African slaves in the Ottoman world during the 1500s have not attracted much attention, apart from a few outstanding individuals connected to the sultan’s court. However, by the late 1400s and early 1500s, quite a few Africans were showing up in the records of the Bursa qadis, usually because of sales and manumissions. In this context, we may ask whether African slaves were rare luxuries unknown outside of major commercial and politico-administrative venues. Perusing the registers of sharia courts, the researcher will conclude that this was not the case: Africans, whom the scribes typically termed Arab (sometimes: Habe?i Arab), were more widespread in sixteenth-century Anatolia than previously believed. I focus on information concerning African slaves in rural and semi-rural environments, showing that even before the conquest of the province of Habe?/Abyssinia by Özdemiro?lu Hasan Pa?a in 1561-67, there must have been a steady stream of African slaves arriving in Anatolia. In the mid-1500s, officials serving the qadi of the small and semi-rural town of Üsküdar produced 118 documents concerning slaves, both male and female. In 65 cases, the scribes mentioned ethnicity, and in 14 instances, the persons at issue, usually re-captured fugitives, were ‘Arab’. While these figures have no statistical value, they do indicate a significant presence of Black slaves and indirectly, the activities of slave traders, who probably brought in people by way of Egypt. Üsküdar was a coastal town, close to Istanbul. However, it is unrealistic to assume that the escaped Black slaves all belonged to members of the elite, because in some cases, the owners reclaiming them were clearly villagers. Furthermore, we possess evidence of a significant number of Africans, both slave and free, who during the 1500s lived in the Aegean region, far from Istanbul. Even more surprisingly, we find fugitive Black slaves in the sharia court records of the small land-locked town of Karaman/Larende, which date to the early years of Süleyman the Magnificent. These findings invite hypotheses concerning the trade bringing Black people, mostly males, to rural Anatolia. A likely explanation is the timber trade, as southern Anatolia had supplied Cairo already in Mamluk times. After the Ottoman conquest, this trade increased, as the use of timber became fashionable among the local elite. Possibly, the exportation of Black slaves paid for the wooden decorations of wealthy homes, but this intriguing problem requires further study.