Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry

by Bernard Lewis

  20. Maqrizi, Khitat, vol. 2. p. 19.

  21. D. Avalon, Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mam/uk Kin,gdorn (London, 1956), pp. 66ff.

  22. Maqrizi, Kitah al-Suluk, ed. Muhammad Mustafa Ziyada, vol. 1 (Cairo, 1934), p. 440 (French translation in E. Quatremere, Histoire des sultans mamlouks tie l'Egypte, vol. 1, pt. I [Paris. 18371, pp. 122-29). See, further, A. N. Poliak, "Les Revoltes populaires en Egypte a I'epoque des mamelouks et leurs causes econom- iques," Revue des etudes islamiques (1934), pp. 241-73, esp. 254-72.

  23. Slightly variant accounts in Ibn Taghri Birdi, Hawadith al-Duhdr, ed. W. Popper, vol. 8, pt. I (Berkeley, 1930), pp. 19-20; al-Sakhawi, A/-Tihr al-masbuk ft dhavl al-Suluk (Cairo, 1896), p. 126; Ibn Iyas, Badd'i` al-zuhur, vol. 2 (Bulaq, 1311/189394), p. 28. See also Poliak, "Les Revoltes populaires," pp. 272-73; 1. M. Lapidus, Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA, 1967), pp. 171-72.

  24. Ansari, cited and translated from an unpublished manuscript by D. Ayalon, "Gunpowder," p. 70.

  25. Andrew Handler, "The `abid under the Umayyads of Cordova and the muluk al-tawa'if," in Occident and Orient: A Tribute to the Memory of Alexander Scheiher, ed. Robert Dan (Budapest and Leiden, 1988), pp. 229-39. M. Brett, "Ifriqiya as a market for Saharan trade from the tenth to the twelfth century A.D.," Journal of African History 10 (1969), pp. 354-56. On black slaves in medieval Tunisia, see also H. I. Idris, La Berberie orientate sous les Zirides: Xe-X//e siecles (Paris, 1962), pp. 575-76, 68485; M. Talbi, L'Emirat aghlabide 184-296/800-909: histoire politique (Paris, 1966), pp. 193-247.

  26. Ramon Lourido Diaz, "La rebelion de los 'Abid, en 1778, y su desintegracion como milicia especial," Cuadernos de historia del Islam 5 (1973), pp. 99-149: Nicola Ziadeh, "Al-Mawlay Ismail Sultan al-Maghrib, 1082-1139/1672-1727," Al-Ahhath 17 (1964), pp. 155ff.: Allan R. Meyers, "Class, ethnicity, and slavery: The origins of the Moroccan 'Abid," International Journal of African Historical Studies 10 (1977), pp. 427-42; Henri Terrasse, Histoire du Maroc, vol. 2 (Casablanca, 1950), pp. 256-57: Ch.-Andre Julien, Histoire de l'Afrique du Nord, 2d ed. (Paris, 1961), pp. 229-30. The relevant passages from Nasiri's chronicle were translated into French by Eugene Fumey and published in Archives marocaines 9 (1906), pp. 74-78, 94-96.

  27. David Hume, "Of parties in general," in Essays. My thanks are due to E. Kedourie for drawing my attention to this passage.

  28. Fumey, Archives marocaines, pp. 330-33.

  29. W. G. Browne, Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria from the Year 1792 to 1798, 2d ed. (London, 1806), p. 54; Louis Frank, Memoire sur le commerce des negres au Kaire et sur les maladies auxquelles its sort sujets en v arrivant (Paris, 1802). pp. 37-38.

  30. On this curious episode, see Raverat and Dellard, "Historique du bataillon negre egyptien au Mexique (1863-1867)," Revue d'Egypte 1 (1894-95), pp. 42-53, 104-23, 176-85, 230-45, 272-86; 'Umar Tusun, Butulat al-Urta al-Sudaniyya al- Misriyya fi harh al-Maksik (Cairo, 1352/1933).

  31. R. R. Madden, Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine .... 2d ed., vol. 1 (London, 1833), pp. 145-46.

  32. Bernard Lewis, "Slade on the Turkish Navy," Journal of Turkish Studies 2 (1987), p. 10. The report was written by Adolphus Slade, a British naval officer attached at that time to the Turkish Navy and known as the author of a number of important books about the Ottoman Empire.

  33. The Turkish is kapt kulu, lit. "slave of the Gate." On the Gate, or entrance to a building, as a metaphor of sovereignty, see B. Lewis, The Political Language of /slam (Chicago, 1988), pp. 20-21. The term "Sublime Porte." which came into European usage at a later date, refers to the office of the grand vizier, to which the effective conduct of government had been transferred.

  Chapter 10

  1. W. G. Browne (Travels in Egypt, Syria, and Africa (in 1793), 2d ed. [London, 1806]) offers considerable information on the slave routes in Africa. For the nineteenthcentury slave trade, see J. L. Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 2d ed. (London, 1822), esp. pp. 290ff.; T. F. Buxton, The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy (London, 1840), esp. pp. 39ff., 90ff., 192ff.; Captain Colomb, R. N. Slave-Catching in the Indian Ocean (London, 1873). For some modern studies, see J. B. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf 1795-1880 (Oxford, 1968), pp. 441-51; Reginald Coupland, The Exploitation of East Africa 1856-1890: The Slave Trade and the Scramble (London, 1939); A. Adu Boahen, Britain, the Sahara, and the Western Sudan 1788-1861 (Oxford, 1964); Esmond B. Martin and T. C. I. Ryan, "A quantitative assessment of the Arab slave trade of East Africa, 1770-1896," Kenya Historical Review 5 (1977), pp. 71-91; Glauco Ciam- maichella, Libyens etfrancais au Tchad (1897-1914): La Confrerie senoussie et le commerce transsaharien (Paris, 1987); G. Baer, Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago, 1969), pp. 161-89; Terence Walz, "Black slavery in Egypt during the nineteenth century as reflected in the Mahkama archives of Cairo," in Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, ed. J. R. Willis, vol. 2 (London, 1985), pp. 137-60; Terence Walz, Trade between Egypt and Bilad as-Sudan, 1700-1820 (Cairo, 1978), pp. 173-221 (chap. 6, "Trading in Slaves"); Allan G. B. Fisher and Humphrey J. Fisher, Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa (London, 1970); on the Sudan, see, further, R. Hill, Egypt in the Sudan 1820-1881 (London, 1959), pp. 24ff., 62ff., and passim; R. Gray. A History of the Southern Sudan 1839-1889 (London, 1961); P. M. Holt, A Modern History of the Sudan, 2d ed. (London, 1963), pp. 14, 35, 61-72, and passim; Gabriel Warburg, "Slavery and labour in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan," Asian and African Studies 12 (1978), pp. 221-45.

  2. Cheykh Muhammad ibn `Ali ibn Zayn al-'Abidin, Le Livre du Soudan, trans. Marcel Grisard and Jean-Louis Bacque-Grammont (Paris, 1981), pp. 8-9. The Arabic original of this work is lost; the translation was made from a Turkish version published in Istanbul in 1846. On the slave trade, see, further, R. S. O'Fahey, "Slavery and the slave trade in Dar Fur," Journal of African History 14 (1963), pp. 29-43.

  3. 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.

  4. Ettore Rossi, Storia di Tripoli e dalla Tripolitania della conquista araba a! 1911 (Rome, 1968), pp. 316-19 (based mainly on Italian consular reports). Sometimes over-successful slave raiding produced a glut of slaves, and lowered prices. At the market in Bagirmi, at the southern end of Lake Chad, in 1878, an old man could be bought for two to three dollars; a woman, young or old, for five dollars. A child, age six to eight, could be bartered for a locally made shirt, valued at seventy-five cents. See Fisher and Fisher, Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa, p. 165. On African slaves in Ottoman Europe, see Richard Pankhurst, "Ethiopian and other African slaves in Greece during the Ottoman occupation," Slavery and Abolition 1 (1980), pp. 339-44. A British visitor to Crete in 1834 noted that "in the principal towns there are slaves in the families of every gentlemen. The price of labour is everywhere very high, the difficulty of obtaining labourers in many cases amounting to an absolute impossibility, and the markets of Khania and Megalo-Kastron are as regularly furnished with human flesh as they are with bullocks, the supply of both being chiefly drawn from the same place, Bengazi" (Pankhurst, "Ethiopian and other African slaves," p. 341, citing Robert Pashley, Travels in Crete, vol. 2 [Cambridge and London, 18371, p. 104). Pankhurst cites numerous other sources on this topic.

  5. See below, pp. 161ff.

  6. Enver Pascha, Um Tripolis (Munich, 1918), p. 90. My thanks are due to Michel Le Gall for this reference.

  7. See documents in Lewis Hertslet, ed., A Complete Collection of the Treaties and Conventions, and Reciprocal Regulations, at Present Subsisting between Great Britain and Foreign Powers, etc., vol. 10 (London, 1859), pp. 1011-12, 1014-17, 10971100; vol. 11 (1861), pp. 551-53.

  8. See C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka, vol. 2 (The Hague, 1888-89), pp. 12-23, 132-37; in English, C. Snouck-Hurgronje, Mekka in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century (London, 1931), pp. 10-20, 106-10; R. F. Burton, Peronal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Mecca (London, 1924), vol. 1, pp. 47, 49, 59-61; vol. 2, pp. 12-13, 233, 251-52.

  9. Quoted i
n M. Kaya Bilgegil, Ziya Pasa uzerinde bir Arastirma, 2d ed., vol. 1 (Ankara, 1979), p. 399.

  10. Rudolf C. Slatin, known as Slatin Pasha, who was a captive of the Mahdi for two years, wrote a vivid account of the slave trade-the capture and transportation of the slaves and the central slave market at the Mahdist capital, Omdurman (Fire and Sword in the Sudan [London, 1897], pp. 557ff.).

  11. Browne, Travels, p. 76. Bouza or buza is a kind of beer.

  12. E. W. Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 5th ed., vol. 1 (London, 1871), pp. 168-69, 233-34.

  13. Arnold Kemball to Lt. Col. H. D. Robertson (officiating resident, Kharaq), July 8, 1842 (enclosed in H. D. Robertson to Willoughby [chief secretary to the government in Bombay], July 9, 1842 [No. 116 Secret Dept.]), enclosure to Secret Letter 106 of Sept. 30, 1842, Enclosures to Bombay Secret Letters, vol. 50, India Office Records, London. Cf. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, pp. 411ff. See below, Document 5, pp. 157-59. On the slave trade from Africa to the Persian Gulf, see, further, Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic History of Iran 1800-1914 (Chicago, 1971), pp. 124-28.

  14. I am indebted to Shaun Marmon's study, in preparation, on the eunuch custodians of the Prophet's tomb. For a contemporary comment on the quasi-sacerdotal status of certain eunuchs, see Alfred von Kremer, Aegypten: Forschungen fiber Land and Volk wahrend eines zehnjahrigen Aufenthalts, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1863), p. 88.

  15. On the Ottoman court eunuchs, see H. A. R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West, vol. 1, Islamic Society in the Eighteenth Century, pt. 1 (London, 1950), pp. 76f., 329ff.; N. M. Penzer, The Harem (London, 1936), pp. 125-51, 233: Ismail Hakki Uzuncargili, Osmanli devletinin saray teskilkti (Ankara, 1945), pp. 172-83; cagatay Ulucay, Harem 11 (Ankara, 1971), pp. 117-31 and passim. For an earlier comment, see Paul Rycaut, A History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire, 4th ed. (London. 1675), pp. 66-67. On the modern period, see chapter 1, n. 34.

  16. A. Ubicini contrasts the brilliant careers open to white slaves, both male and female. with the domestic drudgery that is the universal fate of the blacks: "Only one path is open to them [black males] to reach high honor, that of the meheyn [palace staff]; but one knows on what condition" (La Turquie actuelle [Paris, 1855]. p. 294).

  17. Louis Frank, Memoire surle commerce des Negres au Kaire (Paris, 1802), pp. 1314; Gabriel Baer, Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago, 1969), p. 164.

  18. J. L. Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia (London, 1819), pp. 294-96. See, further, Prince von Puckler-Muskau, Aus Mehemed Ali's Reich, vol. 3 (Stuttgart, 1844), pp. 158-59 (in English, Prince von Puckler-Muskau, Egypt under Mehemet Ali, vol. 2 [London, 1845], p. 251); H. von Maltzan, Meine Wallfahrt nach Mekka, vol. I (Leipzig, 1865), pp. 48-49. Maltzan notes that many of the castrated black boys died, and that the survivors were sold at twenty times their previous price.

  19. See above. p. 101.

  20. Baer, Studies, p. 166 (citing a British consular report); cf. other sources quoted pp. 165-68.

  Chapter 11

  1. "0 you who believe! Do not forbid the good things which God has permitted to you" (Qur'an V:87). On this, the commentator Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (al-Tafstr al- Kabir, vol. 12 [Cairo, 1938], p. 71) observes: "It is clear that just as one may not permit what God forbids, so one may not forbid what God permits." The same point was made by the sultan of Morocco in a letter of April 1842 written in reply to an enquiry from the British consul general concerning the slave trade. See below, p. 156.

  2. There is an extensive literature on the Western, largely British, anti-slavery movement. For a detailed survey of abolitionism and abolition in the Muslim states, see Murray Gordon, Slavery in the Arab World (New York, 1989), pp. 208-38, and sources cited there.

  3. M. Bompard, Legislation de Tunisie (Paris, 1888), p. 398. An important and interesting statement of views on slavery is contained in a letter sent by Husayn Pasha, head of the Tunis municipal council, to Amos Perry, the U.S. consul general in Tunis, in the last decade of Jumada 1, 1281 = late October 1864, in answer to his enquiry about Tunisian experience of slavery and abolition and their effects. Husayn Pasha, while conceding that Islamic law allows slavery, nevertheless argues on both practical and moral grounds in favor of abolition and commends this choice to the American republic (Amos Perry to Husayn Pasha, November 12, 1863, Record Group No. 84, pp. 178-80, U.S. National Archives; Husayn Pasha to Amos Perry, October 1864, in Kanz al-Ragha'ib fi Muntakhabat al-Jawa'ib, vol. 6 [Istanbul, 1871-801, pp. 46-51, and in Ra'if al-Khuri, ed., Al-Fikr al-'Arabi al-Hadith: Athar al-thawra al-Faransiyya ft Tawjihihi al-Siyasi wa 1-/jtima'i [Beirut, 1943], pp. 223-28 [it was first published, in Arabic, in the Istanbul Arabic newspaper Al-Jawa'ib]; English translation by Ihsan `Abbas, Modern Arab Thought: Channels of the French Revolution to the Arab East [Princeton, NJ, 1983], pp. 152-57).

  4. On abolition in the Ottoman Empire, see Ehud R. Toledano, The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression (Princeton, NJ, 1982); Ismail Parlatir, Tanzimat Edebiyatinda Kolelik (Ankara, 1987). This book is concerned with slavery in nineteenth-century Turkish literature. The introduction, based on documents in the Turkish archives, deals with the practice and abolition of slavery in the Ottoman Empire. On Egypt, see Gabriel Baer. "Slavery and its abolition," in his Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago, 1969), pp. 161-89.

  5. G. Young, Corps de droit ottoman, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1903), pp. 171-72.

  6. Ibid., pp. 172-74, 180-81.

  7. Ibid., pp. 175ff. For some Turkish documents, see Hamdi Atamer. "Zenci Ticaretinin Yasaklanmasi," Belgelerle Turk Tarihi Dergisi 3 (1967), pp. 23-29, partially translated in Documents 6 and 7, below, pp. 160-61.

  8. A detailed account of these events in the Hijaz, including the texts of the documents cited, is given in Cevdet Pasa, Tezakir 1-12 (Ankara 1953), pp. 101-52. Other contemporary accounts may be found in the reports of the British and French consuls in Jedda. For modern studies, see Bernard Lewis. "The Tanzimat and social equality," in Economie et societes clans !'Empire Ottoman, ed. Jean-Louis Bacquc- Grammont and Paul Dumont (Paris, 1982), pp. 47-54; William Ochsenwald, Religion, Society, and the State in Arabia: The Hijaz under Ottoman Control, 1840-1908 (Columbus, OH, 1984), pp. 117-27, 138-41; Toledano, Ottoman Slave Trade, pp. 129-35.

