Last of the Chief Black Eunuchs

[JesusA (imported)]

Fahreddin Aga was a Galla from what is now southern Ethiopia. He was captured by slave traders at the age of about 7 or 8, castrated on his journey to the Arabian Peninsula and eventually became part of the Ottoman harem.

After the Young Turk rebellion and the establishment of a constitutional government in the Ottoman Empire in 1908, Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed on 27 April 1909. In his place, his younger half-brother Sultan Mehmed V was installed. Fahreddin Aga had been an adviser to Mehmed before he was installed as sultan and was then appointed Kizlar Agasi, or Chief Eunuch. On 20 May 1909, the General Assembly voted to abolish the position that he held, while he was in the assembly chamber in his ceremonial garb prepared to speak.

After removal from office, he lived in a house that he shared with a Circassian woman, also from the palace. After slavery was abolished in 1918, the two purchased the house together. Fahreddin lived there until his death in 1977.

We have a bit of his life history, as recounted by him:

I'm a Galla. My name was Gülnata. We were living in a little village. We were very happy. I was 7 or 8 years. I was playing with some children the same age as me near the village. We always had the same game. We were running one after the others. Then one day, some horsemen came. They didn't look like the men from our place. Their faces were lighter. They were armed. They caught us.

The slavers took the children to Massawa, which is on the coast of what is now Eritrea. There the boys were held three days without food and water before being castrated. Fahreddin said that he never forgot the great pain of his castration. Two weeks later he was put on a boat for the Arabian Peninsula with other young slaves. The British, who were attempting to end the East African slave trade, intercepted the boat, but did not free the slaves.

The British did not attempt to return slave children to their homes. Probably an impossible task. Instead the slavers were arrested and the children taken to Aden in Yemen. The children were given to the families of officers and local government officials. The Ottoman officer to whom Fahreddin was "given" took him to Istanbul and "gave" him to a man who later "gave" him to the palace. The sale of slaves had been outlawed in the Ottoman Empire (except for the area around Mecca and Medina, where it was still legal until 1962 in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), but the "gifting" of slaves was still permitted.

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Junne, George. (2016). The Black Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire. London: I.B. Tauris.

[nutless1 (imported)]

Thank you for sharing this historical narrative. Very interesting history, and I always enjoy reading non-fiction material.

[Eunuchorn (imported)]

the arabs still practice the art of making Eunuchs for their rich people's harems, and I think there have been articles here on the archive about it. but it's always extra legal, as laws don't really apply to the really rich.