ALGIERS – THE CAPTIVES’ EXPERIENCE 19

This week we begin a new series of posts looking at the captives’ experience in Algiers. This series is drawn from a book titled Relation de la captivité et liberté du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda, (The Relation of the Captivity of Emanuel d’Aranda).

D’Aranda was born into a wealthy merchant family that had emigrated from Spain to what was then the Spanish Netherlands, setting up shop in Bruges, in what is now Belgium. When he was a young man, his family sent him to Spain to perfect his Spanish and to generally broaden his education. On the way home from that trip, the ship upon which he travelled was taken by corsairs from Algiers.

D’Aranda spent nineteen months as a slave (August of 1640 through March of 1642), but thanks to his family’s connections, he was included in an arranged swap of captives, and he and a couple of comrades were traded for five captive Muslims.

Upon his return to Bruges, d’Aranda penned a book about his experiences. His original manuscript was in Dutch, but the first published edition of the book (in 1656) was a French translation titled Relation de la captivité, et liberté du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda, mené esclave à Alger en l’an 1640 et mis en liberté l’an 1642 (The Relation of the Captivity of Emanuel d’Aranda, taken as a slave in Algiers in the Year 1640 and set at liberty in 1642).

In 1666, an English translation of the 1656 French version, done by John Davies, was published, 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.

The excerpts that appear in this series of posts come from this 1666 English version. (I have modernized the text to make it more readable.)

This week’s post presents the first part of a two-part story about a Spaniard naked Domingo. It highlights an aspect of slavery that we haven’t yet focused on: what might be termed the ‘soap opera’ element—the dramatic churn of desperate human interactions.

Slavery, after all, makes people desperate. As a result, they do desperate things. Sometimes those things are not particularly admirable.

Here is Emanual d’Aranda’s story of Domingo the desperate Spaniard.

A Spaniard, whom we shall here call Domingo, having entered into one of the principal Religious Orders at Seville in the year 1626, and completed the year of his novitiate, took the three accustomed vows and some years later was advanced to the priesthood.

But Domingo grew weary of that kind of life, so he left the monastery and retired in his sacerdotal habit to the kingdom of Portugal, and planted himself in a little village, where, after he had sojourned some time, he managed to get a small country living. However, that life proved as tedious to him as that of the Religious Order had been before.

So he changed the habit of a priest into that of a layperson, and took up his residence in Lisbon, the metropolis of Portugal, where he married, and at the year’s end, he had a son. Sometime after, his wife proved with child a second time, whereupon Domingo found himself burdened with children which he had not the means to maintain. He then enlisted himself as a soldier and found he was to be transported into a country newly conquered by the Portuguez, situated on the River of the Amazons, in the Indies [i.e., on the Amazon River in what is now Brazil], where he was to receive a certain portion of land and other allowances for himself, his wife, his son, and whatever other children he might have in that country.

In the year 1639, Domingo and his family embarked aboard a ship bound for the Indies. After they had been some hours at sea, his wife went into labor and delivered a second son, to whom the Captain of the vessel (whom I know) was godfather.

Not long after that, they encountered some Turkish pirates, and, after a short engagement, the ship was taken and brought to Algiers, where the prisoners were all sold.

To avoid the miseries of slavery, Domingo went to see some Jewish merchants in Algiers, and told them that he was Jewish. He then intreated them to redeem him, his wife, and his children. The Jewish merchants began to question him. He answered their questions in the Hebrew tongue, having learned it in his studies, and so they believed what he said. They told him he should be redeemed if he could tell them what tribe he was from, and in what register were written the names of his parents and other relations. He replied with complete confidence that all could be found in the register of the synagogue of Venice, where such a Rabbi (naming him) would provide an attestation.

The Jewish merchants immediately wrote to Venice. However, nothing was found there concerning Domingo. The Jewish merchants, having received that answer from those of Venice, were very much offended, and looked upon Domingo as a rank impostor.

Being now out of all hopes of obtaining his liberty by this means, Domingo bethought himself of another expedient. He made his applications to two of the Catholic Fathers employed in the ransoming of captives, who had come from Valentia in Spain. They managed his business so well that they redeemed his wife and two children and took them away along with the other slaves whose ransom they had paid.

In the meantime, however, Domingo remained a slave at the house of an important officer of the army, a man named Saban Gallan Aga.

For the next installment of Domingo’s story, see the next post here in this blog.