How Ottoman Slavers Sold Chios Girls for Three Pounds a Head

In the summer of 1822, British clergyman R. Walsh watched from the streets of Constantinople as hundreds of Greek girls from Chios were sold like livestock at open-air slave markets. Walsh served as priest at the British embassy and had been in the city since the start of the Greek uprising, recording everything he witnessed firsthand.

Following the Chios Massacre, Ottoman slavers, mostly dock workers, porters, and criminal volunteers who had joined the campaign purely to loot, killed the male members of captured families and took women and children prisoner. They would then bring their captives to the nearest customs post and receive a "teskere," an official certificate of ownership. By May 1, 1822, at least 41,000 such certificates had been issued on Chios alone. Around 5,000 of those enslaved were sold in Constantinople.

By May 1, 1822, at least 41,000 certificates of slave ownership had been issued on Chios alone.

Most transactions took place at the Avret Bazaar, a walled building with an open courtyard where African slave women were displayed on raised platforms. White women and those considered more "valuable" were kept in latticed rooms. But Chiot women were so numerous that sellers spilled into the streets and squares.

Walsh recorded seeing a group of girls aged twelve to fifteen at the Balik Bazaar, the city's fish market, on June 15, 1822. They were half-naked, their faces frozen with terror. Buyers examined them the way butchers handle lambs, and each girl was sold for roughly 100 groschen, the equivalent of three British pounds per head. Around 500 Chiot women were sold at that location alone.

The following day, a slave market was set up in Pera, directly outside the European embassies and beside Frankish churches. Diplomats from powers that treated the purchase of an African pagan as a capital crime walked past chained Christian women being sold into lifelong servitude. Walsh wrote that those women shared the same faith, the same qualities, and the same virtues as the Europeans watching in silence.