ALGIERS – THE CAPTIVES’ EXPERIENCE 14

This week we continue the story of Helgi Jónsson, a young Icelander who, along with the rest of his family, was captured in the summer of 1627 by corsairs from Salé but who wound up in Algiers.

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When he first arrived in Algiers, Helgi would have passed through the Bab Jazira (the Gate of the Island), the gateway that led from the Mole into the city proper, and found himself trailing along behind his owner through the claustrophobic the disorienting warren of alleyways and tight-packed buildings that was Algiers, surrounded by daunting crowds of strangers, struggling to get a solid breath in the close, hot air.

He must surely have felt as if he were being led through one of the gates of hell into the infernal regions.

Helgi’s older brother, Jón, who was also in Algiers, wrote a number of letters from that city. A couple of them have survived the centuries. In one, he mentions that Helgi had many owners. So the man who initially brought Helgi into Algiers apparently sold him off (hence my guess that Helgi and his brother might have been bought by speculators), and Helgi was then passed along to a series of owners—he must have become used to the auction block at the Badestan—until, sometime around 1630, he was bought by a man who kept him for five or six years.

In a letter dated 1630, Jón describes this man as “a Greek renegade who has abandoned his religion and is now a chief over many soldiers.” This description can mean only one thing: Helgi was bought by a janissary officer.

Janissaries were an elite core of soldiers used throughout the Ottoman Empire (Algiers was officially a province of the Ottoman Empire, hence it had not only the janissaries but an Ottoman Governor as well). In Helgi’s day, there were something like 15,000 janissaries stationed in Algiers. They were crucial to the city’s survival, for they provided the brute force that both kept the citizenry—enslaved and free alike—in line and allowed Algiers to successfully dominate large sections of the surrounding countryside.

In the summer of 1635, a ransoming expedition from Denmark arrived in Algiers. They were there for almost a full year, negotiating the freedom of Icelandic, Danish, and Norwegian captives. When it was all done, the organizer of this expedition submitted to the Danish authorities a carefully itemized receipt of the expenses incurred, including a list of all the captives ransomed, the names of the owners of those captives, and the cost of each ransom.

Helgi was ransomed in May, 1636, and his name appears in this official register, along with that of his owner. The section of that original, itemized receipt that provides the details about Helgi’s ransom appears below.

The nearly four-hundred-year-old script used in this receipt is a challenge to make out. Here is what the text says:

Ad. 20 do: Vonn Mamet Bullique Baschi Hellge Jonßen

Jsslennder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Rd. dar zu er selber fourniert

10 Rd: vnnde Jhc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rd. 140 —

Portgellt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rd. 60:—

_____________

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rd. 200:—

Here is an English rendering (in the extract below, “Rd.” is an abbreviation for rigsdaler, a silver coin used in Denmark and the unit of currency used to calculate the ransom amounts):

On 20 ditto [of May]: [bought] from Mamet Bullique Baschi, Helgi Jónsson

Icelander. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150 Rd. who himself provided

10 Rd: and I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rd. 140 —

Port tax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rd. 60:—

_____________

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rd. 200:—

As this translation of the listing makes clear, the man who owned Helgi when he was ransomed was named Mamet Bullique Baschi.

“Mamet” was one of several Turkish variants of Muhammad—a common name. “Bullique Baschi” seems clearly to be a variant spelling of the Turkish military title Bölükbaşı, which meant “Captain.” So the name of Helgi’s owner was essentially “Captain Muhammad.”

(The image at the top of this post is a depiction of a Bölükbaşı in full janissary regalia.)

Since Helgi’s brother Jón mentions the “Greek renegade, chief over many soldiers” in his 1630 letter, Helgi must have been bought by the janissary captain sometime before that. It seems that the captain hung onto Helgi for from then on until agreeing to ransom him in May of 1636.

As it was quite common at this time in Algiers for janissary officers to possess slaves, it is not surprising that Helgi was bought by such a man.

By all accounts, janissary officers made reasonably good owners. They were single men who lived in officers’ quarters in large barracks, and they bought slaves in order to have servants to help them keep their military gear in order and to generally ensure that their living quarters were cleaned and organized.

It was not particularly onerous work, and Helgi would have stayed in the janissary barracks with Mamet Bullique Baschi and been spared the communal misery of the bagnios.

Helgi did initially have a problem with this janissary captain, though. According to Hegi’s brother, Jón, Mamet Bullique Baschi tried to force Helgi to convert to Islam through intimidation and beatings. This stopped only after Helgi threatened to jump into the sea and drown himself rather than convert.

After this, apparently, the two worked out some sort of mutually acceptable agreement, for, as we have seen, Helgi stayed with Mamet Bullique Baschi from sometime around 1630 until he was ransomed in 1636.

Every Algiers corsair ship carried a contingent of janissaries to serve as marines if fighting should prove necessary. These shipboard janissaries were commanded by a Bölükbaşı. Mamet Bullique Baschi was one of these seagoing janissary captains. According to Jón, Mamet Bullique Baschi and the contingent of janissaries he commanded served regularly aboard a ship commanded by a corsair captain named Jairi Mustafa, who seems to have been a particularly wily and successful captain, for he is described as rarely attacking ships directly but, instead, as taking them through the use of cunning.

Helgi regularly accompanied Mamet Bullique Baschi on these corsair cruises.

There is an obvious irony here, of course: Helgi, a European slave, participated in corsair expeditions whose main purpose was to capture more European slaves.

The Icelandic sources provide no details about what Helgi’s life aboard a corsair ship might have been like, but there is another captivity narrative, penned by another European captive who also served as a slave to a seagoing janissary officer. Helgi’s experiences were no doubt similar to this man’s.

We will look at this new captivity in next week’s post.