By this time, the great majority of Muslim slaves were either Turks or blacks, and Aristotle's doctrine of natural slavery, brought up to date, provided a convenient justification of their enslavement.
Another attempt to justify the enslavement of a whole race, this time in religious rather than philosophical terms and restricted to the dark-skinned people of Africa, is the Muslim adaptation of the biblical story of the curse of Ham.9 In the biblical version (Genesis 9:1-27) the curse is servitude, not blackness, and it falls on Canaan, the youngest son of Ham, and not on his other sons, including Kush, later seen as ancestor of the blacks. The rationale of the story is obvious-the slaves of the Israelites were their near kinsmen the Canaanites, and a religious (i.e., ideological) justification was required for their enslavement, hence the story of the curse of Canaan. The slaves of the Arabs were not Canaanites but blacks-so the curse was transferred to them, and blackness added to servitude as part of the hereditary burden. This story, though widespread, was by no means universally accepted. Ibn Khaldun and some other Arab writers reject it as absurd, and attribute blackness to climatic and geographical factors. The idea, however, that blackness and slavery are somehow associated, as expressed in this story, was derived less from tradition than from reality.
Such ideas have no place in the writings of Muslim jurists, who unanimously reject the enslavement of free Muslims, of whatever race or origin. Nor did the total identification of blackness with slavery, which occurred in North and South America, ever take place in the Muslim world. There were always white slaves as well as black ones, and free blacks as well as slaves. Nevertheless, the identification of blackness with certain forms of slavery went very far-and in later centuries white slaves grew increasingly rare.
Already in medieval times it became customary to use different words for black and white slaves. White slaves were normally called mamluk, an Arabic word meaning "owned," while black slaves were called 'abd. "' In time, the word 'abd ceased to be used of any but black slaves and eventually, in many Arabic dialects, simply came to mean a black man, whether slave or free. This transition from a social to an ethnic meaning is thus the reverse of the semantic development of our own word "slave," which began as the designation of an ethnic group and became a social term. In Western Islam-in North Africa and Spain-the word khadim, "servant" (dialectal form, khadem) is often specialized to mean "black slave," "slave woman," or "concubine.""
It is not only in terminology that black and white slaves were distinguished. For one thing, white slaves, especially females, were more expensive;' for another, black slaves were far more severely restricted in their social and occupational mobility. In early times black singers were greatly admired, and some of them won fame and fortune-if not for themselves, then for their trainers and owners. Jahiz, in his essay on singing girls, mentions an Ethiopian slave girl who was worth 120,000 dinars and brought much profit to her master, in the form of gifts and offerings from aspiring and frustrated admirers." Later, the black musicians seem to have been overtaken by whites. The change is ascribed to the great musician Ibrahim al-Mawsili (742-804), whose son is quoted as saying: "They used not to train beautiful slave girls to sing, but they used only to train yellow and black girls. The first to teach valuable girls to sing was my father." The price of these girls, he adds, was very much higher. 14
Ibn Butlan, in his handbook, suggests a proper ethnic division of labor for both male and female slaves. As guards of persons and property, he recommends Indians and Nubians; as laborers, servants, and eunuchs, Zanj; as soldiers, Turks and Slavs. On female slaves he goes into somewhat greater detail, discussing their racial attributes, of both body and character, and the different functions for which they are best fitted.' In the central Islamic lands, black slaves were most commonly used for domestic and menial purposes, often as eunuchs, sometimes also in economic enterprises, as for example in the gold mines of `Allagi in Upper Egypt (where, according to Ya`qubi, "the inhabitants, merchants and others, have black slaves who work the mines")," in the salt mines, and in the copper mines of the Sahara, where both male and female slaves were employed." The most famous were the black slave gangs who toiled in the salt flats of Basra. Their task was to remove and stack the nitrous topsoil, so as to clear the undersoil for cultivation, probably of sugar, and at the same time to extract the saltpeter. Consisting principally of slaves imported from East Africa and numbering some tens of thousands, they lived and worked in conditions of extreme misery. They were fed, we are told, on "a few handfuls" of flour, semolina, and dates. They rose in several successive rebellions, the most important of which lasted fifteen years, from 868 to 883, and for a while offered a serious threat to the Baghdad Caliphate.''
