This week we continue the series of posts on life in Algiers drawn from Relation de la captivité et liberté du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda, (The Relation of the Captivity and Liberation of Emanuel d’Aranda).
This week’s excerpt contains more stories about the sorts of things slaves in Algiers had to resort to in order to survive.
I knew a Spaniard, whom I shall here call Rodrigo, a person who, though far from being valiant, yet lived by the reputation of his sword—that is, a kind of a Hector. These people in Spanish are called Vendevuidas. This Rodrigo got his livelihood by composing differences between the slaves, bringing them to drink together after they were reconciled, and making good cheer among them.
However, his main business was to set the Spaniards together by the ears [to set them against each other], and afterwards to mediate between them and take his share of the drink at their agreement.
Rodrigo would be always haunting the taverns of the Bath [the slave prison], where he thought the greatest drunkards resorted; for commonly, when the reckoning came to be paid, there was some dispute between the drunken Turks, and the Christian taverner. Rodrigo mediated these differences with a Spanish gravity, saying, “Gentlemen, it is sufficient, that a person of my rank and quality says it.” And when the Turks would not pay the Taverner, Rodrigo gave notice of it to the Guardian, who presently locked up the Bath.
When the drunken Turks drew their knives, Rodrigo came behind them with a ladder, and getting a Turk’s head between the rungs, levered him away (which he might do to part them, for a Christian is not to strike a Turk upon pain of death). Then the Guardian [of the Bath] came in and forced the Turk to pay, or made him leave something in pawn.
For such services as these was Rodrigo much esteemed among the taverners of the Bath, having for his reward a good supper.
There was a Muscovite among us, about fourscore years of age, not able to do anything in the way of hard labor, as he had been previously injured. He made clean the necessary house [the toilets] of the Bath, and every week he went a begging alms of the slaves for his pains. With what was given him, he made shift to subsist.
There was also a young Lad, a Hamburger, who at his being taken had lost an arm, and so could not do much for his livelihood, and yet his Patron allowed him nothing. But a countryman of his having given him half a patacoon, he bought with it a pair of ninepins, and pigeon-holes. He went out of the city, near the gate, and hired out his pins, and the holes to the children who were playing there, and so he made a shift to live pretty well.
The Spaniards, who could keep taverns lived like princes among the slaves, and in a short time got as much as paid their ransom. For those who can get in a pipe of wine in September, which costs them sixteen patacoons, will, by retail, make forty or fifty from selling it.
There were also among us six surgeons, who got much money, for they were sent for by the citizens. But whereas some men are ordinarily lost by money and good cheer, these came to their destruction by women and wine.
There were some slaves who employ themselves in knitting stockings, and others got their livelihood by some kind of games. But the profession most used was stealing.
Every night there was publicly sold whatever had been stolen the day before, as I have related more at large in the discourse of my captivity. The priests lived on the alms of the Christian slaves.
In fine, all of all nations made some shift to live, save only the English, who it seems are not so skillful as others, and it seems also they have no great kindness for each another. The winter I was in the Bath, I observed there died above twenty of them out of pure want. Nor are they therefore much esteemed by the Turks, for an Englishman is sold at sixty or seventy patacoons, when a Spaniard or Italian is valued at one hundred and fifty or two hundred—when the value is set according to the body and not according to the ransom that may be gotten.
There were other slaves who frequented certain houses where they daily carried water, and fetched away the dirt [the contents of the toilets] and lived on the salary they had for their pains.
These various ways of getting one’s livelihood were allowed only when the Patron’s work was done. I was so satisfied with the consideration of what passed among the slaves of the Bath that when I lived with Mahomet Celibi Oiga, to divert myself, I went to discourse with the student, about whom there would always be some Dunkirk slaves who related their adventures at sea, telling of the doings of the Dutch, and of what passed in the East Indies, Japan, and China.
The Danes, and Hamburgers told stories of whale fishing in Greenland, of what time of the year the sun appears in Iceland, and when their six month’s night is at an end.
If such conversation pleased me not, I went among the Spaniards, who governed the dominions of their King as they pleased, and who talked of the delicacies of Mexico or the wealth of Peru.
Or if I went among the French, who had news from New France, Canada or Virginie, for most of the slaves are people some way related to the Sea.
By this account of the slaves, it may be seen what a mistress necessity is, and that there can be no better university to teach men to shift for their livelihood then one of the Baths at Algiers.
We will continue next week with more excerpts from d’Aranda’s Relation.
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For those who may be interested…
The two-part series of stories about the sorts of things slaves in Algiers had to resort to in order to survive can be found in “Relation Sixteen: Necessity is the Mother of Diligence and Industry” in the seventeenth century English translation of d’Aranda’s Relation, titled The history of Algiers and it’s slavery with many remarkable particularities of Africk / written by the Sieur Emanuel D’Aranda, sometime a slave there; English’d by John Davies, pp. 152-158.
As usual, I have edited the original seventeenth century text to make it more easily readable.
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