the black death in early ottoman territories - Bilkent University

eflected in rising prices of slaves, 188 which found eager buyers in Mamluk Egypt
as well as in the Southern European countries. However, besides being very
profitable, this trade was fraught with danger. The contact with slaves, who had
often been captured under the hygienically inadequate conditions of war and siege,
held the risk of becoming infected with plague as well. 189 That slaves were known
to spread plague is demonstrated by the letter that Francesco Datini wrote to his
wife in 1393: "I hear that... few slaves will be coming from Roumania, for they say
that in that country many are dead and dying from the plague, and those who come
die on board. It would be bringing the plague into our own homes." 190
After the trade with Inner Asia decreased in the mid-fourteenth century, Pera
would become increasingly dependent for its economic survival on its commercial
exchanges with Bursa that had become an emporium for luxury goods coming
from Iran and Syria. 191 But not only the contact with the Genoese meant possible
exposure to plague for the Ottomans. The maritime activities of the newly-
conquered emirate of Karesi on the Turkish coast might also have put the
Ottomans at risk. Indeed, according to Ibn Khâtimah, Christian merchants that
returned to Almeria after the first outbreak reported plague along the Turkish
coast. 192 It seems indeed logical that the Turkish principalities on the coast, such
188 Fleet (1999: 49) states that "while it is true that the Black Death wiped out slave owners as well
as slaves, thus reducing the number of potential buyers, the plague must have carried off a higher
proportion of the weaker and undernourished members of the society, including slaves." According
to Balard (1989: 44) as well, slaves became more expensive: "La traite est stimulée par le besoin de
main-d'oeuvre que connaît l'Occident après les ravages de la Peste Noire, qui provoque un brutal
renchérissement du prix des esclaves." In Fleet. European and Islamic Trade in the early Ottoman
State: the Merchants of Genoa and Turkey, 49.
189 Although the Turks were engaged in trading as well, their activity pales in comparison with
traders such as the Genoese. However, the Turks assured continuing fresh supply through their
military and raiding activities, a fact much attested for by the chronicles.
190 Iris Origo. "The Domestic Enemy: Eastern Slaves in Tuscany in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Centuries," Speculum 30 (3) 1955, 321-366, page 331.
191 İnalcık , `The Question of the Closing of the Black Sea.` 313.
192 Ibn Khâtimah lived in Almeria, Spain at the time of the first outbreak of the Black Death and
wrote a plague treatise from which this information is taken (fol. 53a) as quoted by Dols (1977:
62).
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