senheiser
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yeah yeah the poor innocent crimean tatars always tortured and abused by the Russians
but go read their true history, about their crimes against humanity, Turkey should have a Russian history month where young turks learn about their horrific crimes they and their Turkic brothers did to Russian People
Slave Trade in the Early Modern Crimea From the Perspective of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources | Mikhail Kizilov - Academia.edu
but go read their true history, about their crimes against humanity, Turkey should have a Russian history month where young turks learn about their horrific crimes they and their Turkic brothers did to Russian People
Slave Trade in the Early Modern Crimea From the Perspective of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources | Mikhail Kizilov - Academia.edu
Numerous sources testify that before 1475 in addition to the Tatars,it was mostly Genoese merchants, known as merciless slave traders, whowere taking large numbers of captives from the port of Caffa either to Genoa or to the Moldavian ports and then further west.
The numberof Tatar slave-raids increased considerably soon after the Ottoman con-quest. The economy of the Crimean Khanate was not particularly pros-perous. Plundering neighboring countries was, therefore, one of theeasiest ways of keeping the economic situation in the country on theproper level—slaves had always been among the most needed anddemanded commodities to be sold both within the country and with-out. The slave trade was a cornerstone of the Crimea’s economy in theEarly Modern period—and a decrease in prices of the slaves also signified
According to almost all written sources, the main income of theCrimean Khanate came from raids upon the territories of adjacent coun-tries and from the trade in slaves captured during these military cam-paigns. The
first major Tatar raid for captives took place in 1468 andwas directed into Galicia.
According to some estimates, in the
first half of the seventeenth century the number of the captives taken to theCrimea was around 150,000-200,000 persons. About 100,000 of themwere captured in the period between 1607 and 1617.
The CrimeanTatars invaded Slavic lands 38 times from 1654 to 1657; 52,000 peo-ple were seized by the Tatars in the spring of 1655 in the course of araid into the territory of Ukraine and Southern Russia.
The numberof Tatar raids seems to have diminished in the eighteenth century due to the growth of Russian strength in the southern regions and a few Russo-Turkish wars, which partially took place in the Crimean territory.
Nevertheless, in 1758 there were around 40,000 slaves captured during
a raid on Moldavia10 and in 1769, during one of the very last Tatar
incursions into Russian and Polish territory, the amount of “live booty”
was about 20,000 souls.11
The demographic importance of the slave trade in the Early Modern
Crimea and Ottoman Empire also should not be underestimated.
Thousands and thousands of Christian female slaves and children were
converted to Islam annually. Soon these neophytes forgot about their
non-Turkic origins and their offspring often would not even be aware
of their Christian past. The descendants of the slaves in the Crimean
Khanate were usually called by a generic term „çora.” One of such „çoras,”
who was a slave no longer, but whose inferior social status was still
remembered by the local Tatars, was met in 1916 in the Northern
Crimea by Alexander Samoilovich. This çora, who spoke pure Tatar
and was a faithful Muslim, had the distinctive appearance of a Russian
peasant from the Riazan’ region.1
Some authors stated that the Crimean Tatars in general preferred
taking foreign female slaves as wives because of rather ugly appearance
of Tatar women.13 Indeed, the Circassian women, while being renowned
for their beauty, were often taken as concubines by the Crimean khans
and Ottoman sultans; as a consequence, many of the Crimean and
Ottoman princes were in fact of Circassian origin.14 A Ruthenian captive, Alexandra-Roxolana (a.k.a. Hurrem Sultan), the favorite wife of
Süleyman the Magnificent, was perhaps one of the most influential
women in the history of the Ottoman Empire.15 The legend about the
Crimean khan who had fallen in love with the Polish captive Maria
Potocka inspired the famous Russian poet Alexander Pushkin to compose a poem “The fountain of Bahçesaray” (Russ. “Bakhchisaraiskii
fontan”). Instances of taking foreign female slaves as concubines and
wives were equally frequent also among ordinary Crimean Tatars and
Turks.
Most of Tatar inland raids were made into the adjacent regions and
countries: Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Moldavia, Georgia, Mingrelia and
Circassia. On their way back they had to pass the narrow isthmus
defended by the fortress of Or (Perekop).20 Customs had to be paid first
there, and later in Kırk Yer (Çufut-Kale); dues were collected by special officers called tam<acı and tartnaqcı.
