That Most Precious Merchandise. Hannah Barker
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Masters frequently renamed their slaves. Roughly 80 percent of slave women in Genoa were given one of six names (Caterina, Lucia, Maddalena, Margherita, Maria, or Marta).28 These names were also given to freewomen, but the pool of names for freewomen was much larger. Giorgio was a common name among male slaves, far more common than among freemen. Certain names were given only to slaves: Cita (quick), Bona (good), Picenina (little), Benvenuta (welcome), Pucella (handmaiden), Divizia (riches), Melica (musical), and Aspertus or Expertus (experienced).29
Legal documents included both old and new names, often presenting the distinction between them in terms of language and religion. Sometimes language was emphasized: “Caron in Tatar, Paul in our language” or “Chotlu by name, and thereafter called Christina in Latin.”30 Other times religion was emphasized: “called Stoilana in her language, by the grace of baptism Marta” or “not baptized, and is called Achzoach in her language, and in baptism ought to be named Bona.”31 Sometimes language and religion were explicitly connected, such as the woman “called Margarita at baptism and in Latin.”32 A Venetian correspondent writing to the Pratese merchant Francesco Datini notified him of the purchase of a new slave and advised him to “have her baptized and give her a name in your own way.”33
Because the imposition of a Latin name was sometimes linked with baptism, scholars have tended to assume that all slaves with recognizably Latin names had been baptized.34 That is not necessarily true. Some masters gave their slaves Latin names without the sacrament of baptism.35 Also, there were numerous slaves whose old and new names were both associated with Christianity. An Abkhaz girl named Maria was renamed Barbara; a Russian Maria was renamed Marta.36 In such cases, did the conferral of a new name imply a second baptism, or were these slaves renamed without baptism? A woman “called Caterina in her language and Antonia in baptism” was certainly baptized once and may have been baptized twice.37 A Circassian girl “called Serafina in her language but in our idiom Magdalena” seems to have been renamed without a sacrament.38 Baptizing the same individual twice was theologically unsound, even if the two baptisms were performed in different rites. Nevertheless, some Catholic priests seem to have performed rebaptisms, since Pope Martin V threatened to excommunicate anyone who rebaptized Greek slaves.39
Adding race to the set of connections between names, languages, and religions can be misleading too. The name Caracossa might derive from Saragossa in Spain, from Circassia in the Black Sea, from the Greek name Karakouttis, or from a Tatar name.40 Each onomastic possibility carries a different set of linguistic, religious, and racial associations. Some slaves had names that reinforced their linguistic or racial categorization, such as Jarcaxa or Jarcaxius for a Circassian.41 Others had ethnonyms that did not match their linguistic or racial categorization, such as a Tatar woman named Cataio (Chinese), a Circassian woman named Gota (Goth), and a Laz woman named Comana (Cuman).42 Nasta, usually considered a Greek name, belonged to a girl categorized as Tatar.43 The name Chotlu or Cotlu was attributed to Alan, Mongol, Russian, and Tatar women.44 The result is that names cannot be relied upon to categorize a slave by language, religion, or race.
In contrast, Mamluk slaves were usually given non-Islamic names. Domestic slaves and eunuchs were given the names of desirable objects or qualities like Amber or Nightingale.45 Young mamluks, as well as some of their slave concubines, were given distinctive names composed of Turkic and Persian elements like Aqbirdī or Qarābughā.46 Names constructed in that way signaled a slave’s membership in the elite military class, not his or her original language. Of the distinctive mamluk names, some were invented in Egypt, but others had roots in the Black Sea.47 Comparing mamluk names with the original names of male slaves in Italian documents can reveal which names were used in the Black Sea. The name Jaqmaq, common among mamluks, also appeared as Zachmach or Iacomacius in seventeen Italian documents from Tana, Venice, Genoa, and Pera.48 Thirteen were categorized as Tatar and one as Circassian. Only two mamluks named Jaqmaq were assigned a racial category in the Mamluk sources: one was a Circassian and the other a Circassian or Turkman.49 Other male slave names that appeared in both Italian and Mamluk sources were Quṭlūbughā/Cotluboga, Qarābughā/Charaboga, Jarkis/Charcaxius, Kitbughā/Katboga, and Tangrī birdī/Tangriberdi. Female slave names that appeared in both sets of sources were Mughāl/Mogal, Ṭughay/Tochay, and Tulū/Tholu.
Mamluk slave names were marked by another distinctive feature. The names of free people included a chain of patronymics, but slaves and former slaves had only one patronymic, Ibn ‘Abd Allah (son of a servant of God). This naming convention erased the slave’s biological family and signaled his or her foreignness from Mamluk society.50 Many Mamluk names also included a nisba or laqab, an adjectival nickname. A single mamluk could have multiple nicknames referring to different facets of his identity, such as his patron (al-Nāṣirī for a client of the sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad), his affiliation with a legal or theological school (al-Mālikī for a jurist of the Mālikī school), his physical appearance (al-A’war for a man with one eye), or his place of origin (al-Asqalānī for a man from Ascalon). Nicknames that appear to indicate a place of origin can be misleading, though. Al-Jarkasī, for example, might refer to a mamluk of Circassian origin or to a mamluk with a previous owner named Jarkas.51
Race in the Late Medieval Mediterranean
We have become used to thinking about slavery as a hierarchy of power built on a racial binary, white over black. This framework does not fit late medieval Mediterranean slavery. First, late medieval Mediterranean slavery was a hierarchy of power built on religious, not racial, difference. Second, neither religious nor racial differences were perceived as binary in the late Middle Ages. Third, racial differences were not articulated in terms of skin color in the late Middle Ages, although skin color was one of many physical characteristics that could carry racial associations. The significance of religion for late medieval Mediterranean slavery was addressed in Chapter 1. The remainder of this chapter addresses the roles played by race, skin color, and other aspects of physical appearance.
To approach race from a new perspective, historians may benefit from conversation with psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists about how human categories arise and function. The private human self is a consciousness located within a body; it develops by interacting with the world around it. The result is the creation of a social self, “a bundle of perceptions held about an individual by a social world,” in addition to a private self.52 Although individuals may try to maintain their social selves in harmony with their private selves, their social worlds may not allow them to do so. This is certainly the case with slaves. While the private selves of slaves are a fascinating and elusive topic of research, the following discussion seeks only to understand certain aspects of their social selves, namely, the perceptions that were relevant to their status as slaves in the minds of the people around them.
A group is a human collectivity, the members of which recognize both its existence and their own membership in it.53 Groups can be constructed based on all sorts of criteria, and individuals normally believe themselves to be members of numerous groups (professors, Star Wars fans, women, Americans) without contradiction. When other people make the decision about how to identify an individual, what they use are categories rather than groups.54 This book is chiefly concerned with the categorization of slaves: their identification by others rather than their self-identification as a group.
Ethnicity is a way of categorizing other people based on culture. From an anthropological perspective, it is a common and widespread aspect of humans’ social existence.55 Race is a way of categorizing people based on their supposedly permanent, fixed, and inherent differences.56 Those differences are usually assumed to be physical, visible, or biological, but they do not have to be. What matters is the belief that they cannot be changed. Race, unlike ethnicity, is not a common aspect of human experience. It appears only in certain societies and historical periods. When race exists in a society as a way of categorizing people but is not associated with a power hierarchy, it can be referred to as race-thinking.57 When race becomes linked to a power hierarchy, either through explicit ideologies