12. Aristotle, Politics 1254b20.
13. Milani, La schiavitu, pp. 68ff.; Pierre Vidal-Naquet, "Reflexions sur l'historio- graphie grecque de l'esclavage," in Travail et esclavage en Grece ancienne, by JeanPierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet (Paris, 1985).
14. Significantly, even in the Middle Ages. Jewish legal texts dealing with slavery refer to the non-Jewish slave as a Canaanite, e.g., Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, section on slaves. On the curse of Ham, see below, chap. 8, n. 9, pp. 123-25.
15. See W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina (Oxford, 1965), pp. 293-96, 344. On the Banu Qurayza, of whom the men were beheaded and the women and children sold into slavery, see Encyclopedia of Islam, 2d ed.-hereafter E12-s.v. "Kurayza" (by W. Montgomery Watt) and sources cited there.
16. Slavery in the Islamic world still awaits a comprehensive study. In the meantime, the best short accounts are those of R. Brunschvig, s.v. "'Abd" in EI', and of Hans Muller, "Sklaven" in Handbuch der Orientalistik, ed. B. Spuler, pt. 1, Der Nahe and der Mittlere Osten, vol. 6, Geschichte der Islamischen Lander, sec. 6, Wirtschafts- geschichte des Vorderen Orients in Islamischer Zeit, pt. 1 (Leiden and Cologne, 1977), pp. 54-83; also, by the same author, a brief general introduction to the subject, "Zur Erforschung des islamischen Sklavenwesens," in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, suppl. 1, vol. 2, Deutsche Orientalistentag, Wurzburg 1968 (Wiesbaden, 1969), pp. 611-22. A selection of translated documents relating to slavery will be found in Bernard Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, vol. 2, Religion and Society (New York, 1974), pp. 236-56. See also A. Mez, Die Renaissance des Islams (Heidelberg, 1922), pp. 152ff. (The Renaissance of Islam, trans. S. Khuda-Bukhsh and D. S. Margoliouth [London, 1937j, pp. 156 ff.); Franz Rosenthal, The Muslim Concept of Freedom Prior to the Nineteenth Century (Leiden, 1960), pp. 29-34; D. I. Nadiradze, "Vopros o rabstve v khalifate VII-VIII vekov," Narodi Azii i Afriki 5 (1968), pp. 75-85; 1. P. Petrushevsky, Islam in Iran, trans. Hubert Evans (Albany, NY, 1985), pp. 154-59; idem, "K istorii rabstva v khalifate VII-X vekov," Narodi Azii i Afriki 3 (1971), pp. 60-71; Walid `Arafat, "The attitude of Islam to slavery," Islamic Quarterly 10 (1966), pp. 12-18. The laws concerning slavery are treated in most, though not all, standard works on Islamic law, usually not as a separate heading but as part of the discussion of the various topics of personal, commercial, and criminal law. For useful presentations, see David Santillana, Istituzioni di diritto musulmano malichita, con riguardo anche al sistema sciafiita, vol. 1 (Rome, 1926), pp. 111-26, where the major Arabic treatises are cited; Th. W. Juynboll, Handbuch des islamischen Gesetzes nach der Lehre der Schafi'itischen Schule (Leiden and Leipzig, 1910), pp. 202-8. An earlier German dissertation deals specifically with the laws on slavery: Kurt E. Weckwarth, Der Sklave im Muhammedanischen Recht (Berlin, 1909), mainly on the basis of translated Ottoman evidence and without reference to Arabic sources. A new study, which comes to hand as this book goes to press, is Murray Gordon, Slavery in the Arab World (New York, 1989). While devoting some attention to earlier history, it is mainly concerned with modern and recent times.
17. Santillana, Istituzioni, vol. 1, p. 111, citing Malik ibn Anas: "Every Muslim is the equal of every other Muslim" (Al-Mudawwana al-Kubra, vol. 4 [Cairo, 1323/1905], pp. 13-14; Muwatta', vol. 3 [Cairo, 1310/1892-931, pp. 57, 262).
