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Edinburgh Studies on the Ottoman Empire

The Adventures of a Slave GirlAn Ottoman Novel

By Samipaşazade Sezai

Format

£14.99

About this book

The first English translation of this powerful portrayal of child slavery in the Ottoman Empire

  • Paints a realistic picture of domestic slavery, especially of women and children
  • Takes the point of view of a young, female slave, humanising her by showing her hopes, dreams and desires
  • Exposes the abusive master–slave relationship, challenging the prevailing 19th-century narratives that portrayed Ottoman slavery as humane
  • Includes a portrayal of a Europeanised Ottoman man and his orientalist inclinations, offering valuable insights into the cultural dynamics and perspectives of the era
  • Critical apparatus includes a contextualising introduction, extensive footnotes, Ottoman slavery contracts in transliteration and translation, and a Foreword by Ceyda Karamursel, a leading historian of Ottoman slavery
  • Enhanced with maps, colour illustrations and a chronology

The Adventures of a Slave Girl (Sergüzeşt), written by the iconic Ottoman realist writer Samipaşazade Sezai (1859–1936), was the first anti-slavery novel published in the Ottoman Empire. Set in Istanbul and Egypt at the end of the 19th century, it tells the story of Dilber, a Circassian girl sold into domestic slavery at only nine years old. We follow her through her tragic ordeal, dreaming of freedom and love even as she is sold from one abusive master to another.

Sensational in its time for its explicit anti-slavery stance and its use of the politically taboo word ‘freedom’, the publication of this book placed the author under palace scrutiny and ultimately into voluntary exile.

Supported by a full critical apparatus, this widely cited novel is published in English for the first time. As global slavery studies expand beyond the Atlantic, it offers rare insight into the gendered and racialised dimensions of child and female slavery in the late Ottoman Empire, in spite of the Tanzimat reforms aimed at cracking down on the trade.

Reviews

This is a significant text not just in terms of literary history, but for cultural insight into late Ottoman modernity as well as contingent aspects of gender, (white) slavery, and human rights in the region.
Table of contents

Acknowledgments
Translators’ Note
List of Figures
Foreword

Introduction
Samipaşazade Sezai’s 1924 Preface

The Adventures of a Slave Girl

Appendices
Appendix A: Slave Sale Deed #1
Appendix B: Slave Sale Deed #2
Appendix C: Slave Sale Deed #3
Appendix D: Slave Sale Deed #4
Appendix E: Slave Sale Deed #5

Chronology
Further Reading on Ottoman Slavery

About the contributors

Samipaşazade Sezai

Samipaşazade Sezai (1859–1936) was an Ottoman writer known for his novel, Sergüzeşt (Adventure, 1889) and his short story collection, Küçük Şeyler (Little Things, 1892).

Iclal Vanwesenbeeck

Iclal Vanwesenbeeck is Associate Professor at the State University of New York, Fredonia. Her current research focuses on animal studies, primarily animals and the Iraq war, and music and literature; in particular, opera in late Ottoman literature. She is also the translator of various poems by the Ottoman poet Nigâr binti Osman, Halide Edip’s fiction, prose poems by Mehmet Rauf, and Samipaşazade Sezai’s short story, ‘Pantomime’.

Burcu Karahan

Burcu Karahan is Lecturer in Turkish Literature and Language at the Comparative Literature Department, Stanford University. She specialises in late 19th- and early 20th-century Ottoman literature, with a particular focus on the novel, literary translation, sexuality and Ottoman modernisation. Her current research and translation project explores erotic fiction from the Second Constitutional Era, examining its connections to national and literary history.

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