Even religious groups with what some would call radical and progressive ideals seem to have accepted the slavery of the black man as natural. Thus, in the eleventh century we are told that the Carmathians established a kind of republic in eastern Arabia, abolished many of the prescriptions regarding persons and property which conventional Islam imposed-and had a force of thirty thousand black slaves to do the rough work.19
Jurists occasionally discuss the status of black Muslim slaves. Muslim law unequivocally forbids the enslavement of free Muslims of whatever race, and was usually obeyed in this. There is, however, evidence that the law was not always strictly enforced to protect Muslim captives from black Africa. A fatwa (legal ruling) in a collection of such rulings by Spanish and North African authorities, compiled by a fifteenth-century Moroccan jurist, Ahmad alWansharisi, is instructive. The question to be decided is whether Ethiopian (i.e., black) slaves professing monotheism and observing religious practices could lawfully be bought and sold. The law is clear. An unbeliever may be enslaved, a Muslim may not; but the adoption of Islam by an unbeliever after his enslavement does not automatically set him free. Slavery, says the fatwa, is a condition arising from current or previous unbelief and persists after conversion, the owner of the slave retaining full property rights. If a group is known to have been converted to Islam, then the taking of slaves from this group is forbidden. However, the existence of a doubt as to whether conversion took place before or after enslavement does not invalidate the ownership or sale of the slave. It is significant that the writer of the fatwa discusses the question in relation to black slaves, that he is at some pains to insist that Islam does not necessarily involve freedom, and that he gives the benefit of the doubt not to the slave but to the slaveowner.21' The problem was clearly not academic. Other sources preserve complaints by black Muslim rulers about "holy wars" launched against them to take captives and by jurists-usually black juristsat the enslavement of free, black Muslims contrary to law.''
The question was discussed at some length by an African jurist, Ahmad Baba of Timbuktu (1556-1627), in an answer written for a group of Muslims in the oasis of Tuat. This was a major center of the slave trade, and the good men of Tuat, apparently suffering from scruples of conscience, submitted a number of questions on the legality of the enslavement of blacks. In general, Ahmad Baba reaffirms the classical Islamic position. Muslims, and also nonMuslims living under Muslim rule and protection, may in no circumstances be enslaved. Idolators captured in a holy war may lawfully be enslaved, and their slave status is not ended by any subsequent conversion to Islam. Ahmad Baba draws his interlocutor's attention to the black tribes farther south, who are still heathens and therefore subject to holy war and enslavement. While thus accepting the legality of enslavement, Ahmad Baba discusses and dismisses the story that the black races are condemned to slavery because of God's curse on their presumptive ancestor Ham. "Even assuming," he says, "that Ham was the ancestor of the blacks, God is too merciful to punish millions of people for the sin of a single individual." Slavery arises not from blackness but from unbelief. All unbelievers, black or white, may be enslaved; no Muslim, black or white, may be enslaved.
Ahmad Baba's answers, however, make it clear that many Muslim blacks were in fact being illegally enslaved, and
he frankly faces the difficulty of distinguishing between lawful and unlawful slaves. Unlike the Moroccan alWansharisi, however, he places the burden of proof not on the slave but on the slavedealer, who must prove his lawful right of ownership over the slave he offers for sale. To the question, "Can one take the word of an enslaved person?"-to which many jurists say no-Ahmad Baba replies with a firm and documented yes."
