This week we continue the series of posts about Algiers, describing what the experience would have been like for European captives who were brought into the city. Last week, we looked at the ways in which newly arrived captives were first processed in preparation for their sale as slaves. This week, we look at how the Pasha (the Ottoman Governor of Algiers) went about choosing the slaves that he was officially entitled to.
The Algiers Pashas typically did not make their choice in the outdoor courtyard of the Dar es-Sultan. They seem to have preferred the inside the building itself—where it was no doubt cooler and more comfortable for them.
An Englishman who wrote under the nom de plume T. S., who was enslaved in Algiers in the late 1640s and who wrote a book about his experiences, included the following description of what it was like for him, and the captives taken with him, to pass through the outdoor courtyard in preparation for going inside the Dar es-Sultan:
We entered into a large and spacious courtyard paved with white Marble. There was a high Brick wall that enclosed us, and before us opened a large gate, patterned with divers colors, which led into a great hall, where our keepers led us.[1]
Entering into the building through this “large gate, patterned with divers colors” must have been quite a shock for the captives. Stumbling from the hot, blindingly sunlit courtyard into the cool dimness of the interior, they were suddenly confronted with unimaginable Oriental luxury.
The Dar es-Sultan was a three-story building. And it was large, something like 165 feet (50 meters) long by half that wide. The upper two stories were divided into arcades, each framed by columns separated by graceful arches, the whole array inlaid with splendid mosaics, the walls illuminated with decorative painting. Here is a description of the building by Antonio de Sosa, who was there in the 1580s:
The Palace is very spacious, with two enormous courts, each some thirty-six feet in diameter and paved with tiles. There are many corridors atop white brick columns, beautifully worked with limestone and plaster, and with many chambers known as ghurfat, large and small, high and low and subterranean. All of these are very well constructed, and many are paneled in fine woods, pine and oak, and painted with Moorish and Turkish pictures. This is done with no human figure but with many flowers, leaves, and grasses, all very charming and lifelike work. [2]
Half a century later, Father Pierre Dan, a Trinitarian friar who was in Algiers as part of a ransoming expedition, also visited the Dar es-Sultan in his capacity. Here is his description:
The most beautiful house in Algiers is that of the Pasha, or the Viceroy, which is almost in the middle of the city. It is remarkable for its two galleries, one on top of the other, supported by a double row of columns made of marble and porphyry adorned with mosaics. There are similarly two lower chambers, the first of which is more spacious than the other. The Palace is bounded by a courtyard, where the Divan meets. [3]
The “great hall” into which T.S. and the Icelanders were led was one of these lower chambers: a long gallery on the ground floor, lined by stone columns, that served as an official audience chamber. It was an opulent space, the floor made of painted and enameled earthenware tiles, an octagonal fountain set into the middle of it, filled with clear, bubbling water.
There, newly arrived captives were forced to wait anxiously, staring at the—to them—outlandish and exotic architecture, until the Pasha deigned to inspect them.
The Pashas of Algiers were important men, imperious, haughty, sumptuously dress (by the standards of Algiers, where the hot climate meant light clothing). Emanuel d’Aranda, a Flemish gentleman who was enslaved in Algiers in the early 1640s, described the Pasha he had to deal with as follows:
He sat in the Audience Chamber on a spacious bench covered with blue tapestry, his legs crossed, as tailors do when they work. He held in his hand a fan of feathers. His garment was a long red silk gown, and on his head he had a large turban curiously interwoven. His legs were bare. [4]
The Englishman, T. S., provides this description of another Pasha:
A grave fellow with a turban almost as big as our English half bushel. On one side of it he had a set of diamonds that sparkled as his eyes did. His garment was green, his legs were bare, and on his feet he wore sandals. [5]
René du Chastelet des Boys, a French gentleman who was captive in Algiers in the early 1640s, also had to enter the audience chamber. Here is his description of yet another Pasha:
He was seated, in the middle of a rather large but poorly lit room, on an elevated platform covered with Persian rugs, his legs crossed like a tailor. Any defects the room might have had were hidden by a large brocade cloth that hung on the wall, displaying a great array of different colors, well matched and nuanced. The Pasha reclined upon several silk cushions. The cushion on the right, which he leaned upon, was larger and more variegated, shining, and adorned with four long tassels of gold and silver mixed with some intertwined jewels. On this, he supported a copy of the Koran, covered with gold and ornamented with precious stones. [6]
Such were the Pashas of Algiers.
