Transformation of 1,2-dithiole-3-thiones into 1,6,6aλ4- trithiapentalenes via reaction with bromoethanones

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MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE OTTOMAN NAVY

IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD¹

BY

MIRI SHEFER MOSSENSOHN*

Abstract

Ottoman sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tell us a great deal about naval

ﬁnances or dockyard operations. Indeed, the logistics of the Ottoman have been studied rea-

sonably well. However, the Ottoman sources are virtually silent about the people involved in

these naval operations. In this article the manpower will be in focus, with particular empha-

sis on the oarsmen who manned the galleys, the captives and criminals, and the medical

treatment offered to them. The resulting discussion allows us to gain insights into the expe-

riences of non-elite or behind the scenes Ottomans involved in the navy—whose voices are

difﬁcult to recover—toward the end of the seventeenth century. This article also indirectly

contributes to the growing scholarship in recent years on Ottoman slavery.

Les sources ottomanes du XVI^ème-XVII^èmesiècles sont très informatives au sujet des ﬁnances

navales, autrement dit, les opérations du chantier naval. Pour cette raison le logiciel de la

marine ottomane a été plutôt bien étudié. Par contre, les manuscrits ottomans adressent

à peine la main-d’œuvre engagée dans les opérations navales. Cette contribution traite parti-

culièremt des rameurs des galères, des captifs et des condamnés, ainsi que du traitement

médical offert à eux. La discussion qui en résulte nous donne une idée des expériences du

menu peuple ottoman servant dans la ﬂotte et de ceux travaillant dans les coulisses – des

personnes dont les archives nous parlent à peine – vers la ﬁn du XVII^èmesiècle. En outre elle

contribue de façon indirecte à l’étude de l’esclavage ottoman, un thème déployé depuis

quelques ans.

Keywords: history of medicine, Ottomans, maritime history

1

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2005 annual conference of the American

Association for the History of Medicine (Birmingham, Alabama) and appeared (in Hebrew)

in Michael Winter and Miri Shefer, eds. Turkey: The Ottoman Past and the Republican

Present; A Volume in Memory of Arye Shmuelevitz (Tel Aviv: The Moshe Dayan Center for

Middle Eastern and African Studies, 2006). I thank my research assistant, Mr. Liran Yadgar,

for his help in conducting the research for this article. Ottoman Turkish terms and names are

transliterated into modern Turkish; under-dots on consonants and macrons on vowels were

eliminated.

* Dr. Miri Shefer, Department of Middle Eastern & African History, Tel Aviv University,

shefer@post.tau.ac.il

Also available online – www.brill.nl

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MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE OTTOMAN NAVY IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 543

On 5 Ramazan 1105/30 April 1694 an Ottoman surgeon by the name of

Hasan was appointed to the prison of the Istanbul imperial arsenal (tersane-i

amire). He was to put the sick prisoners back on their feet and make them

ready to re-board their ships in time for the upcoming spring voyages.²Hasan’s

appointment, duties, and salary are the subject of a document preserved in the

Ba¤bakanlık Osmanlı Ar¤ivi, the Ottoman section of the Prime Ministry’s

Archives in Istanbul.³The signatures of various ofﬁcials on the document allow

us to follow the paper trail of the bureaucratic process of Hasan’s appointment.

The arsenal had petitioned the Ottoman government to appoint a surgeon. The

Grand Vizier then ordered the ofﬁce of the defterdar, the head of the Ottoman

treasury, to ﬁnd a budget for the salary. Once the needed resources had been

allocated, the Grand Vizier issued an order (buyuruldu) approving the appoint-

ment, whereupon the sultanic deed of appointment (berat), bearing the signature

of the sultan (tuªra), was produced by the chancery. The deed stipulated the

title, duties, location, and salary connected to the position as well as the name

of the appointee.⁴Hasan’s appointment was thus arranged according to the

established patterns in the Ottoman chancery—but how routine was the appoint-

ment of a surgeon to the imperial arsenal?

The subject of Ottoman military medicine has received little scholarly atten-

tion to date. In this regard, our ﬁeld lags behind other areas of historical

enquiry, in which the literature on military and militaristic aspects of medical

practice has developed signiﬁcantly, especially since the 1990s. Albeit some-

what detached from the mainstream of historical writing, a large body of liter-

ature exists, including works on venereal diseases, war neuroses, military

aspects of “imperial medicine,” and the development of medicine’s “govern-

mental role” in the military context. Some studies are principally concerned

with medicine in the armed forces, while others explore medicine’s place in between

the military and civilian spheres.⁵These themes are only starting to appear in

2

donanma-i hümayun haraketinden sonar tersane-i amire zindanında kılan esara ve müc-

riman hastalarına timar ve müÆalaca eder cerrah olmayıp i¤ bu ihtiyaç ile muhtaç ve daha

kemal ve fevk ve ¤uÆuru olduªnu [. . .] cerrah tayin olunmak

3

Ba¤bakanlık Osmanlı Ar¤ivi (BOA). Istanbul, Ibnülemin tasniﬁ, Sihiyye: 80.

Halil Inalcik, “Osmanlı Bürokrasisinde Aklâm ve Muâmelât.” Osmanlı Ara¤tırmaları 1

4

(1980): 1-14; Halil Inalcik, “An Appointment Procedure of a Guild Warden (Kethud®).”

Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes. Festschrift Andreas Tietze 76 (1986):

135-42; √smail Hakkı Uzuçar¤ılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Saray Te¤kilatı (3. baskı; Ankara: Türk

Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1988): 284-5; M. Z. Pakalın, “Berat.” In Tarih Deyimeleri ve

Terimleri Sözlüªü (3 vols. √stanbul: Millî Eªitim Basımevi, 1947-1956) vol. I: 205.

5

Mark Harrison, “The Medicalization of War—The Militarization of Medicine.” Social

History of Medicine 9 (1996): 267-76.

JESHO 50,4_f8_542-568III 11/14/07 3:42 PM Page 544

544

MIRI SHEFER MOSSENSOHN

historical scholarship on the Middle East, where local sources are beginning to

be employed as well. One exception is the provision of military medical ser-

vices in the Middle East during the First World War and especially their rela-

tionship to civilian services offered by voluntary agencies (such as the Ottoman

Red Crescent or Christian missionaries) with regard to medical relief activities

during the last years of the Ottoman Empire.⁶For the early modern period,

however, literature on the medical services in the Ottoman army or navy is

scarce. This article thus marks a ﬁrst step toward understanding the evolution

of Ottoman military medicine in general, and naval medicine in particular.

Ottoman sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tell us a great

deal about naval ﬁnances or dockyard operations. Indeed, the logistics of the

Ottoman navy—the structure of the imperial shipyards, the composition of the

navy in terms of the types of ships used, and their respective crews—have been

studied reasonably well.⁷The Ottoman sources, however, are virtually silent on

the people involved in these naval operations. Consider for example the budget

report from the mid-sixteenth century, prepared for the Ottoman central bureau-

cracy in order to supervise the expenses of one of the sailing expeditions of

Heyreddin Pa¤a Barbarossa (d. 953/1546), the famous North African corsair-turned-

admiral. This document is highly detailed in terms of ﬁnancial data. The

bureaucratic procedures that guided the clerk who prepared it further made him

name the people who built the ships and note down their salaries. But there was

6

Zekeriya Türkmen, “Balkan Sava¤larında Hilal-i Ahamr Cemiyetiænin Osmanlı Ordusuna

Yönelik Saªlık Hizmetleri.” Belleten 68 (2004): 483-518; Michael B. Tyquin, Gallipoli:

The Medical War. The Australian Army Medical Services in the Dardanelles Campaign of

1915 (Kensington, New South Wales: University of New South Wales Press, 1993). Ernst

Tucker has undertaken an extensive project on the Ottoman Red Crescent, while Anat

Lapidot-Firilla deals with American missionary agencies in Anatolia in the beginning of the

twentieth century.

7

The term “the Ottoman navy” is used in this article for convenience, yet it is somewhat

misleading in suggesting one military unit under the command of a central authority in

charge of all naval operations. Instead, the term “Ottoman navies” may be more accurate, as

this navy was in fact composed of various naval forces stationed throughout the empire,

sailing out of different ports, each under the command of an independent admiral, and sub-

ject to independent budgets. Some of these units recognized the sultan’s authority over them

only partially, for example the North African corsairs. At the same time, some functions per-

taining to naval operations, such as recruitment and provisions, were consolidated under

various organs in the central bureaucracy and military. Colin Imber, “The Costs of Naval

Warfare: The Accounts of Hayreddin Barbarossa’s Herceg Novi Campaign in 1539.”