That this ruling was of little practical effect is shown by a later discussion of the illegal enslavement of black Muslims by the nineteenth-century Moroccan historian Ahmad ibn Khalid al-Nasiri (1834-97).23 Writing within the context of traditional society, he is nevertheless clearly affected by the new anti-slavery ideas current at the time. Al-Nasiri recognizes the legality of the institution of slavery in Muslim law but is appalled by its application. He complains in particular of "a manifest and shocking calamity widespread and established since of old in the lands of the Maghrib-the unlimited enslavement of the blacks, and the importation of many droves of them every year, for sale in the town and country markets of the Maghrib, where men traffic in them like beasts, or worse." This abuse is so old and so deep-rooted, says alNasiri, that "many of the common people believe that the cause of their enslavement in Holy Law is that they are black of color and imported from those parts." This is, of course, untrue, and al-Nasiri swears that "by God's life, this is one of the worst and greatest abominations against religion, because the black people are Muslim people, with the same rights and duties as ourselves." While conceding that heathens may be enslaved, al-Nasiri argues that by now a majority or at least a substantial minority of the blacks are Muslims and that since the natural condition of man is freedom, they should be given the benefit of the doubt. The evidence of slavetraders is dismissed as interested and unreliable, and the traders themselves are condemned as "men without morals, virtue, or religion."
Al-Nasiri then makes a further point against the legality of the slave trade in blacks:
Some men of integrity and some others have argued that the blacks today, as in the past. raid each other and kidnap each other's children, stealing them in places remote from their homes and dwellings, in the same way that the Bedouin of the Maghrib raid each other and seize and steal each other's mounts and cattle. They are all Muslims but arc led to this by lack of religion and the absence of any restraint. How can any man who is scrupulous about his religion allow himself to buy anything of this kind'? How can he permit himself to take their women as concubines and thus risk entering on a legally dubious sexual relationship'?
Despite such arguments and despite the decrees in favor of emancipation by Ahmad Bey of Tunis, the enslavement of blacks and their export to the Mediterranean lands and the Middle East continued and was defended by the increasingly flimsy argument that blacks were idolators and therefore that warfare against them was jihad, or holy war, and the captives were legally liable to enslavement. Since, for a conscientious Muslim, only a jihad could supply legally valid slaves, it was necessary to call every slave raid a jihad. One can understand the anger and anguish of a good Muslim like al-Nasiri.
White slaves were rarely used for rough labor and filled higher positions in domestic and administrative employment. Both blacks and whites were used as eunuchs, but the blacks soon predominated. The Caliph al-Amin (reigned 809-13), it is said, collected them in large numbers and formed separate corps of white and black eunuchs, which he called "the locusts" (jaradiyya) and the "ravens" (ghurabiyya). An Arabic description of the court of the caliph in Baghdad at the beginning of the tenth century speaks of seven thousand black and four thousand white eunuchs.z' Later, white eunuchs became rare and costly.
The importation of black slaves into the central Islamic lands, which began at the time of the conquest, continued without interruption until the nineteenth century and in some areas into the twentieth. From time to time, Western travelers give us a glimpse of this traffic. Thus Jeremy Bentham, who sailed from Izmir to Istanbul on a Turkish caique in November 1785, noted in his diary: "Our crew consists of 15 men besides the Captain: we have 24 passengers on the deck, all Turks; besides 18 young Negresses (slaves) under the hatches. ,15
Between white and black slaves-even where the latter were numerous and powerful-there was for a long time one crucial distinction. Whereas white slaves could become generals, provincial governors, sovereigns, and founders of dynasties, this hardly ever happened with black slaves in the central Islamic lands. In Muslim India, a number of soldiers of African slave origin rose to high office, some even becoming rulers.26 Elsewhere, their opportunities for advancement were very limited. Only one of them ever became the ruler of a Muslim country outside the black zone-the famous Nubian eunuch Abu'l-Misk Kaffir, "Musky Camphor," who in the tenth century became regent of Egypt (and a very capable one). Historians clearly regarded this as remarkable, and the great Arab poet al-Mutanabbi found in Kaffir's blackness a worthy object of satirical abuse. In one of his most famous poems, he bitterly attacks the master of Egypt:
In another poem he remarks:
The same limitation of opportunity applies to the emancipated slave. The emancipated white slave was free from any kind of restriction; the emancipated black slave was at most times and places rarely able to rise above the lowest levels. In Umayyad times, we still hear of black poets and singers achieving some sort of social standing, even though they complain of discrimi nation. In later times, the black poet as a figure in Arabic literature disappears and none of any consequence are reported from the mid-eighth century onward. A few religious figures-saints and scholars-are said to have had black ancestry, but these again are exceptional.28 What is more important is that the black is almost entirely missing from the positions of wealth, power, and privilege. Medieval authors sometimes attribute this want of achievement by black slaves and freedmen to lack of capacity. The modern observer will recognize the effects of lack of opportunity.
