This week, we continue with the history and description of Algiers provided by Father Pierre Dan, the French Trinitarian friar, in his celebrated book, Histoire de Barbarie (History of Barbary), taken from the second edition, published in 1649, and translated into English here for the first time.
Last week, Father Dan recounted the story of the (in)famous Barbarossa brothers and then went on to describe the countryside surrounding the city of Algiers.
We pick up things from there.
This week’s excerpt includes details that need some background explanation to properly appreciate. I’ve added those explanations in footnotes.
There are along the sea, especially on the side of Bône, Constantine, and of Tremecen, some very fertile valleys, and very beautiful countryside that produces much fodder and fruit, mainly apples and pears. It is true, however, that they are not so good as those in France, and they do not preserve as well either.
Amongst other things, it is a country where poultry and other meats are in very great abundance, and consequently very cheap: a pound of mutton usually cost five aspers, which equals about a sol in our currency, that of beef, eight deniers, a chicken two sols, a partridge, of which there are many, six blancs at the most, and a hare three or four sols. As for the bread, it is so cheap that we could not spend more than eight deniers a day for it.[1]
One should not be surprised by the abundance of chickens and partridges, which come from stock that broods seven or eight times a year. They easily raise their young because it is not very cold there, except upon the highest mountains. The autumn and the winter, however, are especially marked by wind and rain, the violence of which makes the Barbary Coast so perilous and causes ports to be unsafe and wrecks many ships.
As for the income of this Kingdom, some put it at six hundred thousand ducats a year, and the others at four hundred and fifty.[2] This is not quite certain, however, for at times it is less, and at others more. It comes from contributions and field taxes on merchandise, from cities, towns, and villages, and from the tax that is applied every year on the Jews.[3] This is what is assured there.
What makes it variable is that, for the rest, it depends on the ships and on the merchandise that the corsairs take, which is taxed at ten percent.[4] However, it happens that such catches are sometimes big, sometimes small—though still too big for the Christian merchants, whose goods and liberty is the cost of it. There have been years, as in 1615 and 1616, when they got catches that amounted to more than two or three million.[5] But when I was there in 1634, they hardly had enough to arm and maintain their pirate vessels. Because of this, the Pash [the Ottoman Governor of Algiers, the titular head of the government] found himself at a loss for pay for the janissaries, which he is obliged to make up at his own expense if there is not enough revenue from the previous year.[6] If he cannot pay, they put him in jail, as I saw happened to the old Pasha, a man of eighty years, his beard white, and his body weak and trembling, who could not guarantee the payment. These barbarians are ruthless when it comes to payment and money.[7]
I should also note that the janissaries once crushed one of the Pashas in a large bronze mortar that they have in their magazine [i.e., storehouse for military supplies] in the Qasba [fortress] at the top of the town. Indeed, this is the punishment with which they are accustomed to threaten their Pashas. Their avarice pushing their infidelity beyond mere interest in their pay, they presume to violate the respect they owe to their Great Lord in the person of his viceroys.
For the next installment of Father Dan’s history of Algiers, see the next post here in this blog.
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[1] The asper (“aspre” in Father Dan’s original French text), was a small-denomination, square silver coin in common use in Algiers at the time. A sol (“sol” in the French text) was a French coin. Seventeenth century French currency consisted of livres, sols (also called sous), and deniers. A livre was worth 20 sols; a sol was worth 12 deniers. There were several kinds of blancs, varying from about 5 to 10 deniers or a little more in value. It is not clear what sort Father Dan had in mind. Since he is touting the cheapness of things, however, it is likely the smaller-value blanc. So a pound of mutton in Algiers cost 1 sol; a pound of beef, 8/12 of a sol, a chicken two sols, a partridge 3½ sols; a day’s supply of bread—bread was the staple food that both North Africans and Europeans relied on—cost 8/12 of a sol. To put this in perspective, the daily wage for an ordinary unskilled laborer in France during this period was perhaps 7-8 sols. So food prices in Algiers were, as Father Dan notes, quite cheap by French standards. Slaves in Algiers had little access to this abundant and relatively inexpensive food, however. Typically, slaves were issued with two loaves of coarse black bread per day—their entire food ration. If they wanted anything beyond that, they had to buy, scavenge, or steal it. Some slaves did not even get a bread ration. Emmanuel d’Aranda, a Flemish gentleman who was captive in Algiers for the better part of two years in the early 1640s, recorded the following about the conditions of his enslavement: “We were there five hundred and fifty Christian slaves, all belonging to our owner, Alli Pegelin, who gave us nothing whatsoever to eat. The only consolation we got was that every day we were allowed three or four hours to seek our sustenance, each of us making the best use he could of his own industriousness” (Relation de la captivité et liberté du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda, jadis esclave à Alger (The Story of the Captivity and Freedom of Sieur Emanuel d’Aranda, Formerly a Slave in Algiers), nouvelle edition, Paris: la Compagnie des Libraires du Palais, 1665, p. 10).