Archivum Ottomanicum 4 (1972): 248-51, 269-76. See also Kate Fleet, “Early Turkish Naval

Activities.” Oriente Moderno: The Ottomans and the Sea, n.s. 20 (2001): 129-38, who

emphasizes the central administration of the Ottoman navy since its inception in the four-

teenth century.

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MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE OTTOMAN NAVY IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 545

no bureaucratic necessity to record details about the people who manned the

ship while on voyage.⁸

It is this human side of the Ottoman navy on which this article aims to focus,

with particular emphasis on those who manned the oars of the Ottoman galleys.

It addresses the question of why Ottomans offered medical treatment to the cap-

tives and criminals put to work at their naval operations. The discussion result-

ing from this question allows us to gain ﬁrst insights into the experiences of

non-elite Ottomans involved in the navy, whose voices are difﬁcult to recover.

We thus gain rare glimpses behind the scenes of Ottoman naval operations

toward the end of the seventeenth century.⁹This article also indirectly con-

tributes to the growing scholarship in recent years on Ottoman slavery, as it

shifts the focus to the experiences of slaves, about the participation of whom in

naval operations our knowledge is extremely limited.¹⁰

OTTOMAN MILITARY MEDICINE IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD

Hasan’s deed of appointment as a surgeon to the imperial dockyard is a rare

document, because few contemporary Ottoman sources offer insights into

aspects of military medicine. Ottomans were certainly aware of the medical

needs of their armed forces. It was clear for example, that the Ottomans lost

more soldiers on their march to the frontline than to enemy ﬁre in the bat-

tleﬁeld. Conditions were particularly dire on the Eastern front at the border of

Safavid Iran, where polluted water and natural forces, such as storms and

winds, exacerbated the situation.¹¹So what was the state of Ottoman military

medicine during Hasan’s time? How was medical care for the army organized?

In order to answer these questions, we must investigate the Ottoman’s military

medical knowledge, and how this was put into practice.

8

Colin Imber, “The Navy of Süleyman the Magniﬁcent.” Archivum Ottomanicum 6

(1980): 203-85.

9

A rare exception of a study that deals with the ships’ crews (more speciﬁcally, their eth-

nic composition) is the collection introduced by Luigi de Rosa, Le Genti del Mare

Mediterraneo (Naples: Lucio Pironti Editore, 1981). This subject has been revisited only in

the last issue of Medieval Encounters. 13.1 (2007).

10

A leading ﬁgure in this burgeoning area of scholarship is Ehud R. Toledano, whose

studies include The Ottoman Slave Trade and its Suppression, 1840-1890 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1982); Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle:

Washington University Press, 1998) and As if Silent and Absent: Bonds of Enslavement in

the Islamic Middle East (Yale: Yale University Press, 2007).

11

Rhoads Murphey, Ottoman Warfare 1500-1700 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University

Press, 1999): 129-30.

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546

MIRI SHEFER MOSSENSOHN

Medical Knowledge

The Ottomans were engaged in a dialogue with contemporary and past prac-

tices and knowledge pertaining to military medicine. With regard to the admin-

istrative aspect of military medicine, the Ottomans could build on the

experience of earlier Muslim armies. The Cairo Genizah, Muslim biographic

dictionaries, and medieval Arabic chronicles all mention mobile hospitals. These

sources describe the medical equipment and personnel, usually transported on

camelback, trailing the army to the frontline and back. A rudimentary form of

military medicine thus already existed, but in pre-Ottoman times it was far from

standard policy, and the inclusion of a medical convoy in fact depended on the

personal inclination of a speciﬁc ruler or military commander.¹²

The Ottomans also had some knowledge of the medical problems unique to

the military setting. For example, they could treat injuries caused by common

weapons of the day, such as cold steel, arrows, and ﬁrearms. The most impor-

tant Ottoman medical encyclopedias detail the chirurgical procedures to be fol-

lowed for the removal of arrows or bullets from the body. They also include

references to the treatment of wounds from lances and swords. Indeed, even

general medical compendia mention such medical problems.

The knowledge concerning military surgery in Muslim-Arab medicine origi-

nated with Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn ÆAbbas al-Zahrawi, who died in the begin-

ning of the eleventh century. Al-Zahrawi, known in the West as “Albucasis,”

was a Spanish physician from Cordoba, who included a treatise on surgery and

surgical devices in his vast compendia Kitab al-Tasrif. This is probably the ear-

liest work on surgery in Arabic, and certainly the ﬁrst containing illustrations

of surgical and dental instruments. In three separate sections he discusses cau-

terization, cupping, incisions, puncturing, venesection, surgery on abscesses, and

the removal of arrows from the body and of foreign bodies from the ear and

nose.¹³⁄erefeddin ÆAli b. al-Haj Ilyas Sabuncuoªlu (1385-1468) later composed

12

S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as

Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (Berkeley and Los Angeles: California University

Press, 1967-88): II: 252, 380; Ahmad Isa Bek, Tarikh al-Bimaristanat ﬁ al-Islam (Bayrut: Dar

al-Raid al-Arabi, 1981): 11-5; Rahab Khadar al-Akawi, al-Mujiz ﬁ Tarikh al-Tibb inda al-

ÆArab (Bayrut; Dar al-Manahil, 1995): 159; Cyril Elgood, A Medical History of Persia and

the Eastern Caliphate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951): 174-5.

13

Emilie Savage-Smith, “Al-Zahr®w¬, Ab‚ al-|®sim ßalaf b. al-ÆAbb®s.” In Encyclo-

paedia of Islam, 2nd edition, eds. C. E. et al. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001) vol. XI: 398-9; Sami

Khalaf Hamarneh, Drawings and Pharmacy in al-Zahrawi’s 10th century Surgical Treatise

(Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1961); M. S. Spink and G. L. Lewis, trans. and

eds., “Introduction.” In Albucasis on Surgery and Instruments (London: Wellcome Institute

of the History of Medicine, 1973): vii-xii.

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MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE OTTOMAN NAVY IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 547

an illustrated treatise on surgery in Ottoman Turkish on the basis of al-

Zahrawi’s work. He dedicated his Cerahiyyetü ’l-Haniyya (“Imperial Surgery”)

to the reigning sultan, Mehmed II (reg. 1451-81).¹⁴

Another example of a popular medical text is Salih b. Nasrallah Ibn Sallum’s

Ghayat al-itqan ﬁ tadbir badan al-insan (or The Culmination of Perfection in

the Treatment of the Human Body). Ibn Sallum (d. 1670), an Arab physician

from Aleppo, became the Head Physician (hekimba¤ı or reis etibba) of the

Ottoman Empire and was an intimate of Sultan Mehmet IV (reg. 1648-87).

Shortly after the appearance of this Arabic work it was translated into Ottoman

Turkish by leading Ottoman physicians and the Sultan rewarded the author with

a fur coat.¹⁵Ibn Sallum’s writings enjoyed considerable popularity. His treatises

were copied time and again, both in Arabic and in Ottoman (many of them are

still to be found in libraries in Turkey and elsewhere). In his tract on therapy

and hygiene, Ibn Sallum included several folios dealing with weapon-generated

wounds in the section on surgery.¹⁶

The discussions in these medical texts, however, lack a historical context.

Thus, for example, medical treatises dealing with weapon wounds do not men-

tion whether these were inﬂicted in naval or land encounters, even though each

required a different sort of treatment. In fact, it is not even clear whether such

injuries were indeed sustained in military combat to begin with.¹⁷Furthermore,

14

Several publications on speciﬁc aspects of this work by Turkish medical historians have

recently appeared in medical journals. See, for example, Osman Sabuncuoglu, “Early Color

Illustrations of Psychiatric Treatment Methods, as Drawn by Physician Serefeddin

Sabuncuoglu (1385-1470).” The American Journal of Psychiatry 163.12 (December 2006):

2071; H. Oguz, “Ophthalmic Chapters of ⁄erefeddin Sabuncuoglu’s Illustrated Surgical Book

(Cerrahiyyetü ’l Haniyye) in the 15th century.” Annals of Ophthalmology 38.1 (March 2006):

49-52; G. Bademci, F. Batay, H. Sabuncuoglu, “First Detailed Description of Axial Traction

Techniques by ⁄erefeddin Sabuncuoglu in the 15th Century.” European Spine Journal 14.8

(October 2005): 810-2; A. Verit, S. Aksoy, H. Kafali, F. F. Verit, “Urologic Techniques of

⁄erefeddin Sabuncuoglu in the 15th Century Ottoman Period.” Urology 62.4 (October 2003):

776-8.

