STOLEN LIVES: THE BARBARY CORSAIR RAID ON HEIMAEY – PART 3

This week, we continue with another excerpt from Stolen Lives: The Story of the Barbary Corsair Raid on Heimaey in 1627 .

This book, remember, is newly available on Amazon.

Stolen Lives – Amazon listing

Stolen Lives focuses on the raid, by corsair from Algiers, on the island of Heimaey, one of the Westman Islands off Iceland’s south coast, and on what happened to the Icelandic captives when they arrived in Algiers.

The excerpts from the book here in this blog look at what happened in Algiers.

This week we look at what it was like to be auctioned off into slavery in the Badestan—the outdoor market where slaves were sold.

The word “Badestan” is a European rendering of the Ottoman Turkish word Bezistân (from “bez,” meaning canvas or cloth, and “stân,” the familiar suffix used to indicate place).

Every Ottoman city of any size had its Bezistân.

Generally, a city’s Bezistân was the place where expensive, precious, or luxury items were sold (there were separate markets for more pedestrian commodities such as livestock, grains, fruits, cloth, leather goods, household objects, etc.). So the Algiers Badestan was the place where slaves were sold, but it was not dedicated solely to that purpose. Other commodities could be had there as well, including the merchandise from captured European ships.

Father Pierre Dan, a Trinitarian friar who was in Algiers on a ransom expedition in 1634 (seven years after the Icelanders arrived in Algiers), witnessed first-hand the sale of slaves in the Badestan. Here is his description:

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Recently taken captives are brought out of the prison where they are kept under guard and brought to the Badestan, along with the Reis, or Captain, of the vessel that has captured them, as well as other officers deputized expressly in order to ascertain how much the captives will be sold for. There are brokers, like horse dealers, who, well versed in this business, walk beside the captives the length of the market, loudly shouting that they are for sale to whoever wants to buy them.

This I have seen multiple times, with so much unhappiness that I must confess I had tears in my eyes and my heart went cold. The buyers carefully scrutinize these poor Christian captives, whom they strip naked as they like, without regard for their shame. No matter what, the captives must obey every command immediately or be struck with truncheons, which these inhuman people are always quick to use. The buyers look to see if the captives are strong or weak, healthy or sick, or if they have any wound, or some disease that can prevent them from working. After this, using blows of their truncheons, the buyers make the captives walk, jump, and cavort about in order to determine how healthy they are.

The buyers also look at the captives’ teeth, not to know their age, but to see if they have tooth decay, which would make them less valuable. In addition, they look into the captives’ eyes and study their faces in an effort to divine their natures, whether good or bad.[1]

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Laurent d’Arvieux, a French consul in Algiers in the seventeenth century, describes something very similar:

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There are auctioneers or brokers who take the slaves by the hand and walk them from one end of the Badestan to the other, shouting aloud the price that is offered. This is an auction where everyone can bid, and where the merchandise is delivered to the last and highest bidder, provided he has the cash to pay for it.

Merchants who trade in slaves (there are many who have no other occupation) do all they can to find out if the slaves they are buying are of good family and what they can give for their ransom. The buyers examine the slaves’ teeth, and also the palms of their hands, to judge by the delicacy of their skin to determine if they are working people.[2]

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Here is a description by a captive, who was enslaved in Algiers in the early 1640s, of how he and his companions were sold:

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We were taken to the market where it is customary to sell Christians. A very old man, with a staff in his hand, took me by the arm and led me around. Those who wanted to buy me asked about my country, my name, and my profession. They felt my hands to determine if they were hard and calloused from work, and they made me open my mouth to see if my teeth were able to gnaw biscuits on the galleys.

