EHUD R. TOLEDANO, Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1998). Pp. 197. $18.00 paper.

Abstract

Compared with the cottage industry that has grown up around the study of slavery in Africa and the Americas, slavery in the Ottoman East barely registers as a target of inquiry. Ottomanists and Islamicists have tended to avoid it altogether, and global comparativists have given little play to slave systems that, like the Ottoman, did not center on plantation labor. Military slaves and other varieties of “elite slaves” in the Ottoman Empire have been exceptions to the general indifference, although considering the long and complex history of elite slave (kul) manpower in the 600 years of Ottoman statehood, the pickings are slim there, as well.