15

Muhammad b. Mustafa Rashed, Tarih-i Rashed (√stanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1282H)

vol. I: 96.

16

Salih b. Nasrallah Ibn Sall‚m, Ghay®t al-itq®n f¬ tadb¬r badan al-ins®n (Cambridge

University Library, Add. 3532): fol. 261v-269v. For other references, see C. Brockelmann,

Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1937-1949): S II 666-7.

17

In early modern Ottoman society, a large percentage of the male population, of all

social echelons, bore arms. In all Ottoman cities, especially Istanbul, there were many young

men quick to anger and with too much time on their hands, ready to draw a weapon at an

insult. In this charged environment, the likelihood of arguments deteriorating to violent and

even fatal quarrels was high. Walter G. Andrews and Mehmet Kalpaklı, The Age of the

Beloveds: Love and the Beloved in Early-Modern Ottoman and European Culture and Society

(Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2005): Ch. 8 “To Die For . . . Love and

Violence in the Age of the Beloveds”: 251-69.

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548

MIRI SHEFER MOSSENSOHN

discussions of weapon-generated wounds in Ottoman medical treatises were few

in the ﬁrst place. In Ibn Sallum’s case, for example, of roughly 300 folios only

eight or so are devoted to wounds from various weapons. Whether these brief

discussions tell us that weapon wounds were a rare clinical occurrence or sim-

ply indicate the limits of contemporary knowledge, they certainly suggest that

the treatment of such injuries, and perhaps military medicine in general, gener-

ated little interest in the Ottoman medical literary-scientiﬁc community.

It is also useful to remember that Ottoman medical treatises, like those of

earlier Muslim societies, were not written in order to discuss medical clinical

experience; nor did they presume to report case studies. Thus, in boasting med-

ical knowledge founded on actual clinical experiences, authors of medical com-

pendia sought to assert their authority rather than report the epistemological

sources of their knowledge.¹⁸

Moreover, we really do not know whether these or other medical treatises

including knowledge possibly pertaining to military situations were standard

texts for Ottoman medical students. The matter of medical training in the

Ottoman Empire in general is still a debated issue.¹⁹Our knowledge about mil-

itary medical training is mainly indirect and derives from documents like the

1768 petition of the imperial Head Surgeon to the sultan.²⁰The Head Surgeon

requested that one Haci Abu Bekir be appointed as the Army Head Surgeon.

The document emphasizes Haci Abu Bekir’s virtues, which included his mas-

tery of te¤rih (the technical term for anatomy) from his studies at the

Süleymaniye medical school (this imperial complex in Istanbul which was built

in the middle of the sixteenth century was named after its founder, Süleyman I,

and also included a hospital). According to some Turkish scholars, attendance

to anatomy courses at the Süleymaniye medical school was a condition for a

surgeon’s appointment to the imperial palace.²¹However, by the early modern

18

For a discussion of medicine as literature and social activity in the Muslim Middle

Ages, see Lawrence I. Conrad, “Scholarship and Social Context in the Near East.” In

Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions, ed. Don Bates (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1995): 81-101; Cristina Álvarez-Millán, “Greaco-Roman Case Histories and

their Inﬂuence on Medieval Islamic Clinical Accounts.” Social History of Medicine 12

(1999): 19-43; Cristina Álvarez-Millán, “Practice versus Theory: Tenth-Century Case

Histories from Islamic Middle East.” Social History of Medicine 13 (2000): 293-306.

19

A good starting point for the state-of-the-art is Nil Sarı, “Educating the Ottoman

Physician.” Tıp Tarihi Ara¤tırmaları 2 (1988): 40-64, also available on http://www.mus-

limheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?ArticleID=538.

20

Ahmet Süheyl Ünver, “Süleymaniye Darü¤¤ifasında Fenni Te¤rihi Tahsil Eden Cerrahlardan

Biri Hakkında.” Türk Tıp Tarihi Arkivi 5.19-20 (1942): 37-8.

21

Nil Sarı and Ali H. Bayat. “The Medical Organization at the Ottoman Court.” Studies

in History of Medicine and Science, n.s. 16 (1999-2000): 41.

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MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE OTTOMAN NAVY IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 549

period, the term te¤rih, as used in the Muslim medical context, did not only

denote a description of the human body, but could also refer to an empirical

application in the form of dissection (this mid-eighteenth-century document con-

tinues this linguistically blurred state of affairs). The nominee could well have

excelled in anatomy, in the theoretical body of knowledge, in surgery, in clini-

cal skills, or in a combination of them. Thus we do not know what type of edu-

cation Haci Abu Bekir acquired that made him especially qualiﬁed to act as a

military surgeon.²²

The Organization of Medical Care for the Ottoman Armed Forces

The Ottoman army sustained a medical apparatus for combat forces.

Physicians and surgeons were appointed to armed units and fortresses through-

out the empire.²³In various cases some kind of an evacuation system was set

up, as becomes clear from two documents from the end of 1110 / 1698. These

texts refer to the salaries of the men operating the wagons transferring sick or

injured soldiers in the Balkans to Soﬁa.²⁴But despite the dozens of documents

in the archives pertaining to such appointments (which have yet to be investi-

gated closely), the reality was that until the nineteenth century the Ottoman mil-

itary forces had no permanent posts for medical staff. Physicians and surgeons

were not an integral part of military divisions in the army or the navy but were

assigned ad-hoc to various units, as part of the preparations for an upcoming

battle. Orders for military medical appointments indicate that all appointees con-

tinued to belong to the medical corps, which was attached to the imperial court,

and that the medical men in question were only temporarily assigned to the

army for the duration of a speciﬁc campaign. Military physicians and surgeons

thus remained part of the palace medical corps.²⁵

The Ottoman palace and central administration were not exclusively civilian

institutions. Some groups acted as reserve-duty units, while others, who were not

called upon to ﬁght, were expected to carry out their civilian tasks while accom-

panying the army into battle. For example, the select group of servants sur-

rounding the sultan, who were attached to the enderûn-ı hümayûn, the “imperial

22

Part of the on-going debate on Ottoman medical training and the roles played by med-

ical schools is whether the Süleymaniye medical school had a military character. Tuncay

Zorlu, “The Medical Medrese of Süleymaniyya.” In International Congress on Learning and

Education in the Ottoman World Istanbul, 12-15 April 1999, ed. Ali Çaksu (Istanbul:

IRCICA, 2001): 65.

23

Sarı and Bayat. “The Medical Organization at the Ottoman Court”: 39-40.

BOA, Cevdet Sihhiye: 1074.

Sarı and Bayat. “The Medical Organization at the Ottoman Court”: 39-40.

24

25

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MIRI SHEFER MOSSENSOHN

interior service,” also had military duties. These servants were expected to join

the sultan as a ﬁghting unit under his command whenever he left the palace in

order to lead a campaign. These personal servants of the sultan—from his pri-

vate dresser to the royal müezzin (the caller to the ﬁve daily prayer)—were hier-

archically organized by way of titles, salaries, and clothes. This elaborate

hierarchy reﬂected the military structure, in which servants had a dual task—

their regular palace duties in addition to a military post.²⁶Those who merely

continued performing their civilian tasks while accompanying the army to bat-

tle included the clerks who were employed in various branches of the imperial

state council (divan-i hümâyun). For example, the Grand Vizier, the head of the

Ottoman imperial council and the central bureaucracy, took active part in mili-

tary campaigns and could be absent from the capital for extended periods of

time. In order to safeguard the continuity of the state administration, the Grand

Vizier was followed by an “army” of clerks who traveled with the tools of their

trade in order to keep record of state affairs and issue documents.²⁷

Four more examples of appointments of physicians to military posts from the

same period illustrate that transfers from a “civilian” to a “military” post were

not unique events. During the month of Rajab 1085/October 1674 three men, all

members of the palace medical corps, were assigned to accompany the army on

a campaign. The appointments concerned a surgeon, a physician, and a new

Chief Physician to the Army (ordu-yu hekimba¤ı).²⁸As in Hasan’s case, the

deeds of appointment of these medical men were the products of internal

bureaucratic correspondence but they contain less information, referring only to

rank and salary, without mentioning their speciﬁc military assignments. The fact

that several physicians and surgeons were appointed to the army during a rela-

tively short period of time may have been connected with the 1670s Polish cam-

paigns under Sultan Mehmed IV (reg. 1648-87).²⁹

26

Uzuçar¤ılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Saray Te¤kilatı: 297-357.

