Disestablishment of the Istanbul Slave Market

v t e Slave trade suppression
Abolitionism Firman of 1830 Suppression of the slave trade in the Persian Gulf Firman of 1854 Firman of 1857 Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1880 Blockade of Africa Kanunname of 1889 Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889–90 Brussels Conference Act of 1890 West Africa Squadron (U.K.) African Slave Trade Patrol (U.S.) Africa Squadron (U.S.) Brazil Squadron (U.S.) Eastern Naval Division (Brazil) Slave Trade Acts Capture of the Providentia Capture of the Presidente Capture of the El Almirante Capture of the Marinerito Capture of the Veloz Passagera Capture of the Brillante Convention of Saint-Germain-en-Laye 1919 Creole case La Amistad Incident Capture of the Emanuela Bombardment of Johanna Mary Carver Affair Edward Barley Incident Battle of Little Bereby Hamerton Treaty Frere Treaty Treaty of Jeddah (1927) Moresby Treaty Temporary Slavery Commission 1926 Slavery Convention Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery

Slave trade suppression

The Disestablishment of the Istanbul Slave Market, refers to the Imperial Firman or Ferman (Decree) issued by Sultan Abdülmecid I in 1847. The edict closed the public slave market in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul. The reform was a cosmetic one and removed the visible slave trade in the capital by removing it from the street to indoors, thereby making it less visible to foreign criticism during the Tanzimat modernization era.

Background and firman

It was one of the reforms representing the process of official abolition of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, including the Firman of 1830, Disestablishment of the Istanbul Slave Market (1847), Suppression of the slave trade in the Persian Gulf (1847), the Prohibition of the Circassian and Georgian slave trade (1854–1855), Prohibition of the Black Slave Trade (1857), and the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1880.

The Firman was issued in a time period when the Ottoman Empire was subjected to a growing diplomatic pressure from the West to suppress slave trade and slavery in the Ottoman Empire. In the 1840s, the slave market in Istanbul was the biggest in the Ottoman Empire and Europe. Slaves were trafficked to it from the Circassian slave trade, the Trans-Saharan slave trade, the Red Sea slave trade and the Indian Ocean slave trade. The public sale of slaves in the Ottoman capital chocked foreign visitors from the West and created bad publicity for the Ottoman Empire, which was painted as barbaric. In the market bazaar for female slaves, the Avret Pazari, for example, slave girls were exposed naked on the auction block and tied in position for presumptive buyers to inspect.

The edict ordered the closure of the public slave market in Istanbul. The slave market was closed from December 1846, during the 1846-1847 financial year. The edict resulted in the end of the visible slave market in Istanbul. The result was that the slave market in Istanbul was no longer visible to foreign visitors or the suject of criticism and bad publicity, contributing to a more modern image of the Ottoman capital consistent with the modernization efforts of the Tanzimat era.

However, the reform was mainly a cosmetic one. Neither the slave trade or the institution of slavery was banned when the slave market was closed. The slave market in Istanbul simply moved indoors, away from the visibility of foreigners, and now took place in the private houses and homes of the slave traders rather than in a public slave market. Formally illegal, it was clandestinly tolerated. A foreign visitor in Istanbul commented in 1869, that while the public sale of slaves in the city had ended twenty years before, the slave market in the city was known to still be in operation away from public scrutiny. The reform in fact worsened the conditions of the slave market, by moving it away from state control and supervision.

When slave trade itself was formally banned by the Kanunname of 1889, former house slaves continued to work as house servants: there was no difference in their status, and domestic servants were viewed as synonym to slaves. However, they became easier to dispose of by firing them, which created a class of free domestic servants. The state institution Hizmetçi İdaresi was established as a work agency for domestic servants, which in practice functioned as a slave market.

References

^ Erdem, Y. (1996). Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and Its Demise 1800-1909. Storbritannien: Palgrave Macmillan UK
The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History. (2023). Tyskland: Springer International Publishing
Madden, T. F. (2016). Istanbul: City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World. USA: Penguin Publishing Group. p272
Toledano, E. R. (2014). The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression: 1840-1890. USA: Princeton University Press.
^ Junne, G. H. (2016). The Black Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire: Networks of Power in the Court of the Sultan. Storbritannien: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise 1800-1909, (London: Palgrave Macmillan Publish House, 1996), p. 125.
Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise 1800-1909, (London: Palgrave Macmillan Publish House, 1996), p. 52-53
Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise 1800-1909, (London: Palgrave Macmillan Publish House, 1996), p. 52-53

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