The mores of the Crimean Khanate’s early modern slaving zone in Eastern Europe as pertains to female captives, and particularly the topic of sexual violence, are still under- researched. It is well known that Slavic girls and women from Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy captured during slave raids by Crimean Tatars and Nogays, constituted the majority of white female slaves trafficked to the Ottoman Empire in the 16th–17th centuries as a commercial enterprise. Yet the circumstances in which newly-captured females found themselves en route to the Khanate, and slave markets there and in Ottoman port towns of the Northern Black Sea region, remain poorly understood owing mostly to the paucity of reliable primary sources. Eastern European folklore (primarily Ukrainian) reflects various aspects of female experiences of captivity and slavery including sexual violence at the hands of captors during their southward journey. Such passages are sometimes quoted by way of illustration in contemporary studies (e.g., Mikhail Kizilov, Orest Subtelny). Yet there remain serious reservations as to the reliability of folklore narratives as historical evidence. However, hitherto no attempt has been made to peruse the testimonies found in contemporary memoirs and travel accounts (e.g., Simeon Lehatsi, Zbigniew Lubieniecki, Eremya Çelebi Kömürciyan) to evaluate the veracity of the folklore sources on the topic of sexual violence towards female captives. The proposed paper will analyze a selection of such testimonies in conjunction with Crimean Sharia court records (sijills) and Muscovite chancery materials. Undoubtedly, beautiful nubile girls deemed suitable for elite harems stood the best chance of passing through the hands of their captors unmolested. As for the rest, the English diplomat Paul Rycaut maintained that few female captives could “escape the lust of the Tatars.” Variants of this staggering claim appear frequently in other accounts consulted. Other European contemporaries viewed Tatar slave raiding as sexually predatory towards vulnerable female captives as well. Of course, many female captives were either sold to the Ottomans or entered Crimean society first as slaves and were eventually manumitted and integrated into local society. This paper will investigate whether the captors’ enduring pre-Islamic tribal ethos may have played a role in their treatment of newly captured females. Such attitudes along with commercial considerations may explain the substantial numbers of female slaves and ex-slaves in the Khanate offered for ransom or exchange to their countries of origin—a practice seemingly different from that in the Ottoman Empire proper.