Did castes exist in the Tahari? This is a big question and one that has been argued quite a bit. My understanding of what a caste is in gor is simple; The society of Gor is divided into groups referred to as "Castes". Each Caste is made up of its own profession or occupation. Castes are ranked according to their particular place in Gorean society and its interaction. Many castes contain sub-castes that are particular to a unique activity and need of the profession. An example would be slavers being a subcaste of merchants. The Gorean caste structure is hereditary being passed from father to children.
According to Luther, Tribesmen of the Tahari do not have castes. However, to the best of my knowledge this is incorrect--I do not find a reference to castes NOT existing in the Tahari in the books, but I find many references to specific castes in Tribesmen as relates to the Cities and so it is my belief that referring to castes in the Tahari, as they are referred to in the books is correct. That may not mean there are formalized laws or codes that are adhered to by the members of a profession in the Tahari. Here are the quotes I have found pertaining to castes, I will leave it to you to decide what exists and what does not.
Tor was, as Gorean cities went, rich, trading city. It was headquarters for thousands of caravan merchants. In it, too, were housed many craftsmen, practicing their industries, carvers, varnishers, table makers, gem cutters, jewelers, carders, dyers of cloth, weavers of rugs, tanners, makers of slippers, toolers of leather, potters, glaziers, makers of cups and kettles, weapon smiths, and many others. Much of the city, of course, was organized to support the caravan trade. There were many walled, guarded warehouses, requiring their staffs of scribes and guards, and, in hundreds of hovels, lived kaiila tenders, drovers, and such, who would, at the caravan tables, when their moneys had been exhausted, apply, if accepted, making their mark on the roster, once more for a post with some new caravan. Guards for these caravans, incidentally, were usually known by, and retained by, caravan merchants between caravans. They were known men. Tenders and drovers, on the whole, came and went.
Tor's water, I might mention, was ample to her needs. Though I saw few of them, she boasted many shaded gardens. Water for these gardens, by contract with slave masters, was carried by chains of male slaves and emptied into house cisterns, whence, later, by house slaves, it would be taken in cans and sprinkled carefully, foot by foot, throughout the garden.
I had arrived in Tor four days ago, after first taking tarn to Kasra. There I had sold the bird, for I did not wish to be conspicuous in Tor, as would surely as a tarnsman. From Kasra I had taken a dhow upriver on the Lower Fayeen, until I reached the village of Kurtzal, which lies north, overland, from Tor. Goods which are to be transported from Tor to Kasra sometimes are first taken overland to Kurtzal, and thence west on the river. Kurtzal is little more than a loading and shipping point. In Kasra, descending upon my tarn, I had been a warrior. A mercenary tarnsman. As a portion of my assumed disguise, uncollared, lashed on her back across my saddle, had been the body of a naked girl. She was blond. She was barbarian. She could not even speak Gorean. I was congratulated on my catch. I visited one of the metal workers, to purchase a collar for my prize. None, Samos and I suspected, would regard one with such a wench, so clumsy, so untaught, so obviously new to slavery, as being upon the business of Priest-Kings. She was simply a caught girl, picked up by a tarnsman with ease, simply to be used for a time and then discarded for a few tarn disks. "I took her from a slaver's camp," I told the metal worker. "I see her brand is fresh," said the metal worker. It was true.
In training a man to use the iron slavers always give him poorer women at first, sometimes having him mark them more than once, until he becomes proficient. Usually by the fifteenth or the twentieth woman, the man is capable of marking them deeply, precisely and cleanly.
I wore now the rags of a drover of kaiila. Bent over, carrying a grossly woven bag of kaiila-hair cloth, filled with accouterments, I set foot on the cracked boards of the Kurtzal dock.
In Kasra I had learned the name, and father, of the boy who had found, in pursuing a kaiila, the rock on which had been inscribed 'Beware the steel tower'. His name was Achmed, and his father's name was Farouk, who was a Kasra merchant.
