ALGIERS

Last year we spent considerable time looking at what life was like in Algiers for the myriad of European captives who had the misfortune to find themselves there.

This week, we’re going to return to Algiers once again.

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Captives in Algiers were desperate to be free. Those who could, wrote letters to friends and family pleading to be ransomed. Those who could not raise the ransom money, or who could endure their circumstances no longer, tried to escape. We can catch a glimpse into all this from a contemporary account in which the author ends his description of the Mole (the breakwater in the Algiers harbor) with the following:

Close by [the Mole] there is a small beach where, when they have finished the day’s work, Christians and Moors pull up all the lesser boats in the harbor so that none are left afloat. They then attach these boats one to the other with iron chains and station fifteen or twenty Moorish guards, so that Christians cannot make off with them during the night. But this is not enough, because every year Christians steal four or five and, in complete safety, sail them to Spain. These boats are the best way to escape, as the boats constructed in the gardens, or made of leather, are very dangerous, and few who use such ever reach their destination.

One catches a sense here of the absolute desperation to escape, of slaves cobbling together boats “in the gardens” out of whatever materials lay at hand (including scraps of leather). Another writer notes in a letter that “There are some captured people here who sneak boats into the forest and eventually escape in them.” He adds: “Some people grow too ambitious, though, and attempt to construct large, eight‑oared boats able to hold many passengers; often, they are not able to finish building such big vessels. Some neglect to place lookouts in the trees to watch for coming people, to ensure that the sounds of the hammers will not be heard. Those that neglect this are caught, and suffer terribly.”

Slaves caught trying to escape were punished severely, sometimes by being publicly executed in agonizing ways.

Despite all this, however, Algiers did offer opportunities for slaves to achieve a better life, and some did just that, ‘turning Turk’ and rising to positions of authority and influence. One (in)famous example is Ali Pegelin (also known as Ali Picheny, Ali Pichellin, Ali Bitchin, Ali Bitchnin), an Italian (with an original family name of something like Puccini or Piccini, perhaps from Venice) who was captured as a boy when the ship he was traveling on was taken by corsairs. He grew up in Algiers to be a Muslim and a corsair, and became one of the principle captains and eventually led the Taifa, the organization of the city’s corsair captains. He amassed immense wealthy, owned many slaves, and, among other things, financed the building of a mosque that one can still visit today in Algiers—known variously as the Mosque of Ali Piccinini, Mosquee Ali Bitchnin, or Djama’a Ali Bitchin.

Much of what we know of Ali Pegelin comes from Emmanuel d’Aranda, for Ali Pegelin was d’Aranda’s owner. D’Aranda has this to say of him:

We were there five hundred and fifty Christian Slaves, all belonging to our Patron Ali Pegelin; yet he did not allow any one of this great number ought towards his sustenance. The only comfort we had was that we had three hours every day allowed us to shift for our Livelihood; so that everyone was to make the best advantage he could of his industry.

So it was possible, given the right chances (and the right sort of ruthlessness), for a European slave to rise the very highest ranks of the Algiers world. For most slaves, though, life as a slave was grim. Many were ransomed, but, as one writer put it, “For every one that is ransomed, more than twenty new captives arrive to take his place.” The brutal reality of it all was this: tens of thousands of people lived and died miserably as slaves in Algiers.

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The suffering endured by European slaves and the inhumanity and sheer brutality of the whole sordid system are undeniable, but it is also worth recalling that Algiers was more than just a cesspit of misery. It depended on who one was. The following extract from the diary of an Arab traveler who visited the city in 1590 reveals a very different sort of place:

Algiers is a prosperous city with many souks and large numbers of soldiers. It is well fortified, with three gates and a spacious community mosque… The harbor teems with ships whose captains are renowned for their courage, determination, and seaworthiness, far better than the captains of Constantinople… Algiers is the best city in Africa, with a large number of buildings and extensive trade, its souks so full of merchandise and goods that it is called Little Constantinople. There is a good number of students in it… and there are more books in it than in other parts of Africa, most of them from al‑Andalus [Spain].

So Algiers was many things: a bustling port town and major trading center, the home port of one of the Maghreb’s most significant corsair fleets (some might say the most significant), a haven for expelled Moriscos, a center of learning, a polyglot, multicultural metropolis far more meritocratic than anywhere in Europe at the time—all based on an economy that depended on human slave labor to function, and that made life a veritable Hell on Earth for many of those enslaved there. It was, in other words, a city full of complexity and contradiction, a place where some could thrive while others sank into despair and death.

Above all, perhaps, it was not a place for the weak.

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