  9. I owe this image to Lord Shackleton; see his speech of July 14, 1960, in the debate cited in note 10.

  10. For a discussion of the slave trade between Africa and Arabia in 1960, see Hansard Parliamentary Debates (House of Lords), 5th ser., vol. 225 (1960), col. 335.

  11. C. Snouck Hurgronje, "Ober seine Reise nach Mekka," Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft fiir Erdkunde zu Berlin 14 (1887), pp. 150-51; for a more extensive treatment, idem, Mekka, vol. 2 (The Hague, 1889), pp. 12ff.; in English, C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century, trans. J. H. Monahan (Leiden and London, 1931), pp. 10ff.

  12. T. F. Keane, Six Months in Mecca (London, 1881), pp. 94-100.

  13. Ludwig Stross, "Sclaverei and Sclavenhandel in Ost-Afrika and im Rothen Meere," Oesterreichische Monatsschrift fur den Orient 12 (December 15, 1886). pp. 211-15.

  14. For estimates of the numbers of slaves sent from black Africa to North Africa and the Middle East, see L. C. Brown, "Color in Northern Africa," Daedalus 96 (1967), pp. 467, 479; Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914 (Chicago, 1971), pp. 124-26; Raymond Mauny, Les Siecles obscurs de l'Afrique noire (Paris, 1970), pp. 240ff.; UNESCO, African Slave Trade (Paris, 1979), contributions by I. B. Kake and Bethwell A. Ogot. In about 1839, T. F. Buxton gave, as a "conservative estimate," a figure of twenty thousand black slaves a year transported by the desert routes to the Arab lands (The African Slave Trade [London, 18391, pp. 46ff., cited by Brown). Estimates of slaves exported by sea routes from Zanzibar, in the same period, vary between twenty and thirty thousand a year. Esmond B. Martin and T. C. I. Ryan ("A quantitative assessment of the Arab slave trade of East Africa, 1770-1896," Kenya Historical Review 5 [1977], pp. 71-91) conclude that in the
125 years covered by their study, fewer than one million slaves were exported to destinations outside East Africa and about another one million were absorbed by local demand on the East African coast. In an admittedly rough estimate, Mauny puts the total drain of African slaves to the Muslim lands at fourteen million. See also above, p. 10, and below, pp. 157ff.

  15. Louis Frank, Tunis, description de cette regence, p. 119, edited and annotated by J. J. Marcel, in L'Unii'ers pittoresque (Paris, 1850).

  16. Bowring, cited by Buxton, African Slave Trade, p. 193, cf. 108ff.

  17. The position of these black communities in Arab and Turkish cities still awaits scholarly investigation. One of the few black ghettoes in Arab cities to be studied is that of the old city of Jerusalem, which, owing to special circumstances, has been opened to scholarly research. See Adriana Destro, "Habs el 'Abid: 11 Quartiere Afri- cano di Gerusalemme," Africa (Rome) 29, no. 2 (1974), pp. 193-212.

  Chapter 12

  1. EI2 s.v. "Kafa'a" (by Y. Linant de Bellefonds); Y. Linant de Bellefonds. Traite de droit musulman compare, vol. 2 (Paris, 1965), pp. 171 81; F. J. Ziadeh, "Equality (Kafa'ah) in the Muslim law of marriage," American Journal of Comparative Law 6 (1957), pp. 503-17; cf. G. Rotter, Die Stellung des Negers (Bonn, 1967), pp. 131ff., and the standard treatises on Muslim law, esp. those by Hanafi and Shati i jurists, e.g.. Shams al-Din al-Sarakhsi, Kitab al-Mabsut (Cairo, 1324/19(16), pp. 22ff. The Malikis interpret Kafa'a in religious, not social, terms, while the Shia do not recognize the doctrine at all. The quotation from Malik is from Al-Mudasvwrana al-Ktrbra, vol. 4 (Cairo 1323/1905), pp. 13-14. For a Shiite view, see Shaykh Muhammad Hadi al- Yusufi, "Mafhum al-Kafa'a." Al-Hadi 4, pt. 6 (Qumm, 1396). pp. 59-64.