18. For example in Ibn Sa'd's account of the Prophet's address to the Muslims at the "Farewell Pilgrimage" (Kitab al-Tabagat al-Kabir, ed. E. Sachau, vol. 2 [Leiden, 1925], p. 133). For hadiths on slavery, see A. J. Wensinck et al., Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane, 8 vols. (Leiden, 1933-88), s.vv. Abd, Ghulam, etc. Among the Greeks and Romans it was a common practice to address an adult male slave as "boy" (Greek, pais; Latin, puer). There are many examples of this in papyri from Egypt and in other sources, including the Greek Testament and the Latin Vulgate translation. This has often been compared with the use of "boy" by colonial and American slaveowners, and it was generally assumed that this appellation served the same purpose of degrading and diminishing the adult slave. An Islamic tradition may suggest another explanation. According to a frequently cited /hadlth, the Prophet told the Muslims not to address a slave or slave woman as "my slave" or "my slave woman," but rather as "my young man" or "my young woman." The Arabic terms are fata and fatal. In the context in which it is cited, the purpose of this instruction is very clearly not to diminish, but rather to elevate, the status of the slave, by treating him or her as a member of the owner's family. For another version, with numerous other traditions and dicta urging kind treatment for slaves, see 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha'rani, Kitab Kashf al-Ghumma, vol. 2 (Cairo, 1370/1950), p. 154. Some jurists, especially among the Shi'a, maintain that only Muslim slaves should be liberated; the majority of Sunni authorities approved the manumission of all the "People of the Book," i.e., Christians and Jews (Petrushevsky, Islam in Iran, p. 158).
19. Santillana, Istituzioni, vol. I.
20. Mendelsohn, Slavery, p. 5; Westermann, Slave Systems, pp. 6, 30, 70, 84-86. Free children could also be enslaved by kidnapping or by legal adoption.
21. On Muslim and Christian laws concerning prisoners of war, see Erwin Graf, "Religiose and rechtliche Vorstellungen fiber Kriegsgefangene in Islam and Chris- tentum," Die Welt des Islam, n.s., 8, no. 3 (1963), pp. 89-139. On exchanges of prisoners with Byzantium, see Petrushevsky, "K istorii rabstva," p. 64. On the large numbers of slaves acquired during the conquests. see ibid., pp. 62ff., relying especially on Christian (Syriac, Armenian, etc.) historians, who understandably give more attention to the taking and disposal of slaves from among their co-religionists than do the Muslim historians.
22. For examples of such deeds of manumission, from both medieval and Ottoman times, see A. Grohmann, Arabic Papyri in the Egyptian Library, vol. 1 (Cairo, 1934), pp. 61-64; idem, "Arabische Papyri aus den Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin," Der Islam 22 (1935), pp. 19-30; K. Jahn, Turkische Freilassungerklarungen des 18 Jahrhunderts (1702-76) (Naples, 1963). On Ottoman usage, see further Alan Fisher, "Studies in Ottoman slavery and slave trade, II: Manumission," Journal of Turkish Studies 4 (1980), pp. 49-56.
23. See Encyclopedia of Islam, 1st ed.-hereafter EI'-s.v. "Umm Walad" (by J. Schacht).
24. See S. D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967-88), vol. 3, pp. 147-48; vol. 5, pp. 311, 321-12, 486-87. According to a ruling by a ninth-century rabbi in Iraq, "If a Jew is caught in fornication with his slave girl, she is taken from him and sold and the money distributed among the poor, and he is flogged, his head is shaven, and he is shunned for thirty days" (Rabbi Natronay, cited in Assaf, Be-ohale Ya agov, p. 230). Among Christians, committed by their faith to monogamy, the ban on concubinage was categorical, and enforced by the threat of excommunication (see, e.g., Mez, The Renaissance, p. 156). There are nevertheless reports of cohabitation with slave women by delinquent members of both communities.
25. On the redemption of captives, see Eliezer Bashan, Shevi_va u Pedut ha-hevra ha-vehudit he-artsot ha-yam ha-tikhon (Jerusalem. 1980). In the devastation of Polish Jewry by the Cossacks and their Tatar allies in 1648. those who fell into Tatar hands were enslaved and sent to Turkey, and most were redeemed. Those who fell into Cossack hands were killed.