[2] It is not clear what sort of ducat Father Dan has in mind here. There are a number of candidates: the sultana, also known as the Turkish ducat or Moorish ducat; the Venetian zecchino; the Hungarian ducat; and the Dutch golden ducat. All these coins were in circulation in Algiers. Seventeenth century currency was fiendishly complex, and calculating values and exchange rates is challenging, but all these various ducats seemed to have had roughly the same value: all were worth about half a Spanish piece of eight—as was the French livre. Six hundred thousand ducats/livres a year was a huge amount of money. By Father Dan’s valuations, it would have bought 12,000,000 pounds of mutton, 18,000,000 pounds of beef, or 6,000,000 chickens.
[3] The tax Father Dan mentions here was the jizyah, the tax levied on non-Muslim males—principally “people of the book” (Christians and Jews)—who were resident in Muslim lands. Women, children, the elderly, the handicapped, and the insane were exempt.
[4] In other words, the Algiers government levied a 10% tax on the value of all goods that came into the city as a result of corsair activity. These ‘goods’ included people (captives) as well as merchandise and captured ships. The tax revenue derived from corsair activity was by far the largest source of tax for Algiers, and the city was dependent on it to function.
[5] Father Dan does not, unfortunately, include the unit of currency here. His original French text merely states “à plus de deux ou trois millions” (“more than two or three million”). Whatever unit of currency he might have in mind here, the magnitude of this sum provides a clear example of just how enormously profitable corsairing could be.
[6] The government of Algiers at this time consisted of a Pasha, the a Governor appointed by the Ottoman Sultan; the Ocak, the body of janissaries whose leader was known as the Agha; and the organized group of the corsair captains known as the taife reisi (the council of captains). These three different elements all participated in running the city. Governing seventeenth century Algiers was thus a complex and demanding political balancing act, as illustrated by Father Dan’s anecdote of the Pasha jailed by the janissary Ocak when he was unable to pay their wages on time.
[7] Cornelis Pijnacker, a Dutch envoy who was in Algiers in the 1620s, describes the relationship between the Pasha and the janissaries as follows: “The state of Algiers retains 16,000 janissaries who receive wages, that is, who are paid in aspers, 8,000 janissaries who receive renda, that is, who are paid with bread and other victuals, and, as well, 40,000 swabes, who receive no more than two doublas a month, and that only when they are on campaign. The state revenues cannot support such a large number of soldiers, but the Divan opposes any reduction in the number, and the Great Sultan insists on a large payment as his tribute—amounting to 40,000 sultanini, or Hungarian ducats. So it is inevitable that the money to cover the wages and other expenses of the state must come from the pillaging of the Great Sultan’s enemies. The Pasha, who must pay the necessary tribute [to the Sultan] before he leaves Istanbul, has the right to all the revenues and profits of the state of Algiers. In return, he is responsible for paying the soldiers. He must do this punctually, every two months. If he defaults, he is immediately imprisoned” (Cornelis, Pijnacker, Historysch verhael van den steden Thunes, Alger ende andere steden en Barbarien gelegen, Gérard van Krieken, éd., ‘s-Gravenhage: Marinus Nihoff, 1975, p 80).
Corsairs and Captives
Narratives from the Age of the Barbary Pirates
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The Travels of Reverend Ólafur Egilsson
The story of the Barbary corsair raid on Iceland in 1627
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