ICELANDERS IN ALGIERS – PART 3 – Corsairs & Captives

(This post is a continuation of Icelanders in Algiers – Parts 1 & 2. If you haven’t done so already, it’s best to read that post before continuing on here.)

This week continues the series of excerpts from Stolen Lives (the book my Icelandic colleague, Karl Smári Hreinsson, and I published last year) dealing with the captive Icelanders’ experience in Algiers.

Last week described the captive Icelanders’ arrival at the Dar al-Soultan (the Pasha’s palace) where they were declared legal booty. This week, we pick up at the point where the Pasha of Algiers (the Ottoman Governor) is about to inspect the captives in order to choose the one eighth of the catch that he, as Pasha, is legally entitled to.

The Pasha of Algiers during this period was a man known as Hussein-Khodja (also Hussein-ben-Elias-Bey). No description of him has come down to us, but we do have descriptions of other Pashas. Here is one from the early 1640s:

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He was seated, in the middle of a rather large but poorly lit room, on an elevated platform covered with Persian rugs, his legs crossed like a tailor. Any defects the room might have had were hidden by a large brocade cloth that hung on the wall, displaying a great array of different colours, well matched and nuanced. The Pasha reclined upon several silk cushions. The cushion on the right, which he leaned upon, was larger and more variegated, shining, and adorned with four long tassels of gold and silver mixed with some intertwined jewels. On this, he supported a copy of the Koran, covered with gold and ornamented with precious stones.

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Pasha Hussein-Khodja no doubt had the same opulent appearance as the Pasha described above. One can imagine him easily enough: an imperious man in a large turban and a sumptuous robe—likely with a long-bladed knife or a sword in an embroidered sheath slid into a sash at his waist, the times being what they were (the image at the top of this post is a depiction of what Pasha Hussein-Khodja might have looked like).

The Pasha would have been a thoroughly daunting presence for the bedraggled Icelanders, who, remember, had just spent a month in cramped quarters aboard ship, unable to bathe, and who stood there in the same clothes they had been captured in.

The Algiers Pashas sometimes struggled for authority within the city’s complicated political power structure, but in the splendid audience chamber of the Dar al-Soultan, surveying a line of trembling, newly arrived captives… they ruled supreme. Here is a description of the process by which the Pasha chose the captives that would be his:

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The Pasha marched to the upper end of the chamber, where there was a canopy of state and two Turkish carpets and a large pillow covered with damask, which he sat upon. The owners of the ship that had captured us presented themselves before him, kissing the hem of his garment. They discoursed amongst themselves for about an hour, showing him our bills of lading.
The Pasha then commanded us to come before him one by one. He looked upon us with a stern countenance and took notice of our features and stature, for it seems the Turks are excellent in the art of physiognomy; they know a man and his inclinations at the first view, just as an expert farrier can know the good or ill qualities of a horse. It concerns them much, especially those who trade in slaves.
The Pasha made jokes about every one of us, which gave the company in the hall a great deal of mirth but only increased our sadness. At last, when he had considered us all, he commanded us to stand before him together and began to make his choices.

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In just such a manner would Pasha Hussein-Khodja have taken his pick among the Icelanders, appropriating for himself one out of every eight of the men, women, and children. His first choice among the children was the eleven-tear-old son of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson.

The reverend survived his abduction and captivity and lived to write a memoir of his experiences. Here is his recollection of the moment the Pasha took his son from him:

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The Pasha selected from our group those whom he wanted… His first choice amongst the boys was my own poor son, eleven years old, whom I will never forget as long as I live because of the depth of his understanding and knowledge. When he was taken from me, I asked him in God’s name not to forsake his faith nor forget his catechism. He said with great grief, “I will not, my father! They can treat my body as they will, but my soul I shall keep for my good God.”
I have to say with Job: What is my strength, that I should hope? Were one to try to weigh my misery and suffering altogether on a scale, they would be heavier than all the sand in the sea.

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The Pasha need not even have said anything when he took Reverend Ólafur’s son from him. A mere flick of his finger… and guards would have hustled the boy away. There was nothing Reverend Ólafur or anyone else could do about it.

That day, Pasha Hussein-Khodja acquired somewhere close to fifty new slaves—whom he could keep for his own use or sell at a huge profit (since he had paid nothing for them). It was a very lucrative day for him. He was likely quite used to such affairs, though, given the large number of captives corsairs were bringing into Algiers at this time. He no doubt considered such a bounty as nothing less than his rightful due.

At the end of the choosing process, he would have simply turned his back on the remaining Icelanders and dismissed them with a negligent wave of his hand.

The remaining captives were then led away, out of the audience chamber, through the marble-paved outdoor courtyard—blinking in the bright-hot sunlight—and back through the maze of dim alleyways.

They were headed, finally to be auction off at the Badestan—the slave market.

It is important to retain a sense of perspective here.

The Barbary corsairs were not the only ones during this period engaging in the ruthless business of human trafficking for profit. Look at the following quote, for instance:

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If you had ever seen them as they were taken, you would have wept blood. Children were separated from their mothers, and husbands from their wives. For the loss of their loved ones, tears streamed down their cheeks. The virgin was paraded in the open, after her hijab was torn away from her, and the enemy watched gleefully as tears choked her moans.

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The author of this extract was from the Muslim side of the Mediterranean. The Barbary States did indeed prosper economically from violent robbery and human trafficking. But the European states of the time did much the same thing. There were slave markets in North African cities like Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Salé, but there were also slave markets in European cities like Naples and Livorno, and in Valetta, on the island of Malta.

Human trafficking was not limited exclusively to North Africa; it was one of the things that generally characterized the times.

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For those who may be interested…

The description of the Pasha comes from René Du Chastelet Desboys, L’Odyssée ou diversité d’aventures en Europe, Afrique et Asie (The Odyssey, or a Diversity of Adventures in Europe, Africa, and Asia), 1665, p. 46.

The description of the Pasha choosing slaves comes from A. Roberts, ed., The Adventures of (Mr T.S.), 1670, pp. 25-28.

The description of the Pasha taking Reverend Ólafur Egilsson’s son comes from Hreinsson and Nichols, The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson, Revised Edition, pp. 20-21.

The description from the Muslim perspective is quoted in Nabil Matar, “Piracy and Captivity in the Early Modern Mediterranean: The Perspective from Barbary,” in Claire Jowitt, ed., Pirates? The Politics of Plunder, 1550-1650, p. 56.