This week we continue the story of the Knight de Cherf, another in 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).
For nine months together, the Knight de Cherf had the sixty-pound chain fastened to his leg. For the space of fifteen days, he was forced to drag it after him to a place near the seashore, to work, where he had to help several stone masons who were cutting some marble that Alli Pegelin had brought away upon his gallies from the city of Bône [present day Annaba], anciently called Hippo Regius, seated on the Mediterranean and sufficiently known by this: that it had been the metropolis of Africa in Saint Augustine’s time, where those stones had served for the tombs of Christians.
The Knight’s work was to mix the sand and water to be used in cutting the marble. While he was at his work, Alli Pegelin would come sometimes to see what he did, offering to send him to Livorno on a ship that was then ready to set sail, if only he would agree to the thirty thousand patacoons that he had demanded of him for his ransom.
To this, the Knight answered that he had no money. Alli Pegelin, having made such offers several times to him without success, was so vexed that he said to him in Lingua-Franca, “La cane ty far garziva, ty tener fantasia, à fè de Dio my congar bueno por ti.” That is: “You dog, you think yourself cunning, and show yourself to be prideful, but by God’s faith I will take another course with you.”
Alli Pegelin was then accompanied by some Jews, who in all likelihood had a financial share in the Knight de Cherf, yet who concealed their interest under the name of Alli Pegelin, as they are wont to do, so that they did not publicly disobey the prohibitions against them buying Christian slaves. This suspicion was afterwards confirmed when the Knight was called to Alli Pegelin’s house at the request of those very Jews. There, Alli Pegelin, accompanied by them and some captains of his gallies, asked the Knight once more whether he would promise thirty thousand patacoons for his liberty.
To this demand, the Knight replied that he had nothing to say.
Alli Pegelin immediately responded: “Pila baso cane, porta Falaca.” This is commonly said in that place when they intend to punish someone. It means, “Lie down on the ground, you dog, and bring hither the Falaca.” The ‘Falaca’ is a piece of wood having a hole in the middle, through which, by a small cord, the feet are fastened. The victim lies upon his back, having the soles of his feet raised upwards. He is then held in place, and a man begins the exercise: lashing the soles of his feet as hard as he can with a bull’s pizzle [a desiccated bull’s penis] four or five feet long, round at the end by which he holds it, but widening by degrees towards the other end where it is near half a foot in breadth. Instead of a pizzle, they sometimes make use of a rope end, or sometimes a stick.
The Falaca was presently brought, and the Knight received two hundred blows. In the midst of that cruel punishment, Alli Pegelin commanded the executioner to pause, and asked the Knight whether he had any desire to change his religion, and to embrace Mahometanism [i.e., Islam]. If he did, Alli Pegelin promised to make him captain of a galley, to go out against the Christians.
The Knight replied that he was not resolved to do so, and that he would rather die a Christian, but that he would pay a thousand patacoons for his ransom. Upon that answer, Alli Pegelin commanded the executioner to give him a hundred blows more, which was done.
This proposal of Alli Pegelin’s might make some believe that he was a person who endeavored to propagate his religion, but those who are acquainted with the avarice of the Turks will easily comprehend that Alli Pegelin had no design whatsoever to advance Mahometanism, but only used that pretense to get more money out of the soles of the Knight’s feet.
The blows being given, the Knight was taken off the instrument, with his feet all black by reason of the blows. Alli Pegelin then threatened that the Knight would have as many more blows as soon as he were recovered from the ones he had just received, or that he would send him to the Grand Seignior [the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul], to be employed in the Seraglio [the Sultan’s harem], where he would first have to be made a eunuch.
The blows to his feet did not trouble the Knight half so much as this new menace did.
The Knight was then carried by some slaves to his quarters in the Bath [the slave compound], for it was impossible for him, I will not say to go, but so much as to touch the ground with his feet. His friends among the slaves tried all they could to give him ease. Some brought wine to wash his feet. Another, who was a surgeon, opened the dead flesh and dressed him. Most remarkable, however, was the charitable action of a discalceate Carmelite Friar, a slave, named Father Angeli, a Genoese, who with his mouth sucked the corrupt blood to get it out of his feet.
The Knight lay for six weeks in recovery. At the end of this time, a Jew coming to treat with him about his ransom, and, with many menaces, told him that Alli Pegelin had sworn by the Grand Seignior’s head (an inviolable oath) that the Knight should never have his liberty unless he gave fifteen hundred patacoons.
The Knight was persuaded to promise this sum. Thereupon his chain was taken off, and he had the freedom to walk up and down the city, as such ransomed slaves commonly do who have agreed a ransom with their patrons, till such time as they have a convenience to transport themselves.
I and my companions might have been treated in a similarly harsh manner, had not Alli Pegelin been fully persuaded that the said Knight was some public Minister of the King of Spain, and that we were merely his servants, and so there was no great account made of us—which worked in our favor.
All things being agreed upon, it was proposed, that the Knight should take ship for Livorno, in Italy, to be kept there in prison till the ransom were paid, which was to be made to some Jews there who maintained a correspondence with Alli Pegelin.
The Knight declined this arrangement, declaring that he wished to be sent to Spain, where he could acquire duplicates of the Grants and Rewards which his Catholic Majesty had made him, since the originals were cast overboard when we were taken.
By a twist of fate, the Knight’s declining this offer of passage on a ship to Livorno deprived him of an opportunity to gain his freedom within having to pay any ransom at all. For the ship bound for Livorno met with a tempest at sea and ran aground on the coast of Spain, where the ship was taken and all the slaves had their liberty granted to them without paying anything. By means of that happy tempest, they escaped imprisonment at Livorno, where they were to have been incarcerated till the return of their ransoms. This practice is punctually observed in that city, but not by other Christian Princes, who hold no such strict a correspondence with those of Algiers, and who set at liberty any slaves that come within their jurisdiction, regardless of whether they be ransomed or not.
For a continuation of the Knight de Cherf’s story, see the next post here in this blog.
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For those who may be interested…
This part of the Knight de Cherf’s story can be found in “Relation Thirty-Eight: The Adventures of Philip de Cherf of Vlamertingue [a village in West Flanders], Knight of the Order of Saint James,” 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. 217-221.
As usual, I have edited the original seventeenth century text to make it more easily readable.
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