26. Baron, Social and Religious History, vol. 4, pp. 156, 187-96; Assaf, Be-ohale Yaagov, pp. 224ff.
27. For an example, see Assaf, Be-ohale Ya agov, pp. 243-44.
28. Such, for example, were Johann Schiltberger (1396-1402), Georgius de Hun- garia (1475-80), Gian Maria Angiolello (1470-?1483), Bartholomeus Georgievitz (ca. 1548), and Albert Bobowski (ca. 1667). Some Europeans were even taken to Mecca, as slaves of Muslim pilgrims. Such, for example, were the German Johann Wilden (1604) and the Englishman Joseph Pitts (1680). For bibliographical details of those and other works, see Carl Gollner, Turcica: Die europaischen Turkendrucke des XVI Jahrhunderts (Bucharest and Berlin, 1961, 1968); Shirley Howard Weber
, Voyages and Travels in Greece, the Near East, and Adjacent Regions Made Previous to the Year 1801 (Princeton, NJ, 1953) s.vv. Among numerous accounts by Europeans who had been slaves in North Africa, particular interest attaches to the memoirs of Maria ter Meetelen, one of the few female slaves to have written a book about her adventures. Originally published in Dutch in 1748, the book was translated into French by F. H. Bousquet and G. W. Bousquet-Mirandelle, L'Annotation ponctuelle de la description de voyage etonnante et de la captivite remarquable et triste durant douze ans de moi Maria ter Meetelen et de l'heureuse delivrance d'icelle, et mon joyeux retour dans ma chere patrie, le tout decrit selon la verite et mon experience personnelle. Institut des Hautes-Etudes Marocaines, Notes et Documents, vol. 17 (Paris, 1956). Among several modern accounts written from within the harem, see Melek Hanum (Mme. Kibrizli- Mehemet Pasha), Thirty Years in the Harem, 2 vols (Berlin, 1872); Princess Musbah Haidar, Arabesque, 2nd ed. (London, 1968).
29. For numerous examples, see Petrushevsky, "K istorii rabstva," pp. 62ff.
30. Text in al-Maqrizi, Kitab . . . al-Khitat, vol. 1 (Bulaq, 1270/1854), pp. 199-200 (= ibid., ed. G. Wiet, vol. 3 [Cairo, 1922-], pp. 290-92). English translation in Yusuf Fadl Hasan, The Arabs and the Sudan from the Seventh to the Early Sixteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1967), pp. 22-24. For critical historical discussions of the pact, see Martin Hinds and Hamdi Sakkout, "A letter from the governor of Egypt to the king of Nubia and Muqurra concerning Egyptian-Nubian relations in 141/758," in Studia Arabica et Islamica: Festschrift for Ihsan 'Abbas on His Sixtieth Birthday (Beirut, 1981), pp. 20930; V. Christides, "Sudanese at the time of the Arab conquest of Egypt," Byzan- tinische Zeitschrift 75 (1982), pp. 6-13. For a contemporary document, complaining that among other breaches of the pact, the Nubians are sheltering runaways and are not sending the Muslims young and healthy slaves but "that in which there is no good-the one-eyed, or the lame, or the weak old man, or the young boy," see J. Martin Plumley. "An eighth-century Arabic letter to the King of Nubia," Journal of Egyptian Archeology 61 (1975), pp. 241-45.
31. See B. I. Beshir, "New light on Nubian Fatimid relations," Arabica 22 (1975), pp. 15-24, where a number of Arabic sources are cited and examined. See, further, Ugo Monneret de Villard, Storia della Nubia Cristiana (Rome, 1938), pp. 71-83. The imposition of a levy of slaves, as part of a tax or tribute, is still recorded in earlynineteenth-century Egypt and even later in tropical Africa. See Gabriel Baer, "Slavery in nineteenth century Egypt." Journal of African History 8 (1967), p. 420; Gustav Nachtigal, Sahara and Sudan, trans. Allan G. B. Fisher and Humphrey J. Fisher, 4 vols. (London, 1971-87), index (Sahara and Sudan. Ergebnisse seehsjahriger Reisen in Afrika, 3 vols. [Berlin-Leipzig, 1879-89; reprinted Graz, 19671).
