Where the Slaves Went

As Cantemir indicated, so also in earlier times, many of the Slavic captives sold at the market in Kaffa or in Istanbul, especially strong young men with no special skills or professional training, went directly into the sul­tan's navy, where they served as galley slaves.

Ukrainian captives filled a large part of this need during this period. The archival records of the Knights of St John of Malta show that, on the fifteen Turkish galleys they captured at about this time, they liberated 2,483 Christian galley slaves (see Figure 7), of whom a full 1,230, or almost half, were of Ukrainian origin or nationality. The Italians came a distant second, with 271, and the Poles third, with 202. Captives from almost every other nation of central, southern, and eastern Europe were to be found.⁵¹ The very Ukrainian and Russian words for punitive exile - katorha or katorga (wide­ly used in nineteenth-century Russia) - derive ultimately from the Turkish word for galley, kadirga, adopted from Byzantine Greek.⁵²

Some of the most touching Ukrainian historical songs about Ottoman captivity deal with the galley slaves. The most famous by far is the duma (reflective song) “The Flight of Samuel Kishka from Turkish Slavery.” Sam­uel Kishka (d.

Other Tatar captives in the Crimea met different fates, some of them apparently quite tragic. For example, if we can believe Michael the Lithua­nian, “there were strong ones, who, if they were not castrated, had their ears cut off or their nostrils torn, or were branded with a hot iron on their cheeks or lips.”⁵⁴ Although it is hard to understand why a slave-owner would de­liberately mutilate and thus devalue his bondsman, and indeed such action was expressly forbidden by Islamic law, it is possible that some run-away slaves may have been branded. Moreover, we do know that before the em­pire's decline there were a certain number of white eunuchs guarding the harems and serving in the households of the sultan and of rich and influen­tial Turks, where they were in great demand. (For example, white eunuchs were in charge of training the pages in the sultan's household.) But of who performed this terrible operation and where, we know much less. There is no information about eunuchs preserved in the Ukrainian folk tradition.⁵⁵

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that some eunuchs originated in Slavon­ic Europe. Michael the Lithuanian writes: “All of the servants, eunuchs, scribes, and various craftsmen of these tyrants, and the better warriors, the Janissaries, whom they teach the art of war from childhood and from whom in the end they select their leaders and notables, come from our Christian blood.”⁵⁶ Indeed, if a slave had some education or a special talent, his lot was almost certain to be better than that of his uneducated, or less talented compatriots.

Artists and musicians were especially highly prized by both Turks and Tatars. For example, the favourite singer of Khan Islam Giray III was a “Polish” slave, as was much of the khan's chorus. When, on conclusion of a Polish-Tatar peace treaty in 1654, the choristers were given the chance to return home, none of them did.⁵⁸