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The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem

Eunuchs were a common feature of pre- and early modern societies but are
now poorly understood. Here, Jane Hathaway offers an in-depth study of the
chief of the African eunuchs who guarded the harem of the Ottoman Empire.
A wide range of primary sources are used to analyze the Chief Eunuch’s
origins in East Africa and his political, economic, and religious role from the
inception of his office in the late sixteenth century through the dismantling of
the palace harem in the early twentieth century. Hathaway highlights the
origins of the institution and how the role of eunuchs developed in East
Africa, as well as exploring the Chief Eunuch’s connections to Egypt and
Medina. By tracing the evolution of the office, we see how the Chief Eunuch’s
functions changed in response to transformations in Ottoman society, from
the generalized crisis of the seventeenth century to the westernizing reforms
of the nineteenth century.

jane hathaway is professor of history at Ohio State University and one of

the world’s leading authorities on the Ottoman Empire and on eunuchs in
Islamic societies. She is the author of five books, including The Arab Lands
under Ottoman Rule (2008), which won the Turkish Studies Association’s
M. Fuat Köprülü Book Prize. She also authored the article “Eunuchs” for the
third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, a seminal reference work. Her
research has been funded by prestigious grants from the National Endow-
ment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the
Institute for Advanced Study.
The Chief Eunuch of
the Ottoman Harem
From African Slave to Power-Broker

Jane Hathaway
The Ohio State University
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107108295
DOI: 10.1017/9781316257876
© Jane Hathaway 2018
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2018
Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd. Padstow, Cornwall
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-107-10829-5 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
In memory of Meg Hathaway (1927–2014)
 Contents

List of Figures page viii

List of Maps ix
List of Tables x
Acknowledgments xi
Note on Transliteration and Diacritics xiii
List of Abbreviations xiv

1 Introducing the Chief Harem Eunuch 1

2 The African Connection 12
3 Arrangement in Black and White: Eunuchs in the Ottoman Palace 40
4 The Creation of the Office of Chief Harem Eunuch and the
Career of Habeshi Mehmed Agha 55
5 The Crisis Years of the Seventeenth Century 77
6 Yusuf Agha and the Köprülü Reforms 105
7 A New Paradigm: El-Hajj Beshir Agha and His Successors 129
8 Exile and the Kingdom: The Chief Harem Eunuch and Egypt 160
9 The Chief Harem Eunuch and Ottoman Religious and
Intellectual Life 193
10 Reformed Out of Existence: The Dénouement of the Chief
Harem Eunuch 221
11 Memorializing the Chief Harem Eunuch 248
12 Conclusion 275

Appendix: Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuchs 283

Works Cited 287
Index 304

vii
 Figures

3.1 Plan of Topkapı Palace page 46

4.1 Habeshi Mehmed Agha’s mosque in Istanbul’s Çarşamba
district 71
5.1 Inscription on the façade of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque,
naming el-Hajj Mustafa Agha as superintendent of the
mosque’s construction 90
9.1 El-Hajj Beshir and Moralı Beshir Aghas’ sebil-mektebs
in Cairo 199
9.2 El-Hajj Beshir’s complex near Topkapı Palace and the book
depot inside the mosque 206
10.1 Photographs of Nadir Agha in the palace and as an older man 241
11.1 Habeshi Mehmed Agha 251
11.2 Osman II with harem and Third Court eunuchs 254
11.3 El-Hajj Beshir Agha in procession with the Chief Threshold
Eunuch 257
11.4 El-Hajj Beshir Agha presents the grand vizier’s gifts to
Sultan Ahmed III 259
11.5 Two palace eunuchs 262
11.6 El-Hajj Mustafa’s and el-Hajj Beshir’s tombs on either side
of the tomb of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari 266

viii
 Maps

0.1 The Ottoman Empire in the mid-sixteenth century page xv

0.2 The Ottoman Balkans in the late sixteenth century xvi
2.1 Ethiopia and adjacent regions, showing major ethno-regional
groups 21
4.1 Istanbul, showing neighborhoods where Chief Harem Eunuchs
endowed structures 70
8.1 Egypt, showing subprovinces 166
8.2 Cairo, showing neighborhoods where harem eunuchs
were active 174

ix
 Tables

4.1 Major officers of the harem and Third Court during the reign
of Murad III page 56
5.1 Major officers of the harem and Third Court during the
crisis era 79
6.1 Major officers of the harem and Third Court in the late
seventeenth century 106
7.1 Major officers of the harem and Third Court in the early to
mid-eighteenth century 130
10.1 Major officers of the harem and Third Court from the late
eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries 222

x
 Acknowledgments

This book has been a long time coming, and I have many people and insti-
tutions to thank. I have used the notes for this purpose where appropriate, but
they cover only part of the debt.
Early research for this project was funded by generous grants from the
National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned
Societies. I began writing the book while holding the Douglas Southall
Freeman Professorship in History at the University of Richmond, Virginia,
and finished drafts of most of the chapters while holding the Gladys Kreible
Delmas Membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. I am
grateful to Ohio State’s College of Arts and Sciences for allowing me to accept
these positions and for funding a Special Assignment in spring 2017 that
allowed me to complete a full draft of the book.
I am grateful to the staff and directors of the Başbakanlık Ottoman Arch-
ives, the Süleymaniye Library, the Köprülü Library, and the Topkapı Palace
Museum Library and Archive in Istanbul for access to their collections, and
to Dr. Anthony Greenwood and the staff of the American Research Institute in
Turkey’s Istanbul branch for providing a haven on numerous occasions. Over
the years, a number of colleagues and students have provided access to
research materials. Here, I must single out Muhammad Husam al-Din Ismail
Abd al-Fattah, Günhan Börekçi, Emine Fetvacı, Betül İpşirli Argıt, George
Junne, Svetlana Kirillina, Mikhail Meyer, Özgül Özdemir, Doğa Öztürk, and
Ata Potok. For helping me track down eunuch monuments and tombs, I thank
Caroline Finkel (who also gave the book manuscript a close read), Catalina
Hunt, Davidson McLaren, Darin Stephanov, and Professor Abd al-Fattah’s
graduate students at Ayn Shams University.
I thank Nicolas Vatin for inviting me to deliver a series of lectures, spon-
sored by the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, at the Sorbonne in
spring 2008 that were instrumental in my conceptualization of this project.
I likewise thank the late Patricia Crone for commissioning my short biography
of el-Hajj Beshir Agha (2006), which served as a forerunner for this project.

xi
xii Acknowledgments

I am grateful to two anonymous readers for Cambridge University Press

and, above all, to my retired colleague Stephen Dale, who during summer
2017 read the entire book manuscript and offered chapter-by-chapter com-
ments. Needless to say, responsibility for any errors or omissions is entirely
mine. Laura Seeger of Ohio State’s Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teach-
ing proved vital to the preparation of the maps and images.
I could not have completed this book without the support of my husband,
Robert (“Mimar Bob”) Simkins, and Pelin and Tasha, the worthy successors to
the legendary Beshir and Stella. I dedicate this book to the memory of my
mother, Meg Hathaway, the only member of my family to have read all my
books. The last time I saw her, in May 2014, she asked me if I had another
book for her to read. Here it is, Mom, only a few years late.
 Note on Transliteration and Diacritics

Since I use both Ottoman Turkish and Arabic primary sources in my research,
I constantly confront the question of which transliteration system to employ in
my publications. Since this is a book about an Ottoman official who served
mainly in the imperial capital (even though he might be exiled to Cairo), I have
chosen to give pride of place to Turkish transliterations. Thus, I use Turkish
transliteration for the names and offices of Ottoman officials, most Ottoman
institutions, titles of books composed in Ottoman Turkish, and the Islamic
(hijri) months. I use Arabic transliteration for Arabic book titles and the names
of most Arabophone authors. I follow the transliteration system of the Inter-
national Journal of Middle East Studies, although, in consultation with my
editor, I have elected to omit diacritics apart from ‘ayn, which is indicated by a
backward apostrophe, and hamza, which is indicated by a forward apostrophe.
Names of Islamic institutions and offices that can be found in a present-
day English dictionary (e.g., hadith, madrasa, qadi, Sufi) retain the spellings
found there.
Otherwise, the sounds indicated by the distinctive letters of the modern
Turkish alphabet are as follows:

Letter Sound

c j
ç ch
ğ elongated vowel, as in “espagnol”
ı short u, as in “put”
ö er, as in “pert,” or French oe
ş sh
ü long u, as in “cute,” or French u

xiii
 Abbreviations

BOA Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives,

Istanbul)
EI2 Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden, 1960–2004)
EI3 Encyclopaedia of Islam Three (Leiden, 2007–present)
MD Mühimme Defteri (Register of Important Affairs)
TDVİA Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı İslam Ansiklopedisi

Because I find the classification abbreviations currently employed by the

Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi to be a source of considerable confusion, I do
not use them in my notes. They are, however, provided in the Works Cited,
in parentheses after the title of each major classification.

xiv
 Map 0.1 The Ottoman Empire in the mid-sixteenth century.
xv
xvi Maps

Ostrava Kraków
Brno L’vov 50

Linz Danu be R Źurawno

ive C A
Salzburg r Vinnitsa
Vienna Bratislava RP
A P O D O L E B
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u
Ri H Dn
IA

Ri
Väcz Mezökeresztes ie er

v
Szombathely Gyor Sventendre N BUKOVINA BE te

s
S r

Pru
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Graz Buda Pest
Tis

SA
t
Vasvár Cegléd Debrecen
St. Gotthárd

RA

R i ver
MO

M
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BI
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Nagykörös

Sir e
va LDA

A
VIA

IU
Kanizsa

O
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Riv
Ljubljana Iaşi

U
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Szigetvár Cluj

er
R
Mure

Rive r
N
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Trieste Zagreb Szeged A Kishinëv Bender

P Tirgu Mureş

ş
Pécs

TA
A Arad
Fiume AT I Mohács Subotica Odessa
RO
Senj C R i v er

I N
Zenta
Sa

va r Akkerman
Banjaluka Riv
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S
Petrovaradin Braşov
Pag Rača Novi Slankamen Galati Kilia/Kiliya
Stremski Karlovci S Y LV A N I A N A L P S
Zemun TRAN
(Karlowitz) Argeş Brâila Izmail/
Beograd İsmail Geçidi
er

Zadar

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Šabac Orşova
in a Riv

Ploësti 45

JA
Požarevac IRON GATE Sulina
Šibenik WA L L A C H I A

UD
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OLTENIA
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Dr

Vidin

DO
(Bucharest)
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ava

Hvar D an Yergögü Constanţa

ub e Silistra Küçük
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Mostar River
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I

Niš Nikopolis
Svishtov Rusçuk BLACK
A

Pločnik Novi Pazar

I Pleven
T

River

C Dubrovnik Kotor Pec

Priština
BALK
A N M O U N TA I N S Kotel SEA
Sofia Tundzha
Kosova
Velbužd Pazardzhik Burgas

River
Shkodër (Köstendil) Maritsa
S

S truma

Skopje RH Rive
O D Plovdiv
E

Va OP
r
Bari E Chirmen
A

Durrës Dibra r BanskoMOUNTAIN

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Tiranë Prilep (Blagoevgrad) S

River

Lezhë Edirne rus

rR

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sp
iver

Brindisi Serres Üzünköprü 1453 Bo

Monastir Kavala
Salonika Koyunhisar
(Thessaloniki) Istanbul Izmit
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.
Sea of

yR
Karaferye Marmara Mekece

ar
Çimne

Sak
Imros Çanakkale Bursa Iznik
es (Abydos) Söǧüt
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40
Catanzaro an iz
Trikala rd
Da Eskişehir
Ri

Arta
IONIAN
ver

AEGEAN
Messina Agrinion Skiros Lesvos
SEA Lepanto Manisa
SEA r
Chios Izmir
Patras
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Athens Chios (Smyrna) Birgi

Ri

Çeşme
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Corinth Andros re s
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eş

MOREA Samos
fÇ

Tenos
o
ait

Burdur
Str

Naxos
MAINA
MEDITERRANEAN SEA Antalya
Milos
Kithira Rhodes

Map 0.2 The Ottoman Balkans in the late sixteenth century.

1 Introducing the Chief Harem Eunuch

Let’s start with the cover illustration. It shows the most powerful Chief
Harem Eunuch in Ottoman history, el-Hajj Beshir Agha, leading three sons
of Sultan Ahmed III through the Third Court of Topkapı Palace. The year is
1720. The princes are about to be circumcised in the Circumcision Room in
the palace’s Fourth Court. Each of them is held on either side by a vizier, or
government minister. Beshir Agha is right at the front of the painting, flush
with the picture frame. Even the grand vizier, supposedly the most powerful
figure in the Ottoman Empire at the time, walks behind him, holding the right
arm of the oldest prince. What is the message of this painting? El-Hajj Beshir
Agha is the most powerful person in the palace, more powerful than the
grand vizier or any of the princes. He holds the princes’ fates and, by
implication, the fate of the empire in his hands. But he also guards the barrier
separating the princes and the viziers from the viewer. In this sense, he is
both a central figure and a marginal figure, both the master of the princes and
viziers and their servant. He is also the only dark-skinned figure in the
painting, yet he is leading all the pale-skinned figures.
Does this image seem contradictory? It should. The Chief Eunuch of the
Ottoman Empire’s imperial harem embodied all these contradictions. He was
a castrated African slave, permanently separated from his family of origin
and incapable of founding a family of his own, yet someone who was on
intimate terms with the Ottoman royal family, to the extent of announcing the
birth of a prince or princess to the sultan, overseeing the princes’ education,
representing the bridegroom at the wedding of a princess, or informing the
sultan of his mother’s death. The very existence of such a person might seem
outlandish and incomprehensible to us, and yet the office of Chief Harem
Eunuch existed for more than three hundred years, building on precedents
that may have gone back to the earliest human civilizations. This book’s task
is to explore this office and the characteristics of the people who held it over
these three centuries, examining how the office changed in response to the
transformations in Ottoman society and Ottoman court life that occurred
during this lengthy period.

1
2 Introducing the Chief Harem Eunuch

Introducing This Book

Astonishingly enough, no book-length study has yet been devoted to this
pivotal yet enigmatic figure. The Turkish historian İ. H. Uzunçarşılı provided
the best description of the office’s duties in a seminal study of Ottoman palace
institutions published in 1945.1 Since then, various works on Topkapı Palace
and on the Topkapı harem, both scholarly and popular, have discussed the role
of both African and white palace eunuchs, including the Chief Eunuch.2
A popular Turkish overview of the harem eunuchs appeared in 1997, while
an English-language book based on secondary sources appeared in 2016.3
What I attempt here is a study of the office’s development based on primary
sources. But this is, I hope, more than simply a research monograph. It is also a
wide-ranging consideration of how the development of the office of Chief
Harem Eunuch paralleled the empire’s development during this era.
We start by framing the subject: Which societies used eunuchs? Where did
they come from? What functions did they perform? Then we narrow the focus:
Where did the practice of employing African eunuchs, as harem guardians and
in other capacities, originate, and how did the Ottoman Empire come to adopt
it? Finally, what was the Ottoman harem like, and what place did it occupy in
the imperial palace? These institutional concerns occupy Chapters 1–3.
We then turn to the career of the Ottoman Chief Harem Eunuch specifically.
Rather than simply tracing the accomplishments and failures of all seventy-six
Chief Eunuchs, one after another, I attempt to show how the careers of key
Chief Eunuchs reflected and were affected by transformations in Ottoman
political, social, and institutional history. The office of Agha of the Abode of
Felicity (Ağa-yı Darü’s-sa‘ade, or Darüssaade Ağası) was founded just after
Sultan Murad III (r. 1574–95) moved into the harem and began to spend most
of his “free” time there, more or less abandoning his privy chamber in the
palace’s Third Court. This move made the head of the harem eunuchs, Habeshi
Mehmed Agha, one of the people he saw most frequently. Around the same

1
İ. Ḥ. Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Saray Teşkilatı (Ankara, 1945; reprinted 1984, 1988),
72–83.
2
Gülru Necipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapı Palace in the Fifteenth
and Sixteenth Centuries (New York and Cambridge, MA, 1991), 43, 49, 73, 74, 79, 89–90, 102,
111, 115, 117, 121, 133–35, 160–64, 174, 177–83, 225, 230; Leslie Peirce, The Imperial Harem:
Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York, NY, 1993), 11–12, 46, 49, 125,
135–37, 195–96, 206, 235, 241–42; M. Çağatay Uluçay, Harem II (Ankara, 1971), 117–26;
N. M. Penzer, The Harem: An Account of the Institution as It Existed in the Palace of the Turkish
Sultans, with a History of the Grand Seraglio from Its Foundation (Philadelphia, 1936; 2nd ed.
London, 1965; reprint New York, NY, 1993), especially 117–92.
3
Sema Ok, Harem Dünyası: Harem Ağaları (Istanbul, 1997); George H. Junne, The Black
Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire: Networks of Power in the Court of the Sultan (London,
2016).
 Introducing This Book 3

time, not coincidentally, he made Habeshi Mehmed superintendent of the

imperial pious foundations for the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina,
known in Ottoman Turkish as Evkafü’l-Haremeyn; this post had previously
been held by the head of the white eunuchs of the Third Court.
Chapter 4 dissects the career of Habeshi Mehmed Agha, who set a number
of lasting precedents in the course of his seventeen years in office. He died
shortly before the onset of the prolonged crisis of the seventeenth century,
which coincided with the reigns of a series of youthful sultans who either died
heirless or left behind only young children. The sultan’s mother and favorite
concubines competed to fill the resulting power vacuum, and the Chief Harem
Eunuchs became their allies in this effort. Chapter 5 explains how the chaotic-
ally competitive atmosphere of the crisis years gave rise to factionalism within
the harem and how the Chief Eunuch participated in, and manipulated, this
brand of factionalism.
The reforms of the Köprülü family of grand viziers mark the end of the
crisis, and Chapter 6 demonstrates how they channeled their own clients into
the office of Chief Harem Eunuch or, at the least, promoted Chief Eunuchs
whose priorities matched their own. With the Köprülüs, the office of Chief
Harem Eunuch begins to intersect directly with the corps of eunuchs who
guarded the Prophet Muhammad’s tomb in Medina, for the Köprülüs intro-
duced the practice of naming a former Chief Eunuch to head the tomb eunuchs.
In general, the Köprülüs tried to ensure the grand vizier’s control over all
appointments and decisions made in the imperial capital. As Chapter 7 dem-
onstrates, though, only after the middle of the eighteenth century was the grand
vizier truly able to transcend the Chief Eunuch’s influence, and even then, the
Chief Eunuch was far from powerless. One of his unfailingly reliable channels
of influence, at least before the westernizing reforms of the nineteenth century,
was Egypt, which supplied grain to the Evkafü’l-Haremeyn and provided
deposed Chief Harem Eunuchs with a comfortable place to spend their retire-
ment. Accordingly, Chapter 8 addresses the Chief Eunuch’s connections to
this critical Ottoman province.
Despite the largely chronological flow of the discussion in Chapters 4–8,
several key themes keep surfacing: the Chief Eunuch’s relationship to the
sultan and his mother, his concern with the Evkafü’l-Haremeyn, the interplay
of several different kinds of palace factionalism, the Chief Eunuch’s
competition with the grand vizier, and his connections to Egypt. I have chosen
to emphasize these themes in my treatment of the office of Chief Harem
Eunuch, rather than trying to impose an externally derived theoretical frame-
work on the subject. Above all, I seek to show how the office of Chief Harem
Eunuch mirrored the Ottoman Empire’s experience of a wrenching, multifa-
ceted crisis during the seventeenth century, followed by gradual adaptation in
the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and economic prosperity,
4 Introducing the Chief Harem Eunuch

an expansion of international trade, and a growing regularization of imperial

institutions in the later eighteenth, before the nineteenth-century reforms
transformed the imperial administration.
Three of the book’s last four chapters treat themes that run through most
of the three hundred years during which the office of Chief Harem Eunuch
was active while also considering how the story of the Chief Harem Eunuch
came to an end. Chapter 9 examines the Chief Eunuch’s considerable impact
on Ottoman religious and intellectual life through the establishment of
educational institutions, religious complexes, and libraries, many of which
are still functioning today. In Chapter 10, we see how the westernizing reforms
of the nineteenth century drastically curtailed this kind of society-wide influ-
ence. For the last seventy-five years of its existence, roughly 1834–1909, the
office of Chief Harem Eunuch was purely a palace position, largely irrelevant
to the broader concerns of empire.
In view of these dramatic shifts in the Chief Eunuch’s status and fortunes
over three centuries, Chapter 11 asks how the Chief Harem Eunuch is remem-
bered, and how he fashioned his own memorials through miniature paintings,
on the one hand, and tombs and gravestones, on the other. These consider-
ations provide an appropriate segue to the Conclusion, which considers the
Chief Eunuch’s place in the longue durée of Ottoman history and, even more
broadly, in world history.

