Wie Muslime einst Christen zu Sklaven machten

Das Versklaven des jeweils anderen war ziemlich gegenseitig.

Hier mal der Anfang eines Artikels von Judith E. Tucker, Piracy of the Eighteenth-Century Mediterranean. Navigating Laws and Legal Practices. In: Tucker, Judith E.: The Making of the Modern Mediterranean. Views form the South. Berkely 2019, S. 123–148.

The snow* Ermosa [sic] Rachel was a chameleon. Originally a Portuguese ship, the Ermosa Rachel was captured in Mediterranean waters by corsairs from Algiers in 1767 and subsequently became the property of the ruling dey by virtue of his right to a share in his corsairs’ prizes. The dey of Algiers then sold the ship to Demetrio Vidari, a Greek Ottoman subject from the island of Limos, who was residing in Algiers at the time. In 1768, Vidari in turn sent the ship to the port of Mahon on the British-controlled island of Minorca and sold it there in shares: half of the ship to Theodore Alexiano, the captain of the port and presumably a British subject; one-eighth to Jaymo Vidal, of unknown origin and identity; and the remaining three-eighths to David Busnach, a Tunisian Jew, who registered his shares in the name of his son Abraham Busnach. Then Alexiano and Vidal both sold their shares to Abraham Busnach, so that the ship, based in a British port, was owned in its entirety by a young Jewish subject of Tunis. At some point along the way, the Ermosa Rachel was issued a passport as a British ship. The British consul in Algiers, Archibald Campbell Fraser, who reported on the matter in 1772, was clearly dis-quieted by the whole affair for a mix of anti-Semitic and chauvinist reasons: how could a twenty-two-year-old Jew from Tunis, the “lowest, meanest and most abject of their subjects” be the sole owner of a ship with a British pass?1 We might pose some questions of our own: How could a Portuguese vessel captured by corsairs from Algiers wash up as a lawfully registered ship sailing out of a British port under the British flag? And what does a story like this have to tell us about the mores of Mediterranean piracy, the complexities of life under the law in the twi-light time of the early modern Mediterranean, and fundamental shifts in attitudes toward piracy as they unfolded in the late eighteenth century?
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*Nicht Schnee, sondern Schnau(w)

 

Okay, das war ein kleiner Kommunikationspatzer. Der obige Satz und der Auszug hängen nur mittelbar miteinander zusammen. Der Text ist natürlich länger, als der gepostete Auszug. Aber ihr wisst ja, Urheberrecht. Ich habe den Auszug vor allem deswegen gepostet, weil ein portugiesisches Schiff, von Korsaren gekapert, in Mahón/Menorca (damals britisch) verkauft und im britischenn Handelsregister gemeldet wurde. Das zeigt, wie über die religiösen und politischen Grenzen hinaus agiert wurde, zwischen Piraterie und legalem Handel. In dem Artikel wird u.a. aber auch die muslimische Rechtsposition zur Piraterie behandelt.