I brushed away two sellers of apricots and spices. "Come with me to the cafe of Red Cages," said a boy, pulling at my sleeve. They receive a copper tarsk for each patron they bring through the arched portal of the cafe. I gave the boy a copper tarsk, and he sped from me.
I was jostled to one side by two men in djellabas. My ankle stung. I had nearly stepped into a basket of plums. Not even looking up, a woman had cried out, and, with a stick lashed out, protecting her merchandise. "Buy melons!" called a fellow next to her, lifting one of the yellowish, red-striped spheres toward me.
I turned from the market streets into a street of shops and stalls, the bazaar, which, in Tor, is most commonly reached through the market gate.
I passed by the door of a slaver's house. High in the house, through one of the narrow windows, I saw a girl, looking out. She smiled, and put her arm out through the window, waving. Her face pressed against the bars. She was collared. I blew her a kiss in the Gorean fashion, brushing it upward to her with my fingers.
I looked into a shop where pottery was being turned. To one side of the wheels, along a wall, sitting among many bowls and vessels, a boy, with his finger, was carefully applying bluish pigment to a large, two-handled pitcher. When the pitcher was placed in the kin this pigment would be burned, hardened, into the glaze. The kilns were in the back of the shop.
The carders and the dyers, incidentally, are subcastes separate from the weavers. All are subcastes of the rug makers, which, itself, interestingly, perhaps surprisingly, is accounted generally as a subcaste of the cloth workers.
Rug makers themselves, however, usually regard themselves, in their various subcastes, as being independent of the cloth workers. A rug maker would not care to he confused with a maker of kaftans, turbans or djellabas.
I passed a fellow inlaying wood, and the shop of a silversmith, and stalls filled with baskets, some of which, grain baskets, were large enough to hold a man. In another place tanned, dyed leathers were hanging, purple, red, yellow. I passed a boy in a shop using a bow lathe. He spins the wood with bow and string, held in his right hand. He uses his left hand and his right foot to guide the cutting tool.
I passed another stall, in which mats were being sold. These are used for various purposes, sometimes vertically for screens, more normally, horizontally, for sitting and sleeping.
There were sellers of scarves and sashes, veils and haiks, chalwars and tobes, and slippers and kaftans, and cording for agals. Too, there were cloth merchants, with their silks and rolls of rep cloth.
At one place, on a stone shelf, under awnings, several girls, chained naked, were for sale, interestingly, at set prices. It was a municipal sale, under the jurisdiction of the courts of Tor. One brown-skinned girl, black-eyed, no more than fifteen, kneeling, her wrists and ankles tightly chained, looked up at me. She was being sold to pay her father's gambling debts. I purchased her, and freed her.
Twice I was passed by pairs of guardsmen, in white robes with red sashes and scimitars, the police of Tor.
Miss Blake-Allen was no longer in my compartment. She was now in the public pens of Tor. On the morning of the second day, in the process of my work for Priest-Kings, I had entered the shaded offices of the municipal slave master of Tor.
The usual buying price of the municipal office was two or three silver tarsks per wench. I had learned that Miss Blake-Allen was valuable in the Tahari. This pleased me.
"She was bought for two tarsks, from a caravan master named Zad of the Oasis of Farad," he said.
I passed a stall of perfumers, and thought of Saphrar of Turia. Then I passed a shop where the high, light kaiila saddles were being made. One could also buy there, saddle blankets, quirts, bells and kaiila reins. The kaiila rein is a single rein, very light, plaited of various leathers. There are often ten to a dozen strips of tanned, dyed leather in a single rein. Each individual strip, interestingly, given the strength of the rein, is little thicker than a stout thread. The strips are cut with knives, and it requires great skill to cut them. The rein, carefully plaited, is tied through a hole drilled in the right nostril of the kaiila. It passes under the animal's jaw to the left. When one wishes to guide the animal to the left one draws the rein left; when one wishes to guide it right one pulls right, drawing the rein over the animal's neck, with pressure against the left cheek. To stop the animal one draws back. To start or hasten the animal, one kicks it in the flanks, or uses the long kaiila quirt.