The military slave, who bears arms and fights for his owner, was a known but not common figure in antiquity. In the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C., the city of Athens was policed by a corps of armed Scythian slaves, originally numbering some three hundred, who were the property of the city.' Some Roman dignitaries had armed slave bodyguards; some owned gladiators, as men in other times might own gamecocks or racehorses, but in general the Greeks and Romans did not approve of the use of slaves in combatant duties.' It was not until the medieval Islamic state that we find military slaves in significant numbers, forming a substantial and eventually predominant component in their armies.
The professional slave soldier, so characteristic of later Islamic empires, was not present in the earliest Islamic regimes. There were indeed slaves who fought in the army of the Prophet, but they were there as Muslims and as loyal followers, not as slaves or professionals. Most of them were freed for their services, and according to an early narrative, when the Prophet appeared before the walls of the Hijaz town of Ta'if, he sent a crier to announce that any slave who came out and joined him would be free.' Abu Muslim, the first military leader of the Abbasid revolution which transformed the Islamic state and society in the mid-eighth century, appealed to slaves to come and join him and offered freedom to those who responded. So many, we are told, answered his call, that he gave them a separate camp and formed them into a separate combat unit.4 During the great expansion of the Arab armies and the accompanying spread of the Islamic faith in the seventh and early eighth centuries, many of the peoples of the conquered countries were captured, enslaved, converted, and liberated, and great numbers of these joined the armies of Islam. Iranians in the East, Berbers in the West, reinforced the Arab armies and contributed significantly to the further advance of Islam, eastward into Central Asia and beyond, westward across North Africa and into Spain. These were, however, not slaves but freedmen. Though their status was at first inferior to that of freeborn Arabs, it was certainly not servile, and in time the differences in rank, pay, and status between free and freed soldiers disappeared. As so often, the
historiographic tradition foreshortens this development and attributes it to a decree of the Caliph `Umar, who is said to have ordered his governors to make the privileges and duties of manumitted and converted recruits "among the red people" the same as those of the Arabs. "What is due to these, is due to those; what is due from these, is due from those."' The limitation of this concession to the "red people," a term commonly applied by the Arabs to the Iranians and later extended to their Central Asian neighbors, is surely significant. The recruitment of aliens, that is, nonArabs and often non-Muslims, was by no means restricted to liberated captives, and the distinction between freed subjects, free mercenaries, and bought barbarian slaves is often tenuous.
In recruiting barbarians from the "martial races" beyond the frontiers into their imperial armies, the Arabs were doing what the Romans and the Chinese had done centuries before them. In the scale of this recruitment, however, and the preponderant role acquired by these recruits in the imperial and eventually metropolitan forces, Muslim rulers went far beyond any precedent. As early as 766 a Christian clergyman writing in Syriac spoke of the "locust swarm" of unconverted barbarians-Sindhis, Alans, Khazars, Turks, and others-who served in the caliph's army.' In the course of the ninth century, slave armies appeared all over the Islamic empire. Sometimes, as in North Africa and later Egypt, they were recruited by ambitious governors seeking to create autonomous and hereditary principalities and requiring troops who would be loyal to them against their immediate subjects and their imperial suzerains. Sometimes it was the caliphs themselves who recruited such armies. Such, for example, were the palace guards recruited by the Umayyad Caliph al-Hakam in Cordova and the Abbasid Caliph al-Mu`tasim in Iraq.'
Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry Page 9