Source? Castration had very high mortality and I’m not aware of any historical s...

dudeinjapan · on April 17, 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_Musl...

"Castration: A fair proportion of male slaves were imported as eunuchs... in practice, emasculation was frequent"

(and yes, it did also carry a high rate of death.)

biorach · on April 17, 2022

that text doesn't appear on that page. and that's a very generalised statement covering a long period of time and wide area.

My understanding was that adults were rarely castrated, rather boys from certain regions were targeted (I believe boys from modern Sudan were preferred by the Ottomans)

ttyprintk · on April 17, 2022

It appears on my version of that page.

But, this is such a well-documented aspect of Ottoman slavery that it doesn’t depend on any particular Wikipedia page.

This was known to be full-on castration.

hef19898 · on April 17, 2022

The Barbary pirates weren't Ottomans so. They traded with them and, if memory serves well, operated under Ottoman sponsorship at times.

dudeinjapan · on April 22, 2022

Then they knew how their customers expected their goods delivered!

mda · on April 17, 2022

Rulers of Barbary pirates, famous ex corsair Ottoman chief admiral Barbaros Hayreddin, his brother Oruc were Ottoman.