Why Eunuchs?
Nowadays, many students, to say nothing of the reading public, find it impos-
sible to understand why eunuchs were ever an institution. Castration, they
believe, was a dastardly punishment that the victim must have resented for the
rest of his life, dreaming ceaselessly of revenge. But how could this have been
the case when much of the world, excluding western Europe and possibly the
precolonial Americas, employed eunuchs in positions of trust close to the
ruler? Eunuchs were a deeply rooted institution in most, if not all, of the great
Mediterranean and Asian empires: the ancient Mesopotamian empires, begin-
ning at least with the Neo-Assyrians (911–612 BCE), all the Persian empires
(Achaemenid, 550–331 BCE; Parthian, 240 BCE–220 CE; and Sasanian,
220–651 CE), the Roman and Byzantine Empires (27 BCE –1453 CE), all
Chinese empires beginning with the Zhou (1045–771 BCE) and ending only
with the overthrow of the Qing in 1911, and even many sub-Saharan African
kingdoms, which will be discussed in Chapter 2. The only ancient Old World
civilization about which we are unsure is Pharaonic Egypt.4 The tradition

4
See Chapter 2 on Egypt and the “Eunuchs in Africa and Related Topics” and “Eunuchs in Other
Societies” sections of the Works Cited.
 Why Eunuchs? 5

continued under the major medieval and early modern empires of Asia and
Africa, including all Islamic empires from at least the Abbasids (750–1258
CE) onward. Even in the kingdoms of western Europe, where such “guardian”
eunuchs were unknown, the eunuch singers known as castrati, a possible
evolution of castrated church singers in the Byzantine Empire, were perform-
ing in the church choirs of the Vatican by the mid-sixteenth century and were
wildly popular on opera stages until the 1820s.5 In fact, the eunuch institution
was so widespread that the appropriate question may be not why so many
societies employed eunuchs but why certain others did not.
So why did these polities use eunuchs, and court eunuchs in particular?
Apart from the western European kingdoms, all of them shared three features
that required the use of eunuchs. First, they all featured more or less absolute
rulers who lived in isolation from their subjects and were sometimes quasi-
deified. Orlando Patterson has noted that “rulers who claim absolute power,
often with divine authority, seem to prefer – even to need – slaves who have
been castrated.”6 Because of the risk of assassination or rebellion, access to the
ruler had to be strictly controlled, fueling a need for servants and confidants
with no family or locational ties that would dilute their utter loyalty to the
sovereign. Eunuchs, and particularly eunuchs who came from outside the
empire or from its peripheries, supplied this need.
But the absolute ruler’s need for eunuchs went beyond the practicalities of
protection. Absolute rulers inhabited a quasi-sacred, inviolate space, compar-
able to the inner sanctum of a temple. Eunuchs provided a sort of cordon
sanitaire around this taboo precinct, so that it could not be “polluted” by
contact with commoners. In their mediating role, they arguably resembled
demigods or angels.7 Yet they differed from angels and demigods in occupy-
ing a dangerously ambivalent zone, for they could not become so intimate with
the “sacred” ruler that they would diminish his status while, at the same time,
losing their connection with the common population. Figuratively, then, they
walked a fine line between the ruler’s sacred purity and the mundane impurity
of the mass of his subjects.

5
Helen Berry, The Castrato and His Wife (Oxford, 2011), especially 13, 15–16, 18, 68, 76–77,
183; Neil Moran, “The Choir of the Hagia Sophia,” Oriens Christianus 89 (2005): 1–7; Georges
Sidéris, “Une Société de ville capitale: les eunuques dans la Constantinople byzantine (IVe–XIIe
siècle),” in Les Villes capitales au Moyen Âge – XXXVIe Congrès de la SHMES (Istanbul, 1er-6
juin 2005) (Paris, 2006), 262. I thank Professor Sidéris for providing me with a copy of his
article.
6
Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA,
1982), 323.
7
Kathryn Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in
Byzantium (Chicago, IL, 2003), chapters 4, 7; Shaun Tougher, The Eunuch in Byzantine History
and Society (London, 2008), 86, 89, 106–7, 113–15.
6 Introducing the Chief Harem Eunuch

As to the second shared feature, all these empires practiced seclusion of

royal women as a means of controlling dynastic reproduction. A designated,
circumscribed place for all the ruler’s potential sexual partners (and their
numerous servants and assistants) made it possible to limit the number of
children, particularly sons, that each wife or concubine bore and to ensure that
these women never had sexual partners apart from the ruler. This was the
famous harem or “inner sanctum” institution, practiced not only in Islamic
empires and kingdoms but also in imperial China and in the Roman,
Byzantine, and ancient Persian empires. Even if some of these empires culti-
vated marriage alliances with neighboring polities, the foreign princesses
entered the harem after their weddings, often sharing quarters with concubines.
In this scheme of things, eunuchs policed the boundary between the women’s
space and that of the ruler and his (castrated or uncastrated) male pages.8
The third shared feature is somewhat less obvious: many, if not all, of
these regimes employed elite military-administrative slaves, who in Islamic
empires were usually called mamluks or ghulams. The late David Ayalon has
argued that the use of eunuchs invariably accompanied the use of these
uncastrated elite male slaves, if not for military purposes, then as pages to
the ruler. His reasoning is logical: a large corps of young male recruits,
usually from far-flung lands, usually ignorant of the language and customs of
their new masters, inhabited a barracks or similar quarters for training with
older recruits who could easily abuse them, sexually and otherwise. The ruler
therefore stationed eunuchs in the barracks to prevent this eventuality.9 Their
function in the barracks mirrored their role in the women’s quarters: they
policed the sexuality of the inhabitants. Ayalon’s analysis points up the fact,
also noted by scholars of the Ottoman Empire, that the space occupied by the
ruler and his pages resembled a “male harem.”10 In the Ottoman palace, this
male harem – the Third Court, including the sultan’s privy chamber – had its
own corps of eunuchs who might compete with the harem eunuchs.
These three features describe the distinctive practices of the ruling elite in
polities that employed eunuchs. Broader socioeconomic considerations, how-
ever, may help to explain why castration was accepted by the societies that
these elites ruled. Consider the life of the average subject of a premodern polity
in Asia, eastern Europe, or Africa. Such a person would have lived in a rural
region and had a short life expectancy – hardly beyond thirty or forty in most

8
Peirce, Imperial Harem, 136.
9
David Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans: A Study in Power Relationships (Jerusalem,
1999), 33–34, 45–58.
10
Peirce, Imperial Harem, 11; Koçi Bey, Koçi Bey Risaleleri, ed. Zuhuri Danışman, prepared by
Seda Çakmakoğlu (Istanbul, 2008), 103.
 The Harem, Gender, and Sexuality 7

cases – subject to disease, food shortages, natural disasters, and the myriad
accidents that could occur in a premechanized rural environment.
The life of an elite slave was very different. An elite slave lived in the ruler’s
palace, had decent, even elegant, clothing, never went hungry, received the
best medical care available, and in many (though not all) cases, acquired an
education. And if he were castrated, that slave would be able to function in
very close proximity to the ruler. Despite the physical hardships that eunuchs
suffered, castration might have seemed an acceptable price to pay for this kind
of security and privilege – at least to the ruling elite and society at large; the
eunuchs themselves, virtually all of whom were slaves, almost never got to
choose whether or not to be castrated. In the context of a premodern or early
modern society, castration resembled a security clearance. There were serious
costs involved, but there were also tremendous benefits.

The Harem, Gender, and Sexuality

The harem women’s sexuality was, obviously, essential to dynastic reproduction.
Still, it was a tightly controlled sexuality. The Ottoman imperial household
sought to ensure that imperial wives and concubines produced only a limited
number of potential male heirs to the throne. This guaranteed the succession
while avoiding the chaos of large numbers of sons, with their mothers’ active
support, competing for the throne. As Leslie Peirce has pointed out, the Ottoman
harem by the late sixteenth century – just when the Chief Eunuch became an
influential figure – featured a rigid age and status hierarchy among its inhabitants.
Imperial wives and concubines who had borne male children held pride of place,
with a pecking order descending from the mother of the eldest son to that of the
youngest. The sultan’s mother dominated all, particularly during the crisis years
of the seventeenth century, when these formidable women often ruled de facto
on behalf of their young sons. This period came to be called “the sultanate of
women” as a result.11
As in other absolutist empires, the harem eunuchs occupied an asexual liminal
space between the male harem – that is, the Third Court, inhabited by the ruler
and his male pages – and the female harem. As Peirce explains, “With the
exception of the sultan, only those who were not considered to be fully adult
males were routinely permitted in the inner worlds of the palace: in the male
harem household, boys and young men, eunuchs, dwarves, and mutes; and in
the family harem household women and children.”12 As her description implies,
the harem eunuchs almost never entered the living quarters of the palace women
but remained in the corridors just inside the harem entrance, where they had their

11
The term was coined in 1916 by the historian Ahmet Refik (Altınay) (1881–1937).
12
Peirce, Imperial Harem, 11.
8 Introducing the Chief Harem Eunuch

lodgings.13 The Chief Eunuch acted as a sort of liaison between the top woman
in the harem – either the sultan’s favorite concubine or, by the seventeenth
century, his mother – and the sultan and his male pages, at least some of whom
were white eunuchs from the Balkans and the Caucasus.
Both the African and the white eunuchs could function in this space because
their sexuality had never fully developed. They arguably comprised not so
much a third gender as an arrested male gender, much as if they were young
boys, with all the androgyny that young boys can exhibit. Shaun Marmon
has eloquently compared harem eunuchs to the three boys in Mozart’s opera
The Magic Flute, who “act as neutral messengers between the dangerous and
disorderly female world of the Queen of the Night and the sunlit, rational
world of Sarastro.” “The eunuch/child,” she adds, “is an intermediate being,
safe in both worlds and belonging to neither.”14 Just so the harem eunuchs, like
perpetual children, were able to mediate between the taboo space of the female
or male harem and the public spaces of Topkapı Palace. In this sense, too, they
resembled guardian demigods or angels, as noted above.
This liminality has been one of the main reasons that eunuch gender
has proven so challenging, not only for the societies in which eunuchs have
historically existed but also in scholarship on the subject. There is still disagree-
ment on whether court eunuchs, who generally dressed in clothing designed for
men, were male-gendered or belonged to some other gender entirely; this is the
case above all in scholarship on the Roman and Byzantine Empires, where
eunuchs have been most thoroughly examined from the perspective of gender.15
If court eunuchs were male-gendered, then theirs was not a normative adult male
gender but a nonnormative or alternative male gender. As such, it quite obvi-
ously subverted societal norms of masculinity, which, in most Islamic societies,
included the ability to father children and to grow facial hair. This subversive
gender, moreover, resulted from surgical intervention. Premodern and early
modern societies worldwide perceived a need to intervene to complicate norma-
tive gender categories. But in so doing, they were also emphasizing these
normative categories, for eunuchs, in a sense, enforced them. As Marmon
stresses, the figure guarding the boundary between two realms must be comfort-
able in both while belonging to neither. It was as if the eunuch, by being neither/
nor, sharpened the boundary between either/or.

13
Ibid., 136.
14
Shaun Marmon, Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries in Islamic Society (New York, NY, 1995), 90.
15
Sidéris, “Les Eunuques dans la Constantinople byzantine,” 245; Pascal Boulhol and Isabelle
Cochelin, “La Réhabilitation de l’eunuque dans l’hagiographie antique (IVe–VIe siècles),”
Studi di antichita cristiana 48 (1992): 48, 49–76; Ringrose, Perfect Servant, chapters 1–3, 6;
Tougher, The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society, 3, 5, 34–35, 50–51, 52, 96–118, 129;
Mathew Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology
in Late Antiquity (Chicago, IL, 2001), 96–102, 218–44.
 Distinctive Features of Ottoman Eunuchs 9

Distinctive Features of Ottoman Eunuchs

The Ottoman eunuch system was heavily influenced by those of earlier
Islamic polities, including the Abbasids (750–1258 CE), the Great Seljuks
(ca. 1037–1153), and their various subordinate dynasties in Iraq, Iran, and
Central Asia; the Seljuks of Rum (ca. 1077–1308) in Anatolia; and the
Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517) in Egypt, Syria, and southeastern Anatolia.
But it also bore the influence of non-Muslim dynasties, most notably the
Byzantines, who, as Chapter 3 will point out, were direct models for Ottoman
court institutions, although certainly not the only models. There were key
differences in the Byzantine eunuch institution, particularly the fact that
Byzantine eunuchs were not radically castrated, as their counterparts in Islamic
empires were, and that Byzantine eunuchs could join the church hierarchy and
even become patriarchs of the Orthodox Church, at least before the thirteenth
century CE or thereabouts.16 In Islamic empires, by contrast, eunuchs could
not hold official religious appointments, such as judge (qadi) of a Muslim law
court or Chief Mufti, the official who dispensed legal decisions (fetvas) in
accordance with Islamic law. On the other hand, they could be, and often were,
extremely well read in Islamic law and theology, and might amass impressive
libraries of texts in these and other fields. They could even found mosques,
Qur’an schools, and madrasas, or Islamic theological seminaries. Their
engagement in intellectual life stands in marked contrast to the experience of
their counterparts in Ming dynasty China (1368–1644 CE), where eunuchs
were sometimes totally uneducated and even illiterate, despite the wide variety
of political and economic roles they performed.17 Eunuchs also served in
military roles in a number of these polities, including the Byzantine Empire,
imperial China, and most medieval Muslim empires. In some of the medieval
Muslim empires, military eunuchs could serve in the harem and vice versa.18
The Ottomans, however, introduced a rigid barrier between the two categories.
The Evkafü’l-Haremeyn. Although the Chief Harem Eunuch’s duties by
definition revolved around the palace harem, the office of Chief Harem Eunuch
owed its existence to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina. It was
created in 1588, when Sultan Murad III transferred supervision of the imperial
pious foundations for the holy cities from the head of the white Third Court

16
Ringrose, Perfect Servant, chapter 5; Tougher, The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society,
chapter 5 and 120, 123; Sidéris, “Les Eunuques dans la Constantinople byzantine,” 253, 256.
17
Shih-shan Henry Tsai, “Eunuch Power in Imperial China,” in Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond,
ed. Shaun Tougher (Swansea, 2002), 227–29; Shih-shan Henry Tsai, The Eunuchs in the Ming
Dynasty (Albany, NY, 1996), 42–43 and chapters 4–9.
18
Ringrose, Perfect Servant, 130–41; Tougher, The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society, 5,
35, 40, 97, 116, 120, 121, 122, 126, appendix 2 passim; Tsai, Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty,
chapter 4. On the medieval Islamic empires, see Chapter 2 of the present work.
10 Introducing the Chief Harem Eunuch

eunuchs to the head of the mostly African harem eunuchs. As noted above,
these endowments were known as Evkafü’l-Haremeyn, or Awqaf al-Haramayn
in Arabic, literally, “endowments of the two harams,” since the Great Mosque
in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina were both considered harams,
or spaces that were sacred, on the one hand, and forbidden to outsiders and the
ritually impure, on the other hand. The Arabic word comes from the same root
as harem (harim in Arabic), which is similarly a taboo space that is off-limits to
outsiders – in this case, adult males, particularly those not related to the ruler
by blood.
Supervision of the Evkafü’l-Haremeyn was a key part of the Chief Eunuch’s
duties almost as long as the office existed; the office lost much of its influence
toward the middle of the nineteenth century, just as a Ministry of Pious
Endowments was taking shape as part of the wave of top-down reforms.
Reminders of the palace harem’s link to the holy cities were ubiquitous in
Topkapı Palace: the foundation documents were stored in cupboards lining the
walls just inside the harem entrance,19 and the tiles adorning the harem’s entry
corridor were painted with scenes of the Ka‘ba in Mecca. The Chief Harem
Eunuch spent much of his time in office worrying about collecting revenues
earmarked for the endowments from the far-flung provinces of the empire.
Even if he were deposed and exiled to Egypt, he could hardly forget the Evkaf
since the villages that produced grain for Mecca and Medina were located in
that province.
Beginning in the late seventeenth century, as Chapter 6 will make clear,
deposed Chief Harem Eunuchs were often reassigned to Medina to head the
corps of eunuchs who guarded the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad, a vener-
able institution dating to the late twelfth century. This practice underlined the
importance of the Evkafü’l-Haremeyn to the Chief Eunuch, even well after
deposition. “Making the hijra to the Prophet” – referring to Muhammad’s
emigration (hijra) from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE – symbolically trans-
formed a harem eunuch’s identity; eunuchs were usually manumitted when
they left the palace, and in Medina, they took enslaved African women as
wives. They thus claimed, for the first time in their lives, the status of free,
mature Muslim males. This was a mark of spiritual fulfillment that had obvious
implications for the eunuchs’ sexuality as well, although it is impossible to tell
if married tomb eunuchs were sexually active in any fashion.20 The paradox is
striking: in the presence of the dead, the eunuchs enjoyed the perquisites of
family life, at least in appearance, whereas at the site of dynastic reproduction,

