Asking because I'm curious how the slave economy of the Ottoman Empire worked, and what projects and businesses were purchasing such a large number of slave laborers. Attempting to dig into this online I've found most popular sources out there focus on harem, eunuch and janissary slaves and from my limited understanding these were not typical.
Hi /u/DamnesiaVu,
Great question! I've actually written a bit about this before in some previous answers, if you'd be interested in looking over them:
To more directly answer your question:
Besides harem, janissary, and eunuch slaves, enslaved peoples within the Ottoman Empire fulfilled a wide variety of roles.
Urban, domestic slaves, who were mainly confined to roles within the household were common, as were manual labor slaves, such as those making textiles, that would be sold, by their masters. Additionally, alongside the janissaries, were a similar military administrative slaves, who both participated in managing the Ottoman army and participated in the civil bureaucracy throughout the Ottoman Empire.
Surprisingly, agricultural slaves were not entirely common, but we do know that some slaves were in rural areas. Therefore, it is possible that some slaves performed agricultural work, but it was not as common as the other aforementioned occupations or roles.
If you have any further questions or would like me to reiterate something, please let me know as I'd be glad to help! Also, if you're interested in learning more about the subject, I really recommend looking into most anything written by Ehud R. Toledano, who is one of the leading academics on Ottoman slavery.