There is a growing interest in the study of slavery in the Ottoman Empire. This paper is situated within the time-period of the late nineteenth century when the British increased its pressure on the Ottoman Empire to suppress the African slave-trade. In this paper, I will be using diplomatic correspondences regarding runaway slaves who take refuge at the British missions. Particularly, I will be focusing on a certain young black man who was detained by the Malta police while he was traveling with his master on the grounds that he was a slave and had to be freed. Ensuing diplomatic scuffle surrounding the case tells us a great deal about how Ottomans imagined their slavery to be, and how they created a difference between themselves and the West in an effort to strengthen their imperial legitimacy. In this regard, the debate around the issue of domestic slavery was about the status of slaves as much as it was about sovereign independence and compassion. I argue in this paper that European intervention was a type of moral intervention that violated the customs and traditions of the Ottoman family. This, I believe, is an illustration of the reach of European international law into the heart of the Ottoman social life. I interpret this as public interest in private affairs. The international anti-slavery movement then, whether in the late nineteenth century or earlier, could be seen as the violation of the public-private divide. Studies on the history of colonialism have shown how managing of inter-racial relations, master-slave, or free-freed relations, in the colonies, were important instances and questions through which imperial categories of inclusion and exclusion were developed. In this regard, the case of the Ottoman Empire is an important addition to the study of slavery, domestic arrangements, and politics of intimacy.