19
Necipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremony, and Power, 180.
20
John Lewis Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia (Beirut, 1972), 342, 344; Richard Francis Burton,
Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Meccah, memorial ed. (London, 1893;
reprint, New York, NY, 1964), I: 372.
 Distinctive Features of Ottoman Eunuchs 11

they maintained a monklike bachelorhood. Yet it makes sense at the same

time: the eunuchs’ sexuality, real or fictive, was no threat to the Prophet, who
was dead and whose succession had long since been determined, at least so far
as Sunnis were concerned. As free Muslim men, moreover, they were fitting
companions to the Prophet.
We are justified, in any case, in saying that the Chief Harem Eunuch’s mind
was to some degree always on “the other harem,” that is, the sacred precinct
encompassing the Prophet’s mosque and tomb in Medina, even if the Muslim
holy city seemed to recede amid the daily exigencies of palace life. But by
invoking the link to Medina, and to the pious endowments for the holy cities
more specifically, I hope to stress the point that the office of Chief Harem
Eunuch was an administrative position inextricably tied to these foundations.
After the conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate in 1517, the Ottoman sultan drew
a great deal of prestige from his role as Khadim al-Haramayn, or “servant of
the two harams,” referring to Mecca and Medina. Coincidentally or not, the
Arabic word for “servant,” khadim, came to designate a eunuch as early as the
Abbasid era; by the Ottoman era, it was a virtual synonym.21 The Chief
Eunuch was likewise the “servant of the two harams,” only in his case, the
two in question were the palace harem and the Prophet’s tomb in Medina. In
some respects, we can see the Chief Harem Eunuch’s career unfolding between
these two harems, although the balance between the two shifted over the years.
Because he guaranteed dynastic reproduction while, at the same time,
controlling the pious foundations for the holy cities – two pillars of Ottoman
legitimacy – the Chief Eunuch was indispensable to Ottoman authority, at least
until the westernizing reforms of the nineteenth century. This fact helps to
explain why the office of Chief Harem Eunuch persisted for more than three
hundred years, despite the excesses of individual holders of the office, the
machinations of political enemies within and outside the palace, and the
attempts of certain grand viziers, particularly in the eighteenth century, to
bar the importation of African eunuchs into imperial territory.
The evolution of the Ottoman harem institution, which made the Chief
Harem Eunuch’s role possible (and necessary), is the subject of Chapter 3.
Before we get to the harem, however, we need to ask a fundamental question,
namely, why were almost all Chief Harem Eunuchs, and all Ottoman harem
eunuchs more generally, African? This is the subject of Chapter 2.

21
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, appendix A.
2 The African Connection

Most of the eunuchs who guarded the Ottoman imperial harem – as well as the
harems of high government officials and provincial governors and notables –
were African. Why was this? Four key considerations probably came to bear
on this choice. First, and perhaps most important, was convenience and
availability. Africa, more specifically eastern Africa, was adjacent to Ottoman
territory after the Ottomans’ 1517 conquest of Egypt; at different periods, large
swaths of it were even part of Ottoman territory. This meant that the pool of
potential eunuchs was ready to hand.
A second consideration was the widespread (although by no means
absolute) taboo against enslaving and castrating the core population of an
empire. Most empires that employed eunuchs acquired them from outside
imperial territory or from the empire’s peripheral regions.1 East Africa was
unquestionably such a region in relation to the Ottoman Empire. Muslim
empires, in addition, had to contend with the fact that enslaving Muslims
violates Islamic law, as does castration. Thus, the procedure had to be per-
formed on non-Muslim captives by non-Muslims, preferably outside or on the
fringes of Muslim territory. While the Christian and animist populations of
East Africa fulfilled the first requirement – which was sometimes violated – the
overwhelmingly Coptic areas of Upper Egypt fulfilled the second, as we will
soon see.
A third factor was a preexisting slave trade in the region. In the case of
eastern Africa, a well-developed slave trade existed long before the Ottoman
conquest of Egypt and North Africa in the sixteenth century, so it was
relatively easy for the Ottomans to tap into it. This brings up a fourth, and
related, consideration: eunuchs were almost always a subset of a larger popu-
lation of slaves, elite and nonelite, male and female, from their land of origin.
Thus, we would expect eunuchs to come from regions that already supplied
the Ottoman Empire with slaves. East Africa certainly fulfilled that function.
At the same time, African eunuchs were more often than not a subset of a

1
Tougher, The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society, 60–65, 103, appendix 2, passim; Tsai,
Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty, 14–15, 115, 127, 135, 138–39, 144, 202, 205.

12
 African Slaves in Pre-Ottoman Muslim Empires 13

larger population of eunuchs from a variety of provenances. A court that

employed African eunuchs might therefore choose to assign them duties that
non-African eunuchs did not perform. Harem service was chief among such
duties.
But there was also a fifth, more nebulous factor: the color and racial
prejudices, combined with a perception of “otherness,” that made East African
eunuchs ubiquitous as harem guardians in the Islamic world for more than a
thousand years. So far as the Ottomans specifically were concerned, their
initial exposure to a critical mass of East Africans came at a time when the
empire was undergoing rapid demographic change on a number of fronts.
Broader ethnoregional antagonisms helped to shape the kinds of racism that
emerged in Ottoman society.
This chapter will address these considerations as they pertain not only to the
Ottoman Empire but also to earlier Muslim empires and to the polities of East
Africa. We will observe how the use of enslaved Africans, including eunuchs,
among the Muslim polities that preceded the Ottomans in the eastern
Mediterranean and the Fertile Crescent established patterns that the Ottomans
followed. At the same time, we will not lose sight of the fact that employment
of eunuchs was part of a broader pattern of elite slavery in these societies.
Practices in Africa itself likewise affected Ottoman access to African slaves,
eunuchs and otherwise, and accordingly the second section will address the
circulation of East African eunuchs and non-eunuch slaves in the various
kingdoms of that region, as well as the rather anomalous part taken by the
Christian kingdom of Ethiopia. New sixteenth-century geopolitical realities
that facilitated Ottoman acquisition of East African slaves form the subject of
the third section. Turning to the logistics of the trade in African eunuchs, the
fourth section describes the major routes of the East African slave trade and the
methods by which East African slaves were castrated. A final section broaches
the vexed question of racism and sexual stereotypes.

African Eunuch and Non-Eunuch Slaves in Pre-Ottoman

Muslim Empires
In using African slaves, and more particularly African eunuchs, the Ottomans
were influenced by a long line of earlier Muslim empires. While evidence of
African eunuchs in the Middle Eastern heartland is spotty before the rise of
the Abbasid caliphate in the eighth century CE, trade in non-eunuch East
African slaves was firmly rooted in the region well before the rise of Islam,
and the early Muslim state participated in it to some degree. After failing to
conquer the Nubian Christian kingdom of Muqurra in 652, the Muslim
governor of Egypt famously concluded an agreement (baqt) with the Nubians
that guaranteed their independence if they would undertake a number of
14 The African Connection

obligations, including sending a specified number of slaves to Egypt each

year.2 Whether these slaves included eunuchs cannot be determined. Cer-
tainly, the early Muslims would have been familiar with eunuchs from
contact with the Byzantines and Sasanians. In fact, the biographical traditions
of the Prophet Muhammad assert that when he received the Coptic concubine
Marya as a gift from the Byzantine Patriarch of Alexandria, she was accom-
panied by her eunuch Jurayj.3
In any event, there is reason to believe that court eunuchs were a feature of
the Umayyad empire (680–750 CE), although the meager sources available for
Umayyad institutions and court practices make it impossible to be completely
certain. Lore of the Umayyads transmitted by later authors, however, attributes
the introduction of the eunuch institution to the founder of the Umayyad
dynasty, Mu‘awiya ibn Abi Sufyan (r. 661–80).4
This lack of certainty ends with the Abbasids, who overthrew the Umayyads
in 750 CE and established a new capital at Baghdad. They unquestionably
employed African eunuchs, who, in turn, were a subset of an enormous
number of slaves, eunuchs and otherwise, from a wide variety of locales. In
a description of Baghdad in the late ninth century, the traveler al-Ya‘qubi notes
the quarters of “the black slaves attached to [the caliph’s] personal service” –
almost certainly eunuchs – surrounding the caliphal palace at the exact center
of the city.5 African eunuchs likewise appear in virtually all Abbasid-era
sources, from official chronicles to the Thousand and One Nights. In the latter
source, they are almost always harem guardians and not infrequently lascivi-
ous foils for the women who inhabit the harem.6
In fact, the Abbasids are the first Muslim empire known to have adopted the
custom of grooming East African eunuchs as harem guardians. This did not
mean, however, that East Africa was the dynasty’s sole source of eunuchs. The
bureaucrat Hilal al-Sabi (969–ca. 1056), who composed a description of the
Abbasid court and its etiquette, reports 11,000 eunuchs in the imperial palace,
of whom 7,000 were “blacks” while 4,000 belonged to the Slavic population
known as Saqaliba, who were also a prime source of eunuchs in Muslim

2
Stanley Burstein, ed. and trans., Ancient African Civilizations: Kush and Axum (Princeton, NJ,
1998), 118–20, 127–31.
3
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 277; EI2, s.v. “Khasi,” by Charles Pellat.
4
Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Eunuchs, III. The Early Islamic Period,” by C. Edmund Bosworth;
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 66–68.
5
Al-Ya‘qubi, Buldan, in Bernard Lewis, ed. and trans., Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the
Capture of Constantinople, vol. 2: Religion and Society (Oxford, 1974, 1987), 75.
6
N.J. Dawood, trans., Tales from the Thousand and One Nights (Hammondsworth, Middlesex,
1954; reprint, 1985), 15–17. As is well known, many of the Nights tales were retransmitted under
the Mamluk Sultanate; some even reflect Ottoman-era influences.
 African Slaves in Pre-Ottoman Muslim Empires 15

Spain.7 Intriguingly, the caliph al-Amin (r. 809–13), eldest son of the legend-
ary Harun al-Rashid, is reported by the chronicler al-Tabari (838–923) to have
divided the palace eunuchs into a black corps and a white corps. In so doing,
he anticipated the Ottoman division by some seven centuries, although the
duties of the two corps do not seem to have differed significantly, and there is
no evidence that the division, which lapsed with the end of al-Amin’s brief
reign, influenced the Ottomans.8
The Abbasids fulfill Ayalon’s dictum that societies that employed eunuchs
also employed elite military slaves, known as mamluks or ghulams: the Central
Asian Turks who, beginning in the mid-ninth century, served the Abbasids in
this capacity are well known.9 A eunuch of unspecified origin supervised the
young non-eunuch ghulams who guarded the halls of the Abbasid caliph’s
palace; this was a role that eunuchs typically played, in Ayalon’s schema, in
order to prevent sexual abuse.10 Eunuchs likewise served as companions to the
caliph, oversaw the education of his sons, and delivered confidential messages
between imperial family members.11 Iranian eunuchs and eunuchs of Central
Asian Turkic origin also appear in the seminal history of al-Tabari, who was
well familiar with the Abbasid court.12 These eunuchs, however, were not
restricted to the palace but could serve as military commanders.
Virtually all the regional powers that administered the Abbasid provinces
beginning in the mid-tenth century employed a combination of African and
non-African eunuchs, as well as Turkish mamluks.13 The only one of these

7
Hilal al-Sabi, Rusum dar al-khilafa: The Rules and Regulations of the ‘Abbasid Court, trans.
Elie A. Salem (Beirut, 1977), 14; David Ayalon, “On the Eunuchs in Islam,” Jerusalem Studies
in Arabic and Islam 1 (1979): 110–14, 123; Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 349–52;
Eliyahu Ashtor, The Jews of Moslem Spain (Philadelphia, 1973, reissued 1992), I: 290, II: 69
ff., 105; Jane Hathaway, “Eunuchs,” EI3, http://referenceworks.brillonline.com./entries/encyclo
paedia-of-islam-3/eunuchs-COM_27821?s.num=19.
8
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 128–31.
9
Matthew S. Gordon, The Breaking of a Thousand Swords: A History of the Turkish Military of
Samarra, A.H. 200–275/815–889 C.E. (Albany, NY, 2001); David Ayalon, “The Muslim City
and the Mamluk Military Aristocracy,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and
Humanities 2 (1968): 311–29.
10
Al-Sabi, Rusum dar al-khilafa, 14 n. 1; Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 45–46.
11
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 39–42, 71–103.
12
E.g., Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, vol. 31: The War between
Brothers: The Caliphate of Muhammad al-Amin, A.D. 809–813/A.H. 193–198, trans. Michael
Fishbein (Albany, NY, 1992), 14, 57, 178, 188, 242.
13
E.g., Milton Gold, trans., Tarikh-e Sistan (Rome, 1976), 206, 208, 224, 270–72; C. Edmund
Bosworth, “The Army of the Ghaznavids,” in Warfare and Weaponry in South Asia,
1000–1800, eds. Jos J.L. Gommans and Dirk H.A. Kolff (New Delhi, 2001), 153–84; Encyclo-
paedia Iranica, s.v. “Eunuchs, III. The Early Islamic Period,” by C. Edmund Bosworth; Donald
S. Richards, ed. and trans., The Annals of the Saljuq Turks: Selections from al-Kamil
fi’l-Ta’rikh of ‘Izz al-Din Ibn al-Athir (London, 2002), 44, 48, 206; Kenneth Allin Luther,
trans., The History of the Seljuq Turks from the Jami‘ al-Tawarikh, an Ilkhanid Adaption [sic] of
the Saljuq-nama of Zahir al-Din Nishapuri, ed. C. Edmund Bosworth (Richmond, Surrey,
16 The African Connection

regimes that apparently did not have recourse to African eunuchs was the
Seljuks of Rum, so called because they ruled former Roman – i.e., Byzantine –
territory in central and eastern Anatolia. Although they employed Greek and
Armenian eunuchs, in addition to Turkish and other mamluks (or ghulams in
Seljuk usage),14 there is no record of African slaves of any kind in their
domains, probably because their territory lay relatively far to the north of
Africa, across hostile territory.
Perhaps the most famous eunuch ever to serve the Abbasid caliph – even if
only indirectly – was Kafur al-Ikhshidi, an Ethiopian eunuch who acted as
regent for the last two rulers of the provincial dynasty that administered Egypt
on the Abbasids’ behalf; rulers of this dynasty, which was founded by a
Turkish mamluk, held the ancient Soghdian title Ikhshid, meaning “prince.”
As the late fourteenth-century historian al-Maqrizi says of Kafur, “He
appointed and dismissed, bestowed and withheld; he was named in the Friday
bidding-prayer in all the pulpits.”15 Kafur was likewise a military commander
and, in that capacity, inflicted a defeat on the Fatimids, proponents of an
Ismaili counter-caliphate who were attempting to conquer Egypt from the
west. His death shortly afterward arguably enabled the Fatimid takeover.16
During the two hundred years (969–1171) of their rule over Egypt, the
Fatimids imported large numbers of slaves from Sudan. The long-reigning
caliph al-Mustansir billah (r. 1036–94) was the son of a Sudanese slave girl;
supposedly under her influence, he acquired a regiment of Sudanese military
slaves, who clashed violently with his existing corps of Central Asian Turkish
mamluks.17 Like the Ikhshidids and several other regional dynasties, then, the
Fatimids pressed African slaves into military service, although none of the
Fatimids’ Sudanese fighters was a eunuch, to the best of our knowledge. In
contrast, Ethiopian and Nubian eunuchs did hold military commands under
smaller pro-Abbasid regional dynasties.18
Nonetheless, the Fatimids did employ enormous numbers of eunuchs, both
African and otherwise. By the time the Fatimid regime came to an end, in 1171,
the palace in Cairo housed several thousand eunuchs; the only non-eunuch

