nvrgag44 (imported) wrote: Fri Oct 24, 2014 7:00 am
Yes, a very interesting article. I can understand the reasons for putting eunuchs in charge of caring for the women but why were they also valued for other positions of authority and influence? Even to the point of castrating prepubescent young boys and grooming them for these positions. Were they also used as sex slaves? And how were certain boys selected while others were not? Questions abound.
A very good set of important questions. There are several reasons why eunuchs were valued over the course of the 4,000 years that they were an important part of culture. Some of the reasons will, of course, be covered in the book on the history of human castration that I'm working on.
The hacking off of the sexual parts of a defeated enemy probably goes back to our prehuman ancestors. There are reports of champanzees doing it to a defeated alpha male though by ripping off with brute force, no cutting involved. However, the earliest date that we can find for systematic human castration where the person castrated is expected to live and to prove useful was recorded in the Sumerian city of Lagash at about 2100 BCE.
A major industry in Lagash, probably the largest city in the world at the time, was weaving. The weavers were all slave women who, as slaves, were not allowed to marry. They had many children (as recorded in detailed census records of the time). The girls were expected to join their mothers as slave weaving women. The boys were superfluous until someone thought to castrate them to help pull barges on the canals alongside castrated donkeys and onagers (a horse relative that was used before horses were domesticated). It was quickly discovered that the castrated boys had other uses.
Since domestic animals of various varieties (goat, sheep, donkey, onager) had been castrated for generations (goats and sheep probably for 4000 years by that time), permanent and absolute sterility was already well known as a consequence of castration. Guardians of someone else's women was a logical additional use for the new eunuchs. That their voices remained high and ethereal may have been a new discovery, but some became praise singers to the gods not long after systematic castration of humans was invented.
An addiitional factor that became important was changes in personality. The research on members of the Eunuch Archive community has demonstrated that the removal of testosterone from a brain that is already masculinized (which takes place before and shortly after birth) results in a basic personality structure that is neither male nor female. Specifically, eunuchs have the Emotional Stability of males, which in personality tests from around the world is always significantly higher than in females. The eunuchs are also higher in Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, two traits that are important for many bureaucratic roles. Eunuchs quickly became desirable as government officials, staffing offices within the palace and later being sent to rule distant provinces. These same traits made them ideal as military officials and many of the dynastic states of Asia had eunuch generals and admirals.
That eunuchs were thought not to be able to found their own dynasty was an added bonus. However, we do know of some who deposed the intact head of state and took control. A few even put intact nephews on the throne to begin new dynasties.
For the early Islamic caliphates all of these factors were important. What is most interesting to me is the source of the administrative eunuchs and, in fact, most of the early eunuchs in the Moslem world. Europe was the major source. The modern city of Dublin was founded as a Viking slave trading post. Boys and girls were kidnapped from around the Irish Sea for export to the Caliphate. The boys were generally castrated in the area that is now the modern Ukraine before shipment to Bagdad, or castrated in what is modern France for export to North Africa. The Venetians also traded in slaves from the Holy Roman Empire, castrating the boys in Venice before sending them on. The Slavic lands of Eastern Europe were also favored slave raiding territory for future eunuchs. In the Balkans slave raids were directed especially at Christian monasteries to capture already educated boys to become eunuch officials. The trade in European eunuchs continued well into the 17th century. Gazanfer Agha, the most powerful member of the Ottoman court, after the caliph/emperor himself, was Venetian by birth. Captured in 1559 at age 9 and castrated a year or two later. Hasan Agha, one of the most powerful Ottoman eunuchs of the early 17th century, had been born Samson Rowlie, and had been kidnapped off the beach at Great Yarmouth, England.
Large numbers of eunuchs in the Moslem world also came from Central Asia and from the Indian Subcontinent. It was reported that in 1675 alone, more than 22,000 eunuchs were exported from the kingdom of Golconda into the Moslem world.