Greek Captives and Mediterranean Slavery, 1260-1460 - (Edinburgh Byzantine Studies) by Alasdair C Grant

About the Book

Studies captivity as cross-cultural interaction in the late medieval Mediterranean

Book Synopsis

Captivity and enslavement were characteristic experiences of Greek Christians in the late medieval Mediterranean. During this time, Muslim Turks and Christian western Europeans conquered and traded at the expense of the shrinking Byzantine Empire. By bringing together literary and documentary sources spanning a geographical canvas from the Aegean to Egypt and from Cyprus to Catalonia, this book tells that story in full for the first time. It traces this crisis of captivity from its origins in thirteenth-century Asia Minor to its explosion into a Mediterranean-wide phenomenon, interrogating different types of unfreedom and forced movement and evaluating their significance for Greeks' religious and diplomatic relationships with their neighbours, both Christian and Muslim.
This book tells the story of thousands of ordinary people caught up in conflict and dispersed across the Mediterranean against their will. It is the first study to examine the social, cultural and political ramifications of this late medieval trade in Greeks. The book's wide geographical horizons and its accessible style ensure that it will appeal to anyone interested in the medieval Mediterranean or the history of slavery. Its use of previously unpublished or little-known textual sources and its extensive synthesis of Byzantine, Latin European and Islamic sources and scholarship ensure that it will offer new perspectives and revelations for the specialist.

Review Quotes

This study chronicles the compelling tragedy of the last two centuries of Greek independence and the vicissitudes of the enslaved Orthodox population. [...] Grant (Univ. of Hamburg, Germany) scoured numerous notarial records and official documents in various languages for information on the purchase and sale of Greek slaves and their families along with efforts by the Greek authorities and the Church to redeem the captives. He recounts individual stories of those who purchased their own freedom and those who were granted special leave from slave owners, and how they wandered through war-torn Greek and Italian towns and villages, in some cases for years. Once the Ottomans conquered Constantinople and other Greek entities, all Greeks became Ottoman subjects, subject to the devshirme tax, which put their sons in the Ottoman army and their daughters in the harems. A well-written contribution on the tragic fate of war captives.

Summing Up: Recommended.

--S. Bowman, emeritus, University of Cincinnati "CHOICE"

Centring Greek perspectives while drawing on an impressive range of sources, this fascinating book adds an essential dimension to our understanding of slavery and captivity in the late Middle Ages. Grant highlights the Aegean as a sphere of Greek-Turkish-Latin relations distinct from, though linked to, the rest of the Mediterranean.--Hannah Barker, Arizona State University