2001), 77–78, 110, 116; Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 39–41, 47–48, 153–73,
163–64, 169–73, 176–90, 274, 286–87, 323, 326–29, 343–44.
14
Speros Vryonis, Jr., “Seljuk Gulams and Ottoman Devishirmes,” Der Islam 41 (1965): 224–52.
15
Al-Maqrizi, quoted in Lewis, ed. and trans., Islam. . ., vol. 1: Politics and War (Oxford, 1974,
1987), 44–45.
16
Lewis, ed. and trans., Islam. . ., I: 43–46; Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East:
An Historical Enquiry (New York, 1990), 59–60; Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 340.
17
Yaacov Lev, “Army, Regime, and Society in Fatimid Egypt, 358–487/968–1094,” Inter-
national Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1987): 340–42, 347–51, 357.
18
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 160–61, 184, 188–90, 343; Luther, trans., History of
the Seljuq Turks, 121; Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Eunuchs, III. The Early Islamic Period,” by
Bosworth.
 African Slaves in Pre-Ottoman Muslim Empires 17

residents, in fact, were members of the imperial family. Like the Abbasid palace
eunuchs, these consisted of both East Africans and Saqaliba.19 Among the palace
eunuchs’ duties was supervising the young boys from among the Fatimids’
prisoners of war, on the one hand, and the sons of deceased military commanders
and high administrators, on the other, who were trained as soldiers; here again,
they policed the sexuality of young military recruits.20 Prominent Fatimid eunuchs
served as confidants to the caliphs, keepers of the imperial treasury, provincial
governors, and military commanders.21 Although very little is known about the
Fatimid harem, it was certainly guarded by eunuchs, some, if not most, of whom
probably originated in eastern Africa. In contrast, most of the eunuchs who served
the Fatimids as military and naval commanders were Saqaliba – including the
general who conquered Egypt and founded Cairo, Jawhar al-Siqilli.22
In general, all these medieval Muslim dynasties preferred African eunuchs
for harem duty over eunuchs of other ethnoregional origins. Only if Africans
were not available did these various regimes resort to non-African eunuchs,
particularly Saqaliba and occasionally Indians, en masse.23 The same was
true of the Sunni Mughals and the Twelver Shi‘ite Safavids, who dominated
India and Iran, respectively, during much of the Ottoman period. Both
employed East African eunuchs as harem guardians, supplementing them with
Georgians, in the Safavid case, and Bengalis, in the case of the Mughals.24
In any number of Muslim polities, it is true, small numbers of non-African
eunuchs served in the harem alongside Africans; if Africans were regularly
available in sufficient numbers, however, these regimes did not exploit alter-
native sources of harem eunuchs to any significant degree. We might make the
analogy to the manner in which, from roughly the ninth through the thirteenth
centuries CE, Central Asian Turks were the preferred source of mamluks
among many of these same polities. Only kingdoms, such as those of
Muslim Spain, that were too distant from the Central Asian steppe to import
a critical mass of Turkish mamluks made do with mamluks from other
populations, notably the Saqaliba.25 It was not the case that no other people

19 20
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 139. Ibid., 21, 49–54.
21
Ibid., 141–43, 340–42.
22
Delia Cortese and Simonetta Calderini, Women and the Fatimids in the World of Islam
(Edinburgh, 2006), 37, 74, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84–85, 88, 162; EI2, s.v. “Djawhar al-Sikilli,” by
Hussein Monés.
23
Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Eunuchs, III. The Early Islamic Period,” by Bosworth; Gold,
trans., Tarikh-e Sistan, 282; Richards, trans., Annals of the Saljuq Turks, 284.
24
Gavin Hambly, “A Note on the Trade in Eunuchs in Mughal Bengal,” Journal of the American
Oriental Society 94, 1 (1974): 125–30; Jessica Hinchy, “Eunuchs and the East India Company
in North India,” in Celibate and Childless Men in Power: Ruling Eunuchs and Bishops in the
Pre-Modern World, eds. Almut Höfert et al. (London, 2018), 149–74; Encyclopaedia Iranica,
s.v. “Eunuchs, IV. The Safavid Period,” by Kathryn Babayan.
25
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 349–52.
18 The African Connection

were fit to be mamluks, although the Turks’ extraordinary military prowess

had been noted by many observers. Rather, mamluks were, from the ninth to
the thirteenth century, automatically identified with Turks because of the sheer
mass of Turkic populations moving through the Central Asian steppe at the
time, many of whom the Abbasids and their vassals encountered as they
expanded eastward, and by the example that the Abbasids and their vassals
set by employing them. By the same token, harem eunuchs had by the fifteenth
century come to be automatically identified with East Africans, and for the
same basic reasons of availability and example, although prejudices and
stereotypes of the sort described at the end of this chapter must also have
played a role.
The Model of the Mamluk Sultanate. All of these medieval Islamic
polities – and above all the neighboring Seljuks of Rum – influenced the early
Ottomans in their use of eunuch and non-eunuch slaves, whether African or
otherwise. By the late fifteenth century, though, the Mamluk Sultanate had
arguably become the most immediate and far-reaching model of any Muslim
empire. The Mamluk Sultanate derived its name from the fact that its founders
were Turkish mamluks of the Ayyubids, the dynasty founded in 1171 by the
famous Crusader-fighter Salah al-Din (Saladin). Most of the sultanate’s rulers
were likewise manumitted mamluks, and mamluks dominated the officer ranks
and the elite regiments of its armies.26 (Neither the Mamluks nor the Ayyubids,
who preceded them as overlords of Egypt and Syria, continued the Fatimids’
practice of employing East African slave soldiers.)
By the time of the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the
Mamluk Sultanate’s supply of military slaves came overwhelmingly from
the Caucasus, above all Circassia in what is now southern Russia. They were
transported along the southern Black Sea coast, then through Constantinople or
overland through central Anatolia; the early Ottomans not only would have
been familiar with this slave traffic but would have sought to control it.27
When the Ottomans engaged the Mamluks in warfare in southeastern Anatolia
in the late fifteenth century,28 and above all when they absorbed the Mamluk
empire into their own in 1516–17, they became intimately acquainted with this
slave procurement system, to say nothing of the sultanate’s administrative
institutions, which had a profound influence on the Ottomans’ own developing
state. By the seventeenth century, the Ottomans themselves were importing

26
Robert Irwin, The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate, 1250–1382
(London, 1986), especially 1–61.
27
EI2, s.v. “Mamluk,” by David Ayalon; Halil Inalcik, “The Question of the Closing of the Black
Sea under the Ottomans,” in Inalcik, Essays in Ottoman History (Istanbul, 1998), 416–45,
especially 424, 426, 431–32, 434–35, 441, 443–44.
28
Shai Har-El, The Struggle for Domination in the Middle East: The Ottoman-Mamluk War,
1485–91 (Leiden, 1995).
 African Slaves in Pre-Ottoman Muslim Empires 19

Circassian and Georgian mamluks as an alternative to the rebellious palace

slaves (Turkish plural, kullar) who came into Ottoman service through the
devshirme, the peculiarly Ottoman practice of “collecting” boys from among
the empire’s Balkan and Anatolian Christian subjects, converting them to
Islam, and training them to be either Janissaries or palace pages.29
Similarly, the manner in which the Mamluk Sultanate employed eunuchs
served as a key model for the Ottoman Empire, although this is not to say
that the Ottomans were not influenced by other polities, both Muslim and
non-Muslim. Under the Mamluks, eunuchs of East African, Greek, other
Balkan, and Indian origin served as guardians not only of the women’s
quarters but also of the barracks where mamluk recruits received their
training; their presence there helped to prevent sexual abuse of young new
recruits by older mamluks.30 This was, to a large extent, a continuation of the
practice, observed under the Abbasids, the Fatimids, and the various regional
potentates, whereby eunuchs served as educators to crown princes, and
supervised soldiers and pages in training. While the Ottomans did not install
eunuchs in their own military barracks, white eunuchs did supervise the
Ottoman corps of palace pages, while African eunuchs were in charge of
the princes’ early education (see Chapter 3). In all these cases, the use of
eunuchs to police the sexuality of uncastrated young men in training
followed the pattern observed by Ayalon.
Under the Mamluks, a permanent eunuch guard patrolled the entrance to the
sultan’s audience chamber in Cairo’s citadel.31 A similar phalanx of white
eunuchs came to guard the threshold in front of the Ottoman sultan’s audience
hall in Topkapı Palace. In an even more far-reaching precedent, eunuchs
guarded the tombs of Mamluk sultans in Cairo and the tomb of the Prophet
Muhammad in Medina. This latter custom seemingly originated with either the
Ayyubids or their Zengid predecessors, although its roots are shrouded in
mystery. Already in 1184, thirteen years into Ayyubid control of Medina,
the Andalusian traveler Ibn Jubayr could report, “The guardians [of the tomb]
are Ethiopian and Slavic eunuchs. They present an elegant appearance and
are meticulous in their clothing and bearing.”32 Under the Mamluks, as under
their Ayyubid predecessors, the corps of “tomb eunuchs” in Medina was not

29
Jane Hathaway, “The ‘Mamluk Breaker’ Who Was Really a Kul Breaker: A Fresh Look at Kul
Kıran Mehmed Pasha, Governor of Egypt 1607–1611,” in The Arab Lands in the Ottoman Era:
Essays in Honor of Professor Caesar Farah, ed. Jane Hathaway (Minneapolis, MN, 2009),
93–109; Jane Hathaway, “The Evlad-i ‘Arab (‘Sons of the Arabs’) in Ottoman Egypt:
A Rereading,” in Frontiers of Ottoman Studies: State, Province, and the West, vol. 1, eds.
Colin Imber and Keiko Kiyotaki (London, 2005), 203–16.
30
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 41–42, 54–57, 309; Marmon, Eunuchs and Sacred
Boundaries, 11–12.
31
Marmon, Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries, 10–13.
32
Ibn Jubayr, Rihla, quoted in Marmon, Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries, 131.
20 The African Connection

exclusively African but included Indian, Greek, and other Balkan eunuchs, as
well.33 Under the Ottomans, an exclusively African eunuch corps would guard
the Prophet’s tomb into the twentieth century.

African Eunuchs in Africa

Of course, the fact that Muslim empires sought to acquire eunuchs, to say
nothing of female slaves and uncastrated male slaves, from East Africa does
not mean that East Africa was simply a passive source of man- and woman-
power. The infrastructure for the creation and dissemination of eunuchs existed
internally in eastern Africa well before the Ottomans extended their conquests to
the African continent. In contrast to the Fertile Crescent, though, use of court
eunuchs apparently does not go back to the earliest civilizations in Africa. There
is no convincing evidence for the presence of eunuchs in Pharaonic Egypt. They
were apparently introduced to Egypt in the wake of Alexander the Great’s
conquest in 331 BCE and became staples of court culture under the dynasty
founded by Alexander’s general Ptolemy, which ruled Egypt until the Roman
takeover in 30 BCE, and under Roman and Byzantine rule. These eunuchs,
however, tended to come from European and Asiatic populations.34
The earliest mention of an African eunuch at an African court appears in
the well-known story from the New Testament Book of Acts of “a man of
Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians,
who had the charge of all her treasure” (Acts 8:27). Apparently a Jew, the
eunuch was converted to Christianity by Philip the Evangelist while returning
from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Although the story describes the queen as
Ethiopian, she would more realistically have been the ruler of the kingdom
of Kush in what is now Sudan, with its capital at Meroë on the Nile (see
Map 2.1). Candace, or Kandake, was an ancient Nubian title for a queen, and
Kush had a total of eleven Kandakes between the fourth century BCE and
the fourth century CE.35 The very existence of this story, naturally, suggests
that eunuchs from the surrounding region were employed at the Kushite
court before the three Nubian successor kingdoms to Kush accepted

33
Marmon, Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries, 15–77.
34
Frans Jonckheere, “L’Eunuque dans l’Égypte pharaonique,” Revue d’Histoire des Sciences 7, 2
(1954): 139–55; Gerald E. Kadish, “Eunuchs in Ancient Egypt?,” in Studies in Honor of John
A. Wilson (Chicago, 1969), 55–62; John Cameron, “The Anatomy of the Mummies,” in The
Tomb of Two Brothers, ed. Margaret Alice Murray (Manchester and London, 1910), 33–47,
especially 33.
35
James Bruce, Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772,
and 1773 (Dublin, 1790–91), II: 115; J. Spencer Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia (London, 1965), 38
n. 1; László Török, The Kingdom of Kush: Handbook of the Napatan-Meroitic Civilization (Leiden,
1997), 443, 452, 455, 456, 459, 484; David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery
in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton, NJ, 2003), 17–25.
 African Eunuchs in Africa 21

Mecca

Dongola
BE
JA Suakin

HA
Meroë

BE
Shendi

SH
Khartoum Kassala
Asmera Massawa
Ouad Madani Aksum
FU NJ Sennar
Mekele R A Y Mocha
El Obeid Gondar T I G
A
A

PI
LL

AGEW
GA

AMHARA Zayla
AN

IO
Bahir Dar Lalibela
SH

ADALHargeisa
H

Dessie
ET

Harar SOMALI
Addis Ababa

Jimma Hadiya
Washilu
SIDA
MO
Juba OROMO
Beledweyne

Isiro Gulu
Bunia Mogadishu

Kampala Eldoret

Goma Nairobi
Kigali
Bujumbura
Mombasa
0 25 50 km
Tabora
0 10 20 30 miles

Map 2.1 Ethiopia and adjacent regions, showing major ethno-regional

groups.

Christianity sometime in the sixth century.36 So when the early Muslims made
their treaty with Christian Nubia in 652, eunuchs would have been well
established there.
During the medieval and early modern eras, certain of the Muslim kingdoms
of East Africa oversaw the production and marketing of eunuchs while also

36
Laurence Kirwan, Studies on the History of Late Antique and Christian Nubia, eds. Tomas
Hägg et al. (Aldershot, Hampshire, UK, 2002).
22 The African Connection

employing eunuchs at their own courts. Before its conquest by Ethiopia in

1332, the city of Hadiya, capital of a kingdom of the same name that had
controlled the region southwest of the present Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa,
for some decades, was a key center for the export of eunuchs and other
slaves to Muslim lands, including Egypt.37 Castration took place inside the
kingdom’s territory, at a town called Washilu south of the city of Hadiya.38 To
the east, the kingdom of Adal employed eunuchs at its court in the Somali
port of Zayla‘, as attested by a story purporting to explain Ethiopia’s decision
to attack the Muslim kingdom: the emperor accused the ruler of Adal of
“upbraiding him as a eunuch, fit only to take care of the women of their
seraglio.”39 Over five centuries later, Richard Francis Burton, ensconced in
Harar, which became Adal’s capital in the sixteenth century, described one
“Sultan, a sick and decrepid [sic] Eunuch who, having served five Amirs, was
allowed to remain in the palace.”40 In eastern Sudan, the Funj sultans, who
ruled a regional trading power from their capital at Sennar from 1505 to 1821,
employed what the Scottish explorer James Bruce, who traveled extensively in
the region between 1768 and 1773, calls “black slaves” in the harems where
their wives lived.41
In western Sudan, the kingdom of Darfur apparently drew on the traditions
of the Muslim kingdoms to the west, around Lake Chad and in northern
Nigeria, notably Kanem-Bornu, Baguirmi, and Wadai. Under all these
regimes, a highly specialized hierarchy of palace eunuchs developed, with
the top two or three in charge of, variously, military expeditions, diplomatic
missions, tax collection, the administration of peripheral territories, the harem,
the education of princes and princesses, the palace treasury, and palace
provisioning.42 These traditions extended as far west as the kingdom of
Songhay, which controlled a swath of western Africa stretching from
present-day Nigeria to the Atlantic from the early fourteenth century through
the late sixteenth century.43 Eunuchs employed in these kingdoms were drawn
from prisoners of war and from miscreants who were castrated as a form of
judicial punishment, as well as from animist populations to the south.44 Both
Baguirmi and Bornu supplied eunuchs to the Great Mosque of Mecca, and the

37
Richard Francis Burton, First Footsteps in East Africa, or, An Exploration of Harar, ed. Isabel
Burton (London, 1894), II: 2–3. See also Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, 182; Taddesse
Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia, 1270–1527 (Oxford, 1972), 135–37, 155, 173.
38
Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia, 86, 87 and 86–87 n. 6, 136–37; Trimingham, Islam in
Ethiopia, 66–67; Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 305–6; Humphrey Fisher, Slavery in
the History of Muslim Black Africa (New York, 2001), 280.
39
Bruce, Travels, II: 228; Burton, First Footsteps, II: 3 (conflating Adal and Hadiya).
40 41
Burton, First Footsteps, II: 34–35. Bruce, Travels, V: 110.
42 43
Fisher, Slavery in the History of Black Africa, 281, 285–90, 292–93. Ibid., 282.
44
Ibid., 281–84, 98.
 African Eunuchs in Africa 23

rulers and notables of these two kingdoms and Wadai occasionally presented
eunuchs to the Ottoman palace.45
Nor was the employment of eunuchs in central and western Africa exclusive
to Muslim kingdoms. The ruler of the Oyo empire, which emerged from
among the animist Yoruba people in the fourteenth century and ruled northern
and western Nigeria until the late 1800s, employed a large staff of eunuchs
and delegated judicial, religious, and executive functions to the three highest-
ranking.46 Eunuchs performed similar functions in the kingdom of the
nearby Igala people, which lasted from the sixteenth century through the early
twentieth century; the Igala’s chief source of eunuchs was subjects who
rebelled or otherwise committed crimes against the king.47
Ethiopia. Ethiopia was unique among all these African polities in being
officially Christian; the religion took root there in the fourth century CE. By
the medieval era, a Christian elite belonging largely to the Amharic population
at the kingdom’s geographical center ruled an assortment of ethnoregional
groups, some animist, an increasing number Muslim. Despite the Ethiopian
Church’s official opposition to the slave trade, Ethiopia had a lengthy tradition
of elite slavery, although most such slaves came from the kingdom’s peripheral
non-Christian populations.
On the other hand, the emperor seems to have enforced the Church’s
prohibition of castration more or less rigorously.48 As a result, the Ethiopian
court made only very occasional use of eunuchs. Notwithstanding, the court
had a hierarchy of offices close to the monarch that directly paralleled those
routinely filled by eunuchs in other societies. By James Bruce’s account, these
were, from lowest to highest, gentleman of the king’s bedchamber; groom of
the king’s stole, referring to a ceremonial garment; and master of the king’s
household.49 The last office supervised all of Ethiopia’s provincial governors
and collected revenues from them.50
These are exactly the sorts of positions of trust, involving regular close, even
intimate, contact with the ruler, that were held by eunuchs in the Byzantine,
Chinese, and various Islamic empires, not to mention the West African
kingdoms. Under the Ottomans, such posts were ordinarily held by the white
eunuchs of the Third Court, although once Sultan Murad III (r. 1574–95)
moved his residential quarters into the harem, his bedchamber was guarded by