32. For examples, see Tabari, Ta'rikh al-rusul wa'l-muluk, ed. M. J. de Goeje et al., vol. 2 (Leiden, 1879-1901), pp. 1238, 1245-46; Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1863), p. 421 (in English, The Origin of the Islamic State, trans. Philip K. Hitti and Francis Murgotten, 2 vols. [New York, 1916-24]), Ta'rikh-i Ststan, ed. Bahar (Tehran, 1314/1935), p. 82. According to this text, the rulers of the eastern Iranian region of Sistan, in surrendering to the Arabs in 650 A.D., agreed to pay to the caliph an annual tribute of one million silver dirhams, plus one thousand slave girls (wasifat), "each with a golden cup in her hand." The later Arabic historian Ibn al- Athir (Kamil, ed. C. J. Tornberg, vol. 3 [Leiden, 1883], p. 50) doubles the numbers to two million dirhams and two thousand slaves (wasif). Cf. C. E. Bosworth, Sistan under the Arabs, from the Islamic Conquest to the Rise of the Saffarids (30-250/651-864) (Rome, 1968), p. 17: Ya'qubi, Ta'rikh, ed. T. Houtsma, vol. 2 (Leiden, 1889), pp. 344ff. Another way of ensuring a supply of slaves is indicated in a passage in Balidhuri, Futuh, p. 225 (cf. Hitti, pp. 353-54) according to which 'Amr ibn al-'As told a group of Luwata Berbers: "You will sell your wives and children to pay poll-tax for yourselves." See, further, Petrushevsky, "K istorii rabstva," pp. 65-66.
33. See David Ayalon, "The plague and its effects on the Mamluk Army," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1946), pp. 67-73; Michael W. Dols, The Black Death in the Middle East (Princeton, NJ, 1977), pp. 178f., 185ff. For a nineteenth-century description, see above, p. 84.
34. On eunuchs in the Islamic world, see E12, S.V. "Khasi" (by Ch. Pellat [classical], A. K. S. Lambton [Iran], and C. Orhonlu [Ottoman]); David Ayalon, "On the eunuchs in Islam," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 1 (1979), pp. 67-124; idem, "The eunuchs in the Mamluk sultanate," in Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet, ed. M. Ayalon (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 267-95. On the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Ehud R. Toledano, "The Imperial eunuchs of Istanbul: From Africa to the heart of Islam," Middle Eastern Studies 20 (1984), pp. 379-90; Gordon, Slavery, pp. 91-98. On eunuchs in antiquity, see Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves, pp. 172-96.
35. On slavery and the slave trade in Europe, including Muslim Spain, see the numerous studies of Charles Verlinden, especially L'Esclavage dans l'Europe tnedi- evale, 2 vols. (Bruges, 1955). On the slave trade from black Africa to the Islamic world, see UNESCO, The African Slave Trade from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century: Reports and Papers of the Meeting of Experts Organized by UNESCO at Portau-Prince, Haiti, 31 January to 4 February 1978 (Paris, 1979), esp. the contributions by Mbaye Guaye, Ibrahima Baba Kake, Bethwell A. Ogot, Herbert Gerbeau, and the bibliography assembled by Y. A. Talib. On African slaves exported to India, see J. J. L. Duyvendak, China's Discovery of Africa (London, 1949), pp. 13-24; Joseph E. Harris, The African Presence in Asia: Consequences of the East African Slave Trade (Evanston, IL, 1971).
