Slavery, Freedom Suits, and Legal Praxis in the Ottoman Empire, ca. 1590–1710
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8847084 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joshua M White (0000-0002-2482-7198, University of Virginia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 65 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 526-556 |
| Publication date | 2023-04-21 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s001041752300004x |
| OpenAlex | W4366775228 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 42 |
Beginning with the story of the Muslim youth Mehmed bin Abdülcelil of Tunis, this article examines the plight of Ottoman subjects abducted and sold into slavery within the Ottoman Empire and their efforts to regain freedom through Ottoman courts. Freedom suits ( hürriyet davaları ) were common in the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire, so much so that contemporary legal praxis manuals ( sukuk ) always provided examples of how to document them, but they have never been systematically studied for this period in which slave ownership was extremely widespread and the legality of enslavement depended solely on religion and subjecthood. Drawing on a sample of seventy-nine suits from greater Istanbul and eleven sukuk manuscripts, this article considers how the trade in the illegally enslaved was concealed by the immense traffic in licit captives and how the theoretical protections of Ottoman subjecthood clashed with the practical challenges of how to prove it, exposing the gap between slavery as legal institution and slaving in practice. Whereas the vast majority of freedom suits ended in rulings in favor of the victims, most of the illegally enslaved probably never managed to have their cases heard or were turned away for lack of evidence
Ancient history · Empire · Institution · Ottoman empire · Political science · Politics · Praxis · Principle of legality · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law
From Slaves to Prisoners of War
The Problem of Slavery as History
The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem
Brokering Empire
Slaves in the Social and Economic Life of Bursa in the Late 15th and Early 16th Centuries
Une affaire interne. Le sort et la libération des personnes de condition libre illégalement retenues en esclavage sur le territoire ottoman (XVIe siècle)
Document Use in Ottoman Courts of Law
Contested Conversions to Islam
Slaves Without Shackles
Possessed by the Right Hand
Slave Trade in the Early Modern Crimea From the Perspective of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources
La fille du meunier et l’épouse du gouverneur d’Adana
The Use of Ottoman Sharīʿa Court Records As a Source for Middle Eastern Social History
Piracy, Ransom, Slavery and Trade. French participation in the liberation of Ottoman slaves from Malta during the 1620s
In the shadow of Dred Scott
Freedom Suits and Civil Law in Brazil and the United States
African Freedom Suits and Portuguese Vassal Status
Legal personality and the processes of slave liberty in early-modern New Spain
Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants
Black Africans’ Freedom Litigation Suits to Define Just War and Just Slavery in the Early Spanish Empire
Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise 1800–1909
Fugitives and Factotums
Slavery and Household Formation in Ottoman Aleppo, 1640-1700
Black Slaves and Free Blacks in Ottoman Cyprus, 1590-1640
Ethnic-Regional ( Cins ) Solidarity in the Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Establishment
Some Notes on the Dev sh irme
Freedom with Local Bonds
How Juan and Leonor Won Their Freedom
Devshirme and Shari'a
Slavery and Its Transformations
Transplanted Slavery, Contested Freedom, and Vernacularization of Rights in the Reform Era Ottoman Empire
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |