Blonde cargoes: Finnish children in the slave markets of medieval Crimea

litwin · May 2, 2017

slave handle which we know very little about,

all questions about slavery are welcomed here :

Finnish exotics ever found their way to the Crimea; Jukka Korpela estimates that their numbers may have been as low as half a dozen a year. The prices they commanded, however, were simply colossal; one
source notes that girls who could be purchased for as little as 5 altyn in Karelia could be resold for 6,666 altyn even before they reached the Khanate – a mark up in excess of 133,000 percent. The higher price, equivalent to 200 roubles or (in about 1600) 250 sheep, was also about five times the usual price for a Crimean slave. It is no surprise, in these circumstances, that slaves from the far north were highly sought-after for their colouring – nor that their special characteristics were scrupulously noted in the slave registers so carefully kept in the ports that lay at the heart of this commerce in human misery: “white skin, white hair.”

To get some idea of how this slave trade worked, how it developed and how it was made profitable, it is necessary first to make the point that slave raiding and slave trading were the economic mainstays of the Crimea throughout the medieval period. The trade actually rose and fell twice, once before and once after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, demand for pagan or Muslim slaves for Byzantium being supplanted by the market for Christian slaves in the Ottoman Empire. There seem to have been few years in this period, however, in which at least 2,000 prisoners were not shipped out of Caffa, a port which Mikhalon Litvin – a Lithuanian writing in about 1550 – described as “not a town, but an abyss into which our blood is pouring.” That figure, moreover, substantially understates the true extent of slavery in the Crimea. It has been estimated that at least a third of the prisoners brought into the peninsula remained there, working as slaves for Tatar masters. Another substantial group found their way to rival ports in the peninsula, or were sold on to buyers from other Mongol successor-states such as the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan.
Click to expand...

https://mikedashhistory.com/2015/01...dren-in-the-slave-markets-of-medieval-crimea/

kazenatsu · May 17, 2017

The Middle East has a long history of slavery. It spread to Africa under the muslims, with Africans enslaving other Africans to sell to muslim slave traders. A lot of these men were turned into eunuchs to guard harems. Having an exotic big strong ebony-skinned African man to guard your harem was the thing to do at the time, apparently. Of course they took white slaves from the North to fill those harems. The raids against Europe were as much about filling their harems as it was about conquering new territory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlqW0zOlpf0

Log in or Sign up

Blonde cargoes: Finnish children in the slave markets of medieval Crimea

litwin Well-Known Member

kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

Share This Page

Log in or Sign up

Blonde cargoes: Finnish children in the slave markets of medieval Crimea

litwin Well-Known Member

kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

Share This Page

Useful Searches