36. On the Sagaliba, see Ayalon, "On the eunuchs," pp. 92-124.
37. See Alan Fisher, "Chattel slavery in the Ottoman Empire." Slavery and Abolition 1 (1980), pp. 25-45; idem, "The sale of slaves in the Ottoman empire: Market and state taxes on slave sales," Bogazici Universitesi Dergisi 6 (1978), pp. 149-71; idem, "Muscovy and the Black Sea slave trade," Canadian-American Slavic Studies 6 (1972), pp. 575-94; idem, "Studies in Ottoman slavery. II: Manumission," Journal of Turkish Studies 4 (1980), pp. 49-56; Halil Inalcik, "Servile labor in the Ottoman Empire." in Mutual Effects of Islamic and Judeo-Christian Worlds: The East European Pattern, ed. Abraham Ascher, Tibor Halasi-Dun, and Bela K. Kiraly (New York, 1980), pp. 23-52; Halil Sahillioglu, "Slaves in the social and economic life of Bursa in the late 15th and early 16th centuries," Turcica 17 (1985). pp. 43-112: Ibrahim Metin Kunt, "Kullarin Kullan," Bogaziei Universitesi Dergisi, Hi7maniter Bilimler 3 (1975), pp. 27-42 (on slaves owned by the sultan's slaves). For an earlier study, see Cornelius Gurlitt, "Die Sklaverei bei den Tiirken im 16 Jahrhundert nach europaischen Berichten," in Beitrdge zur Kenntnis des Orients, ed. Hugo Grothe. vol. 10, Jahrbuch des Deutschen Vor- derasienkomites (Halle, 1913), pp. 84-102. For a contemporary comment on slavery in sixteenth-century Turkey, see The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, Imperial Ambassador at Constantinople, 1554-1562, trans. Edward Seymour Forster (Oxford, 1917), pp. 100-102.
38. On the devjirme, see E/2, s.v. (by V. L. Menage), where further sources and studies are cited. Paul Wittek ("Devshirme and Shari'a," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 17 [19551, pp. 271-78) argued that the Ottomans were following a Shafi'i rule of law, according to which the status of dhimmi was available only to those who had become Christians before the advent of Islam. Greeks were considered as such, and therefore exempt from enslavement. Balkan Christians, converted later, were enslavable. One weakness of this argument is the lack of evidence that it was ever adduced by the Ottomans themselves. See, further, Claude Cahen, "Notes sur I'esclavage musulman et le devshirme ottoman, a propos de travaux recents," Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 13 (1970), pp. 211-18.
39. On galley slaves in Turkey, see Michel Fontenay, "Chiourmes Turques au XVIIe siecle," in Le genii del mare Mediterraneo, ed. Rosalba Ragosta (Naples, 1981), pp. 877, 903.
40. See Alan Fisher, The Crimean Tatars (Stanford, 1978), pp. 15-16, 26-29, 42; idem, The Russian Annexation of the Crimea, 1772-1783 (
Cambridge, 1970), pp. 19-21.
41. C. N. Pischon, "Das Sklavenwesen in der Turkei. Eine Skizze, entworfen im Jahre 1858," Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 14 (1860), p. 248.
42. For some brief descriptions of the slave markets of Cairo by European visitors from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, see A. Raymond and G. Wiet, Les Marches du Caire: Traduction annotee du texte de Magrizi (Cairo, 1979), pp. 223-29. For detailed descriptions of the slave markets in Cairo and Istanbul, see Louis Frank, Memoire sur le commerce des Negres au Kaire (Paris, 1802), pp. 32-35; Charles White, Three Years in Constantinople, vol. 2 (London, 1845), pp. 281-83. See, further, Ehud R. Toledano, The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression (Princeton, NJ, 1982), pp. 48-54.
43. See Goitein, Mediterranean Society, vol. 1, pp. 130ff.; E. Ashtor, Histoire des prix et des salaires dans !'Orient medieval (Paris, 1969), pp. 57ff., 208ff., 360ff., 499ff.; Mez, The Renaissance, p. 156.
44. Pischon, "Das Sklavenwesen," p. 254.
45. Oluf Eigilssen, En Kort Beretning om de Tyrkiske S4roveres onde Medfart og Omgang (Copenhagen, 1641), p. 34. This is a Danish version from the Icelandic original.
46. See Mohamed Talbi, "Law and economy in Ifriqiya (Tunisia) in the third Islamic century: Agriculture and the role of slaves in the country's economy," in The Islamic Middle East 700-1900: Studies in Economic and Social Historv, ed. A. L. Udovitch (Princeton, NJ, 1981), pp. 209-49; also in French in idem, Etudes d'Histoire Ifrigiyenne et de civilisation musulmane medievale (Tunis, 1982), pp. 185-229; Talbi, L'Emirat Aghlabide (Paris, 1966), passim; Inalcik, "Servile Labor in the Ottoman Empire," pp. 25-52, esp. 30ff.; EI2 s.v. "Filaha," 4 (by H. Inalcik): idem. "Rice cultivation and the celt6kci re`aya system in the Ottoman Empire," Turcica 1 (1982), pp. 69-141.
Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry Page 16