This week we continue the series of posts on life in Algiers drawn from the book titled Relation de la captivité et liberté du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda, (The Relation of the Captivity and Liberation of Emanuel d’Aranda), written (not surprisingly) by Emanual d’Aranda.
Arriving in Algiers as a captive was a frightening experience. Such captives were vulnerable and easy to take advantage of.
This week’s post deals with one of the ways such vulnerable captives were deceived.
I would not affirm that a new slave should look on everyone who speaks to him as traitorous. That were too great a distrust. But he should consider that those he converses with may be deceivers. It is therefore necessary he should dissemble a while, till he is sufficiently informed about whether they be impostors, or may be trusted.
During the time of my slavery at Algiers, there was a very rich Jewish merchant, named Ciscas, who, to find out which Christian slaves could afford to pay high ransoms, was wont to take advantage of them in the following manner.
He convinced a Turk of his acquaintance to buy a Christian slave for him, because the Jews in Algiers are not permitted to have any Christian slaves. The Turk gave out that the slave was his, and that he only lent him to the Jewish merchant to wait on him at his house. But the greatest service he did the merchant was that when there came any letters directed to the Christian slaves in Dutch or Flemish, he read and interpreted them to his Master, and since all commerce in Barbary is managed by the Jews, all the merchants’ letters fall into their hands. By this means, the said Jewish merchant found out the secrets to make the Christians pay the utmost amount they could raise for their ransom.
This treacherous slave would also go down to the waterfront when there were any prizes from Hamburg or the Netherlands brought in, and when the new captives came ashore, he fell into discourse with them, saying, “Whence come you my friends and companions? You may assure yourselves I am extremely troubled at your misfortune. However, pray be of good courage and do me the kindness to accept a glass of wine which I will bestow on you.”
The newly arrived captives would haply make answer, “We have no money, and if we had, we cannot get hence without leave.”
He would reply, “Let me manage that. I am sufficiently known here. And as for money… God be thanked, I have yet enough to entertain a friend or two”
The Turks who were in league with his Master gave this traitorous slave special leave to entertain the newly arrived captives.
Having brought them to a tavern, he made them drink plentifully. When they began to be drunk, he thought it time to lay his snares in order to advance his affairs, telling them that he had assisted many slaves to get their liberty, and that he still had the same power to oblige others.
The poor besotted fools, having their hearts full of grief, their bellies of wine, and their heads addled, believed all this rascal said to them.
Finding them more and more tractable, he would say to them, “Are you able to give four or five hundred Patacoons for your liberty?”
Some answered that they were, and, if need be, could advance as much as a thousand, for they had such and such friends who would not suffer them to continue long in that miserable condition. Others would say, “We have a house, or tract of land, which we would gladly sell rather then stay long in miserable slavery.”
When the dissembling villain had pumped out all the information he could get, he paid the bill, and brought back the new captives to the place where they were to remain till they were sold.
Having lodged them there, he went to give the Jewish merchant an account of what the captives had said to him. When they came to be sold in the market, some Turk who was in league with the Jewish merchant bought them. Then the traitor went again to see them, saying, “Thanks be to God, you have got a good Patron. He is a great friend of the Jewish merchant with whom I live. If you are desirous to make some arrangements concerning your ransom, it is in my power to do you a kindness.”
These new slaves were very glad that they had met such a friend, as they thought him. But the Jewish merchant had most reason to look upon him as a friend, for the slave was grown so expert in dissembling that the Jewish merchant was thought to be worth a hundred thousand Patacoons.
Whenever this treacherous dissembler had concluded some enterprise with success, he received a considerable recompence.
It was, however, God’s pleasure that his deceptions should be discovered, for eventually his reputation was so well known among the slaves that not one would treat with him, and the new slaves were advised that they should be wary of this traitor.
When a man is by misfortune fallen into slavery, if he be over-earnest in the prosecution of his liberty, the issue of it proves somewhat like that of ignorant swimmers who, being fallen into the water, out of a fear of being drowned, strive so hard to save themselves that they soon grow exhausted, and so their excessive diligence occasions their miscarriage.
Next week, we’ll continue with more stories from Emanuel d’Aranda’s Relation.
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For those who may be interested…
The story of the traitorous slave can be found in “Relation Nine: A new Slave ought to be distrustful of all people” 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. 135-138.
I have edited the original seventeenth century text to make it more easily readable.
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