One of my wills written in mid 1665 leaves money ‘to my cosen xx now a prisoner under the Turk and if he returns to England”
As a matter of curiosity does anyone know to which war or other this might refer ? I can see an Austro-Turk/Ottoman war of 1663-4 listed but otherwise not anything relevant.
The only thing I am aware of were the attacks and raids by the 'Barbary Pirates' mainly from North Africa but some captives were sold to/within the Otterman Empire. Samuel Pepys mentions two men who had been made slaves in Algiers by them.
Thanks Pauline. I guess - as often - there were mercenaries too who might end up almost anywhere.
Thanks Juliet – that’s a really interesting reference! As you say, the ‘cosen’ could be a mercenary who fought in the recent war and was still being held prisoner, or as Pauline says this might be a reference to someone who had been captured and enslaved by the 'Barbary corsairs’. They operated from ports in North Africa, raiding towns and seizing merchant ships primarily across the Mediterranean in the 16th-century, and in later years they would attack the coasts of Ireland and south-west England.
If you are interested in the Barbary states there’s a brief overview of earlier Maghreb history here: https://memorients.com/maghreb-and-al-andalus (you need to scroll past the Al-Andalus section to find it).
And this blog post is also relevant https://memorients.com/articles/news-and-maghrebi-diversity-in-restoration-london
This is also complicated by the fact that ‘Turk’ could mean a range of things in early modern England – for more on that there’s a neat summary in this open access book: Keywords of Identity, Race, and Human Mobility in Early Modern England https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/50188
Click on 'pdf viewer', then go to page 276 to see the 'Turk' essay.