ICELANDERS IN ALGIERS – PART 2 – Corsairs & Captives

(This post is a continuation of Icelanders in Algiers – Part 1. 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.

All newly arrived captives to Algiers had to be officially processed before they could be put up for auction in the Badestan—the save market. The Icelanders, the miscellaneous booty the corsairs had seized, and the Danish merchant ship they brought with them from Heimaey all had to be formally declared a ‘good prize’—that is, legal and legitimate plunder.

So the parade of captives, led by Murate Flamenco, surrounded by raucous crowds, would have wound its way through the twisty streets of the city to the Dar al-Soultan, the palace of the Pasha (the Ottoman Governor). This was an imposing three-story structure that was often described as the most beautiful in the city, located in the middle of the city’s al-Wata district, on al-Souk al-Kabir (see the Map of Algiers below).

Set into the northern face of the Dar al-Sultan was a courtyard about twenty-five meters (80 feet) square. In this courtyard, much of the official business of Algiers was conducted: the Divan (the governing council of Algiers) met there, janissary troops received their pay, criminals were judged and condemned, and ransoms for European captives were paid.

And it was there that the Algerian authorities would typically convene an assembly to officially determine whether or not booty and captives could be declared a good prize.

All the major European powers kept Consuls in Algiers. These men regularly attended such assemblies to speak on behalf of their countrymen, for if their country was currently at peace with Algiers, they could argue that any ship hailing from it, along with all its contents, crew, and any passengers aboard, should be set free at once. Such disputes could be quite lengthy, and quite complex, but the end result was usually the same: the merchandise and captives were declared legitimate. The real point of the assembly, after all, was to legitimize plunder.

The process with the captive Icelanders was no doubt brief and perfunctory. Iceland was a Danish possession, but there was no Danish consul in Algiers, and Denmark had no treaty with Algiers. There was nobody to speak up on the Icelanders’ behalf. Word would have gone out quickly: “A good prize! A good prize! Slaves and booty!”

Once this finding had been officially pronounced, the Icelanders were beyond any hope of a last-minute reprieve. They were destined now to be sold as slaves.

They still would not have been herded directly to the Badestan, though. First, they had to go before the Ottoman Governor of Algiers—the Pasha.

Algiers was officially a regency of the Ottoman Empire, and in the first half of the seventeenth century, the city was ruled by series of Pashas put in place by the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul—at least in principle. The reality was somewhat more complicated.

During this period, the Pashas were appointed for three-year terms, though “appointed” is perhaps not the right word. Would-be Pashas essentially bought their position, lavishing costly bribes on officials in Istanbul in order to smooth the way. They did this because three years as Pasha in Algiers could make a man wealthy enough to retire to a pleasant little country villa for the rest of his life—if he managed to survive the three years, of course.

Algiers was a complicated place. Power was shared between the Pasha, the janissaries, and the Taifa (the council of corsair captains). Of these three power blocks, the Pashas were the weakest. Their authority came primarily from their prestige and their connection to the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul. The Sultan lived a long way off, however, and their short, three-year tenures did not give most Pashas sufficient time to cement effective local alliances. Over the years, a significant number of them were assassinated—poisoned, strangled, blown out of cannons. Eventually, the janissaries ousted the Pashas and took direct control of Algiers themselves.

The Pashas were still the titular rulers of Algiers when the captives from Iceland arrived, though, and they kept control of important revenue streams—one of them being the traditional right of the Pasha to claim one eighth of all booty and captives brought to the city. Not only that—the Pasha got first pick.

So as soon as the Icelandic captives had been officially declared legitimate booty, it was time for the Pasha to collect his one eighth of the catch.

This choosing process seems to have usually taken place not in the outdoor courtyard of the Dar al-Soultan but inside the building itself—where it was no doubt cooler and more comfortable for the Pasha. An Englishman who was enslaved in Algiers in the late 1640s included the following description of what it was like to pass through the outdoor courtyard and into the Dar al-Soultan:

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We entered into a large and spacious courtyard paved with white Marble. There was a high Brick wall that enclosed us, and before us opened a large gate, patterned with diverse colors, which led into a great hall, where our keepers led us.

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Entering into the building through this “large gate, patterned with diverse colors” must have been another shock for the captive Icelanders. Stumbling from the blindingly sunlit courtyard into the cool dimness of the interior, they were suddenly confronted with unimaginable Oriental luxury.

The Dar al-Soultan was a three-story building, remember. Accounts (as usual) differ, but it was large: something like 50 meters (145 feet) long by half that wide. The upper two stories were divided into arcades, each framed by columns separated by graceful arches, the whole array inlaid with splendid mosaics, the walls illuminated with decorative painting. Here is a description:

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The Palace [the Dar al-Soultan ] is very spacious, with two enormous courts, each some thirty-six feet across and paved with tiles. There are many corridors atop white brick columns, beautifully worked with limestone and plaster, and with many chambers known as ghurfat, large and small, high and low and subterranean. All of these are very well constructed, and many are panelled in fine woods, pine and oak, and painted with Moorish and Turkish pictures. This is done with no human figure but with many flowers, leaves, and grasses, all very charming and lifelike work.

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Father Pierre Dan, a Trinitarian friar, visited the Dar al-Soultan in his capacity as and one of the negotiators of a French ransom expedition. Here is his description:

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The most beautiful house in Algiers is that of the Pasha, or the Viceroy, which is almost in the middle of the city. It is remarkable for its two galleries, one on top of the other, supported by a double row of columns made of marble and porphyry adorned with mosaics. There are similarly two lower chambers, the first of which is more spacious than the other. The Palace is bounded by a courtyard, where the Divan meets.

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The place into which the Icelanders would have been led was one of these lower chambers: a long, open space on the ground floor, lined by stone columns, that served as an official audience chamber. It reeked of opulence, the walls intricately painted, the floor made of painted and enameled earthenware tiles, an octagonal fountain set into the middle of it, filled with clear, bubbling water.

There the captives would have waited nervously, staring at the—to them—outlandish and exotic architecture, until the Pasha deigned to inspect them.

For what happened when the Pasha appeared, see the next post in this series here in this blog.

For those who may be interested….

The description of what it was like to enter the Dar al-Soultan comes from The Adventures of (Mr T.S.) an English Merchant Taken Prisoner by the Turks of Argiers, and Carried into the Inland Countries of Africa, written first by the Author, and fitted for the Public view by A. Roberts, 1670, p. 23.

The first description of the Dar al-Soultan comes from María Antonia Garcés, ed., Diana de Armas Wilson, trans., An Early Modern Dialogue with Islam: Antonio de Sosa’s Topography of Algiers (1612), p. 255.

The second description of the Dar al-Soultan comes from Pierre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie, 1649, p. 88.