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 that city. Last week, we began looking at the process by which the captives were auctioned off into slavery in the Badestan. This week, we continue with that auctioning process.
We ended last week with Father Dan’s firsthand description of the sale of slaves in the Badestan. Laurent d’Arvieux, the French consul in Algiers in the 1670s, describes something very similar:
There are auctioneers or brokers who take the slaves by the hand and walk them from one end of the Badestan to the other, shouting aloud the price that is offered. This is an auction where everyone can bid, and where the merchandise is delivered to the last and highest bidder, provided he has the cash to pay for it.
Merchants who trade in slaves (there are many who have no other occupation) do all they can to find out if the slaves they are buying are of good family and what they can give for their ransom. The buyers examine the slaves’ teeth, and also the palms of their hands, to judge by the delicacy of their skin if they are working people.[1]
Here is how Emmanuel d’Aranda, who was enslaved in Algiers in the early 1640s, describes the process by which he and his fellow captives were sold:
We were taken to the market where it is customary to sell Christians. A very old man, with a staff in his hand, took me by the arm and led me around. Those who wanted to buy me asked about my country, my name, and my profession. They felt my hands to determine if they were hard and calloused from work, and they made me open my mouth to see if my teeth were able to gnaw biscuits on the galleys.
Then they made us all sit down, and this same old man took the first of us in the line by the arm and walked with him three or four times around the market, shouting, “Arrache! Arrache!”—meaning “Who offers more?” Once the first man was sold, he was made to sit on the other side of the market, and another was brought up.[2]
Joseph Pitts, an Englishman who was enslaved in Algiers in the 1670s, provides us with more details, including some of the content of the sales patter used during the auctioning process:
There we stood from eight o’clock in the morning until two in the afternoon (which is the time limit for the sale of Christians) and had not the least bit of bread allowed us during our stay there. Many people were curious to come and take a look at us while we stood there exposed for sale. Others, who intended to buy, came to see whether we were sound and healthy and fit for work.
The slaves are sold at auction, and the auctioneer tries to make the most he can of them. When the bidders are at hand, he cries out, “Behold! What a strong man this is! What limbs he has! He is fit for any work. And see what a pretty boy this is! No doubt his parents are very rich and are able to pay a great ransom!” With sales pitches like these, the auctioneers try to raise the price. [3]
Finally, William Okeley, an English Puritan who was a captive in Algiers in the 1640s and who wrote a book about his experiences, provides further details not only about the selling process and the sales patter, but also about the dickering that went on between seller and buyer:
Their manner of selling slaves is this: they lead them up and down the fair, or market, and when a dealer bids any money, they cry, “a-Rache! a-Rache!” which is their way of saying, “Here is so much money offered. Who bids more?”
The first priority of the buyers is to look into the captives’ mouths, for a good, strong set of grinders will advance the price considerably… Their next step is to feel the limbs of the captives to see if there are any fractures or dislocations in the bones, anything analogous to spavin or ringbone [in horses], for these will bring down the market price dramatically, just as being clean-limbed and well jointed will raise the price considerably.
The seller praises his goods to the sky. The buyer, on the other hand, will try to undervalue them. The true market price lies between, but this is the same all over the world. “See!” cries the seller. “Mark what a back this one has, what a breadth he had between his shoulders! What a chest! How strongly set! How fit for work and for carrying burdens. He will do too much work!” “Pish,” says the buyer. “He looks like a petty criminal, like a timid creature.” [4]
Perhaps the most moving description of what occurred in the Badestan is one by Father Dan in which he describes the auctioning off of a group of a hundred or so captives, mainly women and children, who were abducted from Baltimore, Ireland:
They were brought to Algiers, where it was a pitiful thing to see them put up for sale. Women were separated from husbands and children from fathers. Husbands were sold on one side, wives on the other, their daughters snatched from their arms, without hope of any of them ever seeing each other again. [5]
Thanks to the details provided by the authors above, it is easy enough to imagine what it would have been like to be auctioned off into slavery in the Algiers Badestan.
The sellers would haul you stumbling into the crowded, noisy market place and parade you about, shouting “Arrache! Arrache!” as initial offers are made, in order to attract more buyers and boost the sales price.
The constant hubbub of commerce, the haggling back and forth over prices, stops momentarily while people look you over.
Buyers begin clustering around, poking and prodding you, examining your hands and teeth critically, interrogating you as far as is possible with the aid of translators, all accompanied by a constant animated chatter you cannot understand as seller and buyer harangue each other. Rough hands strip the clothing from you, and you are made to jump about or bend over or stretch in front of cold, appraising eyes.
If you are a woman, you will likely have to endure far more intimate inspections.
All around you, other captives are being sold. Families who survived their initial capture and the voyage to Algiers together are broken apart as their members are sold to different buyers. Friends are separated. Children are taken from their parents, at times ripped from their parents’ arms, wailing hysterically.
The selling of human beings was a heartless process.
It had to be.
For any captives not wealthy enough to arrange a ransom, the moment of sale was the final end of everything they had known, the fabric of their lives irrevocably torn apart. It is difficult to conceive how they—and the thousands of other captives who, over the years, underwent the same crushing process—endured it. Yet somehow they did.
Somehow they survived.
For the next installment of this series of posts on captives in Algiers, see the next post here in this blog.
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Addendum
It is important to retain a sense of perspective here and recognize that the Barbary corsairs were not the only ones during this period engaging in the business of human trafficking for profit. Look at the following quote:
“If you had ever seen them as they were taken, you would have wept blood. Children were separated from their mothers, and husbands from their wives. For the loss of their loved ones, tears streamed down their cheeks. The virgin was paraded in the open, after her hijab was torn away from her, and the enemy watched gleefully as tears choked her moans.”[6]
The author of this extract was from the Muslim side of the Mediterranean. The Barbary States did indeed prosper economically from violent robbery and human trafficking. But the European states of the time did much the same thing. There were slave markets in North African cities like Tunis, Algiers, and Salé, but there were also slave markets in European cities like Naples and Livorno, and in Valetta, on the island of Malta.
Human trafficking was not limited exclusively to North Africa; it was one of the things that generally characterized the times.
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[1] Laurent d’Arvieux, Mémoires du Chevalier D’Arvieux, Tome 5, p. 266.
[2] Emmanuel d’Aranda, Relation de la captivité et liberté du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda, mené esclave à Alger en l’an 1640, & mis en liberté en 1642, pp. 13-14. The slaves who rowed the corsair galleys, chained to an oarbench, were fed hardtack biscuits and little else, so when evaluating a newly arrived captive as a potential galley slave, it was important to determine if his teeth were in good enough condition to “gnaw biscuits on the galleys.”
[3] Joseph Pitts, Encountering Islam: Joseph Pitts: An English Slave in 17th-century Algiers and Mecca, ed. Paul Auchterlonie, pp. 119-120. Pitts’ narrative was originally published in 1735.
[4] William Okeley, Eben-ezer, or, A small monument of great mercy, pp. 9-11, originally published in 1675.
[5] Pierre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie, p. 313.
[6] Quoted in Nabil Matar, ‘Piracy and Captivity in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Perspective from Barbary,’ in Claire Jowitt, ed., Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550-1650, p. 56.
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