Slavery, Freedom Suits, and Legal Praxis in the Ottoman Empire, ca. 1590–1710
Journal: Comparative Studies in Society and History
Year: 2023

Abstract Beginning with the story of the Muslim youth Mehmed bin Abdülcelil of Tunis, this article examines the plight of Ottoman subjects abducted and sold into slavery within the Ottoman Empire and their efforts to regain freedom through Ottoman courts. Freedom suits ( hürriyet davaları ) were common in the seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire, so much so that contemporary legal praxis manuals ( sukuk ) always provided examples of how to document them, but they have never been systematically stu