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The second half of the nineteenth century, marked by recurrent military and diplomatic conflict, witnessed large-scale forced displacement into the Ottoman Middle East. With it came a prolonged crisis that unsettled established legal and ethical frameworks, creating a volatile environment in which the slave trade not only persisted but adapted and, in some cases, expanded—even as formal efforts to suppress it were underway. This paper turns to a pivotal moment within this broader turbulence: the 1877–78 Russo-Ottoman War and its aftermath. It examines the practices of Ottoman slaveholders and traders—many of them women—operating across different scales, from elite mistresses to local intermediaries. In doing so, it explores how these practices collided with a shifting global moral order that recast legal categories of race, ethnicity, religion, and state belonging, leaving a lasting imprint on the region’s social and legal landscape.
