Medical Treatment in the Ottoman Navy in the Early Modern Period.

Ottoman sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tell us a great deal about naval finances or dockyard operations. Indeed, the logistics of the Ottoman have been studied reasonably well. However, the Ottoman sources are virtually silent about the people involved in these naval operations. In this article the manpower will be in focus, with particular emphasis on the oarsmen who manned the galleys, the captives and criminals, and the medical treatment offered to them. The resulting discussion allows us to gain insights into the experiences of non-elite or behind the scenes Ottomans involved in the navy—whose voices are difficult to recover—toward the end of the seventeenth century. This article also indirectly contributes to the growing scholarship in recent years on Ottoman slavery.