It was commonly known that Circassian ladies were mainly purchased to turn into wives or concubines to wealthy men, which made the Circassian slave commerce to be considered as a form of marriage market, with the girls being raised by the slave traders as “apprentices” for marriage after which bought to turn out to be the wives or concubines of rich men. However, in March 1858 the Ottoman governor of Trapezunt knowledgeable the British Consul that the 1854 ban had been a temporary conflict time ban resulting from international stress, and that he had been given orders to permit slave ships on the Black Sea pass on their way to Constantinople, and in December formal tax rules was introduced, legitimizing the Circassian slave commerce again. The worst fate for a male slave was reportedly to change into a galley slave; every Ottoman galley required 200 galley slaves, and the Ottoman fleet consisted of between 45,000 and 60,000 galleys in the late 18th century, and these galleys were provided with many slaves from the Crimean slave trade. However, the slave commerce with Circassians from the Caucasus to the Middle East was redirected from the Crimea and as a substitute went straight from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, and was significantly expanded and continued until the early 20th century.
There was a tendency by Ottomans to assert that slavery was useful to the Circassians, since it delivered them from “primitimism to civilisation, from poverty and must prosperity and happiness”, and that they turned slaves willingly: “Circassians got here to Istanbul willingly ‘to become wives of the Sultan and the Pachas, and the young males to become Beys and Pachas'”. Preserved documentation does not clearly provide the place of origin for the vast majority of the slaves to the Imperial Harem, nevertheless it is clear that some of the European female slaves were from Greece, Hungary, Poland, Wallachia, and Malta, some of whom were acquired from local Ottoman governors, though more Circassian, Georgian, Abkhasian, and Russian (that means the arrived by way of the Crimean slave trade). Within the 1840s, the Ottoman Empire agreed to stop their attacks on Russian forts along the Black Sea in change for the Russians turning a blind eye to the Circassian slave trade in now Russian Caucasus, which the Russians agreed to silently tolerate.
Within the Treaty of Adrianople, the Russians had been given management over the Ottoman forts alongside the Black Sea coast between Anatolia and the Caucasus, significantly reducing the Circassian slave commerce, which triggered the price of white girls on the markets of Constantinople and Cairo to skyrocket. The Circassian refugee colonies in Anatolia and Constantinople continued to promote girls, on this case, Circassians are famous to have bought the children of their very own Circassian slaves or serfs directly to the Ottoman slave traders, or to the buyers themselves. In the context of the Circassian slave trade, the time period Circassians did not necessarily confer with ethnic Circassians, but was used as an umbrella term for a number of various ethnicities from the Caucasus area, reminiscent of Georgians, Adyge, and Abkhazians, in the identical vogue because the term “Abbyssinians” was used as a term also for African slaves who weren’t from Abyssinia. The male Mamluk aristocrats of Ottoman Egypt, who themselves have been typically of white slave origin (typically Circassian or from Georgia), most well-liked to marry girls of similar ethnicity, whereas black slave ladies were used as home maids. In this interval, African slaves supplied by the trans-Saharan slave commerce, the Red Sea slave commerce, and the Indian Ocean slave commerce commerce had been standard to be used as domestic servants and laborers, and white slaves provided by the Barbary slave commerce and the Black Sea slave trade have been used for different functions in the Middle East.
Slaves trafficked from the Crimean slave commerce could possibly be sold far away within the Mediterranean and the Middle East; a Convent in Sinai in Egypt is for example famous to have bought a male slave originating from Kozlov in Russia. As a rule, there was an inverse correlation between age and value for enslaved individuals over 40. For instance, in 1835 South Carolina, when Ann Ball spent virtually US$80,000 (equal to $2,362,839 in 2023) to purchase 215 enslaved folks from the estates of her deceased family, she made a degree to buy several apparently elderly slaves (Old Rachel, Old Lucy, Old Charles) and the lowest-priced single person was Old Peg, purchased for US$20 (equivalent to $590.71 in 2023), compared to a mean price of $371 per. It was commonly claimed that Circassian girls had been eager to be enslaved and asked their mother and father to promote them to the traders, because it was the one approach for them to reinforce their class standing. Circassian dad and mom grew to become infamous for his or her alleged willingness to promote their kids to Ottoman slave traders, as a result of their poverty made the high demand for Circassian women extremely profitable. The Caucasus was an excellent space for slave commerce, since it was a fragmented border zone affected by constant warfare and political instability.