These names were extracted from the 1580-1583 court records for the city of Bursa, Turkey. They include the names of free Muslim women, free ethnic Greek women, and suspected or confirmed enslaved Muslim women. Muslim Women These names belonged to Muslim women who appear to have been free-born. Most were…
These names were borne by a mix of free, enslaved, and converted women. Because of the data spread, the names couldn’t be conclusively placed in one category or another; there were too many freeborn women bearing them to declare that they were slave names, and too many slave women bearing…
[Page in progress] Male and female slaves were different–so different that there were different words to refer to them. Male slaves were köle, and female slaves were cariye (pronounced “jariyeh”). Cariye literally means “runner,” one who runs to perform her master’s bidding, but even now it’s synonymous with “concubine.” So…