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 deals with a married couple who were captured together.
In the year 1638. the gallies of Algiers landed some Turks on Christian land, who being conducted by a treacherous renegado, a native of the country, took many Christians captive, who were afterwards sold in Algiers.
Among these slaves, there was a man whom we will call Joseph, with his wife, named Vipra, both bought by Mahomet Celibi Oiga. Joseph’s work as a slave was to dress the horses and the mules, and Vipra waited on Mahomet’s wife.
In the year 1639. Mahomet Celibi said one night to Joseph, “Tomorrow morning at break of day, take the mule, and go to Babazon Gate, and there you will find some Christian slaves with horses and mules going two leagues hence for coal. Go along with them and bring back a load.” The next day, Joseph went to the gate, but finding nobody there, he went onwards, thinking the other slaves had been on before him.
After having gone about an hour’s ride along the seacoast, he saw a bark [a small sailing ship] and went closer to it to see who might be aboard. Perceiving that they were Christians, he turned the mule loose and ran to the bark. The mariners aboard received him and told him they came from Majorca with orders to carry away some slaves from that country. However, since the slaves had not appeared, those on the bark were afraid they had not received the letter informing them of arrangements. Those on the bark were afraid they might be discovered while they waited.
They offered Joseph a hundred patacoons, and promised to carry him along with them, if he would return to the city and give notice to those slaves of Majorca. But Joseph would not leave a certainty for an uncertainty, and he said, “I am now confident of my liberty, whereas if I return to the city, it may be your design will be discovered, and I shall be made more a slave than ever, for if it ever come to be known that I have had any hand in this business, three hundred blows with a cudgel will hardly excuse me.”
Joseph had hardly made an end of excusing himself ere some Turks passed by that way who, seeing that those of the bark were dressed in the Christian mode, (those aboard the bark made a grave mistaken by not dressing themselves like Africans), began to raise an alarm. Those on the bark fearing they might be surprised by some brigantine [an Algerine galley], made all the haste they could to take the sea, bringing Joseph along with them. The bark soon got out of sight, and the alarm ceased.
The Christian slaves whom Joseph thought to be before him, were but come thither when the alarm ceased, so that, finding the mule, they said among themselves, “This is Mahomet Celibi’s Mule. Let us take it home with us. His slave hath either been killed or taken by the Alarbes” [local Arab tribesmen]. The Mule was brought home, and Joseph given over for a dead man by his patron and lamented by his wife Vipra.
In a short time, however, his wife’s sorrow ceased, for she fell in love with a renegado named Assan, who had once been a slave of that same patron Mahomet.
In the meantime, Joseph got to Majorca, and thence to his own country, where he related what had happened to him, both during the time of his slavery and his deliverance. Though he was free now, he could not settle because of the absence of his beloved wife, Vipra. Accordingly, Joseph sold all he had, and, with the help of some good people, he got together the sum of five hundred patacoons.
Five months had now passed since Joseph was numbered among the dead. At the end of this term, Mahomet Oiga received a letter, to this effect:
Sir, by the great mercy of God, I recover my liberty on the day you sent me for coal, by means of a bark from Majorca. I cannot imagine you will charge me with any unfaithfulness for doing what I have done, for every man endeavors the retrieval of his liberty. While I was your slave, you demanded of me five hundred patacoons for the ransom of my wife and myself, I send herewith order for the payment of the said sum, accounting myself still a slave as long as my wife shall continue without her liberty. I have such a confidence of your kindness that I presume this proffer will not be unacceptable to you.
This Letter was shown to Vipra. She was not well pleased by it because all the conjugal love she should have had for her husband had been smothered by the affection she now bore the renegado, Assan. She said publicly that she would not return to her country.
That resolution of hers troubled Mahomet Celibi, for he would rather have received the five hundred patacoons and set Vipra at liberty. But his wife told him, “Vipra is desirous to embrace the Mohammedan religion. Will you, for five hundred Patacoons, hinder a work so acceptable to our Prophet? Besides, all the neighborhood knows her design, and if you send her away, you will be looked upon as a favorer of the Christians.”
Upon these representations of his wife, Mahomet Celibi thought fit to leave the business in suspense.
About that time, I came to be a slave to the same patron Mahomet, and having heard the story of Vipra and her husband, I stood one day at the door with her.
She said to me, Why are you so melancholy?”
I answered, “Because I am not so happy as you are.”
When she asked me why, I replied, “Because you may be set at liberty when you please, for I hear your husband hath sent five hundred patacoons for your ransom, and I wonder to find you so unwilling to return into your country and your husband who is so kind and so faithful to you, and to eschew the exercise of the Catholic Religion among your friends and relations.”
She roundly made answer, “A Turkish garment will become me as well as a Spanish petticoat.”
And with those words, she left me and went into the house.
From this, it might easily be inferred that the love she had for her gallant was greater then that she had for her religion, her country, her husband, and her relations.
For those who may be interested…
This excerpts can be found in “Relation Twenty-Nine: Of the fidelity of a husband, and the unfaithfulness of his wife,” 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. 188-191.
As usual, I have edited the original seventeenth century text to make it more easily readable.
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