45
Ibid., 292; Bruce, Travels, V: 248.
46
Fisher, Slavery in the History of Black Africa, 293; J.S. Eades, The Yoruba Today (Cambridge,
1980), 20–21.
47
J.S. Boston, The Igala Kingdom (Ibadan, 1968), 21, 54, 93, 105, 163–75, 197–99, 209–13.
48
Burton, First Footsteps, II: 25 n. 1; Trimingham, Islam in Ethiopia, 67 n. 1; Harold G. Marcus,
A History of Ethiopia (Berkeley, CA 1994), 55.
49
Bruce, Travels, III: 273, 596; Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia, 104–5, 269–75.
50
Bruce, Travels, III: 273; Samuel Johnson, A Voyage to Abyssinia, ed. Joel L. Gold, trans. from
the French (New Haven, CT, 1985), 44.
24 The African Connection

elderly women (see Chapter 3). In Ethiopia, though, these positions, while
often filled by slaves, were only occasionally held by eunuchs. Bruce describes
six masters of the king’s household; of these, only one, Kefla Wahad, active
in the early seventeenth century, can be identified with certainty as a eunuch.51
In contrast, other holders of this post included a relative of the ruler and even a
future king.52
Ethiopia is, in fact, something of a curiosity: a society that possessed all the
offices, duties, and career paths that ordinarily accompanied widespread use of
eunuchs, yet one that only very rarely had recourse to them. Bruce observed
“black servants” – again, not specified as eunuchs – who guarded the door of
the king’s “presence chamber,” not unlike the white eunuchs who guarded the
threshold in front of the Ottoman sultan’s audience chamber. He refers repeat-
edly to young boys and girls taken in slavery by the Ethiopian court;53 in other
polities, including those bordering Ethiopia, young boys would have been the
most likely candidates for castration, which, according to the logic of many
early modern empires, would have cemented their loyalty to the dynasty.
Bruce likewise describes a system whereby both male and female slaves under
the age of seventeen or eighteen were converted to Christianity and educated
by the king; they were then sent to serve in the “great houses of Abyssinia.”
The cream of these slaves became the king’s personal attendants.54 This
custom appears analogous to the process by which, in the Ottoman Empire,
an African eunuch might serve in the household of the governor of Egypt or
one of Egypt’s grandees before being presented to the imperial palace.55 Yet
Bruce gives no indication that the young male slaves were castrated, and given
the ecclesiastical injunction, we may assume that they were not.56
Since castration was not practiced in Ethiopia, we have to conclude that any
eunuchs who entered the service of the Ethiopian court had been castrated
somewhere else. Eunuchs such as Kefla Wahad may have been previously
castrated prisoners of war from the Funj Sultanate or from the Ottoman province
of Habesh. Certainly, Ethiopia had a history of attacking its Muslim neighbors
and enslaving large numbers of captives, despite the Ethiopian Church’s official
prohibition of slavery.57

51 52
Bruce, Travels, III: 518. Ibid., III: 142, 144, 273–74, 291–92, 418–19; IV: 696.
53 54
Ibid., II: 480–81, 489; III: 52, 56, 156, 172, 213. Ibid., III: 156.
55
Jane Hathaway, The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt: The Rise of the Qazdağlıs
(Cambridge, 1997), 158, 160–64; Jane Hathaway, Beshir Agha, Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman
Imperial Harem (Oxford, 2006), 25–26.
56
My thanks to Professors Ralph Lee and Glen Bowersock for their insights on this issue.
57
Alice Moore-Harell, “Economic and Political Aspects of the Slave Trade in Ethiopia and the
Sudan in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” International Journal of African
Historical Studies 32, 2 (1999): 407, 409, 412; Bruce, Travels, II: 489, III: 242, 263; J.H.
Arrowsmith-Brown, ed. and trans., Prutky’s Travels in Ethiopia and Other Countries (London,
1991), 152.
 African Eunuchs in Africa 25

On the other hand, Ethiopia, true to the pattern observed in many other
polities, routinely raided the populations of its own peripheral territories for
non-eunuch slaves. These populations were almost uniformly non-Christian,
and in most cases animists of one kind or another. In numerous cases,
rebellions on the parts of these peoples against the Ethiopian monarch served
as justifications for punitive expeditions that resulted in the capture of large
numbers of slaves. In the space of two pages, Bruce describes an early
seventeenth-century monarch attacking the ancient Jewish population popu-
larly known by the derogatory term “Falasha” and two different groups of
the Oromo, popularly known by the derogatory term “Galla.” In each case, the
king and his forces forced the survivors to convert to Christianity and sold the
captured women and children into slavery.58 Before the same king conquered
and converted the animist principality of Narea, in the far south of Ethiopia,
Oromo warriors routinely raided the region for prisoners, whom they sold to
Muslim slave traders, who, in turn, sold them in what was then the Ethiopian
capital of Gondar.59
Other seventeenth-century Ethiopian emperors acquired slaves from among
the Shangalla, whom Bruce describes as “black pagans” who dwelt in caves in
Ethiopia’s northeastern mountains and worshipped “the Nile and a certain
tree.”60 The governors of the districts bordering Shangalla territory were each
required to deliver a specified number of slaves to the king each year; many of
the palace slaves apparently came from this source.61 On the other hand, Bruce
has the Shangalla raiding the Agew, a large animist confederation near the Nile
headwaters, for slaves.62 Agew men also served in the royal army during
Bruce’s stay in the late 1760s and early 1770s.63 Slaves from among the
Oromo, meanwhile, supplied the royal household cavalry, while the so-called
Falasha contributed to the imperial guard.64
While these slaves were not castrated in preparation for their service at the
Ethiopian court, that fate might well await them if they fell into the hands of
the eunuch-employing polities bordering Ethiopia, whether through warfare or,
more commonly, through trade conducted by enterprising merchants from
Ethiopia and neighboring polities. During the medieval period, Ethiopian

58
Bruce, Travels, II: 401ff., 480–81, 550–51.
59
Bruce, Travels, II: 501–4; Cengiz Orhonlu, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun Güney Siyaseti: Habeş
Eyaleti (Ankara, 1974; 2nd printing 1996), 72–73.
60
Bruce, Travels, II: 22; III: 39, 56, 149, 158–67.
61
Ibid., II: 479; III: 155–56, 506–7, 590; IV: 336; Henry Salt, A Voyage to Abyssinia, and Travels
into the Interior of That Country (Philadelphia, PA, 1816), 293–95; Tamrat, Church and State
in Ethiopia, 91–92, 136, 173.
62
Bruce, Travels, II: 248; III: 40; IV: 320, 437, 675; Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia, 8,
25–29, 37, 196, 201–2; Marcus, History of Ethiopia, 5–6, 10–11, 32.
63 64
Bruce, Travels, III: 320, 323. Ibid., III: 206, 219, 272; Marcus, History of Ethiopia, 43.
26 The African Connection

merchants routinely supplied slaves to the Muslim principality of Adal to

the east in return for rock salt, even though Adal was supposedly subordinate
to the Ethiopian emperor.65 By the early seventeenth century, male and
female prisoners from animist Narea, mentioned above, were sold by Muslim
merchants not only at Gondar but also at “Constantinople, India, and Cairo.”66
Muslim merchants likewise bought up Agew slaves captured by the
Shangalla.67 During Bruce’s sojourn in Ethiopia, the powerful governor of
the northern province of Tigray traded slaves to “Arabia” – presumably
meaning the Ottoman-ruled Hijaz – in exchange for firearms. This human
cargo included not only “pagans” from the market at Gondar but hundreds of
kidnapped Christian children, as well. The governor himself had first pick of
all slaves passing through.68
In addition, Ethiopian Christians, including members of the core Amharic
population, were often enough captured by enemy raiders and sold to Muslim
slave traders, who occasionally transported them across the Red Sea to the
Hijaz and Yemen, or overland to Egypt, from where they might be trans-
shipped to Anatolia and Syria. A powerful fourteenth-century king complained
that the rulers of Adal and the neighboring Muslim state of Mora made war on
him for the express purpose of “carry[ing] Ethiopian children into slavery.”69
The governor of Harar, which later became Adal’s capital, was accused of
selling whole Ethiopian villages to Arabia, India, and “all parts of Asia.”70 In
the years following the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517, the caravan
carrying Ethiopian Christians on pilgrimage to Jerusalem was repeatedly
attacked by Ottoman troops; on at least one occasion, the elderly pilgrims
were killed while the young were sold as slaves.71 In the later part of the
sixteenth century, the Ottoman governor of Habesh routinely raided Ethiopian
territory and drove his captives to the slave markets of Massawa.72 The
Franciscan Remedius Prutky, a native of Bohemia who was invited by the
emperor to lead a mission to Ethiopia in 1751, describes Arab raiders in
the border regions kidnapping Ethiopian boys and girls, then selling them to
slave traders who transported them to Egypt, the Hijaz, Yemen, “and other
parts of the world.”73
During Bruce’s stay, some twenty years later, civil war between the king
and the governor of Tigray created horrific conditions under which Ethiopian
Christians even sold children stolen from their coreligionists to Muslim

65
Burton, First Footsteps, II: 3; Tamrat, Church and State in Ethiopia, 87.
66 67 68
Bruce, Travels, II: 503. Ibid., III: 40. Ibid., III: 582.
69
Ibid., II: 200–201; III: 419–20; Burton, First Footsteps, I: 50, quoting the Italian traveler
Ludovico di Varthema (Bartema) (1503).
70
Bruce, Travels, II: 294–95, 306, 308; Burton, First Footsteps, II: 3–4.
71 72
Bruce, Travels, II: 340. Ibid., II: 416.
73
Arrowsmith-Brown, ed. and trans., Prutky’s Travels in Ethiopia, 178–79.
 The Funj Sultanate and the Ottoman Province of Habesh 27

traders, who transported them to Massawa to sell to merchants from Arabia

and India. This was the case in the mixed Christian-Muslim town of Dixan
(Dessie) on the border between Tigray and Begmender provinces, where the
governor of Tigray allowed the priests of that province to engage in this trade
in exchange for supplying him with firearms from Habesh.74 “Straggling
soldiers” from both sides snatched Christian women and children “to sell them
to the Turks for a very small price.”75
As the examples cited above demonstrate, many of the Ethiopians swept up in the
East African slave trade were children aged fifteen or younger. This was precisely
the pool from which eunuchs were taken, and we can assume that a significant
percentage of the captured boys ended up as eunuchs at one court or another, or in
one great household or another. As if to underline this point, the French pharmacist
Charles Jacques Poncet, who traveled to Gondar from Cairo to treat the emperor
and his son for a skin disease, reports that an Ethiopian boy purchased by the
Armenian merchant who accompanied him on his return was seized by Egypt’s
Janissaries as Poncet and the merchant were boarding a ship at the Nile port of
Bulaq and taken to the kethüda of their regiment, Mustafa al-Kazdağlı, founder
of the household that came to dominate Egypt by the late eighteenth century.76 If
this boy were not already a eunuch, he was certainly destined to become one in
short order, for this, as Chapter 8 will make clear, was the capacity in which the
Kazdağlı household habitually employed Ethiopian slaves.
In short, Ethiopia was an unwilling, or at least unwitting, source of eunuchs
to neighboring polities and to the Ottoman Empire. To judge from the numerous
references to the shipment of Ethiopian slaves to India, the Mughals were
likewise recipients, as perhaps were the Safavids.77 And while these “Ethiopian”
eunuchs could well include members of the kingdom’s core Amharic popula-
tion, most of them came from Ethiopia’s peripheral populations. Although we
can only speculate as to the proportions of these various peoples represented in
the total, we can assume that Oromos made up a large share, particularly given
their predominance in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Funj Sultanate and the Ottoman Province of Habesh

Before the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk Sultanate, Ethiopia’s relations
with the various Muslim rulers of Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean were,

74 75
Bruce, Travels, III: 416–18. Ibid., IV: 92–93.
76
Sir William Foster, ed., The Red Sea and Adjacent Countries at the Close of the Seventeenth
Century, as Described by Joseph Pitts, William Daniel, and Charles Jacques Poncet (London,
1949), xxix; Bruce, Travels, III: 92.
77
The sultanates of the central Indian region known as the Deccan employed non-eunuch
Ethiopian military commanders. See Omar H. Ali, Malik Ambar: Power and Slavery across
the Indian Ocean (Oxford, 2016).
28 The African Connection

for the most part, indirect. Slave traders from these regions acquired Ethiopian
slaves, in the vast majority of cases, not from Ethiopia itself but from
intermediaries, usually merchants who were subjects of the Muslim coastal
kingdoms located in present-day Somalia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, or of the
various kingdoms occupying what is now Sudan.
This circumstance began to change early in the sixteenth century, not only
with the Ottomans’ expansion into Egypt and the Red Sea region but also with
the rise of the Funj Sultanate in Sudan. A population of rather mysterious
origin, apparently from the extreme south of present-day Sudan, the Funj
moved northward and established their capital at the southeastern Sudanese
city of Sennar, strategically located on the Blue Nile, in 1504–5. In succeeding
decades, they extended their sway over a wide swath of southeastern and
central Sudan, including the territory of the ancient Christian kingdom of
Upper Nubia, which had been conquered by an Arab tribal confederation
around 1500. They also forged alliances with neighboring kingdoms, includ-
ing Darfur in western Sudan.78 Originally animist, the Funj converted to Islam
in the 1520s under the tutelage of a Sudanese Sufi scholar.79
For the four centuries during which the Funj sultans and, beginning in 1761,
the influential members of the Hamaj tribe who served as their regents80 ruled
this territory, the starting points of the major slave caravans lay within their
domains. Since the Funj Sultanate effectively united much of central and
southern Sudan, its presence made the passage of Ethiopian slaves, as well
as slaves from Nubia and other parts of East Africa, into Ottoman territory
logistically easier. Certainly, the transport of thousands of African slaves
through Sudan to Ottoman Egypt every year would not have been possible
without the Funj Sultanate’s active cooperation – and this despite friction with
the Ottomans in the later part of the sixteenth century.
The kingdom of Ethiopia itself was hostile toward the Funj and launched a
number of invasions of its territory across the border region of southeastern
Sudan, home to an Ethiopian population that the Funj routinely raided for
slaves.81 Although the Funj Chronicles, the only known internally produced
histories of the sultanate, are silent on relations between the Funj and Ethiopia
before the eighteenth century, they note an Ethiopian invasion in the 1740s and

78
P.M. Holt, ed. and trans., The Sudan of the Three Niles: The Funj Chronicles, 910–1288/
1504–1871 (Leiden, 1999), 4, 34, 155, 163 n. 13; P.M. Holt and M.W. Daly, A History of the
Sudan from the Coming of Islam to the Present Day, 5th ed. (Harlow, Essex, UK, 2000), 24–27,
31–32; P.M. Holt, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent: A Political History, 1516–1922 (Ithaca, NY,
1966), 53–54; Bruce, Travels, II: 487–89; Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 73–75.
79
Holt, ed. and trans., Sudan of the Three Niles, 4; Holt and Daly, History of the Sudan, 28–29.
80
Holt, ed. and trans., Sudan of the Three Niles, 19, 72–73, 76, 184–85; Holt and Daly, History of
the Sudan, 33–35.
81
Holt, ed. and trans., Sudan of the Three Niles, 14; Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname, vol. 10, eds.
Seyit Ali Kahraman et al. (Istanbul, 2007), 438–39, 462, 519.
 Enslavement and Castration 29

border raids in the 1830s and 1840s, by which time the Funj territories had
been conquered by the regime of Mehmed Ali Pasha, the autonomous Ottoman
governor of Egypt. In all the reported cases, the Ethiopians were repulsed, and
all captives from their armies were enslaved.82
If the emergence of the Funj Sultanate facilitated the transport of Ethiopian
slaves into Ottoman territory, the foundation of the Ottoman province of
Habesh, comprising essentially what is now Eritrea, in 1560, following the
spectacular conquests of the former Mamluk emir Özdemir Pasha,83 virtually
guaranteed a steady supply. It cannot be a complete coincidence that the
number of Ethiopian eunuchs employed in the harem of Topkapı Palace in
Istanbul peaked, at perhaps four hundred, only a few decades after Özdemir
Pasha’s exploits – a time, moreover, when the Ottomans were actively pursu-
ing their imperial ambitions in the Red Sea. Yet even when the kingdom of
Ethiopia appeared to hold the upper hand militarily against both the Funj
Sultanate and Habesh, the slave trade continued apace. This suggests that
Ethiopia itself had a certain interest in this trade and that slave traders within
Ethiopia may have channeled some of their supply – drawn, as it was, chiefly
from the kingdom’s peripheral, largely non-Christian populations – into the
Sudanese caravan and Red Sea slave trade. Slaves routed into this international
market would undoubtedly have included future eunuchs.

