Spyropoulos, Yannis. “Slaves and Freedmen in 17th and Early 18th Century Ottoman Crete.” Turcica 46 (2015): 177–204.
This article is a study of the institution of chattel slavery in early Ottoman Crete. Conquered by the Ottomans between 1645 and 1669, Crete immediately became a pool of enslavement through war captivity as well as an active market place where both locals and non-Cretans bought and sold slaves of various ethnic backgrounds. Yet the importance of slavery for the early Ottoman Cretan society went far beyond its financial aspect. At a time of fluid social and religious identities for the island’s population, slave ownership became a marker of wealth just as converting slaves to Islam and emancipating them became a sign of piety. Thus it was used as a means of bridging the status gap between the local converts and the newly settled Ottoman administrative and military elite.