27

√smail Hakkı Uzuçar¤ılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Merkez ve Bahriye Te¤kilâtı (3. baskı;

Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1988): 82.

28

In each case, imperial agents (vekil) working under the comptroller of the barley sup-

plies (arpa emini) or the nüzül emini (the commissary-general of the army) received a letter

of notice (tezkere) to issue daily rations of various food items, such as loaves of bread,

grains, and barley. BOA, Ali Emiri Tasniﬁ, 4. Mehmet dosyası: 1010, 1463, 3109.

29

The expansion of Poland into the Ukraine, the conﬂict between Cossacks recognizing

Polish suzerainty and their Tatar opponents, the Cossacks’ attacks on the southern shores of

the Black Sea and reaching as far as the vicinity of Istanbul, and the religious tensions

between Roman Catholics and Orthodox in Poland and the Ukraine, all provided opportuni-

ties for the Ottomans to intervene in Eastern Europe. In the late 1660s the Ottomans, led by

Grand Vizier Köprülüzade Ahmed Pa¤a, annexed Podolia as an Ottoman province and dic-

tated Polish tribute payments (1672). Suraiya Faroqhi, “Crisis and Change, 1590-1699”:

ch. 15, “The Main Political Events.” In An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman

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MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE OTTOMAN NAVY IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 551

The fourth example of a member of the palace medical corps who was

appointed to a military post is found in a petition (arzuhal) by Büyük

Hayatizade Mustafa Feyzi (d. 1692), the Royal Chief Physician (ser etibba-ı

hassa) under Süleyman II (reg. 1687-91). He requested that the sultan appoint

Süleymanzade Ahmed Efendi, a member of the court medical corps, to the posi-

tion of Chief Physician to the Army, arguing that he was the most suitable man

for the job. Mustafa Feyzi asked the sultan to issue a sultanic writ formalizing

the new post and rank of Ahmed Efendi, who had in fact already left Istanbul

to join the army on its march to the front. Again the speciﬁc military circum-

stances were not discussed, and the document does not bear a date.³⁰In this

case the army-on-campaign may have had to do with the Ottoman-Habsburg

wars (1683-99) which raged throughout Süleyman II’s reign, but once more we

cannot be certain.

As the separate appointments of a physician and a surgeon in 1674 indicate,

the Ottomans distinguished between different types of medical practitioners.

Physicians who held a formal position in the Ottoman establishment practiced

humoralism, a medical system inherited from Antiquity and expanded and

adapted by many generations of Muslim physicians, according to which one had

to treat patients as an integral entity, composed of body and mind, a human

being situated in his natural and moral environment. Surgeons, on the other

hand, specialized in certain wounds and treatment techniques, such as fractures

or blood-letting. This differentiation also had a ﬁnancial component: physicians

were more highly regarded and their salaries in Ottoman imperial hospitals indi-

cate that they clearly ranked higher than surgeons and other medical practition-

ers, like ophthalmologists (kehhal). These professional distinctions were,

however, largely theoretical, and in everyday civilian medical practice, the roles

of surgeons and physicians tended to blend into one another. Although this may

well also have been the case with medical men in the Ottoman army, the

paucity of sources does not support any solid conclusions.

All the above-cited documents refer to ongoing campaigns as the justiﬁcation

for the transfer orders of the physicians involved. This suggests that they were

appointed to the army “on loan.” The doctors were apparently expected to

return to their original civilian positions once the war was over. But the fact

that these physicians were selected from among a rather small, elite group of

medical personnel attached to the imperial palaces does not necessarily indicate

that they were excellent physicians. We cannot determine whether those who

Empire, 1300-1914, eds. Halil Inalcik and Donald Quataert (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1994): 426-8.

30

BOA, Ali Emiri Tasniﬁ, 2. Süleyman dosyası: 1782.

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MIRI SHEFER MOSSENSOHN

were transferred to the Ottoman army were particularly ﬁt—physically, emo-

tionally, and professionally—to serve as army physicians. It was only during the

nineteenth century that physicians attached to the Ottoman army were supposed

to specialize in military medicine in all its forms. Before that time, their med-

ical expertise lay elsewhere and military medicine was something they did on

the side.

MEDICAL CARE FOR THE OARSMEN OF THE OTTOMAN NAVY

The appointment of Hasan as surgeon to the dockyard prison raises the ques-

tion of why the Ottoman authorities were willing to bear the costs of this form

of health care. One answer is that this policy conforms to the Islamic law and

norms governing the treatment of prisoners of war and convicts. The matter of

captives (asirs), either Muslims or non-Muslims captured by other Muslims, was

dealt with in various legal and moral treatises discussing proper conduct in war

(jus in bello). The treatment of these people went beyond mere theoretical legal

debates, since the matter of captives and their redemption was a regular reality.

Prisoners should be shielded from heat and cold, and provided with cloths and

treatment for their illnesses. In other words, they should be treated fairly and

mercifully, much in line with the obligatory treatment of orphans.³¹

But there was also a military rationale behind the health care offered to the

inmates at the dockyard. These prisoners were not as marginal as they might

seem; on the contrary, they fulﬁlled a critical role in the Ottoman navy, serv-

ing as oarsmen in the navy; this a vital task for which it was difﬁcult to ﬁnd

either willing or cheap alternative sources of manpower.

In the late seventeenth century the Ottoman Mediterranean ﬂeet was still pre-

dominantly a galley navy. The high proportion of galleys made the oarsmen

who powered the ships very important to the Ottomans.³²Compared to the

31

Troy S. Thomas, “Prisoners of War in Islam: A Legal Inquiry.” Muslim World 87

(1997): 50; M. Khadduri et al., “ºarb.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, eds. C. E.

Bosworth et al. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001) vol. III: 180-94; Khaled Abou El Fadl, “Between

Functionalism and Morality: The Juristic Debates on the Conduct of War.” In Islamic Ethics

of Life: Abortion, War and Euthanasia, ed. Jonathan E. Brockopp (Columbia, SC: University

of South California Press, 2003): 115-8, 127n.66; Sohail H. Hashmi, “Saving and Taking Life

in War: Three Modern Views.” In Islamic Ethics of Life, ed. Jonathan Brockopp (Columbia:

University of South Carolina Press, 2002): 144-6.

32

On the variety of ships used in the Ottoman ﬂeet, the majority of which were rowing

ships, see √dris Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Te¤kilâtı: XVII. Yüzyılda Tersâne-i Âmire (Ankara:

Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1992): 83-97; √dris Bostan, “Ottoman Maritime Arsenals and

Ship-Building Technology in the 16th and 17th Centuries.” In The Great Ottoman-Turkish

Civilization, ed. Kemal Çiçek vol. 3: Philosophy and Institutions (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye,

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MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE OTTOMAN NAVY IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 553

wind, oarsmen formed an inefﬁcient source of motive power, because a pair of

human hands could only produce a fraction of a horse-power. On the other

hand, oarsmen were comparatively reliable. They could accelerate on command

to catch or to evade an opponent, and they could even go into reverse. Sailing

ships, although faster and better suited to cover longer distances, were depen-

dent on the caprice of winds, at times came to a standstill, and were unable to

evade a closing enemy vessel powered by oarsmen. Some types of ships com-

bined both methods of energy, but ultimately sails prevailed, not only in oceanic

voyages but also in the Mediterranean. The Ottomans started to integrate sail-

ing ships into their arsenal of vessels after noting their superiority in their wars

against the Venetians. The number of galleys diminished accordingly, and with

it the need for rowers. However, the shift occurred only during the eighteenth

century, long after Hasan’s appointment.³³

Rowers, like other crew members, were needed especially in preparation for

an upcoming voyage. Naval activities were generally characterized by the alter-

nation of peaks and slumps. As a result the imperial arsenal often only had a

limited permanent staff and relied on drafted labor in periods of peak activity.³⁴

Due to the seasonal limitations concerning activities in the Mediterranean,

spring tended to be the busiest season. This probably explains the date of the

document authorizing Hasan’s appointment to treat patients at the Istanbul

dockyard; the beginning of Ramazan 1105 corresponds to the end of April, i.e.

the spring, when Ottoman naval forces resumed their activities after the winter

anchoring. This was exactly the time when the Ottoman navy needed healthy

and strong oarsmen to sail its ships the most.

The Recruitment of Oarsmen: Social Backgrounds

Oarsmen constituted a large proportion of the galleys’ crews and recruiting

them each year was one of the main concerns of Ottoman admirals (kapudan

2000): 741-2; Uzuçar¤ılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Merkez ve Bahriye Te¤kilâtı: 455-79. See also

Colin Mitchell, “Sixteenth Century Ottoman Naval Strategy and Its Geopolitical Implications

for the Mediterranean Frontier.” McGill Journal of Middle East Studies 2 (1994): 106.

33

John H. Pryor, Geography, Technology, and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1988): ch. 2 “The Ships”: 25-86; John Francis Jr. Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys:

Changing Technology and Meditearrenean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century (London

and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1964): 68; Anthony Lutrell, “Late-Medieval

Galley Oarsmen,” In Le Genti del Mare Mediterraneo, ed. Luigi de Rosa (Napoli: Lucio

Pironti Editore, 1981) vol. I: 87-8.

34

Suraiya Faroqhi, “Labor Recruitment and Control in the Ottoman Empire (Sixteenth and

Seventeenth Centuries).” In Manufacturing in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, 1500-1950,

ed. Donald Quataert (Albany, NY: State University New York Press, 1994): 26.

JESHO 50,4_f8_542-568III 11/14/07 3:42 PM Page 554

554

MIRI SHEFER MOSSENSOHN

pa¤a). The number of rowers per ship times the many ships in the Ottoman

Mediterranean ﬂeet totaled thousands of men. In the naval expedition against

Rhodes in 1522, the Ottoman navy recruited no less than 40,000 rowers. This

was not an exceptional number: tens of thousands of oarsmen were used in

other major naval campaigns as well.³⁵

The number of hands needed to propel Ottoman galleys was not the only rea-

son for the high demand for rowers; it was also caused by their high turnover.

Many sailors were lost on naval campaigns, due to ﬁghting, loss to the enemy,

or drowning. Furthermore, during docking periods some occasionally managed

to escape. All these circumstances necessitated the constant recruitment of fresh

manpower. In addition to the hazards that all sailors were subjected to, rowing

was a particularly heavy and exhausting activity, which further increased the

turnover of oarsmen. The situation was made worse by the poor living condi-

tions on the ships, as rowers had to sleep on their benches. Finally, ships in the

early modern period tended to be overcrowded and their crews usually suffered

from poor sanitary and hygienic conditions, deﬁcient nutrition, and a lack of

fresh drinking water, in terms of both quality and quantity.

For these reasons captives of all religious faiths and political loyalties were

most valuable prizes for Ottoman (and other) corsairs. All powers operating in

the Mediterranean used convicts and slaves in their ﬂeets. This made privateer-

ing a lucrative and respected occupation, which the authorities had difﬁculty

curbing.³⁶Across the Mediterranean, many sea captives were ransomed by rel-

atives, consuls, or local communities for a high price. Others were sent to work

on fortresses, walls, workshops, Christian convents, or palaces. Nevertheless, a

considerable number of captives were sent straight to the benches of the

Ottoman galleys, or they ended up there after having been sold to ship captains

or the naval authorities.³⁷

Shortage of manpower was a constant problem, which naturally became more

acute when a major war ﬂeet needed to be prepared for battle. The Ottomans

35

Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Te¤kilâtı: 187; Mitchell, “Sixteenth Century Ottoman Naval

Strategy”: 117.

36

Until well into the eighteenth century, despite the signing of several international diplo-

matic agreements, privateering remained a hazard to Mediterranean shipping. Gonçal López

Nadal, “Mediterranean Privateering between the Treatises of Utrecht and Paris, 1815-1856:

First Reﬂections.” In Pirates and Privateers: New Perspectives on the War on Trade in the

Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, eds. David J. Starkey et al. (Exeter: University if Exeter

Press, 1997): 106-25; Eyal Ginio, “Piracy and Redemption in the Aegean Sea during the First

Half of the Eighteenth Century.” Turcica 33 (2001): 135-47.

37

Pál Fodor, “Piracy, Ransom Slavery and Trade: French Participation in the Liberation

of Ottoman Slaves from Malta during the 1620s.” Turcica 33 (2001): 124-5.

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MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE OTTOMAN NAVY IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 555

did not necessarily keep their navy and naval crews shipshape during peacetime,

so quite a lot of able men had to be assembled and trained in a short period.³⁸

This became even worse when the Ottomans ambitiously decided to launch two

naval campaigns at the same time, one in the Mediterranean, the other in the

Black Sea.³⁹As a result the state had to resort to unorthodox measures in order

to secure enough men for the ships. Various “marginal” groups in Istanbul’s

society were targeted for galley duty during such times.

One “creative,” method of recruiting fresh oarsmen was to catch young male

newcomers to Istanbul coming from the villages of Anatolia, who had no sta-

ble job or place of residence, and send them to the dockyard. The authorities

thus simultaneously dealt with another problem, that of clearing the streets of

the capital from potential troublemakers. According to Mustafa NaÆima (d. c.

1716), the Ottoman bureaucrat and historian, in the spring of 1652 (Jumada I

1062), when the Ottoman Venetian war over Crete had entered its seventh year,

the need for oarsmen was so pressing that young men were forced out of shops,

taverns, and marketplaces and were press-ganged into navy service.⁴⁰

The Ottomans also levied various groups and demanded a certain percentage

of the male population. This practice began during the ﬁfteenth century and

came to produce most of the oarsmen needed for the ﬂeet. The recruits could

buy themselves out of active duty by paying large amounts of money (bedel),

thereby covering the state’s expenses in hiring other oarsmen. In certain cases

the authorities may even have preferred to receive the ransom money instead

of the actual recruits, because the men who were drafted from in-land provinces

often proved to be useless as rowers, for example due to sea sickness. The pop-

ulation on whom the “rowing tax” was imposed included certain provinces in

the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Aegean Sea, as well as certain Istanbul esnaf

(guilds), including porters, tavern/cabaret managers (meyhaneci), owners of

small boats, makers of boza (the popular beer-like brew), and the non-Muslim

communities of Istanbul: the Jews, Armenians, and Greeks.⁴¹It is believed that

38

The Ottoman neglect of the navy in peacetime is presented as an inherent weakness.

Svatopluk Soucek, “Naval Aspects of the Ottoman Conquest of Rhodes, Cyprus, and Crete.”

Studia Islamica 98.98 (2004): 254-6.

39

Rhoads Murphey, “The Ottoman Resurgence in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean:

The Gamble and its Results.” Mediterranean Historical Review 8 (1993): 190-1.

40

Mustafa NaÆima, Tarih-i Naima: Rawdat al-Husayn ﬁ Khulasat Akhbar al-Khaﬁqin

(√stanbul: Matbaa-i Amire, 1281H) vol. V: 200-1.

41

Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Te¤kilâtı: 187-204; Imber, “The Navy of Süleyman the

Magniﬁcent”: 265-9; Colin Imber,The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650 (Basingstoke, Hampshire:

Palgrave, 2002): ch. 8, “The Fleet”: 305-8; Carlo M. Cipolla, Guns, Sails and Empires:

Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion, 1400-1700 (New

York: Minerva Press, 1965): 161-2.

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556

MIRI SHEFER MOSSENSOHN

these groups were targeted for speciﬁc reasons: the managers of taverns were

penalized for their discreditable trade; boza makers and sellers were linked to

the (morally questionable) cabarets; boatmen and porters were chosen for their

sea skills and physical abilities, while non-Muslims were only targeted when the

recruitment of too many boatmen and porters threatened to destabilize regular

transportation services in the capital.⁴²

Another group that was used as oarsmen by the Ottomans consisted of slaves.

Those who were bought by the arsenal for this speciﬁc purpose were called

gebran-i miri or miri esirler, state slaves.⁴³Others were provided by their

private owners who hired them out to the Ottoman ﬂeet. At the peak of this

practice of slave-taking, which coincided with the culmination of its sixteenth-

century clashes with Spain, the Ottoman Empire had somewhere between twelve

and twenty thousand Christian galeotti, of whom about a third were the sultan’s,

the rest belonged to individual pashas and beys.⁴⁴According to Paul Rycaut

(1629-1700), the English diplomat who served in various posts in Istanbul and

Izmir for more than twenty years, Ottoman slave owners “rented’ out their

slaves for hefty sums of money to serve in the spring and summer voyages. In

this way they earned thousands of aspers, the Ottoman silver coin of akçe, per

voyage and if their slaves survived the hardships, they were returned to their

original owners.⁴⁵

Hard labor as an oarsman was also a form of punishment for convicted crim-

inals. From the sixteenth century onward sentences to the kürek (lit. “oar”)

became customary in Ottoman courts. The punishment appeared frequently in

the Ottoman kanunnames, the sultanic codes of law/regulations as well, but it

never appears to have become the ﬁxed penalty for speciﬁc crimes. Instead,

forced labor at the oars was a punishment for a variety of misdeeds, and dur-

ing some periods it was applied almost indiscriminately. The kürek was not reserved

for major offences, such as murder, heresy, larceny, or highway robbery (for

which the sentence was usually the death penalty), and the kidnapping of chil-

dren (the penalty for which was severe corporal punishment). At times it was

also administered for lesser crimes, such as sexual offences, gambling, consumption

of alcohol, false testimonies, bearing arms, forgery of documents and coins,

pick-pocketing, or selling cereals to non-Ottoman subjects (in such cases the

42

Faroqhi, “Labor Recruitment and Control in the Ottoman Empire (Sixteenth and Seventeenth

Centuries)”: 29.

43

Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Te¤kilâtı: 209-12.

Robert Davis, “The Geography of Slaving in the Early Modern Mediterranean 1500-

44

1800.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37 (2007): 65.

45

Paul Rycaut, The Present State of the Ottoman Empire . . . (London 1668): 213-4.

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MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE OTTOMAN NAVY IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 557

usual penalties were lashes, ﬁnes, or public humiliation). Not surprisingly, the

kürek was far more common in times of pressing imperial need for oarsmen.⁴⁶

Yet another group of forced oarsmen is mentioned in Hasan’s deed of

appointment: captives and prisoners of war. Because Mediterranean naval oper-

ations tended to be confronted with chronic shortages of oarsmen for the gal-

leys, ships were less valuable than their crews. It was therefore common

practice to ram and board enemy ships, instead of sinking them—but not in

order to take over the vessel, but to capture the crew. Although ships were very

costly to produce, in terms of the ﬁnancial resources and man hours invested in

them, their crews were worth still more. The outcome of the 1560 European

coalition campaign near Jerba by the North African shores illustrates this point.

The encounter ended in a clear Ottoman victory, and it took years before the

Papal, Spanish, and Sicilian navies were restored to their former power. They

lost hundreds of ships, some being captured, others sunk. The real loss, how-

ever, was in skilled manpower: hundreds of sea captains, technically proﬁcient

crew members, seasoned sailors and soldiers, as well as thousands of oarsmen.⁴⁷

Likewise the Ottomans felt that the principal damage of their defeat at Lepanto

(1571) consisted of the men they lost. This, at least, is how Mustafa Ali, a late

sixteenth-century Ottoman historian and bureaucrat, saw it.⁴⁸

The exact number of people made prisoner by the Ottomans is unknown, but

in 1654, after a successful voyage season, the navy could present the sultan

with 800 captured men (enough oarsmen to man four ships).⁴⁹How many of

them were Europeans—in either this particular season or in general—is equally

unclear, but the risk of Ottoman captivity was clearly part of the public aware-

ness throughout pre-modern Europe. England, for example, is estimated to have

lost thousands of mariners and passengers to Ottoman corsairs, particularly

those of the North African principalities. In Algiers alone they were thought to

number 5,000 around the middle of the seventeenth century, and their fate was

high on the agenda of the English political and trade authorities.⁵⁰

46

Uriel Heyd, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law, ed. V. L. Menage (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1973): 304-7; Imber, “The Navy of Süleyman the Magniﬁcent”: 268-9; Imber,The

Ottoman Empire, 1300-1650: 307-8; Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Te¤kilâtı: 213-20.

47

The Atlantic oceanic tradition was different. Anglo-American navies required their

crews to guard the ships and not abandon them in any event, even at the price of loosing the

crew’s lives. Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys: 53, 130-2.

48

Soucek, “Naval Aspects of the Ottoman Conquest of Rhodes, Cyprus, and Crete”: 245-6.

Murphey, “The Ottoman Resurgence in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean”: 191.

Nabil Matar, “Introduction: England and Mediterranean Captivity, 1577-1704.” In

49

50

Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England,

ed. Daniel J. Vitkus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001): 5-6, 14-5; Nabil Matar,

Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University

JESHO 50,4_f8_542-568III 11/14/07 3:42 PM Page 558

558

MIRI SHEFER MOSSENSOHN

Edward Webbe, an English gunner in Her Majesty’s service, was one of

these English captives. As a slave he served in galleys in the Ottoman dock-

yard in Istanbul for ﬁve years. After proving his skill with cannons, he served

in the Ottoman army, but later was put in prison.⁵¹Webbe described the harsh

reality of life onboard Ottoman navy vessels. He recounts the prisoners being

chained to the walls of the ships on which they served as rowers, bitten daily

by ﬂeas, mosquitoes, and other bugs, and fed and watered only enough to sus-

tain them:

The Manner of our usage was thus. First, we were shaven head and face, and then a

shirt of cotton and breeches of the same were put upon us, our legs and feet left naked.

And by one of the feet is each slave chained with a great chain to the galley, and our

hands fastened with a pair of manacles. The food which I and others ate, was very

black, far worse that horse bread. And our drink was stinking water, unless it was when

we came to the places where we took in fresh water. At which time we supposed our

diet to be very dainty. Thus, as I said before, I remained ﬁve years in this miserable

estate, wonderfully beaten and misused every day. There have I seen of my fellows

when they have been so weak as they could not row by reason of sickness and faint-

ness; where the Turks laid upon them as on horses, and beat them in such sort, as oft

times they died. And then [they] threw them into the sea.⁵²

Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1576-1635), a Bohemian baron who

joined a Habsburg embassy to the court of Murat III (reg. 1574-95) at a young

age, also recorded his experiences as a captive under the Ottomans. During the

years 1593-6 he was imprisoned in the Istanbul arsenal and in the fortress of

Rümeli Hisarı, north of Istanbul along the Bosphorus. According to his testi-

mony, some 700 foreign prisoners were assigned galley duty during that time.⁵³

Press, 1999): 46, 76-7; Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain 1558-1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1998); Sonia P. Anderson, An English Consul in Turkey: Paul Rycaut at

Smyrna, 1667-1678 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989): 114. In their turn, captured Ottomans

(many of whom originated from North Africa, but also from Anatolia) served as oarsmen in

European ﬂeets, for example in Spain, Malta, or Venice. Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Te¤kilâtı:

212; Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen: 20, 24-6, 199n7; Matar, “Introduction: England

and Mediterranean Captivity, 1577-1704”: 9-10.

51

One modern scholar was skeptical of the historical accuracy of Webbe’s account of his

captivity and regarded his Travels as a work of literature. H. W. L. Hime, “The Travels of

Edward Webbe.” The English Historical Review 31.123 (Jul. 1916): 464-70. Fact or ﬁction,

Webbe’s account proved popular and was reprinted four times by 1600. Matar, “Introduction:

England and Mediterranean Captivity, 1577-1704”: 3.

52

Edward Webbe, The Rare and Most Wonderful Thinges which Edward Webbe an Englishman

Brone, Hath Seene and Passed in His Trouble Some Travails in the . . . (London, 1590)

reprinted in the series The English Experience, Its Record in Early Printed Books Published

in Facsimile, 564 (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1973): 8-9. A modern version is

cited in Kenneth Parker, ed. Early Modern Tales of Orient: A Critical Anthology (London

and New York: Routledge, 1999): 39.

53

Vratislav Vaclav Mitrovic, Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz:

What he Saw in the Turkish Metropolis, Constantinople; Experienced in His Captivity; and

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MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE OTTOMAN NAVY IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 559

The conscription of marginal groups for naval duty, especially as oarsmen,

was not only common practice for the Ottomans but for all Mediterranean pow-

ers, being an established tradition in those regions for hundreds of years. As a

result the ethnicities of crews and passengers were often mixed. In order to sup-

plement the various mercenaries (Greek, Italians, and Spaniards) who volun-

teered their services,⁵⁴the Ottoman navies forced Italian and English captives to

support their military efforts. The crews of the Ottoman ﬂeets thus displayed a

tremendous diversity, including Europeans, Circassians, Arabs, Maghrebis, Gujartis,

Ethiopian Christians, and other non-Muslims from Black Africa.⁵⁵

Despite the impression of many Europeans that the Ottomans drew heavily

on foreign slaves and captives to man their ships, they were in fact reluctant to

rely too much on them. After the peak of Ottoman slave-taking in the middle

of the sixteenth century, the number of galley slaves dropped considerably.⁵⁶

A

possible explanation could be found in Katip Çelebi’s Tuhfetüæl Kibar ﬁ Esfar-

il-Bihar, a history of Ottoman naval engagements for the years 1067/1656,

which provides recommendations for, and criticisms of, naval affairs and infor-

mation on the ﬂeet and its armament. This seventeenth-century scholar and

scribe in the ﬁnancial bureau of the army pointed out the dangers of employ-

ing Christian crews on Ottoman ships. The Ottomans, like other Mediterranean

naval powers, were weary of slaves who could scarcely be trusted to ﬁght hard

for their masters. Çelebi certainly advised the imperial navy to limit the num-

ber of non-Muslim slaves onboard each ship to ensure that they would not out-

number or out-power the Ottoman Muslims. According to Çelebi, there were known

cases of ships that were “kidnapped” during combat by their Christian crews.⁵⁷

We have seen that even among those crew members who were free Muslims,

many were forced into service rather than having joined of their free will. The

After His Happy Return to his Country, Committed to Writing in the Year of Our Lord 1599

(literally trans. from the Bohemian by A. H. Wratislaw; London: Bell and Daldy, 1862): 127.

54

Fleet, “Early Turkish Naval Activities”: 136-8.

Giancarlo Casale, “The Ethnic Composition of Ottoman Ship Crews and the ‘Rumi

55

Challenge’ to Portuguese Identity.” Medieval Encounter 13 (2007): 122-44.

56

Davis, “The Geography of Slaving in the Early Modern Mediterranean 1500-1800”:

72n22.

57

Katip Çelebi, Tuhfetüæl Kibar ﬁ Esfar-il-Bihar (√stanbul: Matbaa-i Bahriye, 1329H

[1913]): 161-2; Murat Çizakça, “Ottomans and the Mediterranean: An Analysis of the

Ottoman Shipbuilding Industry as Reﬂected by the Arsenal Registers of Istanbul 1529-1650.”

In Le Genti del Mare Mediterraneo, ed. Luigi de Rosa (Napoli: Lucio Pironti Editore, 1981)

vol. II: 787; Lutrell, “Late-Medieval Galley Oarsmen”: 91-2. On the whole, claims Faroqhi,

slaves—even state-owned—were inconsequential in terms of the Ottoman economy. Although

some slave artisans acquired an important role in some local economies, like Bursa or

Algiers, the overall number of slaves remained relatively low. Faroqhi, “Labor Recruitment

and Control in the Ottoman Empire (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)”: 23-4.

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560

MIRI SHEFER MOSSENSOHN

Ottoman authorities exercised various forms of coercion on people to row for

the state. Moreover, the Ottoman ﬂeets made use of slaves, prisoners, and con-

victs, although the authorities were careful not to become dependent on them.

In the 1660s over ninety percent of the Ottoman navy consisted of free men,

with only ten percent slaves, prisoners of war, or convicts.⁵⁸Nevertheless, their

number was high enough to justify building special prisons on the dockyard

(zindan-i tersane).

The Dockyard Prison and its Hospital

The largest and most famous navy prison, which served as a model for other

gaols, was located within the premises of the Istanbul arsenal in Kasimpa¤a, on

the northern shore of the Golden Horn. The prison was constructed as a com-

plex encompassing several buildings. Besides the dungeon, it included a

mosque, an oven, a kitchen, a bathhouse, and a fountain. The ﬁrst buildings

were established under Beyazid II (reg. 1481-1512), whose reign was noted for

the expansion of the Ottoman navy. The complex was renovated several times

over the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, until the authorities decided in

1667 to abandon what was considered by then ramshackle old buildings and

built a new prison instead.⁵⁹

The Istanbul navy prison was sizeable not only in terms of its physical

dimensions, but also in terms of its capacity. Evliya Çelebi (c. 1611-1685), the

renowned Ottoman traveler, claimed that no less then 31,000 people were

interned in the navy prison during Süleyman I’s reign (1520-66).⁶⁰Evliya is

known for his tendency to exaggerate numbers, and the high ﬁgure probably

conveys that he was impressed by the jail’s capacity. More realistic numbers

are mentioned in a roll call conducted in the prison by the shipyard’s com-

mander (amin) on 12 Dhu al-Hijja 1114/29 April 1703. The document speciﬁes

that 120 of the 562 prisoners were sick or injured at that time.⁶¹

58

This certainly was different in the case of some European navies, which used convicts

and slaves almost exclusively. Jan Lacussan and Erik Jan Zürcher, “Introduction:

Conscription and Resistance. The Historical Context.” In Arming the State: Military

Conscription in the Middle East and Central Asia 1775-1925, ed. Erik J. Zürcher (London

and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1999): 5; Daniel Panzac, “The Ottoman Navy in the Heyday of

Sail.” In Arming the State: Military Conscription in the Middle East and Central Asia 1775-

1925, ed. Erik J. Zürcher (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1999): 42-3, 44-6.

59

BostanOsmanlı Bahriye Te¤kilâtı: 7, 11, 12-3; Bostan, “Ottoman Maritime Arsenals and

Ship-Building Technology in the 16th and 17th Centuries”: 739.

60

Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname (√stanbul: Matbaa-i ÆAmire, 1314H/1894) vol. I: 417.

Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Te¤kilâtı: 212.

61

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MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE OTTOMAN NAVY IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 561

Hasan’s appointment as a surgeon to the naval prison hospital thus was not

a novelty of the late seventeenth century. A budgetary report from the ﬁscal

year 1030-1/1621-2 already listed the salary of a surgeon and the medications

needed for sick inmates in the imperial dockyard prison.⁶²Operating a hospital

within a prison was a long standing tradition, at least from the end of the six-

teenth century.

Wenceslas Wratislaw testiﬁed that during his own captivity in the last decade

of the sixteenth century, the prison included three institutions or wings. One

wing was intended for prisoners and foreign captives who were considered

exceptional artisans and workers in the dockyard; the second was reserved for

prisoners who served as rowers; and the third was designated as the prison hos-

pital, where sick prisoners and old workers could rest comfortably. He does not

mention any professional medical care, but all Ottoman hospitals employed an

expert medical staff, and there is no reason to assume that the dockyards were

an exception.⁶³

Seventy years after Wratislaw’s stay there, the budget report for the

1075/1664 renovation of the Istanbul shipyard prison included a clause referring

to the stone walls dividing the space into separate rooms for Muslims and non-

Muslims prisoners, and separating the sick from the healthy inmates.⁶⁴

Developments in Ottoman Military Medicine

By the late seventeenth century military medicine was not yet acknowledged

as a discipline in its own right in the Ottoman Empire. Nor did the Ottomans

permanently assign physicians to military or naval units. As in other European

navies, formal positions for healers in the navy came relatively late. The Napoleonic

wars, from 1805 to 1815, marked an important transitional point in the evolu-

tion of military medicine.⁶⁵The same was true for the Ottoman Empire, as we

62

Ibid.

63

Mitrovic, Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz: 125-8; Bostan,

Osmanlı Bahriye Te¤kilâtı: 12.

64

Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Te¤kilâtı: 13.

A preliminary list of sources dealing with the change during the Napoleonic Wars

65

includes Jane Bowden-Dan, “Diet, Dirt and Discipline: Medical Developments in Nelson’s

Navy: Dr. John Snipe’s Contribution.” Mariner’s Mirror 90 (2004): 260-72; Charles Savona-

Ventura, “Military and Naval Hospitals in Malta in the Last Two Centuries.” Historia Hospitalium

22 (2000-1): 156-81; Mark Harrison, “Medicine and the Management of Modern Warfare.”

History of Science 34 (1996): 379-410; Paul E. Kopperman, “Medical Services in the British

Army, 1742-1783.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 34 (1979):

428-55; Richard L. Blanco, “The Development of British Military Medicine, 1793-1814.” Military

Affairs 38 (1974): 4-10; Owen H. Wangensteen, Sarah D. Wangensteen and Charles

F. Klinger, “Wound Management of Ambroise Parre and Dominique Larrey, Great French

JESHO 50,4_f8_542-568III 11/14/07 3:42 PM Page 562

562

MIRI SHEFER MOSSENSOHN

can see early signs of change taking place during the eighteenth century, which

would mature a century later.

Around 1700 only some of the bigger Ottoman ships had a surgeon onboard

from time to time. Being mentioned in salary lists of some Ottoman ﬂag-ships,

surgeons were, for example, appointed to the galleons of the Ottoman vice-

admiral (in 1693-5) and of the admiral (in the years 1696-1701).⁶⁶The fact that

these men were onboard certain ships only during certain years supports the

notion that their presence was not standard policy in the Ottoman navy in the

early modern period—not even on these leading vessels, let alone on all other

ships of the ﬂeet.

The importance of medicine in naval operations rose considerably in the

beginning of the nineteenth century, when the Ottomans organized new

and modern armies. First, Selim III (reg. 1789-1807) initiated the short-lived

Nizam-i Cedid (“The New Order”) and Mahmud II (reg. 1808-39) subsequently

founded the Asakir-i Mansure-yi Muhammadiye (“The Victorious Soldiers of

Muhammad”). These new armies were patterned on the western model, which

called for the attachment of a physician—holding the rank of a commissioned

ofﬁcer—to all military units, including the navy. In the new naval code of reg-

ulations, announced by Selim III in 1805, all battle ships were assigned a per-

manent medical staff, consisting of one doctor and one surgeon. The ships’

medical team came under the command of the Chief Physician to the Imperial

Navy (donanma-yı hümayûn hekimba¤ısı) and the Chief Surgeon to the Imperial

Navy (donanma-yı hümayûn cerrahba¤ısı). That same year, the ﬁrst modern

naval medical hospital opened in a wooden building on the premises of the

Istanbul arsenal, as well as a medical school with (mostly) Italian instructors.

Thus a regular naval medical service was established for the ﬁrst time.⁶⁷

Some Western observers of the modernized Ottoman navy even came to

praise the health conditions onboard their ships. The impressions of Adolphus

Slade (1802-77), a British naval ofﬁcer who spent many years in the Ottoman

Empire in the service of the British navy and later on functioned as an advisor

to that of the Ottomans, are a case in point. In an ofﬁcial report to the British

Military Surgeons of the 16th and 19th Centuries.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 46

(1972): 207-34.

66

Bostan, Osmanlı Bahriye Te¤kilâtı: 183, 186; Uzuçar¤ılı, Osmanlı Devletinin Merkez ve

Bahriye Te¤kilâtı: 475-7.

67

Ali √hsan Gençer,“√stanbul Tersânesinde Açılan √lk Tıb Mektebi.” √stanbul Üniversitesi

Edebiyat Fakültesi Tarih Dergisi 31 (1977): 302, 310-3; Stanford J. Shaw, “Sel¬m III and the

Ottoman Navy.” Turcica 1 (1969): 238-40; Ekmeleddin √hsanoªlu and Salim Aydüz,

“Ottoman Science and Education in the Modern Age.” In The Turks, eds. Hasan Celâl Güzel,

C. Cem Oªuz and Osman Karatay (Ankara: Yeni Türkiye, 2002): vol. 4: Ottomans: 698-9.

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MEDICAL TREATMENT IN THE OTTOMAN NAVY IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD 563

Ambassador in Istanbul of 1849, Slade asserts that the Ottoman ﬂeet had

recently much improved in every respect. He comments that the crews were

healthy and orderly and the ships neat, clean, and thoroughly ventilated.

Moreover, he adds that “their sick-bays are unrivalled in arrangements for com-

fort and repose surpassing anything of the kind I have witnessed in other

navies.”⁶⁸

It was only during the military reforms of the nineteenth century that

Ottoman military medicine transformed to become a discipline in its own right.

One of the aspects of this change was the fact that physicians were appointed

full-time to serve in the army. Indeed, their military rank and position became

part of their identity to the extent that their position in the army or navy was

commemorated on their tombstones, as a survey of Istanbul graveyards from the

1800s reveals.⁶⁹

The inclusion of army physicians as permanent members of military units

was not just a superﬁcial organizational ploy. The degree of their integration

into the divisions and their placement as ofﬁcers (and not rank-and-ﬁle or non-

commissioned ofﬁcers) and members of headquarters, reveals the new impor-

tance accorded to medicine and medical aspects in military decisions. Such

considerations manifested themselves in the way a unit was formed, managed,

prepared, and led into battle. In extreme cases medical considerations dictated

military decisions, for instance in assessing the state of (un)readiness of indi-

vidual soldiers and of a unit as a whole, or in deciding where to base divisions

or when to evacuate a spot. In other words: medicine’s role in the management

70

of warfare grew considerably

CONCLUSION

An English ship surgeon’s journal about his activities during a ten-month

period in 1706 sheds light on the incidence and treatment of the sick onboard

a man-of-war in the Mediterranean. It suggests that at the beginning of the eigh-

teenth century, sickness, not injuries, constituted the principal reason for med-

ical treatment onboard his ship.⁷¹This may well have been the case in the

68

Bernard Lewis, “Slade on the Turkish Navy.” Journal of Turkish Studies 11 (1987): 2-3.

Necdet √¤li, “Tıp Tarihimizle √lgili Birkaç Mezar Kitâbesi III.” Tıp Tarihi Ara¤tırmaları

69

3 (1989): 123; Necdet √¤li, “Tıp Tarihimizle √lgili Birkaç Mezar Kitâbesi IV.” Tıp Tarihi

Ara¤tırmaları 4 (1990): 117, 119.

70

Harrison, “Medicine and the Management of Modern Warfare”: 379-410.

J. D. Alsop, “Sickness in the British Mediterranean Fleet: The Tiger’s Journal of 1706.”

71

War and Society [Australia] 11:2 (1993): 57-76.

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564

MIRI SHEFER MOSSENSOHN

Ottoman navy as well, but the sources unfortunately tell us nothing about the

ailments of Hasan’s patients, nor what became of them. We may assume, how-

ever, that most oarsmen did not fare well. Edward Webbe’s account of his ser-

vice as an oarsman on an Ottoman galley conveys the most difﬁcult medical

problem facing the Ottoman navy and army: diseases spreading on board, or in

the barracks. In this regard, the Ottoman case was no different than other pre-

modern navies.

What also remains unclear is the nature of the relationship between “civil-

ian” and “military” medical training and posts during the pre-modern period.

Did court physicians and surgeons seek out opportunities in the army and vol-

unteer for them, or was a tour-of-duty forced upon them? Did serving the mil-

itary further their “civilian” career? These and many other questions have yet

to be answered.

Further research is also needed in order to fully comprehend the naval med-

ical changes of the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, what we know so far

allows us to hypothesize that the wellbeing of the soldiers as such was not nec-

essarily the ultimate aim of the medical/health reforms in this period. The

Ottoman case may resemble other historical ones, in which the introduction of

a medical regimen into the army and navy was a means of imposing greater

discipline among soldiery, rather than merely improving their health and ability

to perform in combat situations. In the Ottoman context it may also have con-

tributed to reafﬁrming their rule within the decentralized state and to assert their

sovereignty in response to ever growing pressures from foreign powers.

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