## Note on sources  
Nadir Agha dictated his memoir. It was taken down by a headman of the neighbourhood in which he lived. The memoir was preserved by a family that had some links with a professor who had bought Nadir Agha's pavilion. One member of this family transcribed the text into the Turkish alphabet and another, who had once met Nadir Agha during his childhood years, published it in two parts in 1998 in a Turkish magazine, without any critical edition. ${ }^{1}$ Apart from the memoirs, we also have two interviews, one of which was conducted shortly before Nadir Agha's death in 1957 and the other in 1934. ${ }^{2}$ Finally, the archival documents and other memoirs of his contemporaries provide a tool for examining various aspects of his life.  
Unlike in the United States of America, where various slave narratives are available, ${ }^{3}$ we are virtually left in the dark concerning Ottoman slave narratives. ${ }^{4}$  
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[^0]:    1 Throughout the article, I will use Nadir Agha's memoir as the main source of his narrative, but I will cite other works if other versions are available (Ertuğ, 1998a pp. 7-15; Ertuğ, 1998b, pp. 6-14).
2 See Unknown author 1957, henceforth referenced as Hayat, 1957, pp. 6-7; Çapanoğlu, 1934, pp. 19, 21, 29.
3 Paul Lovejoy states in the case of slave narratives in the Americas, 'What has survived and in what form varied enormously. We are fortunate that hundreds, perhaps several thousands of such accounts have survived, some very short and some fully developed biographies, often autobiographical' (2011, p. 93).
4 Studies in Egypt and the Islamic Middle East have recently begun to amend this omission through literary strategies as well as innovative methodologies (Toledano, 2007; Toledano, 1993; Erdem, 2010; Troutt Powell, 2012; Troutt Powell, 2006).