Enslavement and Castration

Slave Trade Routes. As noted above, East African eunuchs were part of a
much larger population of slaves entering Ottoman territory from Africa. Each
year, from the sixteenth century through the late nineteenth century, thousands
of slaves from Ethiopia, Nubia, and southern Sudan arrived in the slave market
of Cairo,84 whence hundreds of them made their way to Istanbul and to other
Ottoman provincial capitals. The majority arrived with the slave caravans that
set out each year from Sudan. The larger of these, from the western district of
Darfur, site of unspeakable carnage during the early 2000s, carried several
thousand slaves to Egypt. Meanwhile, the Funj capital of Sennar in south-
eastern Sudan, along with several other Sudanese trading hubs, sent out
smaller caravans that converged at the Egyptian border. These were known
in Egypt as Sennar caravans; collectively, they carried several hundred

82
Holt, ed. and trans., Sudan of the Three Niles, 15–16, 100, 106, 108–9, 116; Bruce, Travels, III:
242–45, 263.
83
Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford, 2010), 107–8; Holt and Daly,
History of the Sudan, 26–27; Holt, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, 52–54; Orhonlu, Habeş
Eyaleti, 31–42, 93–128.
84
Jean Carlier de Pinon, Relation du voyage en Orient de Carlier de Pinon (1579), ed. Edgar
Blochet, Revue de l’Orient latin 12 (1911), 412–13, and 413 n. 2.
30 The African Connection

slaves.85 Conditions along these routes could be dire as avaricious slave traders
commonly deprived their charges of food, water, and adequate shelter so as to
minimize travel expenses.86
Yet by the early nineteenth century, the Swiss archaeologist John Lewis
(Johann Ludwig) Burckhardt tells us, few of the slaves traded northward from
Sudan were Ethiopian since “in Arabia and Egypt Abyssinian slaves may be
had cheaper by the Djebert traders from Massouah, who sell them at Djidda.”87
While slaves from Nubia, Darfur, and other westerly regions of Sudan entered
Egypt overland, in other words, most Ethiopian slaves followed an alternative
route that took them by boat from Massawa and other port cities in the
Ottoman province of Habesh through the Red Sea to Jidda, the Arabian
peninsula port serving Mecca.88 The seaborne slave traders in this case were
the Ethiopian Muslims known as Jabart. This mode of transport had the virtue
of being generally swifter than the overland caravans, so that the slaves might
have suffered somewhat less. If, on the other hand, some of these slaves were
sold at Jidda to Egyptian buyers, they would have been transported back across
the Red Sea to Suez, then taken overland to Cairo or another town. This would
have entailed lengthy waits in the ports of Massawa and Jidda, to say nothing of
the slave markets of those cities. Such delays might have added up to several
months, easily the equivalent of the time necessary for the various southeastern
Sudanese overland caravans to converge at Egypt’s southern border.
Regardless of which route they took, these East African slaves, future
eunuchs included, would have experienced the common lot of slaves imported
into Egypt: numerous changes of location and master, long months or even
several years of bondage before being settled in a household.89 What is worth
noting is that the routes themselves were specifically designed to bring East
African slaves into the eastern Mediterranean for purchase by the Muslim
powers that predominated there. Although a caravan occasionally arrived in
Cairo from what is now Libya, bringing slaves from the Lake Chad region,90
West Africa was never a significant supplier of slaves to the Ottoman Empire
and earlier Islamic empires, except in the westernmost reaches of North Africa.91

85
Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 38, 58–59, 217; P.S. Girard, Mémoire sur l’agriculture, l’indus-
trie et le commerce de l’Égypte, vol. 17 of the Description de l’Égypte, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1824),
278–96; Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 100–102, 130.
86
Louis Frank, “Memoir on the Traffic in Negroes in Cairo and on the Illnesses to Which They
Are Subject upon Arrival There,” trans. Michel LeGall, in Slavery in the Islamic Middle East,
ed. Shaun E. Marmon (Princeton, NJ, 1999), 73–74.
87
Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 276–79, 288, 290.
88
Frank, “Memoir on the Traffic in Negroes in Cairo,” 77; Orhonlu, Habeş Eyaleti, 102.
89
Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 291, 293.
90
Frank, “Memoir on the Traffic in Negroes in Cairo,” 75.
91
Lewis, Race and Slavery, 51; R.W. Beachey, The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa (New York,
NY, 1976), 172.
 Enslavement and Castration 31

Castration Practices in East Africa and Egypt. Available evidence

strongly suggests that most eunuchs in the service of Muslim kingdoms and
empires, going back at least to the Abbasid era, were radically castrated. That
is to say, their genitalia, including the penis and testicles, were removed in
their entirety. This was true regardless of whether the eunuchs in question
came from Africa, Anatolia, the Balkans, or the Caucasus, and regardless of
where the operation was performed.92 Radical castration was, moreover, the
norm not only for harem eunuchs but for eunuchs employed as companions to
the ruler, supervisors of young military recruits, and military commanders, as
well. The practice was similar to the traditions of imperial China, and it is
conceivable that the Abbasids and regional potentates in the eastern reaches of
their empire were influenced by Chinese custom, although there is no clear
evidence to that effect.
On the other hand, radical castration ran counter to the usages of the
Byzantine Empire, which was otherwise a key model for many Islamic
institutions, including the employment of eunuchs. Byzantine eunuchs in most
cases suffered the removal of their testicles but kept their penises. The ninth-
century belle-lettrist al-Jahiz disparages the Byzantines’ laxity in this regard:
“It is as if they only hate that their children [whom they castrate and dedicate to
the church] would impregnate their women and their nuns and nothing else!”93
The more prudent course, in al-Jahiz’s opinion and in that of many other
premodern Muslim commentators, was to eliminate, or at least minimize, any
chance of sexual contact between eunuchs and other members of the ruler’s
court, whether harem women, the ruler and his sons, or young soldiers-in-
training. In this way, those in authority not only prevented illegitimate children
but preserved the innocence of young girls and boys affiliated with the court
while ensuring that the eunuchs’ respect for and loyalty to the ruler continued
undiminished.94
Most accounts of radical castration within East Africa itself focus on the
production of eunuchs for export. The role played in that process before the
fourteenth century by the kingdom of Hadiya and the town of Washilu, south
of the city of Hadiya, has already been mentioned. In the late sixteenth century,
a Portuguese priest encountered a tribe near the Somali port of Mogadishu who
allegedly castrated their own boys, perhaps for export across the Red Sea.95
For the most part, though, Ethiopian, Nubian, and Sudanese slaves bound for
Egypt and points north and east were castrated in Upper Egypt after they had

92
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 304–14; Carlier de Pinon, Relation du voyage en
Orient, 414 (on the Bulgarian eunuch Mesih Pasha).
93
Quoted in Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 305.
94
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 309.
95
Beachey, Slave Trade of Eastern Africa, 170.
32 The African Connection

completed their journeys with the slave caravans or the Red Sea boats because
of the danger of moving them before their wounds had healed completely.96
Thus, Burckhardt observes that few eunuchs were produced in Sudan for
export. Only in Borgho, west of Darfur, was castration carried out for this
purpose on a small number of slaves who were then either transported to Egypt
or “sent as presents by the Negro sovereigns to the great mosques at Mekka
and Medina, by the way of Souakin.”97
Throughout much of the Islamic era, it seems, eunuchs were produced near
the city of Asyut on the Middle Nile. Before the French occupation of Egypt in
1798–1801, according to the French physician Louis Frank (1761–1825), who
traveled throughout Egypt just before the invasion, the hub of castration was
the town of Abu Tig.98 Yet what Burckhardt, writing some twenty years later,
calls “the great manufactory” of African eunuchs for the Ottoman Empire
was the nearby Coptic Christian village of Zawiyat al-Dayr. At the time of
Burckhardt’s sojourn in the region, in 1813–14, the practitioners were “two
Coptic monks, who were said to excel all their predecessors in dexterity, and
who had a house in which the victims were received.”99 Once a contingent of
slaves arrived in Asyut, a selection of boys was taken immediately to the
monks’ house for the procedure. We do not know how slaves were selected for
castration. The slave traders probably had a rough idea of how many eunuchs
were required by the imperial palace and by the various viziers and provincial
governors in a given year. Burckhardt asserts that roughly 150 eunuchs were
produced each year. Numbers must have been higher before the nineteenth
century, for he also claims that “the custom of keeping eunuchs has greatly
diminished in Egypt, as well as in Syria.”100 Beyond this, prepubescent boys,
usually between the ages of eight and twelve, were preferred for castration
since they had not yet undergone the hormonal changes that lead to facial hair,
deepened voices, and sexual desire.101
Imagine, then, the bewilderment and terror of a young Ethiopian, Nubian, or
Sudanese boy who had just suffered through months in a slave caravan, or
weeks in a boat on the Red Sea, only to find himself, with other boys of similar
age, not transported directly to the slave market in Cairo but shunted off to a
village in Upper Egypt for a painful and life-changing operation. He would
have undergone one of two basic procedures, both described as early as the
tenth century by the traveling geographer al-Muqaddasi (ca. 945–1000). In
one, the penis and scrotum were sliced off with a single stroke of a razor. In the
other, “the scrotum is cut open and the testicles are taken out of it. Then a piece

96 97
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs, and Sultans, 306. Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 294.
98
Frank, “Memoir on the Traffic in Negroes in Cairo,” 74.
99 100 101
Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 294. Ibid., 294–95. Ibid., 295.
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 CONTENTS.
Notes:—
Readings in Shakspeare, No. II. 169
National Defences 171
Notes on Homer, No. II., by Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie 171
Folk Lore:—Fernseed—Cornish Folk Lore 172
Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words 173
The Last of the Palæologi 173
The last Lay of Petrarch's Cat 174
Minor Notes:—Sobriquet—Origin of Paper—Persistency of Proper Names—Cheap
Maps 174

Queries:—
Did St. Paul quote Aristotle? by Thomas H. Gill 175
Minor Queries:—Silver Royal Font—L'Homme de 1400 Ans—Llandudno, on the
Great Orme's Head—Johnson's House, Bolt Court—Bishop Mossom—Orlando
Gibbons—Portraits—Barnard's Church Music—The Nelson Family—Letters to
the Clergy—Margaret Burr—Northern Ballads—"Blamed be the man," &c.
—"Quid est Episcopus"—Henry Isaac—German Poet quoted by Camden—
American Degrees—Derivation of News—Passage in Troilus and Cressida—
Bachelor's Buttons—Princes of Wales and Earls of Chester, eldest Sons of
the Kings of England—Authenticated Instances of Longevity 175
Minor Queries Answered:—Laud's Letters and Papers—Scot's Philomythie—Robin
of Doncaster—Horæ Belgicæ—Dulcarnon 179

Replies:—
Number of the Children of Israel 180
Serjeants' Rings and Mottoes, by J. B. Colman, &c. 181
Learned Men of the Name of Bacon 181
Collar of SS. 182
The Königsmarks 183
Boiling Criminals to Death, by J. B. Colman, &c. 184
"Admonition to the Parliament" 184
"Sir Edward Seaward's Narrative," by W. H. Lammin, &c. 185
General Wolfe 185
Replies to Minor Queries:—Commemoration of Benefactors—King Robert Bruce's
Watch—Hornchurch—Buzz—Melody of the Dying Swan—"From the Sublime
to the Ridiculous is but a Step"—"Carmen perpetuum," &c.—Sterne at Paris
 —The Paper of the present Day—Cimmerii, Cimbri—Rents of Assize—
Monastic Establishments in Scotland—History of Brittany—Marches of
Wales, and Lords Marchers—The Broad Arrow—Miniature of Cromwell—The
Sinaïtic Inscriptions—Why cold Pudding settles One's Love—Covines
—"Arborei fœtus alibi," &c.—Poniatowski Gems 186

Miscellaneous:—
Notes on Books, &c. 190
Books and Odd Volumes wanted 190
Notices to Correspondents 191
Advertisements 191
List of Notes and Queries volumes and pages
 Notes.

READINGS IN SHAKSPEARE, NO. II.

Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 4.

"The dram of eale

Doth all the noble substance of a doubt
To his own scandal."
Quarto of 1604.

"The dram of eafe."

Quarto of 1605.

"The dram of ill

Doth all the noble substance often dout,
To his own scandal."
Knight and Collier.

I cannot look upon this emendation, although sanctioned by the two latest editors of Shakspeare,
as by any means a happy one. The original word in the second quarto, "ease," so nearly resembles
"eale" in the first quarto (especially when printed with the old-fashioned long "[s]"); and the
subsequent transition from ease to base is so extremely obvious, and at the same time so
thoroughly consistent with the sense, that it is difficult to imagine any plausible ground for the
rejection of base in favour of ill. Dram was formerly used (as grain is at present) to signify an
indefinitely small quantity; so that "the dram of base" presents as intelligible an expression as can be
desired.
But in addition to its easy deduction from the original, base possesses other recommendations, in
being the natural antagonist of noble in the line following, and in the capability of being understood
either in a moral or physical sense.
If the whole passage be understood as merely assertive, then base may have, in common with ill,
a moral signification; but if it be understood as a metaphorical allusion to substantial matter, in
illustration of the moral reflections that have gone before, then base must be taken (which ill cannot)
in the physical sense, as a base substance, and, as such, in still more direct antagonism to the noble
substance opposed to it.
In a former paper I had occasion to notice the intimate knowledge possessed by Shakspeare in
the arcana of the several arts; and I now recognise, in this passage, a metaphorical allusion to the
degradation of gold by the admixture of baser metal. Gold and lead have always been in poetical
opposition as types of the noble and the base; and we are assured by metallurgists, that if lead be
added to gold, even in the small proportion of one part in two thousand, the whole mass is rendered
completely brittle.
 The question then is, in what way "the dram of base" affects "all the noble substance?"
Shakspeare says it renders it doubtful or suspicious; his commentators make him say that it douts or
extinguishes it altogether! And this they do without even the excuse of an originally imperfect word
to exercise conjecture upon. The original word is doubt, the amended one dout; and yet the first has
been rejected, and the latter adopted, in editions whose peculiar boast it is to have restored, in
every practicable instance, the original text.
Now, in my opinion, Shakspeare did not intend doubt in this place, to be a verb at all, but a noun
substantive: and it is the more necessary that this point should be discussed, because the amended
passage has already crept into our dictionaries as authority for the verb dout; thus giving to a very
questionable emendation the weight of an acknowledged text. (Vide Todd's Johnson.)
Any person who takes the amended passage, as quoted at the head of this article, and restores
"dout," to its original spelling, will find that the chief hindrance to a perfect meaning consists in the
restriction of doth to the value of a mere expletive. Let this restriction be removed, by conferring
upon doth the value of an effective verb, and it will be seen that the difficulty no longer remains.
The sense then becomes, "the base doth doubt to the noble," i.e. imparts doubt to it, or renders it
doubtful. We say, a man's good actions do him credit; why not also, his bad ones do him doubt? One
phrase may be less familiar than the other, but they are in strict analogy as well with themselves as
with the following example from the Twelfth Night, which is exactly in point:
"Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame."
Hence, since the original word is capable of giving a clear and distinct meaning, there can be no
possible excuse for displacing it, even if the word to be substituted were as faultless as it is certainly
the reverse.
For not only is dout an apocryphal word, but it is inelegant when placed, as it must be in this
instance, in connexion with the expletive doth, being at the same time in itself a verb compounded
of do. Neither is the meaning it confers so clear and unobjectionable as to render it desirable; for in
what way can a very small quantity be said to dout, or expel, a very large quantity? To justify such
an expression, the entire identity of the larger must be extinguished, leaving no part of it to which
the scandal mentioned in the third line could apply.
But an examination of the various places wherein scandal is mentioned by Shakspeare, shows that
the meaning attached by him to that word was false imputation, or loss of character: therefore, in
the contact of the base and the noble, the scandal must apply to the noble substance—a
consideration that must not be lost sight of in any attempt to arrive at the true meaning of the whole
passage.
So far, I have assumed that "often" (the third substitution in the amended quotation) is the best
representative that can be found for the "of a" of the original; and inasmuch as it is confirmed by
general consent, and is moreover so redundant, in this place, that its absence or presence scarcely
makes any difference in the sense, it is not easily assailable.
The best way, perhaps, to attempt to supplant it is to suggest a better word—one that shall still
more closely resemble the original letters in sound and formation, and that shall, in addition, confer
upon the sense not a redundant but an effective assistance. Such a word is offer: it is almost
identical (in sound at least) with the original, and it materially assists in giving a much clearer
application to the last line.
For these reasons, but especially for the last, I adopt offer, as a verb in the infinitive ruled by
doth, in the sense of causing or compelling; a sense that must have been in familiar use in
Shakspeare's time, or it would not have been introduced into the translation of Scripture.
In this view the meaning of the passage becomes, "The base doth the noble offer doubt, to his
own scandal"—that is, causes the noble to excite suspicion, to the injury of its own character.
Examples of do in this sense are very numerous in Spenser; of which one is (F.Q., iii. 2. 34.):
 "To doe the frozen cold away to fly."
And in Chaucer (Story of Ugolino):
"That they for hunger wolden do him dien."
And in Scripture (2 Cor. viii. 1.):
"We do you to wit of the grace of God."
By this reading a very perfect and intelligible meaning is obtained, and that too by the slightest
deviation from the original yet proposed.
By throwing the action of offering doubt upon "the noble substance," it becomes the natural
reference to "his own scandal" in the third line.
Hamlet is moralising upon the tendency of the "noblest virtues," "be they as pure as grace, as
infinite as man may undergo," to take, from "the stamp of one defect," "corruption in the general
censure" (a very close definition of scandal); and he illustrates it by the metaphor:
"The dram of base
Doth all the noble substance offer doubt,
To his own scandal."
A. E. B.

Leeds.

