Slavery in the Ottoman Empire
Chattel slavery was a major institution and a significant part of the Ottoman Empire's economy and traditional society. The main sources of slaves were wars and politically organized enslavement expeditions in the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Central Europe, Southeast Europe, the Western Mediterranean and Africa. It has been reported that the selling price of slaves decreased after large military operations. In Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), the administrative and political center of the Ottoman Empire, about a fifth of the 16th- and 17th-century population consisted of slaves. The number of slaves imported to the Ottoman Empire from various geographic sources in the early modern period remains inadequately quantified. The Ottoman historians Halil İnalcık and Dariusz Kołodziejczyk have tentatively estimated that 2 million enslaved persons of Rus, Pole, and Ukrainian extraction, captured in Tatar raids, entered the Ottoman Empire between 1500 and 1700. However, other...
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