The Greek Christians Sold in Ottoman Slave Markets

Historian and commentator Homer Pavlos posted on X this week a stark account of Greek Christians enslaved across roughly 1,300 years of the Muslim-Arab slave trade, estimating that around one million Greek Christians were sold as slaves over that period.

Pavlos cited two specific events to anchor the scale of the claim. During the Chios massacre of 1822, he writes, approximately 42,000 Greeks were killed while 52,000 women and children were sold into the slave markets of Smyrna and Constantinople. A year earlier, on September 1, 1821, Ottoman forces destroyed Samothrace, killing the men and boys of the island and selling its women and children in the markets of Constantinople and Smyrna.

"ΡΟΔΟΝ ΕΤΩΝ ΙΗ ΠΩΛΕΙΤΑΙ" — Rose, eighteen years old, for sale.

Pavlos also shared an image of a slave-sale sign written in Greek, reading "ΡΟΔΟΝ ΕΤΩΝ ΙΗ ΠΩΛΕΙΤΑΙ", which translates as "Rose, eighteen years old, for sale." The sign illustrated what the slave trade looked like at the individual level, a name, an age, a price.

The Chios massacre is one of the most documented atrocities of the Greek War of Independence, 204 years ago, and it drew international condemnation at the time, including from the painter Eugène Delacroix, whose canvas "The Massacre at Chios" brought the event to European attention. Samothrace, a smaller event, receives far less coverage in Western historical memory.

Pavlos presented these figures as part of a broader argument that the enslavement of Greek Christians under Ottoman and Arab rule remains underrepresented in historical discourse compared to other slave trades. The figures he cites are his own estimates and attributions, not drawn from a single peer-reviewed source.