21
Then the fates of the captives taken to the Crimea may have differed.
Some remained in the hands of the Tatars, who then used them for
their own purposes as domestic and agricultural workers or artisans.
According to Marcin Broniewski (1578), the Tatars seldom cultivated
the soil themselves, with most of their land tilled by the Hungarian,
Ruthenian, Russian, and Walachian (Moldavian) slaves.22 Especially
worth mentioning are the prisoners of war—Zaporozhian and Don
Cossacks, undaunted pirate-brigands from Southern Ukraine and Russia,
whose frequent maritime and inland raids devastated many ports and towns
of the Crimea and Turkey in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.23
Contemporary European sources are full of descriptions of the Tatars
as “the detestable people of Satan,” who should be “thrust down to
their Tartaria (or Hell).”29 When describing the siege of Caffa in 1348,
the chroniclers depicted the Crimean Tatars as one of the worst infidel
nations, struck by God with a terrible decease (i.e. the plague), which
they later spread to the Christians.30 Many European thinkers were contemplating reasons for the existence of such phenomena as slavery and
often explained it as some sort of divine punishment for not keeping
the Christian faith and morality. One of the important Crimean historians, the Armenian priest Xacatur of Caffa, who witnessed the arrival
of numberless crowds of Christian captives from Poland to the Crimeanslave trade in the early modern crimea
Early modern Christian sources are full of descriptions of sufferings
of Christian slaves captured by the Crimean Tatars in the course of
their raids to the adjacent countries:
Among these unfortunates there are many strong ones; if they [the Tatars] have
not castrated them yet, they cut off their ears and nostrils, burned cheeks and foreheads with the burning iron and forced them to work with their chains and shackles during the daylight, and sit in the prisons during the night; they are sustained
by the meager food consisting of the dead animals’ meat, rotten, full of worms,
which even a dog would not eat. The youngest women are kept for wanton pleasures...32
The same source described the sorrowful position of the Polish slaves
in the slave-market in Caffa.33 Blaise de Vigenere, who had never visited Tatar lands, left an even more depressing description of the Tatar
captivity. He stated that the old men and children were usually given
to be tortured by the young Tatars so that the latter would learn how
to kill “as if the hunters give partridges to be torn to pieces by the
young falcons.”34 One of the Crimean Muslim authors, Hacı Mehmed
Senai, also mentioned that after a successful raid into Poland and Ukraine
in the course of the Khmel’nyts’kyi (Chmielnicki) rebellion (1648) each
Tatar soldier killed about 10-15 captives for his own amusement.35
Especially interesting for our topic is a conversation between the French
ambassador to the Crimea Baron de Tott and the Crimean Khan Kırım
Giray, which took place right in the midst of the last Tatar slave raid
into Russia and Ukraine in 1769. The discussion started after the Khan
had received his tithe of slaves (about 2,000 souls) and decided to donate
six young Russian slaves to de Tott. The diplomat did not really like
this idea and, in order to avoid this awkward gift, refused to accept the
slaves. De Tott pretended that he could not accept Russian slaves because
of the friendly relations between his country, France, and Russia. Slightly
surprised, the Khan suggested that the Baron accept six Georgians
instead of Russians and remarked: “War makes Slaves, Friendship gives
and Friendship receives them, which is all our Concern.” The Baron,
however, found another excuse saying that his religion would not allow
this. The Khan found this argument to be persuasive enough and insisted
no more: “I, my Friend, have my Religion likewise; which permits me
to give male Slaves to the Christians, but commands me to keep the
female in order to make them Converts.”
Even in the eighteenth century, at the time of European Enlightenmentand emancipation, the Crimea continued to be a symbol of dark Muslimpower, a slave trade, captivity and humiliation in the eyes of ChristianEurope. It was only in 1774-1783 that the Russian annexation of thepeninsula stopped for good this inhuman trade of live objects. The slavetrade was never again resurrected in the region and now only Ukrainianfolk-songs, like the one quoted as the epigraph to this article, remindus of the fact that once this land could hear the laments and cries of sorrow of the Crimea’s most unhappy visitors—slaves, captives, and pris-oners of war—taken without their will faraway from home to be soldas a sort of “live implements” and spend the end of their days in miseryand exhaustive physical labor.
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