It is easy enough to imagine one facing a line of trembling captives: an imperious man in a large turban and a sumptuous robe, his apparel and person bedecked with jewels, his legs bare (because of the summer heat), a feather fan or a Koran in his hand—likely also a long-bladed knife in an embroidered sheath slid into a sash at his waist (the times being what they were).
He would have been a thoroughly daunting presence for the bedraggled captives, who would have just spent days or in cramped quarters in the hold of a corsair ship, unable to bathe, and who stood there in the same clothes they had been captured in.
The Algiers Pashas often struggled for authority within the city’s complicated political power structure, but in the splendid audience chamber of the Dar es-Sultan, surveying newly arrived captives… they ruled supreme. Here is T. S.’s description of the Pasha’s choosing process (he refers to the Pasha as the “King”):
The King marched to the upper end of the chamber, where there was a canopy of state and two Turkish carpets and a large pillow covered with damask, which he sat upon. The owners of the ship that captured us presented themselves before him, kissing the hem of his garment. They discoursed among themselves for about an hour, showing him our bills of lading…
The King then commanded us to come before him one by one. He looked upon us with a stern countenance and took notice of our features and stature, for it seems the Turks are excellent in the art of physiognomy; they know a man and his inclinations at the first view, just as an expert farrier can know the good or ill qualities of a horse: It concerns them much, especially those who trade in slaves.
The King made jokes about every one of us, which gave the company in the hall a great deal of mirth but only increased our sadness… At last, when he had considered us all, he commanded us to stand before him together and began to make his choices. [7]
In just such a manner did the Algiers Pashas take their pick of new captives. One in every eight was theirs by right of their office—men, women, and children. A Pasha did not even need to say anything: a mere flick of his finger… and guards would have hustled his choices away.
On a good day, a Pasha might acquire several dozen new slaves, whom he could keep for his own use or sell at a huge profit (since he had paid nothing for them). Given the large number of captives corsairs were bringing into Algiers at the time, Pashas were quite used to such affairs, and they no doubt considered such a bounty as nothing less than their due.
At the end of the choosing process, a Pasha would simply turn his back on the remaining captives and dismiss them with a negligent wave of his hand.
Those who had not been chosen were then led away, out of the audience chamber, through the marble-paved outdoor courtyard—blinking in the bright-hot sunlight—and back through the maze of dim alleyways.
They were headed, finally, for the Badestan—to be sold into slavery.
For the next installment of this series of posts on Algiers, see the next post here in this blog.
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[1] The Adventures of (Mr T.S.) an English Merchant Taken Prisoner by the Turks of Argiers, and Carried into the Inland Countries of Africa, written first by the Author, and fitted for the Public view by A. Roberts, originally published in 1670, p. 23.
[2] Maria Antonia Garcés & Diana De Armas, An Early Modern Dialogue with Islam, p. 255. This book is a translation of the first book of Antonio de Sosa’s Topographia, e historia general de Argel (Topography and General History of Algiers), first published in 1612.
[3] Pierre Dan, Histoire de barbarie, p. 88.
[4] Emanuel d’Aranda, Relation de la captivité et liberté du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda, mené esclave à Alger & mis en liberté en 1642, (A Relation of the Captivity and Liberation of Sieur Emanuel d’Aranda, Enslaved in Algiers and Released in 1642), originally published in 1656, p. 7.
[5] The Adventures of (Mr T.S.), p. 25.
[6] L’Odyssée ou diversité d’aventures en Europe, Afrique et Asie, originally published in 1660, p. 46.
[7] The Adventures of (Mr T.S.), pp. 25-28.
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