228 | Out of Africa, into the Palace
By the nineteenth century, in any case, a castrated Habashi male slave was so
high priced as to be affordable only to the wealthiest members of Ottoman soci-
ety: the imperial family, grandees, and overseas merchants.
Notwithstanding such favorable attitudes toward Ethiopians, detractors of
Ethiopian eunuchs, and of African eunuchs more generally, were not absent in
the Ottoman court and bureaucracy during the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies. A few of these have left behind famous, or infamous, diatribes against
the African eunuchs. The famous sixteenth-century bureaucrat and intellectual
Mustafa Ali (1541–1600), who stopped in Cairo on his way to take up the gover-
norship of Jidda, the port city serving Mecca, in 1599, composed a description
of Cairo in which he deplores the corruption wrought in Egypt by the insidi-
ous influence of the African eunuchs who, even at that early date, were exiled
there or, alternatively, launched their careers there. What he calls “the unlimited
squandermania” in Egypt
can also be seen from the encroachment of the aghas [eunuchs] of Nubian or
Ethiopian origin with a daily pay of ten or twelve gold pieces, in other words,
from the domination of this prosperous country by eunuchs.... When the eu-
nuchs make their appearance in Egypt... and the star of their luck reaches its
apogee, when they enter that kingdom in splendor, this will be... the down-
fall of all the country, and the death of its master; on both sides of the Nile
nobody will be found, the houses will be in ruins and without walls, gardens
and plantations will be without tree, without fruit, and of all the plants no
other tree will grow in Egypt but the tamarisk, and that tree too will have only
sickly leaves.
Now... , that ilk has increased in the capital of Cairo, and they help and
assist each ot her. The lowest ones of t hem have obtained excellent sa laries w it h
assignment of barley [for their horses] and wheat. Some expert and unpreju-
diced senior persons tell that from the time when Sultan Selim [I] succeeded
in the conquest of Egypt until this moment, that is, until the days of the reign
of Sultan Murad [III], there never were twenty or thirty eunuchs together in
Egypt.... The total of the daily pay of all of them together was not more than
three, four hundred aspers [Ottoman silver coins]. Now, however, the black
aghas cannot be counted any more. Those of the lowest rank have obtained
salaries of forty, fifty aspers and abundant allowances of barley and wheat.
Those of respected rank are not only given honor... but also come to Egypt
with a daily pay of [already] ten or twelve gold pieces. Afterwards, their honors
are increased through the boundless mercy of the beylerbeyis [provincial gov-
ernors], and they get hold of many, many salary raises through the indulgence
and compliance of the fortunate ones who are grand vezirs.Given that Mustafa Ali’s patron was the powerful Venetian eunuch Gazanfer
Agha, head of the contingent of largely white eunuchs who guarded the threshold
in front of the sultan’s audience chamber in Topkapı Palace, his hostility toward
the rival corps of African harem eunuchs is not surprising.