NATIONAL DEFENCES.
Collet, in his Relics of Literature, has furnished some curious notices of a work on national
defences, which perhaps ought to be consulted at the present time, now that this matter is again
exciting such general interest among all classes. It was compiled when the gigantic power of France,
under Buonaparte, had enabled him to overrun and humble every continental state, and even to
threaten Great Britain; and when the spirit of this country was roused to exertion by a sense of the
danger, and by the fervour of patriotism. The government of that day neglected no means to keep
this spirit alive in the nation; and George III. conceiving the situation of his dominions to resemble,
in many respects, that which terminated so fortunately for England in the days of Queen Elizabeth,
directed proper researches to be made for ascertaining the principles and preparations adopted at
that eventful period. The records of the Tower were accordingly consulted; and a selection of
papers, apparently of the greatest consequence, was formed and printed, but not published. This
work, which contained 420 pages in octavo, was entitled, A Report of the Arrangements which were
made for the Internal Defence of these Kingdoms, when Spain, by its Armada, projected the
Invasion and Conquest of England; and Application of the Wise Proceedings of our Ancestors to the
Present Crisis of Public Safety. The papers in this work are classed in the order of external alliance,
internal defence, military arrangements, and naval equipments. They are preceded by a statement of
facts, in the history of Europe, at the period of the Spanish Armada; and a sketch of events, showing
the effects of the Queen's measures at home and abroad. As a collection of historical documents,
narrating an important event in British history, this work is invaluable; and, as showing the relative
strength of this country in population and other resources in the sixteenth century, it is curious and
interesting.
J. Y.
 NOTES ON HOMER, NO. II.
(Continued from Vol. v., p. 100.)
The Wolfian Theory.
The most important consideration concerning Homer is the hypothesis of Wolf, which has been
contested so hotly; but before entering on the consideration of this revolution, as it may be called, I
shall lay before your readers the following quotation from the introduction of Fauriel to the old
Provençal poem, "Histoire de la Croisade contre les Albigeois," in the Collection des Documens
Inédits sur l'Histoire de France. He observes:—
"The romances collectively designated by the title of Carlovingian, are, it would seem, the
most ancient of all in the Provençal literature. They were not, originally, more than very
short and simple poems, popular songs destined to be recited with more or less musical
intonation, and susceptible, consequently on their shortness, of preservation without the
aid of writing, and simply by oral tradition among the jongleurs, whose profession it was to
sing them. Almost insensibly these songs developed themselves, and assumed a complex
character; they attained a fixed length, and their re-composition required more invention
and more design. In another point of view, they had increased in number in the same ratio
as they had acquired greater extent and complexity; and things naturally attained such a
position, that it became impossible to chant them from beginning to end by the aid of
memory alone, nor could they be preserved any longer without the assistance of a written
medium. They might be still occasionally sung in detached portions; but there exists
scarcely a doubt, that from that period they began to be read; and it was only necessary
to read them, in order to seize and appreciate their contents."[1]
[1]
P. xxx., quoted in Thirlwall's History of Greece (Appendix I.), vol. i.
p. 506., where it is given in French.
These remarks, though applied to another literature, contain the essentials of the theory
developed by Wolf in regard to Homer. Before the time of Wolf, the popularly accepted opinion on
this subject was as follows: That Homer, a poet of ancient date, wrote the Iliad and Odyssea in their
present form; and that the rhapsodists having corrupted and interpolated the poems, Peisistratos,
and Hipparchos, his son, corrected, revised, and restored these poems to their original condition.
Such was the general opinion, when at the end of the seventeenth century doubts began to be
thrown upon it, and the question began to be placed in a new light. The critics of the time were
Casaubon, Perizon, Bentley, Hédelin, and Perrault, who, more or less, rejected the established
opinion. Giambattista Vico made the first attempt to embody their speculations into one methodical
work. His Principi di Scienza nuova contain the germ of the theory reproduced by Wolf with so much
scholarship. Wolf, founding his theory on the investigations of Vico and Wood, extended or modified
their views, and assumed that the poems were never written down at all until the time of
Peisistratos, their arranger. In 1778, the famous Venetian Scholia were discovered by Villoison,
throwing open to the world the investigations of the Alexandrian critics; and by showing what the
ideas of the Chorizontes were (on whom it were madness to write after Mure), strengthening the
views of Wolf. In 1795, then, were published his famous Prolegomena, containing the theory—
"That the Iliad and Odyssey were not two complete poems, but small, separate, independent epic
songs, celebrating single exploits of the heroes; and that these lays were, for the first time, written
down and united as the Iliad and Odyssey by Peisistratus, tyrant of Athens."[2]
[2]
Smith, ii. p. 501.
The former critics (Hédelin and Perrault) had been overruled, derided, and quashed by the force of
public opinion; but Wolf brought so many arguments to support his views,—collected so formidable a
mass of authorities, both traditional, internal, and written, that the classical world was obliged to
meet him with fresh arguments, as ridicule would not again succeed. Thus arose the formidable
Wolfian controversy, which "scotched," though not "killed," the belief of the critical world in Homer.
The principal arguments he adduces are from the poems themselves, in his attempt to establish the
non-being of writing at the time of their composition.
Thus, in the Odyssea,[3] a master of a vessel has to remember his cargo, not having a list of his
goods; in the Iliad,[4] Bellerophon carries a folded tablet containing writing or signs to Prætos in
Lycia. This Wolf interprets to signify conventional marks, like the picture writing of the otherwise
civilised Mexicans.[5] Again, in the Iliad (vii. 175.), the chiefs are represented as throwing lots in a
helmet, and the herald afterwards handing the lots round for recognition, as each of the lots bore a
mark known only to the person who made it. From this Wolf argues that writing was unknown at the
time, or the herald would have immediately read the names aloud. But do we not even now make
use of such marks without confounding them with writing? This is nothing at all; and it must be
remembered, firstly, that this does not apply to the Homeric time, but to the period of Troy;
secondly, that if it had applied to that time, it would be absurd to expect from illiterate warrior
chiefs, education superior to the mediæval crusaders, their counterparts at a later period of the
world's progress. These are the principal arguments that Wolf adduces to prove the non-existence of
writing at the Homeric period; whereas, far from proving anything, they are self-contradictory and
incorrect.
[3]
Lib. viii. 163.
[4]
Lib. vi. 168.
[5]
See Mure, vol. iii., Appendix L., p. 507. foll.; and Appendix M. vol. iii.
p. 512. foll.; and see chap. vii. book iii. vol. iii. p. 397. passim.
To prove that the Peisistratidæ first wrote down the poems of Homer, he cites Josephus (Orat.
contr. Apion., i. 2.), who observes that—
"No writing, the authenticity of which is acknowledged, is found among the Greeks earlier
than the poetry of Homer; and, it is said, that even he did not commit his works to writing,
but that, having been preserved in the memory of men, the songs were afterwards
connected."

Josephus had merely heard this reported, as is evident from his use of the words "it is said."
Pausanias, in the Tour in Greece (vii. 26. 6.), has the following observation:—
"A village called Donussa, between Ægira and Pellene, belonging to the Sicyonians, was
destroyed by that people. Homer, say they, remembered this town in his epic, in the
enumeration of the people of Agamemnon, 'Hyperesia then, and Donoessa, rocky town'
(Ιλ. β. 573.); but when Peisistratos collected the torn and widely scattered songs of
Homer, either he himself, or one of his friends, altered the name through ignorance."

Wolf also makes use of this report, liable to the same objections as the above, as one of his
proofs. It is even doubtful whether Peisistratos did edit Homer at all; but, under any circumstances,
it was not the first edition;[6] for is not Solon represented as the reviser of the Homeric poems?
[6]
Granville Penn, On the primary Arrangement of the Iliad; and
Appendix B to Mure, vol. i.
Cicero (de Oratore, iii. 34.) says:
"Who is traditionally reported to have had more learning at that time, or whose eloquence
received greater ornaments from polite literature than that of Peisistratos? who is said to have been
the first that arranged the books of Homer, from their confused state, into that order in which we at
present enjoy them."
This also is produced as a proof by Wolf, though, for the same reason, it is doubtful. But see Wolf's
principal inaccuracies ably enumerated and exposed by Clinton (F.H., i. p. 370.).
 Such is the far-famed theory of Wolf, which, as most modern scholars agree, is only calculated "to
conduct us to most preposterous conclusions."[7] And this last dictum of Othello's, Mr. Editor, reminds
me, that here it would not be preposterous to come to a conclusion for the present, and to close my
observations in another paper, where I shall a theory "unfold," which, after the most patient
consideration and reconsideration, I am inclined to think the most approximative to the truth.
[7]
Othello, Act I. Sc. 3.
Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie.

Feb. 16. 1852.

FOLK LORE.

Fernseed.

—I find in Dr. Jackson's works allusions to a superstition which may interest some of your readers:
"It was my hap," he writes, "since I undertook the ministery, to question an ignorant soul
(whom by undoubted report I had known to have been seduced by a teacher of
unhallowed arts, to make a dangerous experiment) what he saw or heard, when he watcht
the falling of the Fernseed at an unseasonable and suspicious hour. Why (quoth he),
fearing (as his brief reply occasioned me to conjecture) lest I should press him to tell
before company, what he had voluntarily confessed unto a friend in secret some fourteen
years before, do you think that the devil hath aught to do with that good seed? No; it is in
the keeping of the king of Fayries, and he, I know, will do me no harm, although I should
watch it again; yet had he utterly forgotten this king's name, upon whose kindness he so
presumed, until I remembered it unto him out of my reading in Huon of Burdeaux.

"And having made this answer, he began to pose me thus; Sr, you are a scholar, abut I am
none: Tell me what said the angel to our Lady? or what conference had our Lady with her
cousin Elizabeth concerning the birth of St. John the Baptist?

"As if his intention had been to make bystanders believe that he knew somewhat more on
this point than was written in such books as I use to read.

"Howbeit the meaning of his riddle I quickly conceived, and he confessed to be this; that
the angel did foretell John Baptist should be born at that very instant, in which the
Fernseed, at other times invisible, did fall: intimating further (as far as I could then
perceive) that this saint of God had some extraordinary vertue from the time or
circumstance of his birth."
Jackson's Works, book v. cap. xix. 8. vol. i. p. 916. Lond. 1673, fol.
In the sixth and seventh sections of the same chapter and book I find allusions to a maiden over
whom Satan had no power "so long as she had vervine and St. John's grass about her;" to the
danger of "robbing a swallow's nest built in a fire-house;" and to the virtues of "south-running
water." Delrius also is referred to as having collected many similar instances.
I have not access to Delrius, nor yet to Huon of Burdeaux, and so am compelled deeply to regret
that the good doctor did not leave on record the name of the "king of the Fayries."[8]
[8]
[Oberon is his name, which Mr. Keightley shows to be identical with
Elberich. See Fairy Mythology, p. 208. (ed. 1850).—Ed.]
Rt .
 Cornish Folk Lore.

—A recent old cottage tenant at Poliphant, near Launceston, when asked why he allowed a hole in
the wall of his house to remain unrepaired, answered that he would not have it stopped up on any
account, as he left it on purpose for the piskies (Cornish for pixies) to come in and out as they had
done for many years. This is only a sample of the current belief and action.
S. R. P.

DICTIONARY OF ARCHAIC AND PROVINCIAL WORDS.

Will you allow me to suggest that, under the above, or some such heading, "N. & Q." should
receive any words not to be found in any well-known dictionary; such, for instance, as Halliwell's or
Webster's, which do not by any means contain all the words belonging to the class of which they
profess to be the repositories. You may also invite barristers, reporters, professional men generally,
and others, to send such waifs of this description as they meet with. "N. & Q." will then soon
become in this department of literature, as it is already in many others, a rich mine from which
future authors will draw precious store of knowledge. I will begin by giving one or two examples.
Earth-burn. An intermittent land-spring, which may not show itself for several years. There is such
a spring, and so named, near to Epsom.
Lavant. A land-spring, according to Halliwell. But this also is an intermittent spring. The word is
probably from lava, to flow.
Pick. (Lancashire.) To push with the hand. "I gen her a pick;" that is, "I pushed her from me;" or,
"I gave her a violent push forward."
Pick is also the instrument colliers get coals with; or an excavator gets earth with; or a
stonemason uses to take the "rough" off a stone. He may also finish the face of ashlar by "fine-
picking" it.
Gen. (Lancashire.) A contraction of the word gave.
Robert Rawlinson.

P.S.—I have seen, in a court of justice in Lancashire, judge and counsel fairly set fast with a broad
spoken county person; and many of the words in common use are not to be found in any dictionary
or glossary. Again, I have spoken to reporters as to technical words used at such meetings, for
instance, as those of the mechanical engineers in Birmingham, and I have been informed that they
are frequently bewildered and surprised at the numbers of words in use having the same meaning,
but which are not to be found in any dictionary. It would be of the utmost value to seize and fix
these words.
R. R.

[The proposal of our correspondent jumps so completely with the object of "N. & Q.," as
announced in our original Prospectus, that we not only insert it, but hope that his
invitation will be responded to by all who meet with archaisms either in their reading or in
their intercourse with natives of those various districts of England which are richest in
provincialisms.—Ed.]

THE LAST OF THE PALÆOLOGI.

 In Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, vol. xvii. p. 24., there is a very interesting article, bearing the
above heading, in which it is shown that Theodore Palæologus, the fourth in direct descent from
Thomas, the younger brother of Constantine, the last Christian Emperor of Greece, lies buried in the
church of Landulph in Cornwall. This Theodore married Mary, the daughter of William Balls, of
Hadley in Suffolk, gentleman; by whom he had issue five children, Theodore, John, Ferdinando,
Maria, and Dorothy. Theodore, the first son, died in or about 1693, without issue. Of John and
Ferdinando there is no trace in this country. Maria died unmarried; and Dorothy was married at
Landulph to William Arundell in 1636, and died in 1681.
Ferdinando Palæologus appears to have died in the island of Barbadoes in 1678, and was buried in
the church of St. John.
These researches are extremely interesting, and it is only to be regretted that they are not more
frequently made and left on record. Allow me to suggest that such of your readers as have time,
inclination, and opportunity for making inquiries of this nature, should, through the medium of "N. &
Q.," place on record any striking illustrations similar to the above. Your own publication, Vol. iii., p.
350., contains a list of names of the poor of St. Albans, several of which are borne still by noble
families. Possibly there may be still existing descendants of the Dorothy Palæologus who married
William Arundell at Landulph.
To mention another instance: I believe there now lives at Rugby a member of the legal profession,
who is directly descended from one of the most renowned Polish families. Particulars of this case, if
furnished by or with the consent of the head of the family, would, I have no doubt, prove
exceedingly interesting.
L. L. L.

THE LAST LAY OF PETRARCH'S CAT.

In the year 1820 I saw the following Latin verse inscribed under the skeleton of a cat in one of the
rooms of Petrarch's favourite villa at Arqua, near Padua. If you choose to print them, with or without
the accompanying English version, they are at your service:—

Etruscus gemino vates ardebat amore:

Maximus ignis ego; Laura secundus erat.
Quid rides? divinæ illam si gratia formæ,
Me dignam eximio fecit amante fides.
Si numeros geniumque sacris dedit illa libellis
Causa ego ne sævis muribus esca forent.
Arcebam sacro vivens à limine mures,
Ne domini exitio scripta diserta forent;
Incutio trepidis eadem defuncta pavorem,
Et viget exanimi in corpore prisca fides.

The Tuscan bard of deathless fame

Nursed in his breast a double flame,
Unequally divided;
And when I say I had his heart,
 While Laura play'd the second part,
I must not be derided.

For my fidelity was such,

It merited regard as much
As Laura's grace and beauty;
She first inspired the poet's lay,
But since I drove the mice away,
His love repaid my duty.

Through all my exemplary life,

So well did I in constant strife
Employ my claws and curses,
That even now, though I am dead,
Those nibbling wretches dare not tread
On one of Petrarch's verses.
J. O. B.

Minor Notes.
Sobriquet.

—As this word is now pretty generally adopted in our language, I send you this Note to say that
the word is not soubriquet, as some of your correspondents write it, but sobriquet; the former being
what the French term a locution vicieuse, and only used by the illiterate. Ménage derives the word
from rubridiculum.
Philip S. King.

Origin of Paper.

—Whether a product is indigenous or foreign may generally be determined by the rule in

linguistics, that similarity of name in different languages denotes foreign extraction, and variety of
name indigenous production. The dog, whose name is different in most languages, shows that he is
indigenous to most countries. The cat, on the contrary, having almost the same name in many
languages, is therefore of foreign extraction in nearly all countries. The word paper is common to
many tongues, the moderns having adopted it from the Greek; in which language, however, the root
of the word is not significant. In Coptic (ai guptic) the word bavir means a plant suitable for weaving:
and is derived from the Egyptian roots ba, fit, proper; and vir, to weave. The art of paper-making
may therefore be inferred to be the invention of the Egyptians; and further, that paper was made by
them as by us, from materials previously woven. This inference would be either confirmatory or
corrective of history, in case the history were doubtful, which it is not.
T. J. B.

Lichfield.

Persistency of Proper Names.

 —The village of Boscastle, originally founded by the Norman Botreaux, still contains, amongst
other French names, the following:—Moise, Amy, Benoke, Gard, Avery (Query, Yvery),—all old family
names; and places still called Palais, Jardin, and a brook called Valency.
S. R. P.

Launceston.

Cheap Maps.

—This is the age of cheap maps and atlases, yet the public is miserably supplied. We have maps
advertised from 1d. to 5s., and atlases from 10s. 6d. to 10 guineas. Yet they are generally
impressions from old plates, or copies of old plates, with a few places of later notoriety marked,
without taking the entire chart from the latest books of voyages and travels. Look at the maps of
Affghanistan, Scinde, Indian Isles, American Isthmus, &c.
On inquiry at all our shops here for a moderately priced map of the new railway across South
America to Panama, and for maps of California and Borneo, not one could be got.
Have any of your chart-wrights in London got up such maps for youth and emigrants? If not, let
them take the hint now given by
Paterfamiliæ.

Edinburgh.
 Queries.

DID ST. PAUL QUOTE ARISTOTLE?

Throughout the writings of St. Paul, his exactly cultivated mind is scarcely less visible than his
divinely inspired soul. Notwithstanding his magnificent rebukes of human learning and philosophy,
and his sublime exaltation of the foolishness of God above the wisdom of men, the Apostle of the
Gentiles was no mean master of Gentile learning. His three well-known quotations from Greek poets
furnish direct evidence of his acquaintance with Greek literature. He proclaimed the fatherhood of
God to the Athenians in the words of his countryman the poet Aratus (Acts, xvii. 28.). He warns the
Corinthians by a moral common-place borrowed from the dramatist Menander (1 Cor. xv. 33.). He
brings an hexameter verse of a Cretan poet as a testimony to the bad character of the Cretan people
(Titus, i. 12.). I do not positively assert that I have discovered a fourth quotation; I would merely
inquire whether the appearance in a Pauline epistle of a sentence which occurs in a treatise of
Aristotle, is to be regarded as a quotation, or as an accidental and most singular identity of
expression. In the Politics (lib. iii. cap. 8.), Aristotle, in speaking of very powerful members of a
community, says, "κατα δε των τοιουτων ουκ εστι νομος" ("but against such there is no law"). In the
Epistle to the Galatians (v. 23.), Paul, after enumerating the fruits of the Spirit, adds, "against such
there is no law" ("κατα των τοιουτων ουκ εστι νομος"). The very same words which the philosopher
uses to express the exceptional character of certain over-powerful citizens, the apostle borrows, or,
at least, employs, to signify the transcendent nature of divine graces. According to Aristotle, mighty
individuals are above legal restraint, against such the general laws of a state do not avail: according
to Paul, the fruits of the Spirit are too glorious and divine for legal restraint; they dwell in a region
far above the regulation of the moral law.
While there is no possibility of demonstrating that this identity of expression is a quotation, there
is nothing to forbid the idea of this sentence being a loan from the philosopher to the apostle. Paul
was as likely to be at home in the great philosophers, as in the second and third-rate poets of
Greece. The circumstance of Aratus being of his own birth-place, Tarsus, might specially commend
the Phænomena to his perusal; but the great luminary of Grecian science was much more likely to
fall within his perusal than an obscure versifier of Crete; and if he thought it not unseemly to quote
frown a comic writer, he surely would not disdain to borrow a sentence from the mighty master of
Stagira. The very different employment which he and Aristotle find for the same words makes
nothing against the probability of quotation. The sentence is remarkable, not in form, but in
meaning. There is nothing in the mere expression peculiarly to commend it to the memory, or give it
proverbial currency. I cannot say that it is a quotation; I cannot say that it is not.
I am not aware that this quotation or identity of expression has been pointed out before. Wetstein,
who above all editors of the Greek Testament abounds in illustrations and parallel passages from the
classics, takes no notice of this identical one. It is surely worth the noting; and should anything
occur to any of your correspondents either to confirm or demolish the idea of quotation, I would
gladly be delivered out of my doubt. I should not think less reverently of St. Paul in believing him
indebted to Aristotle; I should rather rejoice in being assured that one of the greatest spiritual
benefactors of mankind was acquainted with one of its chief intellectual benefactors.
Thomas H. Gill.
 Minor Queries.
Silver Royal Font.