I walked to the street of the weapon makers. I was anxious to make the acquaintance of the Tahari scimitar.
"There will be war between the Kavars and the Aretai," I heard a man say.
The warrior slipped from his saddle, and, on foot, approached me.
I remained mounted.
I was returning to my compartment in Tor, from the tents of Farouk of Kasra. He was a merchant. He was camping in the vicinity of the city while purchasing kaiila for a caravan to the Oasis of Nine Wells. This oasis is held by Suleiman, master of a thousand lances, Suleiman of the Aretai.
"The barbarian," said the slave master, "is highly intelligent, as the intelligence of females goes, but, strangely, her body is stupid; its muscles seem locked together."
"Have you heard of Earth?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. "I have heard of it." He looked at me. "Is there truly such a place," he asked.
"Yes." I told him.
"I had thought it might be mythical," he said.
"You certify to me," said I to the slave master, "that this man is neither clumsy nor stupid, nor drunk, nor an instructor in combat intent upon increasing the confidence of his pupils."
"It is so certified," he smiled. "He is used in cleaning the pens. He is a drover who falsified the quality-markings on spice crates."
I placed a copper tarn disk on the desk of the slave master. "Fight," I said to the slaves.
I saw Farouk, merchant and caravan master, ride by, burnoose swirling behind him, lance in hand. With him were six men. I saw drovers, holding the reins of their beasts, shading their eyes, looking over the dust to the west.
It had been night, when I had first suspected the nature of the trap, the sixth night after the joining of the caravan of Farouk by the escort of Aretai soldiers.
The lieutenant to the captain, high officer of the escort, came to my tent. It had been he who had suspected me of being a Kavar spy, who had urged the killing of me. We bore one another little good will. His name was Hamid. The name of the captain was Shakar.
Her teacher was a cafe slave girl, Seleenya, rented from her master; her musicians were a flutist, hired early, and, later, a kaska player, to accompany him.
Had it not been for Ibn Saran, I suspected I would not have been admitted even to the presence of the Pasha of Nine Wells.
He bowed. He called a scribe to him. "Give this merchant in gems." said he, "my note, stamped for eighty weights of dates."
At that instant, buffeting guards aside, sending them sprawling, to our amazement, in the carved, turret-shaped portal of the great room, claws scratching on the tiles, appeared a war kaiila, in full trappings, mounted by a veiled warrior in swirling burnoose. Guards rushed forward. His scimitar leapt from its sheath and they fell back, bleeding, reeling to the tiles.
"Should you persist in accusing Hamid," said the judge, "your penalties will be the more severe."
"He it was," said I, "who struck Suleiman."
"Kneel," said the judge.
I knelt.
The judge signaled again to the slave who controlled the handle of the red-haired girl's rack. "No, please!" she screamed.
Once more the handle moved and the pawl slipped into a new notch on the ratchet. Her body, now, was lifted from the network of knotted ropes and hung, suspended, between the two axles of the rack.
"Masters!" she cried. "Masters! I have told the truth! The truth
In my new burnoose and sash, a rather ostentatious yellow and purple, befitting, however, a local merchant, or peddler, who wishes to call attention to himself, I myself went about the shops, making purchases. I obtained a new scimitar. I did not need a sheath and belt. I obtained, too, a set of kaiila bells, and two sacks of pressed-date bricks. These are long, 134 rectangular bricks, weighing about a stone apiece, or, in Earth weight, about four pounds.
"We have water," said the merchant, greeting the bandit.
Hassan stood in his stirrups, looking about at the palms, the red-clay walls, the buildings of mud; some domed, of the oasis, the gardens.
"You have goods for me?" asked the merchant.
What do you expect to find there?" I asked.
"What are you?" he asked.
"A lowly gem merchant," I said.