‘high-value’ individuals might be presented to the sultan or the emperor, while peasant folk were worth little and best sold as slaves. Most desirable were those in the middle: the Hungarian lesser nobility and their counterparts, the middle-ranking officers of the Ottoman border fortresses, against whose release there was more than a fighting chance of securing a ransom. Those seizing captives had to struggle against their commanders for a fair share of the spoils, while the imprisoned had to assert themselves collectively in order to obtain reasonable conditions of imprisonment. From the early seventeenth century the latter were represented by individuals chosen from amongst their number who aided them in the tortuous ransom process.
Ransom may have been regulated by a set of rules acceptable to both sides, but it rarely ran smoothly. The captive offered an amount to his captor, and negotiations could then begin. The captor assessed through his spies how much the captive and his family could afford to pay—in money and goods—and then tortured him to get him to raise his offer. A contract was drawn up when agreement was reached and the captive was able to set off, dragging the chains he was forced to wear, to raise his ransom. Sometimes family members stood in for the prisoner while he went to collect the ransom, but more usually fellow prisoners would stand surety and if he failed to return would be compelled to pay up on his behalf, and risked mutilation or thrashing. The people of the wealthier market towns were often forced to act as guarantor, and suffered the attendant harassment and economic loss without recourse. Before they were released, those who managed to collect their ransom were charged a fee for their time in prison and the cost of the chains. Food was not provided and had to be bought or begged for.
The contributors to this volume draw on individual cases of ransoming—many illuminated by personal testament—to weave the story of an aspect of frontier life that is barely visible in the Ottoman documentary record alone. One such case is that of the sancakbegi Ali Bey of Koppany who was captured by Hungarian soldiers in 1583 and given to a favourite of the Hapsburg emperor. Two senior Ottoman officials from Buda volunteered to stand as his guarantors, and six market towns were also obliged to do so. Ali had agreed to pay a ransom that was clearly beyond his means, and included 30,000 florins in cash; 100 oxen; two horses (with silver and gold saddles and harnesses) on which he used to go to court; eight other horses; a Persian silk carpet; and 400 aigrettes—plus two Hungarians in Ottoman captivity. The market towns feared the worst, knowing they would fall victim to exactions from both sides, as indeed they did. Months of prevarication and confusion followed, and turned into years, and by 1591 Ali had either died or his case had been settled in some way unknown to us. Another case concerns an Ottoman cavalryman called Receb, who was captured in 1646 and required to pay an even greater amount, including two horses whose rich caparison is described in minute detail; leopard and tiger skins; large carpets; gold-brocade quilts; Damascened helmets and arm-guards—the horses had to be “suitable for a magnate”, and the other goods “suitable for a nobleman”. Hungarian nobles, it seems, loved to dress up as Ottoman dignitaries. Needless to say, Receb was unable to fulfil his promise in full, despite having 55 guarantors, and after a series of picaresque adventures, found himself back in captivity in 1657, when the trail goes cold.
The cases of Ali and Receb may not be representative, but evidence two of the numerous occasions when Ottomans, Hungarians and Hapsburgs had to co-operate in the intricate task of ransoming captives. The Crimean Tatars, vassals of the Ottomans, were infamous for their slave markets but when they captured some thousands of Hungarian prisoners in Poland in a Transylvanian rout in 1657, many were ransomed under a system of guarantee similar to that operating in the central Hungarian lands. The names of 275 individuals are known, and those redeemed—the Transylvanian Diet imposed a tax to secure their freedom—were taken to Jassy in Moldavia, where they were released. On another frontier, the French consul in Izmir played a crucial and lucrative role in freeing hapless Ottoman subjects captured by the Maltese in the 1620s, making high-interest loans to enable them to escape the captivity during which most had served as galley-slaves.
The history of Hungary in the Ottoman period is peculiar in that the country was only partly ruled from Istanbul, and both Hungarians and Ottomans produced a wealth of written sources that allow scholars “from both sides of the frontier” to contribute to a single volume. A map showing the locations mentioned in the text would have been an advantage, since the place-names of Hungary are as much of a puzzle as the language. Geography is also a problem when it comes to the title: with two exceptions, the twelve papers concern the central European theatre of war and, in particular, the violence meted out by Ottomans against Hungarians, and by Hungarians against Ottomans, as each tried to enrich themselves at the expense of the other. Neither of these quibbles detracts from the fascination of an outstanding collection of papers on a topic that is new to Ottoman studies, and the decision to write in English on this occasion will delight the many unfamiliar with the prolific Hungarian-language scholarship of the contributors. A final conundrum tantalises, however: what sort of torture translates into English as ‘young wife’?
