Stephan Conermann, Veruschka Wagner & Fırat Yaşa: Rethinking Ottoman and Crimean Slavery: Property, Legal Status, and the Paradoxes of Unfreedom

13.5.2026, 19:00
Orient-Institut Istanbul
Round Table
Language: English
Moderator: Christiane Czygan

After a brief introduction by Stephan Conermann, Veruschka Wagner and Fırat Yaşa will explore new perspectives on Ottoman and Crimean slavery, focusing on questions of property, legal status, and the inherent paradoxes of unfreedom.

Based on 16th- and 17th-century court records, this round table examines the multiple dimensions of slavery in the Ottoman and Crimean context with a particular focus on the shifting and overlapping configurations of dependency, property, and legal status. Rather than treating slavery as a uniform or static institution, the analysis highlights its situational and multilayered character, in which different legal, social, and economic registers could develop in parallel – yet not necessarily in alignment. Source work reveals that relations of dependency often persisted beyond formal manumission and could extend across generations, complicating conventional distinctions between freedom and unfreedom. While acts such as religious conversion, name changes, and marriage frequently signaled attempts to sever ties with a slave past and to integrate into new social identities, these transformations did not automatically dissolve underlying legal or economic entanglements. Ottoman law practices, as reflected in court documentation, simultaneously enabled and regulated such continuities, thereby producing a paradoxical coexistence of emancipation and enduring obligation. By foregrounding these tensions, the argument is that “un/freedom” in the Ottoman context cannot be understood as a clear-cut legal status but must be seen as a negotiated and often fluent condition shaped by overlapping regimes of authority, property, and social belonging.

Veruschka Wagner is a Research Associate in the Department of Islamic Studies and Near Eastern Languages at the University of Bonn and an Affiliated Researcher at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) where she leads two working groups. She holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Bonn, where she also studied Communication Studies and Phonetics, Translation Studies, and German as a Foreign Language. Her doctoral research focused on Ottoman travelogues about Europe. Her current research forms part of the DFG-funded priority programme Transottomanica and examines the agency and mobility of enslaved individuals from the Black Sea region in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Istanbul. In addition, she leads a project on caricature and satire in late and post-Ottoman contexts, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. Since April 2026, she has been a Non-Resident Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African-American Research at Harvard University, where her research explores the history of health, disease, and slavery in the early modern Ottoman Empire.

Fırat Yaşa is a faculty member in the Department of History at Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Türkiye. His research focuses on asymmetrical social dependency, slaving practices, slavery laws, and manumission in the Crimean Khanate (1500–1700) and the early modern Ottoman Empire. He has been a fellow at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS) with a project titled “An Attempt at Revision: Writing about Crimean Slavery in its Own Terms and in a Comparative Perspective”. Currently, he serves as principal investigator of a TÜBİTAK-funded project in Turkey, “A Comparative Analysis of the Transition from Slavery to Paid Labor in the Crimea and Üsküdar (1650–1750)”, supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK).

Stephan Conermann is the Speaker of the Bonn Center of Dependency and Slavery Studies and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bonn. His research focuses on slaveries, historiography, narrative strategies in historiographic texts, transition periods, mobility and immobility, global history, and rule and power. His regional expertise includes the Mamluk and Delhi Sultanates, as well as the Mughal and Ottoman Empires and the broader “Transottomanica” area. He has co-edited numerous volumes on slavery and dependency, including Slaves and Slave Agency in the Ottoman Empire (2020), The Mamluk-Ottoman Transition II (2022), Current Trends in Slavery Studies in Brazil (2023), and Cultural Heritage and Slavery: Perspectives from Europe (2023). His most recent publication is The Strong Asymmetrical Dependency Studies Reader (2024).

The language of the event is English. Participation is free of charge. To join this invitation in person please register through the link below. To join online no registration is necessary. Photos or videos will be taken during the event. By participating, you agree that these may be used on the OII website, newsletter and social media. The event will not be recorded.

VENUE

Orient-Institut Istanbul
Galip Dede Cad. 65, Şahkulu Mah., TR – 34421 Istanbul
Tel: +90 212 293 60 67 oiist@oiist.org www.oiist.org

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