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 involves a perhaps surprising example of… integrity.
In one of my precedent Relations I made it appear that Ali Pegelin had no other God nor Religion then his own self-interest, which I here emphasize again to heighten the reader’s astonishment when he finds a person so destitute of religion to be so scrupulous an observer of his word.
Having been five months his slave, I went to speak with him concerning my ransom. To move him to compassion, I kissed the sleeve of his garment, which hung down to the ground (an African affectation) and said to him, “May it please your Excellency, I have been five months your slave. I question not but your Excellency is by this time sufficiently informed what I am, to wit, a poor soldier, and not a person of wealth and quality, as your Excellency said you knew well enough when you bought me.” (The Turks are very liberal in giving titles to the new slaves, calling one a cavalier, another, a count’s con, and saying that others are very rich, by that means to get a greater ransom out of them.)
Ali Pegelin made answer, “I know not yet who you are, but if I agree with you about your ransom, though I should afterwards come to know that you are much richer then I took you to be, I shall keep my word, as I have done with several other persons.” He then named to me, among others, a merchant of Genoa, called Marco Antonio Falconi.
As I have said elsewhere, the arrangements concerning my ransom were delayed for some days, and I returned to the bath [the slave prison]. That same night, I enquired of some slaves of my acquaintance whether our Patron had kept his word with his slaves when they had agreed with him, and what might be the story of Marco Antonio Falconi, of whom he had spoken to me.
They told me that they had been eyewitnesses of it against their wills; for they then rowed in Ali Pegelin’s galley, and they told me the whole story, to this effect.
A Genoa merchant, who had resided long at Cadiz, in Spain, where he had carried on a successful trade, being grown very rich, and having but one child, a daughter, thought it time to give over trading and return into his own country. He set his affairs in order and embarked himself with his daughter, who was about nine years of age, on a brigantine.
They always kept in sight of land, for fear of meeting with Turkish pirates. Being on the coast of Valentia, Pegelin, whose gallies were thereabouts, discovered the brigantine at a great distance and gave order for the chasing of her. Those of the brigantine endeavored all they could with the help of sails and oars to get to land, but the gallies, by reason of their abundance of rowers, being come within musket-shot of the brigantine, the Genoa merchant and the mariners cast themselves into the sea and made shift to swim ashore.
Only the young girl was left onboard the brigantine. Some Turks, by Pegelin’s order, boarded the brigantine to bring it away.
The merchant, being got ashore and seeing his daughter in the hands of the Turks, went as far as he could into the sea and, holding up his handkerchief, made a sign to the gallies to come and take him in. The Turks were astonished to see such a thing, as was Ali Pegelin himself, who sent out a boat for him.
This voluntary captive was brought before Pegelin who, jeering at him, asked why, having so fortunately escaped, he would of his own accord come into slavery, which makes the most confident to tremble.
The merchant, perceiving that he who spoke to him was General Ali Pegelin, began this speech in the Italian language, which Pegelin understood very well. “Your Excellency is astonished to see me voluntarily render myself up a slave, a condition which men, by a natural instinct, have all the reason in the world to fear. But the reason I shall give your Excellency will take away that astonishment. I am a Merchant of Genoa, I have traded some years in Spain, and I thought to retire with this, my daughter, my only child, into my own country. Your Excellency hath made her your prisoner, and you have taken me with her, for though it seemed that I had escaped, yet was I more a prisoner then she, by my fatherly affection.”
The merchant, paused, and then said, “And therefore I thought fit to render myself unto you, and if your Excellency will set me a ransom, I will pay it if I can. If not, the satisfaction of having done what I ought for my daughter will make me the more easily support the difficulties and inconveniences of slavery.”
Ali Pegelin, having attentively harkened to his discourse, said to him, “You shall pay for the ransom of six thousand patacoons for yourself and your daughter .”
The Genoese immediately replied, “I will do it.”
There was in the galley a Genoese slave who desired to speak with the General. This being told to Ali Pegelin, he was admitted, and said to the General, “I know this prisoner very well. He is my countryman. I have heard that he has pledged to pay your Excellency six thousand patacoons, but he is able to pay four times as much.”
Ali Pegelin replied, “Parola de mi e parola de mi.” That is, “My word is my word.”
This shows that Turks and Infidels keep their word, to the shame of some Christians who take occasion to break theirs.
For those who may be interested…
This excerpt can be found in “Relation Nineteen: The Turks keep their word,” 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. 165-168.
As usual, I have edited the original seventeenth century text to make it more easily readable.
The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson
The story of the Barbary corsair raid on Iceland in 1627
Amazon listing