Then they made us all sit down, and this same old man took the first of us in the line by the arm and walked with him three or four times around the market, shouting, “Arrache! Arrache!”—meaning “Who offers more?” Once the first man was sold, he was made to sit on the other side of the market, and another was brought up.[3]

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Here is another description which provides us with more details, including some of the content of the sales patter used during the auctioning process:

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There we stood from eight o’clock in the morning until two in the afternoon (which is the time limit for the sale of Christians) and had not the least bit of bread allowed us during our stay there. Many people were curious to come and take a look at us while we stood there exposed for sale. Others, who intended to buy, came to see whether we were sound and healthy and fit for work.

The slaves are sold at auction, and the auctioneer tries to make the most he can of them. When the bidders are at hand, he cries out, “Behold! What a strong man this is! What limbs he has! He is fit for any work. And see what a pretty boy this is! No doubt his parents are very rich and are able to pay a great ransom!” With sales pitches like these, the auctioneers try to raise the price.[4]

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Here are some further details, not only about the selling process and the sales patter, but also about the dickering that went on between seller and buyer:

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Their manner of selling slaves is this: they lead them up and down the fair, or market, and when a dealer bids any money, they cry, “a-Rache! a-Rache!” which is their way of saying, “Here is so much money offered. Who bids more?”… The first priority of the buyers is to look into the captives’ mouths, for a good, strong set of grinders will advance the price considerably…

Their next step is to feel the limbs of the captives to see if there are any fractures or dislocations in the bones, anything analogous to spavin or ringbone [in horses], for these will bring down the market price dramatically, just as being clean-limbed and well jointed will raise the price considerably…

The seller praises his goods to the sky. The buyer, on the other hand, will try to undervalue them. The true market price lies between, but this is the same all over the world. “See!” cries the seller. “Mark what a back this one has, what a breadth he had between his shoulders! What a chest! How strongly set! How fit for work and for carrying burdens. He will do too much work!” “Pish,” says the buyer. “He looks like a petty criminal, like a timid creature.”[5]

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Perhaps the most moving description of what occurred in the Badestan is one by Father Dan in which he describes the auctioning off of a group of a hundred or so captives abducted from Baltimore, Ireland, in a raid led by Jan Janszoon/Murat Reis (the Dutch renegade corsair captain who led the raid on southwest Iceland in the summer of 1627):

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They were brought to Algiers, where it was a pitiful thing to see them put up for sale. Women were separated from husbands and children from fathers. Husbands were sold on one side, wives on the other, their daughters snatched from their arms, without hope of any of them ever seeing each other again.[6]

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This concludes the excerpts from Stolen Lives.

Next week, we’ll start a series of excerpts from Enslaved: The story of the Barbary Corsair Raid on East Iceland in 1627.

[1] Pierre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie, et de ses corsaires, des royaumes, et des villes d’Alger, de Tunis, de Salé, et de Tripoly (History of the Barbary, and its Corsairs and Kingdoms, and of the Cities of Algiers, Tunis, Salé, and Tripoli), originally published in 1649, p. 392

[2] Laurent d’Arvieux, Mémoires du chevalier d’Arvieux, tome 5, (Memoirs of the Chevalier d’Arvieux, Volume 5), originally published in 1735, p. 266.

[3] Emmanuel d’Aranda, Relation de la captivité et liberté du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda, mené esclave à Alger en l’an 1640, & mis en liberté en 1642, (The Story of the Captivity and Liberation of Emmanuel d’Aranda, Enslaved in Algiers in the Year 1640 and Liberated in 1642), originally published in 1665, pp. 13-14. The slaves who rowed the corsair galleys, chained to an oarbench, were fed hardtack biscuits and little else, so when evaluating a newly arrived captive as a potential galley slave, it was important to determine if his teeth were in good enough condition to “gnaw biscuits on the galleys.”

[4] Paul Auchterlonie, ed., Encountering Islam: Joseph Pitts: An English Slave in 17th-century Algiers and Mecca, pp. 119-120. Pitts’ narrative was originally published in 1735.

[5] William Okeley, Eben-ezer, or, A small monument of great mercy, originally published in 1675, pp. 9-11.

[6] Pierre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie, 1649, p. 313.