—I remember having read of a very ancient silver font, long preserved among the treasures of the
British crown, in which the infants of our royal families were commonly baptized. Is this relic still in
existence? where may it be seen? what is its history? have any cuts or engravings of it been
published? where may any particulars respecting it be found?
Nocab.

L'Homme de 1400 Ans.

—In that very extraordinary part of a very extraordinary transaction, the statement of Cagliostro,
in the matter of the Collier (Paris, 1786, pp. 20. 36.), mention is twice made of an imaginary
personage called l'homme de 1400 ans. Cagliostro complains that he was said to be that personage,
or the Wandering Jew, or Antichrist. He is not, therefore, the same as the Wandering Jew. I should
be very curious to learn where this notion is derived from.
C. B.

Llandudno, on the Great Orme's Head.

—Having occasion to visit the above interesting place last summer, among other objects of
curiosity, I was induced to visit a "cavern," which the inhabitants said had been lately discovered,
and which they said had been used by the "Romans" (Roman Catholics) as a place of worship. A
party of five hired a boat for the purpose of visiting the place, which is about two miles from the
little bay of Llandudno; for it is quite inaccessible by land. We arrived in about an hour; and were
quite surprised at the appearance of the "cavern," which seems to have been made as private as
possible, and as inaccessible, by large stones being piled carelessly upon each other, so as to hide
the entrance, and which we could not have found without the assistance of the sailors. The "cavern"
is about ten feet high, lined with smooth and well-jointed stone work, with a plain but nicely
executed cornice at the height of seven or eight feet. The shape is heptagonal, and the fronts on
each side are faced with smooth stone; the space from front to back, and from side to side, is equal,
about six feet six inches. On the right, close to the entrance, is a font, sixteen inches across inside,
twenty-two outside, and eight or nine inches deep. There is a seat round, except at the entrance;
and there has been a stone table or altar in the centre, but a small portion of it and the pillar only
remain. The floor has been flagged, but it is in a very dilapidated state. That it was used for worship,
there is little doubt; but how and when it was fitted up, seems marvellous. It is not mentioned by
Pennant, or any Welsh tourist.
Will any of your correspondents oblige me and the public with the history of this "cavern," as it is
called, at Llandudno?
L. G. T.

Johnson's House, Bolt Court.

—Can any of your readers inform me whether the house in which Dr. Johnson resided, and in
which he died, situate in Bolt Court, Fleet Street, is yet in existence? You are probably aware that an
engraving of it appeared in the Graphic Illustrations edited by Mr. Croker, and prefixed to this
engraving was an announcement that it was destroyed by fire.
There is reason, however, to believe that this is a mistake, and that the house so destroyed by fire
belonged not to Johnson, but to Johnson's friend, Allen the printer.
 You are probably aware that the house which stands opposite the Johnson's Head Tavern, is
shown as the residence of the great moralist; and on comparing another engraving by Smith of the
Doctor's study with the room now claimed to have been occupied by Johnson, the likeness is exact.
Cobbett, too, who afterwards lived here, boasted in one of his publications that he was writing in the
same room where Johnson compiled his Dictionary. At any rate it is an interesting question, and
probably can be set at rest by some of your literary friends, especially as I have reason to believe
that there is one gentleman still living who visited the Doctor in Bolt Court. Madame D'Arblay, I think,
once said, that the author of the Pleasures of Memory arrived at the door at the same moment with
herself during Johnson's last illness.
Edwin Lechlade.

Bishop Mossom.

—Robert Mossom, D.D., was prebendary of Knaresboro' in Yorkshire, 1662, and Bishop of Derry,
1666. In dedicating his Zion's Prospect (1651) to Henry (Pierrepont) Marquess of Dorchester and
Earl of Kingston, towards the end he says, "Besides this, mine relation to your late deceased uncle;"
then referring to the margin he has "Ds. T. G., Eques felicis memoriæ."
Zion's Prospect (a copy of which, with several of his other works, is in the library of the British
Museum) has on the title-page, "By R. M., quondam è collo S. P. C."
His grandson, Robert Mossom, D.D. (son of Robert Mossom, LL.D., Master in the French Court of
Chancery), was Senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently Dean of Ossory from 1701
to 1747; he married Rebecca, daughter and coheir of Robert Mason of Dublin, and granddaughter, I
believe, of Jonathan Alaud of Waterford. Dean Mossom was one of the oldest friends of Dean Swift;
Sir Walter Scott has but one letter to him in Swift's Correspondence (2nd ed. Edin. 1824, vol. xix. p.
275.). Are there any other letters that passed between them in existence?
Can any of your readers refer me to a pedigree of the Masons of Dublin, and also any pedigree
that connects the Mossom with the Elaud family of Yorkshire?
What college was that of S. P. C.? and who was Sir T. G——, Knt.; and how was he related to
Bishop Mossom?
T. C. M. M.

Inner Temple.

Orlando Gibbons.

—Hawkins, in his History of Music, gives "a head" of this musician. Is there any other engraved
portrait?
Edward F. Rimbault.

Portraits.

—What is the most correct catalogue of all the engraved portraits which are known to exist?
S. S.

Barnard's Church Music.

—Can any of your readers point out where John Barnard's first book of selected church music,
folio, ten parts, 1641, is to be found? The writer knows of the imperfect set at Hereford Cathedral, a
tenor part at Canterbury, and a bass part in private hands. Dr. Burney makes mention, in his History
of Music, of having sought diligently throughout the kingdom, but could not find an entire copy.
Perhaps some of your correspondents may kindly favour the writer with a list of its contents.
Amanuensis.

The Nelson Family.

—In Burke's Commoners, under the head of "Nelson of Chuddleworth," it appears that William
Nelson of Chuddleworth, born in 1611, had by his second wife, the daughter of John Pococke,
gentleman, of Woolley, among other children, a son named William; but of whom no further mention
is made.
Can any of your Norfolk or Berkshire friends state whether this son William ever settled at
Dunham Parva, in Norfolk?—as, by so doing, an obligation will be conferred on your occasional
correspondent
Franciscus.

Letters to the Clergy.

—In the Diary of Walter Yonge (published by the Camden Society), p. 24., is the following:
"16 Dec. 1614. This day the Ministers of this Diocese (Exon) were called before the Bishop
of Exon, who read letters from the Archbishop, the effects of which were, that every
minister should exhort his parishioners to continue together the Sabbath Day, and not to
wander to other preachers who have better gifts than their own pastors, but should
content themselves with the Word of God read and Homilies. 2. That all should kneel at
the receiving of the Sacrament. 3. To declare unto their parishioners that it is not
necessary to have the Word preached at the Sacraments.—Dictu Magistri Knowles, Vicarii
de Axminster, at that time present."

Query, Can any of your readers say to what letter, and on what occasion such orders were issued
by the archbishop, and also whether they have been published in any volume on ecclesiastical
matters?
H. T. E.

Margaret Burr.

—It is related in Allan Cunningham's Life of Gainsborough, that he married a young lady named
Margaret Burr, of Scottish extraction; and that
"On an occasion of household festivity, when her husband was high in fame, she
vindicated some little ostentation in her dress by whispering to her niece, now Mrs. Lane,
'I have some right to this, for you know, my love, I am a prince's daughter.'"

The biographer of the British Painters prefaces this by saying,

"Nor must I omit to tell that rumour conferred other attractions (besides an annuity) upon
her; she was said to be the natural daughter of one of our exiled princes, nor was she,
when a wife and a mother, desirous of having this circumstance forgotten."

As I just now read in Vol. iv., p. 244., some account of Berwick, and other natural children of
James II., I was put in mind of the above anecdote, and should be glad of any information
respecting the Miss Burr's parentage in question. Myself a collateral descendant of her husband, I
know from other sources that the tradition is worthy of credit; and to the genealogist and antiquary
it may be a historically interesting enquiry.
 H. W. G. R.

Northern Ballads.

—Is any gentleman in possession of any old printed copies of Danish or Swedish popular ballads,
or of any manuscript collection of similar remains? Are any such known to exist in any public library
in Great Britain? By printed, of course I mean old fly-sheets, from the sixteenth century downward;
they are generally of four, sometimes of eight, leaves small octavo. Any information, either
personally, or through "N. & Q.," will much oblige
George Stephens.

Copenhagen.

"Blamed be the man," &c.

—Where is the following couplet to be found?

"Blamed be the man that first invented ink,
And made it easier for to write than think."
N. O. K.

"Quid est Episcopus."

—Can any correspondent furnish me with the reference to a passage supposed to exist in one of
the early fathers (I think Irenæus):—
"Quid est episcopus, nisi primus presbyter?"
X. G. X.

Henry Isaac.

—I shall feel obliged to any person who can give any account (for genealogical purposes) of Henry
Isaac, who lived at Roehampton about the middle of last century. He was a diamond merchant from
Holland. He had a collection of pictures, one of which was the Lord of the Vineyard paying his
Labourers, by Rembrandt.
H. T. E.

German Poet quoted by Camden.

—Britannia, sive regnorum Angliæ, Scotiæ, et Hiberniæ chorographica descriptio: Gulielmo

Camdeno: Lond. 1607, folio, p. 302., Middlesex.
"Nec magno hinc intervallo Tamisim duplici ostiolo Colus postquam insulas sparserit,
illabitur. Ad quem ut nostræ ætatis Poeta Germanus lusit:

"'Tot campos, sylvas, tot regia tecta, tot hortos

Artifici dextrâ excultos, tot vidimus arces,
Aut nunc Ausonio, Tamisis cum Tybride certet.'"
Camden, speaking of the Colne falling with a double mouth into the Thames, quotes a German
poet of his day; and I should be much obliged by any reader of the "N. & Q." favouring me with the
name, and reference to the author from whence the preceding quotation is taken.
☞ F.
 American Degrees.

—Several members of the Brougham Institute here, and constant readers of "N. & Q.," would feel
obliged if some of your learned correspondents would give them some information about the
obtaining of American degrees, as recently a large cargo of diplomas had arrived in this quarter, such
as D.D. and LL.D., and conferred on men of third-rate talent. What we want is, to be informed how
such degrees are obtained; if it is the president, or president and professors, of the American
academies who confer them. This subject is so frequently agitated here, that you would greatly
oblige many inquirers by making a question of it in "N. & Q.," so that we may obtain full reply
explanatory of how these degrees are obtained, and of the bestowers of them.
J. W.

Liverpool.

Derivation of News.

—It is just two years since the word News was stated to be derived from the initial letters of the
cardinal points of the compass, as prefixed to early newspapers. I well remember the impression
which the statement made on me: if written seriously, as a mark of credulity; if sportively, as rather
out of place. Moreover, it was both stated as a fact, and as an ingenious etymology—a manifest
inconsistency.
In the fierce and tiresome discussion which arose out of that announcement, the main points in
support of the asserted derivation were never once introduced. Do such early newspapers exist? Is
the derivation itself of early date? As to the first question, I must declare that no such newspapers
ever came under my observation; but as to the second, it must be admitted that the derivation has
been in print, with all the weight of evidence which belongs to it, above two centuries.
I shall assume, if not better informed, that it has no other authority than the subjoined epigram in
Wits recreations, first published in 1640, and said to contain the finest fancies of the muses of those
times. In default of the original edition of that rare work, I transcribe from the re-publication of it in
1817.

"News.

"When news doth come, if any would discusse

The letter of the word, resolve it thus:
News is convey'd by letter, word, or mouth,
And comes to us from North, East, West, and South."

Bolton Corney.

Passage in Troilus and Cressida.

—Would MR. J. Payne Collier, whose name I have often seen among your contributors, have the
kindness to inform me whether any light is thrown, in the emendations inserted in his folio edition of
Shakspeare, 1628, on a line which has always puzzled me in Ulysses' speech in council, in Scene 3.
of Act I. of Troilus and Cressida? The passage runs thus:
"How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhood in cities,
Peaceful commérce from dividable shores,
 The primogenitive and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?"
It will be seen that the third line, according to the usual pronunciation of the last word, is
defective in scanning; that, if derived from divido, the vowel in the penultimate syllable would be i
and not a; and that, even if intended to express the word divided, as suggested by one of our
commentators, would be too vague and inexpressive.
Might I suggest that the derivation is not from the word divido, but rather from a compound of the
words divitiæ and do; the expression "riches-giving shores" not only completing the sense of the
passage, but forming a compound not uncommon with our immortal bard.
W. S. D.

Bachelor's Buttons.

—That should be their name if they exist; but, if so, where are they to be got? I never heard of
them. I should think a clever fellow might make a fortune by inventing some kind of substitute which
a man without the time, skill, or materials necessary for sewing on a button, might put in the place
of a deserter. If you do not insert this Query, may your brace buttons fly off next time you are
dressing in a hurry to dine with the grandest people you know!
Your Wellwisher.

Princes of Wales and Earls of Chester, eldest Sons of the Kings of England.

—In the New Memoirs of Literature, vol. iv., July, 1726, it was announced that Mr. Bush, one of the
Clerks of the Record Office in the Tower, and late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, designed to
print a Collection of Charters, Letters Patent, and other instruments concerning the creation and
investiture of the eldest sons of the Kings of England as Princes of Wales, Dukes of Cornwall, Earls of
Chester and Flint, &c. &c., from the time of Edward, the first Prince of Wales (afterwards King
Edward II.), to the time of Edward IV.
Can any of your correspondents inform me whether such a work ever was published? and who
was the editor of the monthly review entitled New Memoirs of Literature, which extended to six
volumes 8vo.? It contains notices of many old and now rare works, and stopped in December, 1727.
G.

Authenticated Instances of Longevity.

—Your correspondent A. B. R. (antè, p. 145.) and others argue their question of the old Countess
of Desmond very ably;—will any one of them be pleased to argue my question? Is there one word of
truth in the story, or any other story that rests, as a preliminary condition, on the assumption that
people have lived to one hundred and fifty years of age? Of course the proof is to rest on dates and
facts, parish registers—on clear legal evidence. It is admitted by actuaries and others, learned in
such matters, that the average duration of life is greater now than it was; so, we might fairly
assume, would be the exceptional life. Can these gentlemen refer us to a single instance of an
insured person who lived to one hundred and fifty? to one hundred and forty, thirty, twenty, ten?
aye, to one hundred and ten? There is a nonsensical inscription to this effect on the portrait of a
man of the name of Gibson, hung up in Greenwich Hospital, but its untruth has been proved. I also
remember another case made out to the entire satisfaction of some benevolent ladies, by, as
afterwards appeared, the baptismal register of John the father being made to do duty as the register
of John the son. I mention these things as a warning; I protest, too, at starting against flooding "N.
& Q." with evidence brought from Russia or America, or any of the back settlements of the world,
and against all evidence of people with impossible memories. What I want is good legal evidence;
the greatest age of the oldest members of the Equitable, Amicable, and other Insurance offices—
lives certainly beyond the average; the greatest age of a member of the House of Peers coming
within the eye of proof. When these preliminary questions, and reasonable inferences, shall have
been determined, it will, I think, be quite time enough to raise questions about the old Countess, old
Parr, old Jenkins, and other like ante-register longevities.
O. C. D.

Minor Queries Answered.

Laud's Letters and Papers.

—Can any of your correspondents inform one where any unpublished letters or papers of
Archbishop Laud are to be met with, besides those at Lambeth or in the British Museum?
Anthony à Wood mentions his speech against Nathanael Fiennes; and Wanley, in his Catalogue of
English and Irish MSS., states that many of his writings, both political and theological, were extant at
that time in private libraries.
B. J.

[Archbishop Laud's Works are now in the course of publication in the Library of Anglo-
Catholic Theology, and from the editor's valuable bibliographical prefaces to vols. i. and ii.,
we think it probable that some notices of these MSS. will be given in the subsequent
volumes. Our correspondent may also consult Catalogi Librorum Manuscriptorum Angliæ et
Hiberniæ, Oxon. 1697.]

Scot's Philomythie.

—Philomythie, or Philomythologie, wherein Outlandish Birds, Beasts, and Fishes are taught to
speak true English plainlie, &c.
The same volume, a small quarto unpaged, contains "The Merrie American Philosopher, or Wise
Man of the New World," and "Certaine Pieces of this Age Parabolized, viz. Duellum Britannicum;
Regalis Justitia Jacobi; Aquignispicium; Antidotum Cecillianum; by Thomas Scot, Gentleman, 1616,
with illustrative woodcuts."
Query: Is the book rare, and who was Thomas Scot?
L. S.

[But little appears to be known of the personal history of Thomas Scot. Sir S. Egerton
Brydges, in his Censura Literaria, vol. iii. pp. 381-386., and vol. iv. p. 32., has given some
account of his works, but no biographical notice of the author. The dedications to his
poems being principally to the Norfolk and Suffolk gentry, it is probable he belonged to
one of those counties. The first edition of Philomythie was published in 1610; the second
in 1616; but some copies of the second edition, according to Lowndes, are dated 1622,
others 1640. There is a third portion which our correspondent does not appear to possess,
entitled The Second Part of Philomythie, or Philomythologie, containing Certaine Tales of
true libertie, false friendship, power united, faction and ambition. By Thomas Scot, Gent.
London, 1616, 1625. Thomas Park thought that, from the great disparity of merit between
this and the preceding part, there is little reason to suppose them to be by the same
author, though they bear the same name. Scot's works are considered rare, especially his
first, entitled Four Paradoxes of Arte, of Lawe, of Warre, of Seruice: London, 1602,
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