Avret Pazarları (Ottoman Turkish: []) or simply Esir Bazar was a market of women slaves located in Istanbul, in then Ottoman Empire (now Turkey) between the mid 15th-century and the early 20th-century. Many households owned female slaves were women, including many as domestic servants. Constantinople became the capital of forced captive slaves that included women. The slave market was under the supervision of the Ottoman state, which taxed every transaction of slaves.
Women were captured from various African, Asian, and European territories and sold in Istanbul markets. Unlike their male counterparts, women slaves were permitted to be exploited sexually, and their sexuality was deemed to be the personal property of their owners. Female slaves would have few possibilities, depending upon physical attributes such as beauty and natural skills of pleasure and entertaining of male counterparts with cajoling words and gestures, to be selected by elite men as slaves or concubines.
Commoner and imperial palace slaves were marketed. Turkish television drama usually tend to ignore non-elite-commoner-women slavery and focuses more on privileged female slavery in elite Ottoman imperial palaces. In descriptions of Ottoman times, non-elite-commoner-women slavery are found in some of the then contemporary slave narrative accounts, traveler's accounts, folk songs, late ottoman times Turkish novels, twentieth century poems.
History and context
The general slave trade of men and women was referred to as . According to Jane Hathaway, a sizable majority of the slaves traded in the Arab slave trade were often women; every substantial household and many less substantial households owned female slaves, including many as domestic servants. In history as well as in conventional scholarship on Ottoman historiography, non-elite slaves and women are far underrepresented.
According to Ehud R. Toledano, the Ottoman Empire followed the same path of enslavement as other enslavers in general and their predecessor Islamic states in particular, especially the Caliphates of Al-Mu'tasim and Mamluk Sultanate. Taledano says that while various Muslim societies had developed their own brand of slavery, the legal essence was very much derived from Islamic law. Taledano says harem slavery was a central component of early modern Ottoman imperial and elite households.
In 1453 AD, Constantinople (Istanbul) became the capital of the Ottoman Empire. Over the centuries, it became the capital of forced captive slaves that included women. According to Taledano, during the 15th through 18th centuries, a large pool of women captives were brought in as loot of the war from various war fronts, including Greeks and Balkans from northeast shores of Mediterranean seas and also southeastern European lands lying north of the Black Sea i.e. Georgia and Circassia. These captives became forced labor including the concubinage of elite and royal harems of Ottoman sultans. According to Taledano, in contrast to the Atlantic slave trade where the male-female ratio was 2:1 or 3:1, the Arab slave trade usually had a higher female:male ratio instead, suggesting a general preference for female slaves. Concubinage and reproduction served as incentives for importing female slaves (often European), although many were also imported mainly for performing household tasks.
According to Robert C. Davis, in the 16th century, Avret Pazary was in full swing and doing strong business. Davis estimates demand and market of female slaves capturing and enslavement figure above a thousand per year, in the Ottoman Empire. The slave women market used to be filled with women captured from Corsairs, Tartars and miscellaneous slave dealers.
According to Taledano, slaves usually would not come on record unless reported by their masters, usually for absconding, so while knowing the exact number and composition of slaves remains difficult, analysis of 16th-century absconders presented by Yvonne Seng from Ottoman records shows that some were captured in Ottoman war campaigns in the Balkans, while many others were captured from Russia and Poland by the Crimean Khanate incursions there. Among absconding slaves, 39 percent were Russians, Serbs-Croats 31 percent, Bosnians 11 percent, and the remaining 19 percent from Hungary Bulgaria and Walachia.
According to Davis, Ottaviano Bon, an early 17th-century Italian ambassador, made observations about Avret Pizary of Istanbul: