tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62775779515125729582024-02-20T00:36:58.427-08:00ARAB MUSLIM SLAVERYThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-30260857441159016622008-10-12T15:30:00.001-07:002008-10-12T15:30:57.844-07:00Slavery in the History of Black Muslim Africa (Paperback)y Allan G. B. Fisher (Author), Humphrey J. Fisher (Author)<br /><br />"Will be welcomed by all interested in African history and anthropology. A valuable contribution and a rich mine of material."<br />--Journal of African History<br /><br />In many parts of the African Muslim world, slavery still blights the landscape. What are the origins of this terrible institution? Why is it still practiced? How widespread is it and how does it differ from Western chattel slavery?<br /><br />This book tells the story of how the enslavement of Africans by Berbers, Arabs, and other Africans became institutionalized and legitimized throughout Muslim Africa. A classic, pioneering study, first published in 1971 and extensively updated in this revised edition, Slavery in the History of Black Muslim Africa provides an expansive portrait of domestic slavery from the tenth to the nineteenth century in the context of the religious, social, and economic conditions of the African Islamic world.<br /><br />Drawing on a host of accounts from contemporary observers such as Leo Africanus and Ibn Battuta, Fisher and Fisher describe the status and rights of slaves in Africa, and their various roles as currency, goods, eunuchs, soldiers, and statesmen, as well as the jarring historical interruption brought on by slave raiders and traders in West and North Africa.<br /><br /><br />About the Author<br /><br />Humphrey J. Fisher is Reader in the History of Africa at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. His late father, Allan G. B. Fisher, was formerly Price Professor of Economics at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London.<br />Product Details<br /><br /> * Paperback: 400 pages<br /> * Publisher: NYU Press (August 1, 2001)Thierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-34941506727288561302008-10-12T15:29:00.002-07:002008-10-12T15:30:12.515-07:00Muslim Black slavery - Islam slave history of Black AfricaSunday, May 25, 2008<br /><br />Listen to this article. Powered by Odiogo.com<br /><br />A revealing historical account of the islamic slavetrade in Africa by the historian John Alembillah Alembillah Azumah.<br /><br />Muslim Black slavery - Islam slave history of Black Africa<br /><br /><br />From the YouTube uploader:<br /><br />This explains the current genocide that is going on in Darfur and the Sudan. I could see the link with the past that this has been going on for 14 centuries.<br /><br />This person wrote this book about slavery in Islamic states.<br /><br />John Alembillah Alembillah Azumah<br /><br />The book is called Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-Religious Dialogue.<br /><br />This book reveals the dark secret of Islam and slavery of black people in Africa and the history of how Arab Muslims went to war on and captured black men, women and children and turned them into slaves.<br /><br />While slavery only lasted 3 centuries in the west, it has lasted 14 centuries in the Middle East and exists today in many Muslim countries.<br /><br />He explains the book in this short video and it is very interesting.<br /><br />It explains that when Arab slave traders would raid black villages to the south they would kill the adults and kidnap the children.<br /><br />The boy children were indoctrinated into an Islamic army for the Arabs and the girls were taken as household and sex slaves.<br /><br />The reason their were not that many black descendants in the middle east is because the black male children were castrated so they could not reproduce.<br /><br />There were a few black Africans who grew up and because they curried favor with their masters were allowed to also be slave traders.<br /><br />A very interesting history of black African slave trade and the Muslim Arab world.<br /><br />People need to know this history, BUT instead sadly people will never get enough of watching Souljah Boy dance dude, 50 cent, old Tupac Shakur Rap videos, Britany Spears and other videos and never know the truth, especially white and black converts or reverts.<br /><br />This is part of the legacy of slavery that most African American people should know.<br /><br />Many black converts or reverts do not know this history before they converted believing that they were originally Muslim before they were sold into slavery. They were not. People should research their history before they convert or revert.<br />http://westerncivilizationandculture.blogspot.com/2008/05/muslim-black-slavery-islam-slave.htmlThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-54586453122856405592008-10-12T15:29:00.001-07:002008-10-12T15:29:30.310-07:00Slavery in the Islamic World - A Forgotten Horror StoryPosted by William D. Rubinstein<br /><br />The history of slavery in the Islamic world is too often ignored. William D. Rubinstein - professor of modern history at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and the author of Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain since the Industrial Revolution - argues that the story of slavery in the Islamic world should be better known.<br /><br />The pattern by which Western commentators, especially Western leftists, consistently whitewash the barbarisms committed by the peoples of the Third World, and not least of all by the Islamic world, is well illustrated by the appalling history of slavery in the Islamic world. This is a subject of which most people know nothing whatever, although some people may be dimly aware that slavery existed, and may continue to exist, in the Islamic world.<br /><br />Slavery in the Islamic world existed far longer than did the African-based slave trade and slavery of the Christian West, which began around 1450 and reached its peak between 1750 and 1850. Some historians have estimated that during the centuries in which the slave trade existed in the West, about one-quarter of all captured African slaves were transported to the Muslim world. All of these were pagans at the time of their enslavement, as no Muslim is (theoretically) allowed to enslave another Muslim.<br /><br />The slave trade in the Islamic world entailed bringing captives from black Africa across the Sahara to the Ottoman realms. It is estimated that about 1.5 million of these slaves perished while crossing the Sahara, although their number might have been far higher. The rate at which slaves captured for enslavement in the Muslim world perished might well have been higher than the death rate on the dreaded "Middle Passage" from Africa to the Americas, which is usually estimated at about fifteen per cent of those transported. Slavery into British America was a business, and slavetraders had every vested interest in trying to keep their captives alive.<br /><br />One of the most bizarre aspects of the Muslim slave trade is the fact that European Christians were frequently captured as slaves in large numbers, especially by the pirates of the much-feared Barbary coast of North Africa. According to one recent historian:<br /><br /> between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly and quite possibly a million and a quarter white, European Christians [enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast].<br /><br />Between 1530 and 1730, remarkably [Robert C. Davis, "Counting European Slaves on the Barbary Coast", Past and Present (172), August 2001]:<br /><br /> nearly as many Europeans were taken forcibly to Barbary and were worked as slaves as were West Africans hauled off to labour on plantations in the America.<br /><br />The real possibility of enslavement became dreaded throughout the European world and continued until Western navies became strong enough to forcibly end this barbarity.<br /><br />Just before the end of Barbary slavery, some Americans were captured and enslaved. America's first overseas war was in fact fought in 1804-5 with Tripoli (now Libya) over the enslavement and holding for ransom of its citizens, a conflict which will be surprising to many. The well-known American slogan, "Millions for defence - not one cent for tribute", was coined at the time of this war. In 1815 an American squadron of eight ships killed the last great Barbary corsair leader, Rais Hamidon, freeing many Americans held in slavery. Christian slaves could be ransomed, but ransomers were compelled to pay a fortune to free the enslaved.<br /><br />Although some accounts of Muslim slavery stress that it was milder than the plantation slavery known in the New World, its slaves were subjected to hazards unknown in the West. As late as the early twentieth century, eunuchs (deliberately castrated males) still presided over the harems of sultans and other local rulers. The death rate in the castration process was extraordinarily high, with some British observers claiming that 199 out of every 200 selected for castration died in the process. One British consul of the 1880s, A. B. Wylde, reported that in the mid-1880s there were 500 eunuchs in Cairo alone, which, according to him, represented "100,000 Soudanese" done to death.<br /><br />Slavery in the Islamic world continued in east Africa long after it had been abolished in the West. Slavery was still legal in Saudi Arabia and Yemen until 1962, and was not legally abolished by presidential decree in Mauritania until 1980. Reportedly, slavery still exists in the Islamic world, unremarked upon by the left-wing activists who criticise America and the West without cessation.<br /><br />Slavery ended in the West for a number of reasons, including the lack of economic productivity among slaves compared to free labour after industrialisation. However, the most important reason that slavery ended in the West was because ever-increasing numbers of influential people thought it morally evil and repugnant. In the British Empire, of course slavery was ended by Parliament, thanks to the activism of William Wilberforce and others. In America, slavery was ended because of a Civil War in which 600,000 men were killed. The American Civil War turned into a struggle to abolish slavery, a moral crusade possibly without equal up till that time. Slavery persisted, apparently in a milder form, in Brazil until 1889, the last major Western state to abolish it.<br /><br />In complete contrast, the Islamic world has had no local abolitionists or evangelicals who struggled to abolish slavery, which is permitted by the Koran. This is, of course, a common pattern: Western liberalism and religious or secular liberal radicalism are virtually unknown under Islam.<br /><br />One wonders, too, what today's Islamists think of slavery, given that it is permitted by the Koran (the Prophet Mohammed apparently owned slaves - in fairness, it must be said that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson also owned slaves, and many centuries later). One wonders, even more, why the facts of slavery in the Islamic world are so little known today.<br /><br />For those wishing to read more on this appalling subject, there are several relevant works, including: Ronald Segal, Islam's Black Slaves: The History of Africa's Other Black Diaspora (Atlantic Books, London, 2001); Humphrey J. Fisher, Slavery in the History of Muslim Black Africa (Hurst & Co., London, 2001); and Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2003).<br /><br />William D. Rubinstein is professor of modern history at the University of Wales-Aberystwyth. The Social Affairs Unit is publishing a fully updated and revised edition of Prof. Rubinstein's seminal Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain since the Industrial Revolution.<br />Comments Notice<br />This comments facility is the property of the Social Affairs Unit.<br />We reserve the right to edit, amend or remove comments for legal reasons, policy reasons or any other reasons we judge fit.<br /><br />By posting comments here you accept and acknowledge the Social Affairs Unit's absolute and unfettered right to edit your comments as set out above.<br />Comments<br /><br />I read Denis Healey's autobiography 'The Time Of My Life' a while back. As Shadow Foreign Secretary, he tours South Africa (Steve Biko takes him round Zululand) and notes the injustices of the apartheid state. All well and good.<br /><br />But earlier in the book, Healey is in Abu Dhabi.<br /><br />"When I visited Prince Sultan in his palace, I sat on a low cushion and was served with fragrant tea by a negro slave. Then the Prince leaned forward and asked for the latest news of Nye Bevan's illness."<br /><br />At that time, slavery had been unlawful in the UK and her colonies for some 130 years. Healey makes no comment at all on the fact of slavery existing in the Gulf in 1960. It's different for "them".<br />Posted by: Laban at August 17, 2006 06:24 PM<br />•••<br /><br />Indeed: and it would be no surprise if some kind of slave trade continues in Muslim lands.<br />The role of the Royal Navy in suppressing the slave trade in the Indian Ocean, especially off East Africa, where many hundreds of Arab dhows were boarded and their 'caargoes' freed, is also a little-commented upon story, it being necessary always to maintain the image of the British Empire as a slave-based Empire, when it was the first one to do without such squalor.<br />Posted by: jon gower davies at August 18, 2006 02:12 PM<br />•••<br /><br />England was first to abolish domestic slavery in 1772 in the Somerset case as noted by Jeremy Black on this site:<br /><br />http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000997.php<br /><br />However the first legislative action to prohibit slavery may have been the American Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which was limited to the future midwestern states of the USA. For the text see:<br /><br />http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nworder.htm<br />Posted by: rich at August 26, 2006 06:57 PMThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-951682107623680482008-10-12T15:28:00.001-07:002008-10-12T15:28:39.096-07:00Slavery in IslamAll the ancient as well as the contemporary scholars acknowledge the fact of slavery in Islam and clarify the status of slaves. I have chosen the opinions of the most famous scholars to shed light on their position.<br /><br />The Scholars of al-Azhar in Egypt<br /><br />In his book, "You Ask and Islam Answers", Dr. 'Abdul-Latif Mushtahari, the general supervisor and director of homiletics and guidance at the Azhar University, says (pp. 51,52),<br /><br /> "Islam does not prohibit slavery but retains it for two reasons. The first reason is war (whether it is a civil war or a foreign war in which the captive is either killed or enslaved) provided that the war is not between Muslims against each other - it is not acceptable to enslave the violators, or the offenders, if they are Muslims. Only non-Muslim captives may be enslaved or killed. The second reason is the sexual propagation of slaves which would generate more slaves for their owner."<br /><br />The text is plain that all prisoners of war must either be killed or become slaves. The ancient scholars are in full agreement over this issue, such as Ibn Timiyya, Ibn Hisham, Malik etc. Ibn Timiyya says (Vol. 32, p. 89),<br /><br /> "The root of the beginning of slavery is prisoners of war; the bounties have become lawful to the nation of Muhammad."<br /><br />Then (Vol. 31, p. 380), he indicates clearly and without shame,<br /><br /> "Slavery is justified because of the war itself; however, it is not permissible to enslave a free Muslim. It is lawful to kill the infidel or to enslave him, and it also makes it lawful to take his offspring into captivity.<br /><br />In Part 4, p. 177 of the "Prophet Biography" (Al-Road Al-Anf'), Ibn Hisham says,<br /><br /> "According to Islamic law concerning prisoners of war, the decision is left to the Muslim Imam. He has the choice either to kill them or to exchange them for Muslim captives, or to enslave them. This is in regard to men, but women and children are not permitted to be killed, but must be exchanged (to redeem Muslim captives) or enslaved - take them as slaves and maids."<br /><br />This is the statement of Ibn Hisham, on whom all Muslims and students of Muhammad's biography rely. Of course, these matters which Ibn Hisham recorded used to take place continuously in all of Muhammad's wars and invasions. All of Muhammad's people (his wives, and Muhammad himself) owned many slaves - males and females. In his campaign against the children of Qurayza (the Jewish tribe), Muhammad killed all the males (700-900) in one day. Then, he divided the women and the children among his people.<br /><br />The Caliphs across the ages followed Muhammad's footsteps and enslaved (by hundreds and thousands) men and women who were captured in wars. Many of them were Persians and Byzantines. All the Islamic Chroniclers without exception have recorded these facts. The way Arab Muslims invaded Africa and killed and enslaved Africans is a well-known, historical fact.<br /><br />In Vol. 2, Part 3, p. 13, Malik Ibn Anas repeated the same text as did Ibn Hisham who is also quoted by Ibn Timiyya, and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya in his book, "Zad al-Ma'ad" (part 3, p. 486). All of them taught the same principle and said the same words.<br /><br />This question was delivered to Ibn Timiyya who was Mufti of Islam (Vol. 31, pp. 376, 377),<br /><br /> "A man married a maid-slave who bore him a child. Would that child be free or would he be an owned slave?"<br /><br />Ibn Timiyya says emphatically,<br /><br /> "Her child whom she bore from him would be the property of her master according to all the Imams (heads of the four Islamic schools of law) because the child follows the (status) of his mother in freedom or slavery. If the child is not of the race of Arabs, then he is definitely an owned slave according to the scholars, but the scholars disputed (his status) among themselves if he was from the Arabs - whether he must be enslaved or not because when A'isha (Muhammad's wife) had a maid-slave who was an Arab, Muhammad said to A'isha, `Set this maid free because she is from the children of Ishmael.'"<br /><br />Then Ibn Timiyya states (Vol. 31, p. 380) that the legist Abu Hanifa says, "Muhammad is an Arab; thus it is not admissible to enslave Arabs because of the nobility of this race since Muhammad is from them." Yet other scholars disagree with him, emphasizing that Muhammad (in one of his campaigns) enslaved Arabs, too. However, it is evident from Muhammad's traditions that he regarded Arabs to be the most noble race, especially the Quraysh, his tribe. His famous saying (that the caliphs must be elected from the Quraysh tribe) is acknowledged by all translators of the tradition without exception.<br /><br />He should have told A'isha, "Set her free because she is a human being like you. It is not important whether she is a descendant of Ishmael or of Isaac!"<br /><br />Islam Encourages Muslims to Keep Slaves - No Liberation<br /><br />All Muslim scholars acknowledge that Islam has retained the principle of slavery, though some of them claim that Islam encourages the liberation of slaves. Maybe some of Muhammad's sayings and a few Qur'anic verses indicate so, yet from a practical point of view, we realize that the liberation of slaves was a rare occurrence. The reason is well known. Neither Muhammad nor his wives or companions were a good example in this regard. Sometimes, Muhammad used to talk about the merits of liberating a slave, yet he himself owned dozens of slaves and maid-slaves. However, we encounter a strange opinion spelled out by Muhammad's wives and his friends in which he encourages them to retain their slaves. In Vol. 33, p. 61 Ibn Timiyya says,<br /><br /> "Anyone who says, `If I do so (such a thing), every slave I own will become free' is not obligated by his oath and he can redeem his oath by any means and retain his slaves. (He can do that) by fasting a few days or by feeding some hungry people."<br /><br />On the same page Ibn Timiyya stresses that this is what all Muhammad's friends said (such as Ibn 'Abbas and Ibn 'Umar) as well as his wives (such as Zaynab, A'isha, and Um Salama).<br /><br />Is the liberation of slaves a bad thing so that it is possible for a man who swears he will liberate his slaves to renounce his oath and retain them? It should be said that whoever takes an oath to free his slaves if so and so happens, is obliged to fulfill his oath and liberate his slaves, but we see that Muhammad's wives, his great companions and his relatives say something different according to the testimony of Ibn Timiyya.<br /><br />The Qur'an itself (in several places) approves of slavery and assures the Muslim the right to own dozens of male and female slaves either by purchasing them or as bounty of war. The Qur'an talks about the possession of slaves as "the possession of their necks" (Chapter 58:3, Surah Al-Mujadilah).<br /><br /><br /><br />Slaves of Muhammad - Prophet of Freedom and Equality!<br /><br />Muhammad himself owned numerous slaves after he proclaimed himself to be a prophet. I would like here to quote Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya who is one of the greatest scholars and chroniclers of Islam. In his book, "Zad al-Ma'ad" (Part I, p. 160), he says,<br /><br /> "Muhammad had many male and female slaves. He used to buy and sell them, but he purchased (more slaves) than he sold, especially after God empowered him by His message, as well as after his immigration from Mecca. He (once) sold one black slave for two. His name was Jacob al-Mudbir. His purchases of slaves were more (than he sold). He was used to renting out and hiring many slaves, but he hired more slaves than he rented out.<br /><br />This trading used to take place in the slave market in the Arab Peninsula and in Mecca. Muhammad was accustomed to sell, purchase, hire, rent, and to exchange one slave for two. Thus, he had an increasing number of slaves, especially after he claimed to be a prophet, and after his immigration from Mecca to escape death at the hand of his tribe Quraysh. Also, the slaves of Muhammad and his followers were constantly increasing as the result of those who were captured in wars and not only by purchase. This should alert those who have accepted Islam - the Muslims of New York, Chicago, Georgia, Detroit, Los Angeles as well as all the Africans and all Muslims of the world. Even among the Arabs are Muslims who are not aware of these facts concerning Muhammad. Sadly, this is only a small part of the facts of which they are unaware concerning Muhammad.<br /><br />The Names of Muhammad's Slaves<br /><br />A) Male Slaves:<br /><br />Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya relies always on the prophet's biographies written by great ancient scholars. Therefore, he is regarded by Muslims as an authority, a primary source and a leader among the students of the Islamic religion. This scholar tells us in his book, "Zad al-Ma'ad" (part 1, pp. 114, 115, and 116), the following,<br /><br /> "These are the names of Muhammad's male slaves: Yakan Abu Sharh, Aflah, 'Ubayd, Dhakwan, Tahman, Mirwan, Hunayn, Sanad, Fadala Yamamin, Anjasha al-Hadi, Mad'am, Karkara, Abu Rafi', Thawban, Ab Kabsha, Salih, Rabah, Yara Nubyan, Fadila, Waqid, Mabur, Abu Waqid, Kasam, Abu 'Ayb, Abu Muwayhiba, Zayd Ibn Haritha, and also a black slave called Mahran, who was re-named (by Muhammad) Safina (`ship').<br /><br />He himself relates his own story; he says:<br /><br /> "The apostle of God and his companions went on a trip. (When) their belongings became too heavy for them to carry, Muhammad told me, `Spread your garment.' They filled it with their belongings, then they put it on me. The apostle of God told me, `Carry (it), for you are a ship.' Even if I was carrying the load of six or seven donkeys while we were on a journey, anyone who felt weak would throw his clothes or his shield or his sword on me so I would carry that, a heavy load. The prophet told me, `You are a ship"' (refer to Ibn Qayyim, pp. 115-116; al-Hulya, Vol. 1, p. 369, quoted from Ahmad 5:222).<br /><br />The story shows their ruthlessness and does not need explanation or clarification. The ill treatment Muhammad and his companions made of Mahran is very repulsive. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya is not the only one who recorded this episode and the list of names of Muhammad's slaves. The Tabari also (in his Chronicles, Volume 2 p. 216, 217, 218) presents us with these accounts. No one among the contemporary Muslim leaders denies these matters, especially if he is faced with the Tabari's and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya's records.<br /><br />Still, in regard to Muhammad's slave Zayd Ibn Haritha, Muhammad set him free and adopted him, then he married him to his (Muhammad's) cousin Zaynab. Later Zayd divorced her after he realized that Muhammad was captivated by her. The scandalous story is documented by verses in the Qur'an, and Muslim scholars admit it.<br /><br />B) Maid Slaves:<br /><br />In this same Section (One, p. 116), Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya as well as other Muslim authors of chronicles recorded the list of names of Muhammad's maid-slaves. They are Salma Um Rafi', Maymuna daughter of Abu Asib, Maymuna daughter of Sa'd, Khadra, Radwa, Razina, Um Damira, Rayhana, Mary the Coptic, in addition to two other maid-slaves, one of them given to him as a present by his cousin, Zaynab, and the other one captured in a war.<br /><br /><br /><br />The Status of the Slave Under Islam's Unjust Laws<br /><br />Let us survey together some strange things embraced by Muhammad and Islam pertaining to slaves. Then let us shed some light on the attitude of Christianity towards this issue.<br /><br />The Freeman Should Not Be Killed For A Slave<br /><br />The Qur'an as well as Muslim scholars are explicit in this regard The Qur'an (the Chapter of the Cow:178) shamelessly says,<br /><br /> "O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you in the matter of the murdered - the freeman for the freeman, and the slave for the slave, and the female for the female."<br /><br />The reader does not need the interpretations of the scholars to understand these explicit words which indicate that the freeman should be killed only for another freeman, a slave for a slave, and a female for a female. Still, I promised to stick to the interpretations of the great expositors of these Qur'anic verses from among the Muslim scholars because they are more knowledgeable of their Book and its verses. We rely on their interpretations and not on our own. In the commentary of the Jalalan (p. 24), we read the following regarding the above mentioned verse,<br /><br /> "The same punishment was imposed on believers and what is similar to the act of the crime in the case of a homicide, by virtue of description or actuality. A freeman should be killed for another freeman but not for a slave, a female for a female, but a Muslim (even if he is a slave) must not be killed for an infidel, even if that infidel is a freeman."<br /><br />What kind of equality is this between human beings!<br /><br />To explain the aforementioned verse (2:178), the Baydawi relates what really happened with the prophet Muhammad, Abu Bakr and 'Umar. This is recorded in his book entitled, "The Commentary of al-Baydawi". On p. 36, we read,<br /><br /> "The Shafi'i and Malik prohibit the killing of a freeman if he slays his slave or other men's slaves. This is because 'Ali Ibn Abi-Talib mentioned that a man had killed his slave and Muhammad scourged him only; he did not kill him. It was related on the authority of Muhammad that he said a Muslim should not be killed for a non-Muslim, nor a freeman for a slave; also because Abu Bakr and 'Umar Ibn al-Khattab did not kill a freeman for a slave. (This was said) in the presence of all Muhammad's companions, and no one disapproved or objected to it."<br /><br />These are the verses of the Qur'an and this is the attitude of Muhammad himself as well as Abu Bakr and 'Umar after him.<br /><br />The Muslim legists<br /><br />The Shafi'i, Malik and Ibn Timiyya, pronounce the same principle as in the Qur'an (2:187).<br /><br />The Imam Shafi'i tells us plainly and decisively in Part I of his book, "Ahkam al-Qur'an" ("The Ordinances of the Qur'an", p. 275),<br /><br /> "A man is not to be killed for his slave nor the freeman for a slave."<br /><br />On the same page he adds,<br /><br /> "A believer is not to be killed for a non-believer, nor a man for his son, or a man for his slave or for a woman."<br /><br />What justice! What equality! Then he adds,<br /><br /> "The freeman is not to be killed for a slave according to the scholars."<br /><br />Malik Ibn Anas was asked: "What is the punishment of a master who beats his slave to death?" He answered: "Nothing!" (Vol. 6, Part 15, p 164).<br /><br />In Vol. 28, p. 378, Ibn Timiyya also says:<br /><br /> "What we mentioned in regard to the believers whose blood is treated equally is restricted to the free Muslim against another free Muslim."<br /><br />I do not have better witnesses in this regard than these scholars: Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Ali and Muhammad's deeds, and all great, popular Muslim scholars.<br /><br />A Slave Is Not Entitled To Property Or Money<br /><br />Ibn Hazm says in Vol. 6, Part 9,<br /><br /> "The slave is not permitted to write a will when he dies, nor can he bequeath (anything) because his entire possessions belong to his master."<br /><br />In part I, p. 180 of his book, "The Ordinances of the Qur'an", the Shafi'i also says,<br /><br /> "The Qur'anic verse; `Marry of the women who seem good to you, two or three or four are meant for the freeman only and not for the slaves because he says in it that the one who acts fairly is the person who owns money and slaves do not own money."'<br /><br />He also indicates in Part II, p. 21, "The owned one does not have money." Besides, according to the Islamic law, all Muslims receive portions of war bounty except slaves and women. Malik Ibn Anas says (Vol. 2, Part 3, pp. 33,34),<br /><br /> "Slaves and women do not have any portion in the bounty."<br /><br />This is true even if they have been fighting with the rest of the Muslims. In Part III of the "Prophetic Biography" (p. 386), Ibn Kathir says,<br /><br /> "The slave does not get anything from the bounty whether the bounty is money or women."<br /><br />The Testimony Of The Slave Is Not Admissible<br /><br />In Vol. 35, p. 409 Ibn Timiyya remarks,<br /><br /> "The Shafi'i, Malik, and Abu Hanifa, who are the legists of Islam, assert that the testimony of the slave is not acceptable."<br /><br />If we also turn the pages of the "Ordinances of the Qur'an" by the Shafi'i (part II, p. 142), he determines,<br /><br /> "The witnesses must be from among our freeman, not from our slaves, but from freeman who belong to our religion! "<br /><br />The testimony of a Jew or a Christian is not acceptable, as we have mentioned before, even if justice would be hindered for lack of their witness. This is not important. In his "Sahih" (Part III, p. 223), Al-Bukhari remarks,<br /><br /> "The testimony of a slave is not acceptable in marriages."<br /><br />What is the meaning of the Shafi'i's statement,<br /><br /> "A witness should not be from our possessed slaves."<br /><br />Does not Mr. Shafi'i know that God only is the One who owns people? How dare he utter the phrase, "our possessed slaves."<br /><br />There Is No Punishment For One Who Makes False Accusation Against Slaves<br /><br />It is well known that if a Muslim falsely accuses another free Muslim and slanders his honor, he will be punished by being flogged with eighty lashes. This is what happened when some of Muhammad's companions and relatives accused A'isha, his wife, of adultery with one of the young men because they stayed behind after the departure of the caravan, then later in the morning they arrived together. Muhammad ordered each one of them flogged with eighty lashes. But if a Muslim calumniates a slave, he would not be punished.<br /><br />This is the opinion of all the scholars.<br /><br />For instance (Vol. 8, Part II, p. 27 1), Ibn Hazm asserts that this is the opinion of Abu Hanifa, Shafi'i, Malik, and Sufyan al-Thawri and not only his own opinion. This is what the Sharawi shamelessly remarks,<br /><br /> "Female slaves are deprived of dignity and subject to abuse because they are not `an honor' to anyone (that is, they are not free, respectable women who belong to a free man). These are the same words reiterated by the Shafi'i (Part I, p. 307) in his book, `Ahkam of the Qur'an'; thus a female slave must not be veiled. When- ever Muhammad took a woman as a captive, if he imposed the veil on her, Muslims would say he took her as a wife, but if he left her unveiled they would say, `He owned her as a slave'; that is, she became a property of his right hand."<br /><br />A good example is the incident of Safiyya, daughter of Hay, who was taken as a bounty in the war of Khaybar. All the chronicles (as well as the biographies without exception) have recorded, "We wonder why it is said about women and girls that they are of `shed dignity'." The Shafi'i and the Sharawi state this word for word. Is it necessary for us to repeat that Islam sheds the dignity of man under the pretense that he is a slave, that she is a woman, or that he is a non-Muslim?<br /><br />On Matters Of Sex And Marriage - and About Black Slaves<br /><br />1. The Slave cannot choose for himself.<br /><br />This was confirmed by all the Muslim scholars on the authority of Muhammad. In Vol. 6, Part 9, p. 467, Ibn Hazm said,<br /><br />"If a slave gets married without the permission of his master, his marriage will be invalid and he must be whipped because he has committed adultery. He must be separated from his wife. She is also regarded as an adulteress because Muhammad said, `Any slave who gets married without the approval of his master is a prostitute.'"<br /><br />The same text is quoted by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (Part 5, p. 117 of "Zad al-Maad"), as well as Ibn Timiyya (Vol. 32, p. 201). Malik Ibn Anas relates (Vol. 2, Part 4) more than that. He says (pp. 199, 201, 206),<br /><br /> "The slave does not get married without the approval of his master. If he is a slave to two masters, he has to obtain the approval of both men."<br /><br /><br /><br />2. The male slave and the female slave are forced to get married.<br /><br />Malik Ibn Anas says explicitly,<br /><br /> "The master has the right to force his male or female slave to marry without obtaining their approval" (Vol. 2, p. 155).<br /><br />Ibn Hazm says that Sufyan al-Thawri, too, has said that the master has the right to force his male or female slave to marry without securing their approval (Vol. 6, Part 9, p. 469). Ibn Timiyya is of the same opinion.<br /><br />I must not fail in this regard to mention that Malik Ibn Ons, who (after agreeing with the other scholars that the master has the right to force his male or female slave to get married) added,<br /><br /> "The master does not have the right to force the female slave to wed to an ugly black slave if she is beautiful and agile unless in case of utmost necessity" (refer to Ibn Hazm, Vol. 6, Part 9, p. 469).<br /><br />We wonder here, what did Malik Ibn Anas mean when he said, "An ugly black slave"? Is a man valued on the basis of the color of his skin? Do you say that, O Malik Ibn Anas, and you are one of the great four legists? Or is a man valued on the basis of his personality, reasoning, and heart? We also have the right to wonder why Mihran, the black slave, suffered the humiliation afflicted on him by Muhammad and his companions when they made him carry their belongings in the burning desert while Muhammad was saying to him, "Carry them, for you are a ship." Thus he became known by that surname. Did they not have dozens of other slaves?<br /><br />Muhammad even discriminated (in Islam) between a black dog and a white dog! Yet, what concerns us here is what I pointed out about slaves in general, their masters treat them as if they are not human beings who have feelings, desires and self-will.<br /><br />Let us continue our discussion in order to have a more complete picture about how the Islamic religion abuses the dignity of men and women under the pretense that they are slaves and not free human beings.<br /><br />3. The Arab freeman does not marry a slave unless it is inevitable:<br /><br />In Vol. 31, p. 383, Ibn Timiyya says,<br /><br /> "It is not permissible for the Arab freeman to marry an owned slave unless it is inevitable, such as being unable to get married to a free woman. If it happened and he were wed to a slave, her children would be slaves, too, because they follow (the status) of the mother in slavery."<br /><br />Malik Ibn Anas notes,<br /><br />"It is not allowable for a man to wed a slave besides his freewoman wife. In this case, his wife has the right to divorce him. Likewise, if he marries a freewoman while he is already married to a slave and he fails to tell her so, the freewoman has the right to leave him" (Malik, Vol. 2, p. 204).<br /><br />I do not have any comment on these strange principles, yet I wonder why an Arab freeman cannot marry a slave. Is not he a man and she a woman? And why (if it is inevitable that he should marry her) should all her descendants be slaves? These are iniquitous and ruthless ordinances. It is obvious that Muhammad failed to change the traditions of the tribal society of the pre-Islamic period. Most Arab Muslims had slaves. His companions, wives and he himself owned and retained dozens of them. He bought more after he claimed his prophethood and declared his message - the message or equality, and freedom, and human rights!<br /><br />What Would Happen If A Freewoman Married Her Slave?<br /><br />She might be an open-minded woman who did not discriminate between one man and another. Thus she might have fallen in love with her slave who also loved her and they intended, officially, to get married. What is the attitude of Islam in this case? If something like that took place in Islamic society, it would be a disaster! Let us see the reaction of Umar Ibn Khattab in these situations. In Vol. 8, Part 11, pp. 248, 249, Ibn Hazm remarks,<br /><br /> "A woman was wed to her male slave. Umar intended to stone her, but instead he made them separate and sent the slave to exile. He told the woman, `It is unlawful for you to get married to your owned slave!' Another woman got married to her slave. Umar scourged her with a whip and forbade any man to marry her. Another time, a freewoman came to Umar and told him, `I am not a pretty woman and I have a slave to whom I would like to get married.' Umar refused to do so. He whipped the slave and ordered him to be sold in a foreign country. He told the woman, `It is unlawful for you to get married to what your right hand owns. Only men have the right to get wed to what their right hand owns. Even if you set him free in order to marry him and he becomes a freeman, the manumission will be invalid and the marriage is not valid."'<br /><br />Is there any comment on the ruthlessness of this second caliph who was Muhammad's father-in-law and one of the ten to whom Muhammad promised paradise? He is one of the two whom Muhammad requested the people to follow as a model when he declared, "Emulate Abu Bakr and Umar." Yet Umar was a tyrant, a ruthless man without a heart who attempted to stone a woman for no reason except she married a man who was her slave. He also scourged another woman, forbidding any other man to marry her, and beat and exiled a slave. And when a third woman wanted to free her slave in order to marry him and live happily together, especially after she lost hope in getting married to a freeman, Islam and Umar intervened and said, "No, this is not permissible." He scourged the slave and sold him into a foreign country. By that, he became an example of relentlessness, a hard heart, and detestable oppression.<br /><br />In matters of sex and marriage, Ibn Timiyya states:<br /><br /> "The one who owns the mother also owns her children. Being the master of the mother makes him the owner of her children whether they were born to a husband or they were illegitimate children. Therefore, the master has the right to have sexual intercourse with the daughters of his maid-slave because they are his property, provided he does not sleep with the mother at the same time" (Vol. 35, p. 54).<br /><br />The Value Of The Slave - What Is His Price In Dinars?<br /><br /> "If an owned slave assaults somebody and damages his property, his crime will be tied to his neck. It will be said to his master, `If you wish, you can pay the fine for the damages done by your slave or deliver him to be sentenced to death.' His master has to choose one of the two options - either the value of the slave and his price or the damage the slave has caused" (Vol. 32, p. 202, Ibn Timiyya).<br /><br />Is this how the value of a man is calculated? If the loss amounted, for example, to 600 dinars and the value of the slave in the estimation of the master did not exceed more than 400 dinars because he was sick or weak, his master would, in this case, deliver him to be killed!<br /><br />We have looked at six points concerning the status of slaves in the Islamic religion. Actually, any one point, if we ponder it, is sufficient to clarify the truth. It reveals to us how human dignity is crushed in the practice of slavery. From the very beginning, we referred to the principle of slavery as it is manifested in this religion, and we have listed the names of Muhammad's slaves, the master and the "apostle of God!"<br /><br /><br /><br />The Position of Christianity - the Teaching of the Gospel<br /><br />Christianity is very decisive in this matter. The words and the spirit of the Gospel are very clear. From the very beginning, we have used a fundamental principle in this study and research; namely, the comparison must always be between the Gospel and the Qur'an - Christianity as religion and teachings and Islam as religion, in order to see which one of the two reveals the thoughts of the true, living God. Also, the comparison should be between Muhammad, his life and his sayings on the one hand, and Christ, His life and teachings on the other.<br /><br />If we were to find (for example) some Europeans or Americans who allowed themselves to acquire slaves, we should not blame Christianity for that because we must realize that the Gospel teaches something different. We see that Jesus and His disciples did not possess slaves.<br /><br />We do blame Islam in this regard because Muhammad himself acquired male and female slaves by dozens. All his friends, his wives and most Muslims of his time and after owned slaves. The Qur'an encourages that and the scholars do not negate it. We blame Islamic thought and the behavior of Muhammad in regard to this matter and other issues recorded in the most authentic Islamic sources.<br /><br />We should not, in any subject, dwell on the behavior of some Christians or some Muslims but rather try to examine the attitude of Islamic thought (or Christian thought) toward the issues under discussion. Some people, for instance, believe that a man like Khomeini is an extremist because of Islam, the religion of tolerance, love, and reason. We, for our part, feel surprised to hear that, because who says that this statement is true? Islam is not the religion of tolerance, love, or reason. Not at all! Islam is the exact opposite of this claim.<br /><br />Did we not see that this religion humiliates and persecutes women and non-Muslims as well as waging offensive wars and encouraging Muslims to kill apostates? Is Muhammad, who ordered the killing of a woman who insulted him, the prophet of tolerance? Why should we blame Khomeini when he issued an order to kill Rushdie? Does not Rushdie (according to the law of Islam and Muhammad, not the law of the United Nations) deserve death for attacking the Qur'an, Muhammad and his wives? Khomeini was never radical; he was always a true student of Muhammad. He intended to enforce the Islamic laws and to fight nations which do not comply with them - such as Iraq (even though Islam is its official religion).<br /><br />When Muslims kill one another, it is because Muhammad's friends and disciples did so immediately after his death, each one of them trying to force his friend to go in the right way. Khomeini is a true Muslim who follows Muhammad and his friends. Thus, we hear about "exporting the Islamic revolution" to other countries. All these things are compatible with the views of Muhammad and the rightly guided Caliphs who succeeded him such as Abu Bakr, Umar and Ali. When Khomeini slaughtered his opponents, he was following the footsteps of Ali who killed the dissenters, like Talha, Al Zubair and Al Khwareg, even though they were faithful Muslims.<br /><br />Now, what does the New Testament say about slaves? If we turn in the pages of the New Testament we read these verses:<br /><br /> "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28).<br /><br />Christ was always warning his disciples and all believers from calling themselves masters. He said to them:<br /><br /> "But you, do not be called `Rabbi' [master]; for One is your Teacher [master], the Christ, and you are all brethren" (Matt. 23:8).<br /><br />"But he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself will be abased (humbled); and he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Matt. 23:12).<br /><br />By these last words Christ has turned over all the feeble human standards - The "... greatest among you shall be your servant." How profound and deep are these wonderful words!<br /><br />This truth is clearly taught in the New Testament by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It happened that there was a slave called Onesimus who ran away from his master, Philemon. Onesimus met the apostle Paul in Rome and was converted to Christianity. Paul sent him back to Philemon with a very impressive letter which is included in the New Testament and in which we read these shining words,<br /><br /> "I am sending him back. You therefore receive him, that is, my own heart. Receive him ... no longer as a slave but ... as a beloved brother, ..., both in the flesh and in the Lord" (Chapter 1).<br /><br />Paul, Peter and the rest of the disciples did not have the authority to abolish slavery within the Roman Empire. Paul was not one of the Roman governors, but a fugitive and a persecuted man. Later he and most of the disciples were killed at the hands of the Romans along with thousands of their Christian brothers. Muhammad and his successors were rulers and could have outlawed slavery. Instead, they retained it and kept their slaves.<br /><br />In another letter, Paul urged the Christians to "give your servants what is just and fair" (Col. 4:1). The text emphasizes these two words - brotherhood and justice - because there is neither slave nor freeman, but all are one in Christ.<br /><br />Egyptian history relates a story about a courageous man who stood in front of his tyrannical rulers who mistreated people and wondered in agony, "Why have you enslaved people whose mothers gave birth to them as free persons?" This brave man did not know that he was addressing multitudes of people across the ages, whether ruthless Westerners in Europe and America or the prophet of Islam himself who failed to liberate the slaves because he himself had acquired dozens of them.<br /><br />Christian religious leaders such as John Wesley boldly condemned slavery in Europe and sent strong messages to the rulers of Europe and America. They led the movement of slaves' liberation during the day of Abraham Lincoln. Now there are multiplied black men who hold various positions of honor and respect in America. They teach in colleges and universities. They sit on the bench of the courts of the land-even the Supreme Court. They are freely elected to local, county, state and federal positions. They hold high military offices. They build their own fortunes with which they do as they wish. They freely marry and raise their families without fear.<br /><br />This is what Jesus taught - "There is no difference ...."<br />http://www.answering-islam.org/BehindVeil/btv5.htmlThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-18626173868243917032008-10-12T15:27:00.002-07:002008-10-12T15:28:01.356-07:00The Scourge of SlaveryMuslim slave traders<br />Over 28 Million Africans have been enslaved over the Muslim world over the past 14 centuries<br />While much has been written concerning the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, surprisingly little attention has been given to the Islamic slave trade across the Sahara, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. While the European involvement in the Trans Atlantic slave trade to the Americas lasted for just over three centuries, the Arab involvement in the slave trade has lasted fourteen centuries, and in some parts of the Muslim world is still continuing to this day.<br />CONTRASTS IN CAPTIVITY<br /><br />Slave routes<br />A comparison of the Islamic slave trade to the American slave trade reveals some interesting contrasts. While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Islamic slave trade. Two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims.<br /><br />While the mortality rate for slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Trans Sahara and East African slave trade was between 80 and 90%!<br /><br />While almost all the slaves shipped across the Atlantic were for agricultural work, most of the slaves destined for the Muslim Middle East were for sexual exploitation as concubines, in harems, and for military service.<br /><br />While many children were born to slaves in the Americas, and millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the USA to this day, very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survive.<br /><br />While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth.<br /><br />It is estimated that possibly as many as 11 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic (95% of which went to South and Central America, mainly to Portuguese, Spanish and French possessions. Only 5% of the slaves went to the United States).<br /><br />African Slaves<br />Slaves in Africa - in the early 20th century.<br />However, at least 28 million Africans were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. As at least 80% of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave markets, it is believed that the death toll from the 14 centuries of Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been over 112 million. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the Trans Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 million people.<br />THE ABSENCE OF ARABIC ABOLITIONISTS<br /><br />William Wilberforce<br />William Wilberforce led the campaign against slavery for 59 years.<br />While Christian Reformers spearheaded the anti-slavery abolitionist movements in Europe and North America, and Great Britain mobilised her Navy, throughout most of the 19th Century, to intercept slave ships and set the captives free, there was no comparable opposition to slavery within the Muslim world.<br /><br />Even after Britain outlawed the slave trade in 1807 and Europe abolished the slave trade in 1815, Muslim slave traders enslaved a further 2 million Africans. This despite vigorous British Naval activity and military intervention to limit the Islamic slave trade. By some calculations the number of victims of the 14 centuries of Islamic slave trade could exceed 180 million.<br /><br />Nearly 100 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in America, and 130 years after all slaves within the British Empire were set free by parliamentary decree, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, in 1962, and Mauritania in 1980, begrudgingly removed legalised slavery from their statute books. And this only after international pressure was brought to bear. Today numerous international organisations document that slavery still continues in some Muslim countries.<br />THE PAGAN ORIGINS OF SLAVERY<br /><br />Slavery long predated Christianity and many of the early Christians were slaves in the Roman Empire. Without exception, the pre-Christian world accepted slavery as normal and desirable. The Greek philosopher Aristotle claimed: "From the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule." The great civilisations of Mesopotamia, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and all the civilisations in Central America and Africa were built upon slave labour.<br /><br />People became slaves by being an insolvent debtor, or sold into slavery by their parents, or by being born to slave parents, or by being captured in war, or through kidnapping by slave raiders and pirates. Slave dealing was an accepted way of life, fully established in all societies. Most of these slaves were white people, or Europeans. In fact the very word "slave", comes from the people of Eastern Europe, the Slavs.<br /><br />St. Patrick, the English missionary to the Irish, was once a slave himself, kidnapped from his home and taken to Ireland against his will. Patrick spoke out strongly against slavery. He wrote: "But it is the women kept in slavery who suffer the most."<br /><br />Captured Slaves<br />About 80% of those captured by<br />Muslim slave raiders died before<br />reaching the slave markets.<br />The Greeks, from whom we derive so many modern, humanistic ideas, were utterly dependent on slavery. Even Plato's Republic was firmly based on slave labour. Plato said that 50 or more slaves represented the possessions of a wealthy man.<br /><br />Under Roman law, when a slave owner was found murdered, all his slaves were to be executed. In one case, when a certain Pedanius Secundas was murdered, all 400 of his slaves were put to death.<br /><br />Before the coming of Christ, the heathen nations despised manual work and confined it to slaves. When Christ was born, half of the population of the Roman Empire were slaves. Three quarters of the population of Athens were slaves.<br /><br />Slavery was indigenous to African and Arab countries before it made its way to Europe. Slavery was widely practiced by the tribes of the American Indians long before Columbus set foot on the shores of the New World. Ethiopia had slavery until 1942, Saudi Arabia until 1962, Peru until 1968, India until 1976 and Mauritania until 1980. What is also seldom remembered is that many black Americans in the 19th Century owned slaves. For example, according to the United States census of 1830, in just the one town of Charleston, South Carolina, 407 black Americans owned slaves themselves.<br />THE CHRISTIAN ROOTS OF LIBERTY<br /><br />But Jesus revolutionised labour. By taking up the axe, the saw, the hammer and the plane, our Lord endued labour with a new dignity. Christianity undercut slavery by giving dignity to work. By reforming work, Christianity transformed the entire social order.<br /><br />Our Lord Jesus Christ began His ministry in Nazareth with these words: "The Spirit of the Lord is on Me.to proclaim freedom for the prisoners.and release to the oppressed." Luke 4:18<br /><br />When the apostle Paul wrote to Philemon, concerning his escaped slave, he urged him to welcome back Onesimus "no longer as a slave, but.as a dear brother.as a man and as a brother in the Lord." Philemon 16.<br /><br />Because of these and other Scriptural commands to love our neighbour, to be a good Samaritan and to do for others what you would want them to do for you, Christians like William Wilberforce, John Newton, William Carey, David Livingstone, Lord Shaftsbury and General Charles Gordon worked tirelessly to end the slave trade, stop child labour, and set the captives free.<br /><br />From the very beginning of the Christian Church, Christians freed slaves. During the 2nd and 3rd Centuries many tens of thousands of slaves were freed by people who converted to Christ. St. Melania was said to have emancipated 8000 slaves, St. Ovidius freed 5000, Chromatius freed 1400, Hermes 1200. Many of the Christian clergy at Hippo under St. Augustine "freed their slaves as an act of piety." In AD315, the Emperor Constantine, just two years after he issued the edict of Milan, legalising Christianity, imposed the death penalty on those who stole children to bring them up as slaves.<br /><br />The Emperor Justinian abolished all laws that prevented the freeing of slaves. St. Augustine (354 - 430) saw slavery as the product of sin and as contrary to God's Divine plan (The City of God). St. Chrysostom in the 4th Century, taught that when Christ came He annulled slavery. He proclaimed "in Christ Jesus there is no slave.therefore it is not necessary to have a slave.buy them, and after you have taught them some skill by which they can maintain themselves, set them free."<br /><br />For centuries, throughout the Middle Ages, bishops and church councils recommended the redemption of captive slaves, and for five centuries the Trinitarian monks redeemed Christian slaves from Moorish (Muslim) servitude.<br /><br />In 1102AD, the London Church Council outlawed slavery and the slave trade. By the 12th Century slaves in Europe were rare, and by the 14th Century slavery was almost unknown on the continent of Europe.<br />THE ISLAMIC SLAVE TRADE<br /><br />However, with the birth of Islam came a rebirth of the slave trade. As Ronald Segal in "Islam's Black Slaves" documents: "When Islam conquered the Persian Sassanid Empire and much of the Byzantine Empire, including Syria and Egypt, in the 7th Century, it acquired immense quantities of gold.stripping churches and monasteries.either directly or by taxes, payable in gold, imposed on the clergy and looting gold from.tombs.the state encouraged the search and sanctioned the seizure, in return for a fifth of the finds."<br /><br /> Segal notes: "Female slaves were required in considerable numbers for.musicians, singers and dancers.many more were bought for domestic workers.and many were in demand as concubines. The harems of rulers could be enormous. The harem of Abdal Rahman III (912 - 961) in Cordoba contained over 6000 concubines! And the one in the Fatimid Palace in Cairo had twice as many."<br /><br />Slave raid<br />An Arab slave raid in East Africa<br />1888. The death toll from 14 centuries<br />of the Islamic slave trade in<br />Africa is estimated at<br />over 112 million.<br />Islam's Black Slaves also reveals that the castration of male slaves was common place. "The Calipha in Baghdad at the beginning of the 10th Century had 7000 black eunuchs and 4000 white eunuchs in his palace." It was noted that there were widespread "homosexual relations" as well. Islam's Black Slaves notes that Islamic teachers throughout the centuries consistently defended slavery: "For there must be masters and slaves." Others noted that blacks "lack self-control and steadiness of mind and they are overcome by fickleness, foolishness and ignorance. Such are the blacks who live in the extremity of the land of Ethiopia, the Nubians, Zanj and the like."<br /><br />Ibn Khaldun (1332 - 1406) the pre-eminent Islamic medieval historian and social thinker wrote: "The Negro nations are as a rule submissive to slavery.because they have attributes that are quite similar to dumb animals."<br /><br />By the Middle Ages, the Arab word "abd" was in general use to denote a black slave while the word "mamluk" referred to a white slave. Even as late as the 19th Century, it was noted that in Mecca "there are few families.that do not keep slaves.they all keep mistresses in common with their lawful wives."<br /><br />It was noted that black slaves were castrated "based on the assumption that the blacks had an ungovernable sexual appetite."<br /><br />When the Fatimids came to power they slaughtered all the tens of thousands of black military slaves and raised an entirely new slave army. Some of these slaves were conscripted into the army at age ten. From Persia to Egypt to Morocco, slave armies from 30000 to up to 250000 became common-place.<br /><br />Even Ronald Segal, who is most sympathetic to Islam and clearly prejudiced against Christianity, admits that well over 30 million black Africans would have died at the hands of Muslim slave traders or ended up in Islamic slavery.<br /><br />A dhow, the favourite slave carrying<br />vessel of Arab slave traders.<br />Dhow vessel<br />Arab traders beat their cargo into<br />submission on the run from the African<br />coast to Zanzibar.<br />The Islamic slave trade took place across the Sahara Desert, from the coast of the Red Sea, and from East Africa across the Indian Ocean. The Trans Sahara trade was conducted along six major slave routes. Just in the 19th Century, for which we have more accurate records, 1.2 million slaves were brought across the Sahara into the Middle East, 450000 down the Red Sea and 442000 from East African coastal ports. That is a total of 2 million black slaves - just in the 1800's. At least 8 million more were calculated to have died before reaching the Muslim slave markets.<br /><br />Islam's Black Slaves records: "In the 1570's, a Frenchman visiting Egypt found many thousands of blacks on sale in Cairo on market days. In 1665 Father Antonios Gonzalis, a Spanish/Belgian traveller, reported 800 - 1000 slaves on sale in the Cairo market on a single day. In 1796, a British traveller reported a caravan of 5000 slaves departing from Darfur. In 1838, it was estimated that 10000 to 12000 slaves were arriving in Cairo each year." Just in the Arabic plantations off the East Coast of Africa, on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, there were 769000 black slaves.<br /><br />Slave Market<br />The slave market in Zanzibar sold an average of 300 slaves every day.<br />In the 19th Century, the East African black slave trade included 347 000 slaves shipped to Arabia, Persia and India; 95 000 slaves were shipped to the Arab plantations in the Mascareme Islands.<br /><br />Segal notes "The high death rate and low birth rate among black slaves in the Middle East and the astonishingly low birth rate amongst black slave women" in North Africa and the Middle East. "Islamic civilisation.lagged increasingly behind the West in protecting public health. The arithmetic of the Islamic black slave trade must also not ignore the lives of those men, women and children taken or lost during the procurement, storage and transport.the sale of a single captive for slavery might represent a loss of ten in the population from defenders killed in attacks on villages, the deaths of women and children from related famine and the loss of children, the old and the sick, unable to keep up with their captors or killed along the way in hostile encounters, or dying of sheer misery."<br /><br />One British explorer encountered over 100 human skeletons from a slave caravan en route for Tripoli.<br /><br />The explorer, Heinrich Barth, recorded that a slave caravan lost 40 slaves in the course of a single night at Benghazi.<br /><br />The British explorer, Richard Lander, came across a group of 30 slaves in West Africa, all of them stricken with smallpox, all bound neck to neck with twisted strips of bullock hide.<br /><br />One caravan with 3000 proceeding from the coast in East Africa, lost two thirds of its number from starvation, disease and murder.<br /><br /> In the Nubian desert, one slave caravan of 2000 slaves literally vanished as every slave died.<br />AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT<br /><br />In 1818, Captain Lyon of the Royal Navy reported that the Al-Mukani in Tripoli "waged war on all its defenceless neighbours and annually carried off 4000 to 5000 slaves.a piteous spectacle! These poor oppressed beings were, many of them, so exhausted as to be scarcely able to walk, their legs and feet were much swelled, and by their enormous size formed a striking contrast with their emaciated bodies. They were all borne down with loads of firewood, and even poor little children, worn to skeletons by fatigue and hardships, were obliged to bear their burden, while many of their inhuman masters with dreadful whip suspended from their waist.all the traders speak of slaves as farmers do of cattle.the defenceless state of the Negro kingdoms to the southward are temptations too strong to be resisted, a force is therefore annually sent.to pillage these defenceless people, to carry them off as slaves, burn their towns, kill the aged and infants, destroy their crops and inflict on them every possible misery.all slavery is for an unlimited time.none of their owners ever moved without their whips - which were in constant use.drinking too much water, bringing too little wood or falling asleep before the cooking was finished, were considered nearly capital crimes, and it was in vain for these poor creatures to plead the excuse of being tired. Nothing could withhold the application of the whip. No slaves dared to be ill or unable to walk, but when the poor sufferer dies, the master suspects that there must have been something 'wrong inside' and regrets not having liberally applied their usual remedy of burning the belly with a red-hot iron."<br /><br />Slave Traders<br />Arab slave traders along the Ruvuma River, East Africa, 1866, axe a straggler.<br />Records for Morocco in 1876 show that market prices for slaves varied from £10 ($48) to £30 ($140). Female slaves comprised the vast majority of sales with "attractive virgins" fetching between £40 to £80 ($192 - $386). It was reported that "a considerable majority of the slaves crossing the Sahara were destined to become concubines in North Africa, the Middle East and occasionally even further afield."<br />CHRISTIAN SLAVES - MUSLIM MASTERS<br /><br />Segal also observed that: "White slaves from Christian Spain, Central and Eastern Europe" were also shipped into the Middle East and served in the "palaces of rulers and the establishments of the rich." He records that: "All slavic eunuchs.are castrated in that region and the operation is performed by Jewish merchants."<br /><br />Muslim raiders kidnapping women<br />Muslim slave raiders kidnapped women from Europe for harems in the Middle East.<br />Historian Robert Davis in his book "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters - White Slavery In the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy", estimates that North African Muslim pirates abducted and enslaved more than 1 million Europeans between 1530 and 1780. These white Christians were seized in a series of raids which depopulated coastal towns from Sicily to Cornwall. Thousands of white Christians in coastal areas were seized every year to work as galley slaves, labourers and concubines for Muslim slave masters in what is today Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya. Villages and towns on the coast of Italy, Spain, Portugal and France were the hardest hit, but the Muslim slave raiders also seized people as far afield as Britain, Ireland and Iceland. They even captured 130 American seamen from ships they boarded in the Atlantic between 1785 and 1793.<br /><br />According to one report, 7000 English people were abducted between 1622 to 1644, many of them ship crews and passengers. But the Corsairs also landed on unguarded beaches, often at night, to snatch the unwary. Almost all the inhabitants of the village of Baltimore, in Ireland, were captured in 1631, and there were other raids in Devon and Cornwall. Many of these white, Christian slaves were put to work in quarries, building sites and galleys and endured malnutrition, disease and mistreatment at the hands of their Muslim slave masters. Many of them were used for public works such as building harbours.<br /><br />Female captives were sexually abused in palace harems and others were held as hostages and bargained for ransom. "The most unlucky ended up stuck and forgotten out in the desert, in some sleepy town such as Suez, or in Turkish Sultanate galleys, where some slaves rowed for decades without ever setting foot on shore." Professor Davis estimates that up to 1,25 million Europeans were enslaved by Muslim slave raiders between 1500 to 1800.<br />THE EUROPEAN SLAVE TRADE<br /><br />While Islam dominated the slave trade from the 7th to the 15th Century, between 1519 and 1815 Europe also joined in this trade in human flesh. And it was those European nations which had suffered the most at the hands of Muslim slave raiders, and under centuries of Muslim military occupation, Spain and Portugal, who dominated the European slave trade.<br /><br />It was the enemies of the Reformation who brought Europe into this disgraceful trade. Emperor Charles V (whom Martin Luther defied with his historic "My conscience is captive to the Word of God.here I stand I can do no other." speech) of the Holy Roman Empire who first authorised Europe's involvement in the slave trade in 1519. Because of Pope Alexander VI's Line of Demarcation Bill of 1493 which barred Spain from Africa, Spain issued Asientos (a monopoly) to other nations to supply slaves for her South American colonies. First Portugal had this lucrative franchise, then the Dutch, then the French. Finally, by the treaty of Utrecht 1713, the Asientos was transferred from France to Britain. Britain's involvement in slavery was first authorised in 1631 by King Charles I (who was later executed by Parliament). His son, Charles II, reintroduced it by Royal Charter in 1672.<br /><br />According to "The Slave Trade" by Hugh Thomas, approximately 4 million (35.4%) went to Portuguese controlled Brazil; 2,5 million (22.1%) to the Spanish nations of South and Central America; 2 million (17.7%) to the British West Indies (mostly Jamaica); 1,6 million (14.1%) to French West Indies; half a million (4.4%) to Dutch West Indies and half a million (4.4%) to North America.<br />THE AMERICAN SLAVE TRADE<br /><br />Freed Slaves<br />Slaves freed by the British Navy.<br />It is extraordinary that, considering that less than 5% of all the Trans Atlantic slaves ended up in North America, the vast majority of films, books and articles concerning the slave trade concentrate only on the American involvement in the slave trade, as though slavery was a uniquely American aberration. However, the vastly greater involvement of Portugal, Spain and France seem to be largely ignored. Even more so the far greater and longer running Islamic slave trade into the Middle East has been so ignored as to make it one of history's best-kept secrets.<br /><br />We tend to focus on what happened in North America because the United States would eventually fight a war, in part over slavery, and because of the enormous and vocal American opposition to slavery. This was in sharp contrast to the indifference that Muslims, Africans and many Europeans evidenced towards it.<br />THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE<br /><br />HMS London<br />A steam pinnache of HMS London puts a warning shot across the bow of a slaving dhow in 1881.<br />The legends of European slave raiders venturing into the jungles of Africa to capture free peoples are generally just that: myths.<br /><br />The embarrassing fact of history, is that the Europeans did not have to use any force to obtain these slaves. The slaves were "sold" by their black owners. There was no need for the slave raiders to risk their lives or venture into the jungles of Africa, they simply purchased the people from African chiefs and Muslim slave traders at the coast.<br /><br />However, while the slave trade and slavery itself was always criticised vigorously in Britain and America, no comparable criticism was evident in the Muslim Middle East or amongst the African tribes which sold their own people, and neighbouring tribes, into slavery. Almost all of the African slaves transported across the Atlantic were captured and sold by African rulers and merchants.<br /><br />Many chiefs found it more profitable to sell their enemies, criminals and debtors than to kill or imprison them. Many were weaker neighbouring tribes conquered for the express purpose of selling their people into slavery. The disgraceful fact is that there were three equally guilty partners in the crime of the Trans Atlantic slave trade: pagan African chiefs, Muslim Arabs and Christian Europeans.<br /><br />The Trade, as it became known, involved a triangular voyage. Slave ships sailed from Bristol or Liverpool loaded with cloths, beads, muskets, iron bars and brandy. This merchandise was then traded in West Africa in exchange for slaves. Mostly African chiefs sold their own people, or engaged in wars and slave raids against neighbouring tribes to capture victims for this trade. Often professional Arab slave traders provided the victims.<br /><br />The middle passage transported the slaves to the West Indies. Here the slaves were sold and the ships loaded with spices, rum, molasses and sugar. The third leg of the journey was the return to England. The average Englishman on the street was kept in the dark as to what was actually happening on the middle passage, until, in 1785, Thomas Clarkson's landmark study "Slavery and Commerce In the Human Species" was first published at Cambridge. According to Clarkson's research, 10% of the slaves would normally die during the middle passage. Strong men would fetch as much as £40 while the women and children were sold in cheap batches with the sick and weak men. In England 18 000 people were employed simply on making the goods to trade for slaves in Africa. This trade constituted 4.4% of British exports.<br />WILBERFORCE'S WAR<br /><br />On Sunday 28 October 1787, William Wilberforce wrote in his diary: "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the Reformation of society." For the rest of his life, William Wilberforce dedicated his life as a Member of Parliament to opposing the slave trade and working for the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire.<br /><br />On 22 February 1807, twenty years after he first began his crusade, and in the middle of Britain's war with France, Wilberforce and his team's labours were rewarded with victory. By an overwhelming 283 votes for to 16 against, the motion to abolish the slave trade was carried in the House of Commons. The parliamentarians leapt to their feet with great cheers and gave Wilberforce the greatest ovation ever seen in British history. William bent forward in his seat, his head in his hands, tears of gratitude streaming down his face.<br /><br />In 1809, the British government mobilised its Navy to search suspected slave ships, even foreign vessels on the high seas. In 1810, the British Parliament declared slave trading a felony, punishable by fourteen years hard labour. In 1814, the British representative at the Congress of Vienna insisted on the abolition of the slave trade being included in the International Treaty. This Treaty was signed by all the European powers on 9 June 1815. In 1825, Britain passed a bill making slave trading punishable by death.<br /><br />Finally, just three days before William Wilberforce died, by an Act of Parliament in 1833, the British abolished slavery itself - setting all 700 000 slaves in British overseas territories free. Wilberforce's lifetime campaign of 59 years was now fully successful. "Thank God that I've lived to witness the day in which England is willing to give 20 million pounds sterling for the abolition of slavery!" he exclaimed. Within three days he died rejoicing. (For the story of how slavery was abolished see the chapter on William Wilberforce - Missionary to Parliament in The Greatest Century of Missions).<br /><br />The "History of European Morals" suggests that "the unweary, unostentatious and inglorious crusade of England against slavery may probably be regarded as among the three or four perfectly virtuous pages comprised in the history of nations."<br /><br />The abolition of slavery was one of the great turning points in history. And the long and vigorous crusade by the British Navy throughout the 19th Century against the slave trade ranks as one of the most extraordinary and unselfish applications of national policy ever seen in the history of nations.<br /><br />".where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." 2 Cor 3:17<br />SET FREE TO SERVE CHRIST<br /><br />Samual Crowther<br />Rescued from slavery by the British Navy,<br />Samual Crowther became the first African<br />bishop of the Church of England.<br />One of the many fruits of William Wilberforce's life long crusade against the slave trade was that Samuel Ajayi Crowther, who was born in 1807 (the year Great Britain abolished the slave trade) in Yorubaland (modern Western Nigeria) was rescued by a British naval squadron. When Samuel was just thirteen years old, he was captured by Muslim slave traders for transport across the Atlantic, but rescued by the Navy. Samuel received an education in Sierra Leone, where he was converted to Christ, and after further education in England he was ordained as a minister of the Church of England for service with the Church Missionary Society.<br /><br />Liberated Slaves<br />Newly liberated slaves in Zanzibar.<br />Samuel participated in the expedition up the Niger River Valley to overcome the ravages of the slave industry still entrenched there. Of the 145 Europeans on that expedition, 130 were struck down with Malaria, and 40 died. Yet the expedition succeeded in establishing a Missionary Center at Fourah Bay for training liberated slaves to evangelise West Africa. It was built on the very place where a slave market had once stood. The rafters of the roof were made almost entirely from the masts of old slave ships.<br /><br />Samuel Crowther was one of the first four students to graduate from Fourah Bay's College, Sub-Saharan Africa's first university. In 1864, Samuel Crowther was ordained as the first African Bishop of the Church of England in an overflowing Canterbury cathedral. Today there are eighteen times more Anglicans worshipping in church every Sunday in Nigeria than there are in Great Britain.<br />LIVINGSTONE'S TRAVELS<br /><br />David Livingstone<br />Livingstone and his team free slaves from Arab slave raiders in the Shire Valley.<br />However, as the British Navy was defeating the slave trade in the Atlantic, the East African slave trade was increasing. It was missionary explorer David Livingstone whose graphic descriptions brought the ravages of the East African slave trade to light. His Missionary Travels and Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi exposed the horrors of the slave trade: "Two of the women had been shot the day before for attempting to untie their thongs. One woman had her infants brains knocked out because she could not carry her load and it; and a man was dispatched with an axe because he had broken down with fatigue.those taken out of the country are but a very small section of the sufferers. We never realised the atrocious nature of the traffic until we saw it at the fountain head. 'There truly Satan has his seat.' Besides those actually captured thousands are killed and die of their wounds and famine, driven from their villages by the internecine war waged for slaves with their own clansmen and neighbours, slain by the lust of gain, which is stimulated, be it remembered always, by the slave purchases of Cuba and elsewhere."<br />A TRADE IN HUMAN MISERY<br /><br />The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society reported that most slaves were captured in the Lake Niassa area (Malawi and Mozambique), the Bahr El Ghazal region and in areas of Ethiopia. Slaves were taken to East African markets like Zanzibar, Kilwa and Quelimane and then shipped to Turkey, India, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Iraq, Iran and to the islands of Pemba, Reunion and Madagascar.<br /><br />The Anti-Slavery Reporter estimated the Muslim slave trade as exporting 63000 slaves per year. Some estimates went as high as 500000 slaves exported in a single year. One researcher, Ralph Austen calculated that between 1830 and 1861 imports of slaves to the Persian Gulf averaged 3700 to 3100 per annum. This same researcher noted that about 8855 slaves a year were retained as slaves on the East African coast as slaves of African slave masters.<br /><br />1833 Free slaves<br />1833 - All slaves in the British Empire<br />are set free by Parliamentary decree.<br />Few authors dared describe the horrors involved in the Trans- Sahara slave trade: kidnapping and castrating young boys to be sold as eunuchs ("the living dead") in the homes of wealthy Arab landlords and force marching young women across endless miles of scorching sand in the Sahara desert to become slave concubines, most dying in transit. The Muslim slave trade typically dealt in the sale of castrated male slaves: eunuchs. Eunuchs were created by completely amputating the scrotum and penis of eight to twelve year old African boys. Hundreds of thousands of young boys bled to death during this gory procedure. The survival rate from this process ranged from 1 in 10 to 1 in 30. These castrated boys brought the highest price at the slave market.<br />SHARIA LAW AND SLAVERY<br /><br />Islam's Black Slaves notes: "the Quran stipulated that female slaves might lawfully be enjoyed by their masters." Mohammad himself owned many slaves, some of whom he captured in wars of conquest and some he purchased. The names of forty slaves owned by Mohammad are recorded by Muslim chroniclers. Islamic law (Sharia) contains elaborate regulations for slavery. A slave had no right to be heard in court (testimony was forbidden by slaves), slaves had no right to property, could marry only with the permission of the owner, and were considered to be chattel, that is the movable property, of the slave owner. Muslim slave owners were specifically entitled by Sharia law to sexually exploit their slaves, including hiring them out as prostitutes.<br /><br />One reason why very little has been written about the Arab involvement in slavery is that traditional Islamic culture still condones slavery. The Sharia, the codified Islamic law which is based upon the teachings and example of Mohammad, contains explicit regulations for slavery. One of the primary principles of Islam is following the example of Mohammad. Whatever Mohammad did, we must do, what he forbade, we must forbid, what he did not forbid, we may not forbid. As Mohammad himself traded in slaves and owned slaves, accumulating multiple wives, even marrying a six year old, and having concubines - slavery and the sexual exploitation of women is deeply ingrained in Islamic tradition. Muslim nations had engaged in the slave trade for over 600 years before Europe became involved in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.<br />SLAVERY TODAY<br /><br />Slave - my true storey<br />Almost 200 years after the British outlawed the slave trade in 1807, slave raids and the sale of slaves in Muslim markets continues in countries like Sudan. The slave trade remained legal in Saudi Arabia until 1962, when under international pressure it was finally abolished. However, there are persistent, credible reports, that slavery persists in Saudi Arabia, and even that slaves from Sudan are ending up in Saudi Arabia.<br /><br />Recently, a former slave from the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, Mende Nazer, had her autobiography: "Slave: My True Story" published. Mende was captured in 1992, she was first a slave to a rich Arab family in Khartoum, and then in 2002 to a Sudanese diplomat in London, from whom she escaped and sought political asylum.<br />THE LAW OF LIBERTY<br /><br />Although the Old Testament provided for slavery for criminals and insolvent debtors, kidnapping and enslaving law-abiding people incurred the death penalty. "Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death." Exodus 21:16<br /><br />The New Testament expressly forbids both the slave trade and slavery itself. ".the Law is made not for the righteous but for Law breakers.for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers." 1 Timothy 1:9-10<br /><br />"There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free.for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:28<br /><br />"From one man He made every nation of men." Acts 17:26<br /><br />"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.love your neighbour as yourself." Mark 12:30-31<br /><br />"Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." John 8:32<br /><br />".where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." 2 Cor. 3:17<br /><br />".proclaim liberty throughout the land." Leviticus 25:10<br /><br />Dr. Peter Hammond is the author of Faith Under Fire In Sudan and The Greatest Century of Missions.<br /><br />BIBLIOGRAPHY<br /><br />A History of Christianity, by Kenneth Scott Latourette, Harper, 1953<br /><br />Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean; the Barbary Coast and Italy 1500 - 1800, by Robert Davis, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004<br /><br />God's Politician, by Garth Lean, Helmers and Howard, 1987<br /><br />History of Slavery, by Suzanne Everett, Chartwell, 1997<br /><br />Islam's Black Slaves, by Ronald Segal, Farrar, New York, 2001<br /><br />Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, by David Livingstone, London, 1857<br /><br />Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi, by David Livingstone, London,1865<br /><br />The Greatest Century of Missions, by Peter Hammond, CLB, 2002<br /><br />The Slave Trade, by Hugh Thomas, 1997<br /><br />Under the Influence - How Christianity Transformed Civilization, by Alvin Schmit, Zondervan, 2001<br />http://www.christianaction.org.za/articles_ca/2004-4-TheScourgeofSlavery.htmThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-47602925463710248012008-10-12T15:27:00.001-07:002008-10-12T15:27:31.849-07:00Slavery in the Arab WorldMurray Gordon<br /><br />New Amsterdam Books, New York, NY 1989<br /><br />In his fact-filled work on the history of the Muslim Arab slave trade in Africa, Murray Gordon notes that this trade pre-dated the European Christian African slave trade by a thousand years and continued for more than a century after the Europeans had abolished the practice. Gordon estimates the number of slaves “harvested” from Black Africa over the period of the Muslim Arab slave trade at 11 million – roughly equal to the number taken by European Christians for their colonies in the New World.<br /><br />“Despite the long history of slavery in the Arab World and in other Muslim lands, little has been written about this tragedy,” writes Gordon in his introduction. “Except for the few abolitionists, mainly in England, who railed against Arab slavery and put pressure upon Western governments to end the traffic in slaves, the issue has all but been ignored in the West.”<br />‘Conspiracy of Silence’ on Arab Slave Trade<br /><br />Gordon decries a “conspiracy of silence. . .[that] has blocked out all light on this sensitive subject.” Among scholars in the Arab world, the author points out, “No moral opprobrium has clung to slavery since it was sanctioned by the Koran and enjoyed an undisputed place in Arab society.”<br /><br />The book starts out with a brief outline of the growth of the Islamic attitude toward slavery. There is no evidence that Muhammad sought to abolish slavery, notes Gordon, although he urged slave-owners to treat their slaves well and grant them freedom as a meritorious deed.<br /><br />“Some Muslim scholars have taken this to mean that his true motive was to bring about a gradual elimination of slavery. Far more persuasive is the argument that by lending the moral authority of Islam to slavery, Muhammad assured its legitimacy. Thus, in lightening the fetter, he riveted it ever more firmly in place.”<br /><br /><br />High Rate of Black African Casualties<br /><br />While Gordon acknowledges that at times the Islamic version of slavery could be more “humane” than the European colonial version, he provides many facts which point out that the Muslim variety of slavery could be extremely cruel as well.<br /><br />One particularly brutal practice was the mutilation of young African boys, sometimes no more than 9 or ten years old, to create eunuchs, who brought a higher price in the slave markets of the Middle East. Slave traders often created “eunuch stations” along the major African slave routes where the necessary surgery was performed in unsanitary conditions. Gordon estimates that only one out of every 10 boys subjected to the mutilation actually survived the surgery.<br /><br />The taking of slaves – in razzias, or raids, on peaceful African villages – also had a high casualty rate. Gordon notes that the typical practice was to conduct a pre-dawn raid on an unsuspecting village and kill off as many of the men and older women as possible. Young women and children were then abducted as the preferred “booty” for the raiders.<br /><br />Young women were targeted because of their value as concubines or sex slaves in markets. “The most common and enduring purpose for acquiring slaves in the Arab world was to exploit them for sexual purposes,” writes Gordon. “These women were nothing less than sexual objects who, with some limitations, were expected to make themselves available to their owners. . .Islamic law, as already noted, catered to the sexual interests of a man by allowing him to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as his purse allowed.” Young women and girls were often “inspected” before purchase in private areas of the slave market by the prospective buyer.<br /><br /><br />Racism Toward Black Africans<br /><br />Some of Gordon’s research disputes the oft-repeated charge that racism did not play a part in Islamic slave society. While it is true that the Muslims of the Middle East took slaves of all colors and ethnicities, they considered white slaves more valuable than black ones and developed racist attitudes toward the darker skinned people.<br /><br />Even the famous Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, expressed racist attitudes toward black Africans: “The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and their proximity to the animal stage,” Khaldun wrote. Another Arab writer, of the 14th Century, asked: “Is there anything more vile than black slaves, of less good and more evil than they?”<br /><br />Gordon covers the Arab/African slave trades up until the mid-20th Century, noting that Saudi Arabia only abolished the practice in the early 1960s. Unlike the European nations and the USA, the Arab nations did not abolish African slavery voluntarily out of moral conscience, but due to considerable economic and military pressure applied by the great colonial powers of time, France and Britain. Slavery is still practiced in two Islamic nations: The Sudan and Mauritania.<br />http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/SStephan/islamic_slavery.htmThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-46499407594035489902008-10-12T15:26:00.001-07:002008-10-12T15:26:37.469-07:00The Unknown Slavery: In the Muslim world, that is — and it's not overJohn J. Miller<br /><br />When Henry Morton Stanley explored the Congo River's Boyoma Falls, the cascades weren't the only thing he noticed: "Every three or four miles we came in view of the black traces of the destroyers. The scarred stakes, poles of once populous settlements, scorched banana groves, and prostrate palms, all betokened ruthless ruin."<br /><br />The perpetrators of this wreckage were slavers. As late as 1883 -- when Stanley wrote -- they were scouring the African countryside for people they could seize and haul into bondage. Their gruesome search destroyed whole villages, leaving once-prosperous areas devoid of inhabitants. Their forced marches to the coast were ghastly, with the exposed bones of captives who died along the way so numerous they practically served as trail markers. Those who survived the ordeal -- fewer than half, by some estimates -- were exported to the world's final repository of slavery: the Islamic world.<br /><br />The phenomenon of Muslim slavery is not often studied, and especially not the Muslim enslavement of black Africans. "A list of serious scholarly monographs on [Islamic] slavery -- in law, in doctrine, or in practice -- could be printed on a single page," wrote Princeton's Bernard Lewis in his pioneering but brief book Race and Slavery in the Middle East (1990). He went on to suggest that the subject is so "highly sensitive" that it would be "professionally hazardous" for young scholars to take it up. Indeed, among the thousands of professors and graduate students affiliated with Middle Eastern studies programs in the U.S., only a handful have dared to broach the controversial topic, and a comprehensive history and analysis of it remains to be written.<br /><br />This stands in stark contrast to the huge amount of scholarship on slavery in the West. Judging by the sheer volume of material, one might come away with the mistaken impression that nowhere was the vile institution of slavery more entrenched than among the American hypocrites who declared that all men are created equal. And yet throughout Muslim history, starting with Mohammed himself, slavery was a vigorous and central part of Islamic civilization. This is not to say Islamic slavery was worse than American slavery; in many ways, life was easier under Muslim owners than under Mississippi owners. The problem, rather, is that the Islamic world has not experienced the same kind of moral reckoning on slavery that the West has. Muslim countries proved extremely resistant to abolition; many of them had to be dragged into it by the European colonial powers. It is hard to imagine a serious person calling for America to enslave its enemies. Yet a prominent Saudi cleric, Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik, recently urged Palestinians to do exactly that with Jews: "Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women?"<br /><br />Words are one thing, and actions another. Even today, however, Islamic abolition cannot be called a complete success: Slavery continues to be practiced in at least two nations whose regimes claim to derive their legitimacy from Islam. These nations are Mauritania and Sudan, and Muslims remain virtually silent about the practices of their coreligionists there.<br /><br />Slavery is an ancient institution, as old as recorded history. Aristotle defended it; both the Old and New Testaments accept it as a feature of the human condition. The Koran takes a similar view -- though it also encourages (without commanding) slaveholders to treat their slaves well, and urges (without requiring) their release. In Islamic theology, slave ownership is a morally neutral act, but God smiles on those who give slaves their liberty.<br /><br />The characteristics of Muslim slavery have been far from uniform over the centuries, but it is possible to identify a few general traits. For starters, slaves were accorded more legal protections in the Islamic world than they received almost anywhere else. Slavery came under an intricate set of regulations that, for example, forbade the use of slaves as prostitutes, and prevented mothers and young children from being separated. The act of enslavement also wasn't supposed to occur on Muslim soil, though the slavers and their customers didn't always pay close attention to this rule. In the 19th century, Captain G. F. Lyon of the Royal Navy described slaveholding in Libya: "They seize on the inhabitants of whole towns where the only religion is that of the Koran, and where there are mosques; and this is without scruple or remorse."<br /><br />There was plenty of cruelty -- slavery, of course, always involves cruelty -- but many chattels of Muslims were essentially domestic workers who functioned as surrogate members of the master's family. "Slaves in Islam were directed mainly at the service sector -- concubines and cooks, porters and soldiers -- with slavery itself primarily a form of consumption rather than a factor of production," writes Ronald Segal in Islam's Black Slaves. Perhaps the most important difference between slavery in the West and slavery in Islam is a demographic one: Two-thirds of the slaves transported across the Atlantic were male, and two-thirds of those involved in the Muslim trade were female.<br /><br />Over time, sub-Saharan Africa became the principal source of involuntary labor. Muslims were not the first people to enslave black Africans -- the ancient Egyptians had done it -- but they were the first to engage in it systematically on a massive scale. Going back to Islam's birth in the 7th century, historian Raymond Mauvy estimates that 14 million black slaves have been sold to Muslims. (This compares to Paul E. Lovejoy's estimate of 10 to 11 million Africans shipped in chains to the Western Hemisphere between 1650 and 1900; the vast majority of them were sent to Latin America and the Caribbean, and half a million to British North America and the U.S.) The journey from the slave's homeland to the Middle East was often a treacherous one, especially when it involved enduring the blistering heat of a Sahara crossing. Yet the march was dangerous everywhere -- an Islamic version of the brutal Middle Passage. The dead frequently outnumbered the survivors on these journeys, often by a lot. Slavers accepted the high casualty rates because their business was so lucrative. "It is like sending up to London for a large block of ice in the summer," wrote a 19th-century missionary in what is now Tanzania. "You know that a certain amount of it will melt away before it reaches you . . . but that which remains will be quite sufficient for your wants."<br /><br />The oddest aspect of Islamic slavery was the eunuch. Castrated male slaves became exceedingly popular in the Middle East sometime after the rise of Islam. They are best known for serving as harem guards, but they were also mosque custodians, administrators, and teachers. Eunuchs were bought and sold at a premium, in part because their grisly operation resulted in many fatalities. Their popularity remains something of a mystery. "One can only speculate that eunuchs were regarded as likely to be more devoted and dependable in serving their masters than other males, with normal distractions, would be," writes Segal. Whatever the reason, eunuchs became fixtures of Muslim culture. Islam teaches against physical mutilation, so Muslims found themselves searching for loopholes. Many eunuchs were castrated in non-Muslim territory immediately before importation, in the belief that this somehow kept Islamic land pure; a business in commercial castration thus developed along the fringes of the Muslim world. (Prague is said to have specialized in this during the period when Islam imported many slaves from Europe.) Muslims later accepted castration within their own lands, so long as non-Muslims performed the deed.<br /><br />Slavery, in short, was an ingrained part of Islamic culture -- and it might still have been one today, but for European insistence that Muslims end it. As recently as 1878, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina served as major slave markets, trading 25,000 slaves annually. The eradication of slavery, in fact, is one of the great and unheralded legacies of colonialism.<br /><br />The first Islamic countries to abolish slavery -- Tunisia, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire -- did so under pressure from the West. Others were more obstinate. In East Africa, slavery continued until after World War I. Its persistence into the 20th century explains why the League of Nations prioritized the abolition of slavery, even though doing so must have seemed an anachronism to unsuspecting Westerners. It wasn't until the start of World War II that Ethiopia and Liberia had gotten rid of slavery. Later still, the U.N.'s Declaration of Human Rights condemned slavery -- again, because the Islamic world had failed to wipe it out. In 1953, sheikhs from Qatar attending the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II included slaves in their retinues, and they did so again on another visit five years later. Saudi Arabia and Yemen didn't get around to abolishing slavery until 1962; three years later, a special report by the U.N. reported that the Saudi royal family continued to keep hundreds in bondage.<br /><br />Mauritania outlawed slavery in 1980, apparently because its two earlier prohibitions (in 1905 and 1960) were ignored. Today, it is illegal for Mauritanians to say that slavery exists in their country -- a sure sign that it really does. By some estimates, at least 100,000 of Mauritania's 2.7 million people continue to live in unpaid servitude, most of them blacks toiling for light-skinned Moorish masters. Slavery goes back centuries in Mauritania, and there's a long tradition of slaves' working for the same family across generations. Apologists say that those who remain in this capacity aren't slaves at all, but servants who volunteer to trade their labor for room and board. Yet these claims are effectively rebutted by a small group of escapees who have delivered powerful personal testimonies of beatings and bondage. Reliable information on what's really happening in Mauritania is hard to come by because the Islamic government won't allow investigations. Foreign journalists must travel in the company of the secret police and face expulsion if they ask too many questions. In January, the government banned the main opposition party, which has demanded slavery's eradication. Mauritania has far to go before slavery ceases within its borders.<br /><br />Sudan has received considerably more attention than Mauritania. In April, an organization affiliated with the Boston-based American Anti- Slavery Group made headlines by purchasing 3,000 slaves at $33 apiece and releasing them, and also negotiating the release of 3,000 others. Another group, the Swiss-based Christian Solidarity International, says it has bought freedom for 60,000 slaves in Sudan over the last several years. (This raises a separate question: Does buying slaves from modern-day slave traders wind up perpetuating their wretched business?) As with Mauritania, there are no truly credible numbers describing the extent of the problem. Sudan has engaged in slaving and slaveholding for ages; the current wave seems to have begun in 1983, with the imposition of Islamic law. Following the 1989 coup by the Islamofascist general Omar el-Bashir, the government became actively involved in arming the slavers and supporting their operations in the southern part of the country, where Muslims are outnumbered by Christians and other non-Muslims. These slavers' methods are especially vicious: The men are shot, the women and girls are sold into concubinage, and the boys are fortunate if they become unpaid cattle herders.<br /><br />In considering the history of slavery in Islam and in the West, it is a mistake to decide that one branch of the same evil represents the greater sin. Instead, it is probably enough to say the human toll in both places was horrible: Call it "immoral equivalence." But there's an important difference today. The United States finds itself apologizing for slavery (at least when Bill Clinton visits Africa), handing out huge amounts of foreign aid (partly from a sense of guilt), and giving at least passing thought to financial reparations for the descendants of its own slaves. Yet when Muslim countries gather at international forums, they discuss none of this -- and instead spend their time writing resolutions bashing Israel and the West. They appear to feel no remorse for the past, and no responsibility for the present. While the West has its problems, it does not have this one.<br /><br />COPYRIGHT 2002 National Review, Inc.<br />http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_9_54/ai_85410331/print?tag=artBody;col1Thierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-88731784954339757602008-10-12T15:25:00.000-07:002008-10-12T15:26:02.004-07:00The Role of Islam in African SlaveryPart 1: Obtaining slaves on the African continent.<br /> <br /> More of this Feature<br />• Part 2: Using slaves on the African continent.<br /><br /> Elsewhere on the Web<br />• Race and Slavery in the Middle East<br />• Historical Survey of Slavery<br /><br /><br />Slavery has been rife throughout all of ancient history. Most, if not all, ancient civilizations practiced this institution and it is described (and defended) in early writings of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Egyptians. It was also practiced by early societies in central America and Africa. See Bernard Lewis's work Race and Slavery in the Middle East for a detailed chapter of the origins and practices of slavery.<br /><br />The Qur'an prescribes a humanitarian approach to slavery -- free men could not be enslaved, and those faithful to foreign religions could live as protected persons, dhimmis, under Muslim rule (as long as they maintained payment of taxes called Kharaj and Jizya). However, the spread of the Islamic Empire resulted in a much harsher interpretation of the law. For example, if a dhimmis was unable to pay the taxes they could be enslaved, and people from outside the borders of the Islamic Empire were considered an acceptable source of slaves.<br /><br />Although the law required owners to treat slaves well and provide medical treatment, a slave had no right to be heard in court (testimony was forbidden by slaves), had no right to property, could marry only with permission of their owner, and was considered to be a chattel, that is the (moveable) property, of the slave owner. Conversion to Islam did not automatically give a slave freedom nor did it confer freedom to their children. Whilst highly educated slaves and those in the military did win their freedom, those used for basic duties rarely achieved freedom. In addition, the recorded mortality rate was high -- this was still significant even as late as the nineteenth century and was remarked upon by western travellers in North Africa and Egypt.<br /><br />Slaves were obtained through conquest, tribute from vassal states (in the first such treaty, Nubia was required to provide hundreds of male and female slaves), offspring (children of slaves were also slaves, but since many slaves were castrated this was not as common as it had been in the Roman empire), and purchase. The latter method provided the majority of slaves, and at the borders of the Islamic Empire vast number of new slaves were castrated ready for sale (Islamic law did not allow mutilation of slaves, so it was done before they crossed the border). The majority of these slaves came from Europe and Africa -- there were always enterprising locals ready to kidnap or capture their fellow countrymen.<br /><br />Black Africans were transported to the Islamic empire across the Sahara to Morocco and Tunisia from West Africa, from Chad to Libya, along the Nile from East Africa, and up the coast of East Africa to the Persian Gulf. This trade had been well entrenched for over 600 years before Europeans arrived, and had driven the rapid expansion of Islam across North Africa.<br /><br />By the time of the Ottoman Empire, the majority of slaves were obtained by raiding in Africa. Russian expansion had put an end to the source of "exceptionally beautiful" female and "brave" male slaves from the Caucasians -- the women were highly prised in the harem, the men in the military. The great trade networks across north Africa were as much to do with the safe transportation of slaves as other goods. An analysis of prices at various slave markets shows that eunuchs fetched higher prices than other males, encouraging the castration of slaves before export.<br /><br />Documentation suggests that slaves throughout Islamic world were mainly used for menial domestic and commercial purposes. Eunuchs were especially prised for bodyguards and confidential servants; women as concubines and menials. A Muslim slave owner was entitled by law to use slaves for sexual pleasure.<br /><br />As primary source material becomes available to Western scholars, the bias towards urban slaves is being questioned. Records also show that thousands of slaves were used in gangs for agriculture and mining. Large landowners and rulers used thousands of such slaves, usually in dire conditions: "of the Saharan salt mines it is said that no slave lived there for more than five years.1"<br /><br />http://africanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa040201a.htmThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-37243117831851889092008-10-12T15:24:00.002-07:002008-10-12T15:25:29.177-07:00Born into BondageDespite denials by government officials, slavery remains a way of life in the African nation of Niger<br /><br /> * By Paul Raffaele<br /> * Smithsonian magazine, September 2005<br /><br />Lightning and thunder split the Saharan night. In northern Niger, heavy rain and wind smashed into the commodious goatskin tent of a Tuareg tribesman named Tafan and his family, snapping a tent pole and tumbling the tent to the ground.<br /><br />Huddling in a small, tattered tent nearby was a second family, a man, a woman and their four children. Tafan ordered the woman, Asibit, to go outside and stand in the full face of the storm while holding the pole steady, keeping his tent upright until the rain and wind ceased.<br /><br />Asibit obeyed because, like tens of thousands of other Nigeriens, she was born into a slave caste that goes back hundreds of years. As she tells it, Tafan’s family treated her not as a human, but as chattel, a beast of burden like their goats, sheep and camels. Her eldest daughter, Asibit says, was born after Tafan raped her, and when the child turned 6, he gave her as a present to his brother—a common practice among Niger’s slave owners. Asibit, fearful of a whipping, watched in silence as her daughter was taken away.<br /><br />“From childhood, I toiled from early morning until late at night,” she recalls matter-of-factly. She pounded millet, prepared breakfast for Tafan and his family and ate the leftovers with her own. While her husband and children herded Tafan’s livestock, she did his household chores and milked his camels. She had to move his tent, open-fronted to catch any breeze, four times a day so his family would always be in shade. Now 51, she seems to bear an extra two decades in her lined and leathery face. “I never received a single coin during the 50 years,” she says.<br /><br />Asibit bore these indignities without complaint. On that storm-tossed night in the desert, she says, she struggled for hours to keep the tent upright, knowing she’d be beaten if she failed. But then, like the tent pole, something inside her snapped: she threw the pole aside and ran into the night, making a dash for freedom to the nearest town, 20 miles across the desert.<br /><br />History resonates with countless verified accounts of human bondage, but Asibit escaped only in June of last year.<br /><br />Disturbing as it may seem in the 21st century, there may be more forced labor in the world now than ever. About 12.3 million people toil in the global economy on every continent save Antarctica, according to the United Nations’ International Labour Organization, held in various forms of captivity, including those under the rubric of human trafficking.<br /><br />The U.S. State Department’s annual report on trafficking in persons, released in June, spotlighted 150 countries where more than a hundred people were trafficked in the past year. Bonded laborers are entrapped by low wages in never-ending debt; illegal immigrants are coerced by criminal syndicates to pay off their clandestine passage with work at subminimum wages; girls are kidnapped for prostitution, boys for unpaid labor.<br /><br />The State Department’s report notes that “Niger is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women and children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced domestic and commercial labor.” But there is also something else going on in Niger—and in Chad, Mali and Mauritania. Across western Africa, hundreds of thousands of people are being held in what is known as “chattel slavery,” which Americans may associate only with the transatlantic slave trade and the Old South.<br /><br />In parts of rural West Africa dominated by traditional tribal chieftains, human beings are born into slavery, and they live every minute of their lives at the whim of their owners. They toil day and night without pay. Many are whipped or beaten when disobedient or slow, or for whatever reasons their masters concoct. Couples are separated when one partner is sold or given away; infants and children are passed from one owner to another as gifts or dowry; girls as young as 10 are sometimes raped by their owners or, more commonly, sold off as concubines.<br /><br />The families of such slaves have been held for generations, and their captivity is immutable: the one thing they can be sure of passing on to their children is their enslavement.<br /><br />One of the earliest records of enslaved Africans goes back to the seventh century, but the practice existed long before. It sprang largely from warfare, with victors forcing the vanquished into bondage. (Many current slave owners in Niger are Tuareg, the legendary warlords of the Sahara.) The winners kept slaves to serve their own households and sold off the others. In Niger, slave markets traded humans for centuries, with countless thousands bound and marched to ports north or south, for sale to Europe and Arabia or America.<br /><br />As they began exercising influence over Niger in the late 19th century, the French promised to end slavery there—the practice had been abolished under French law since 1848—but they found it difficult to eradicate a social system that had endured for so long, especially given the reluctance of the country’s chieftains, the major slave owners, to cooperate. Slavery was still thriving at the turn of the century, and the chances of abolition all but disappeared during World War I, when France pressed its colonies to join the battle. “In order to fulfill their quotas each administrator [in Niger] relied on traditional chiefs who preferred to supply slaves to serve as cannon fodder,” writes Nigerien social scientist Galy Kadir Abdelkader.<br /><br />During the war, when rebellions broke out against the French in Niger, the chieftains once again came to the rescue; in return, French administrators turned a blind eye to slavery. Following independence in 1960, successive Nigerien governments have kept their silence. In 2003, a law banning and punishing slavery was passed, but it has not been widely enforced.<br /><br />Organizations outside Niger, most persistently the London-based Anti-Slavery International, are still pushing to end slavery there. The country’s constitution recognizes the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 4: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”), but the U.N. has done little to ensure Niger’s compliance. Neither has France, which still has immense influence in the country because of its large aid program and cultural ties.<br /><br />And neither has the United States. While releasing this year’s trafficking report, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reminded Americans of President Bush’s plea in a 2004 speech for an end to human trafficking, but the U.S. Embassy in Niger professes little on-the-ground knowledge of chattel slavery there. In Washington, Ambassador John Miller, a senior adviser to Rice who heads the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons section, says, “We’re just becoming aware of transgenerational slavery in Niger.”<br /><br />The Nigerien government, for its part, does not acknowledge the problem: it has consistently said that there are no slaves in Niger. Troubled by the government’s denials, a group of young civil servants in 1991 set up the Timidria Association, which has become the most prominent nongovernmental organization fighting slavery in Niger. Timidria (“fraternity-solidarity” in Tamacheq, the Tuareg language) has since set up 682 branches across the country to monitor slavery, help protect escaped slaves and guide them in their new, free lives.<br /><br />The group faces a constant battle. Last March, Timidria persuaded a Tuareg chief to free his tribe’s 7,000 slaves in a public ceremony. The mass manumission was widely publicized prior to the planned release, but just days before it was to happen, the government prevailed upon the chief to abandon his plan.<br /><br />“The government was caught in a quandary,” a European ambassador to Niger told me. “How could it allow the release when it claimed there were no slaves in Niger?”<br /><br />The flight from paris to Niamey, Niger’s capital city, takes five hours, much of it above the dun-hued sweep of the Sahara in northern Africa. We land in a sandstorm, and when the jet’s door opens, the 115-degree heat hits like a furnace’s fiery blast. Niamey is a sprawl of mud huts, ragtag markets and sandy streets marked by a few motley skyscrapers. I pass a street named after Martin Luther King Jr., but the signpost has been knocked askew and left unrepaired.<br /><br />Nigeriens walk with the graceful lope of desert dwellers. The city reflects the country, a jumble of tribes. Tall, slim Tuareg men conceal all but their hands, feet and dark eyes in a swath of cotton robes and veils; some flaunt swords buckled to their waists. Tribesmen called Fulanis clad in conical hats and long robes herd donkeys through the streets. The majority Hausa, stocky and broad-faced, resemble their tribal cousins in neighboring Nigeria.<br /><br />Apart from the rare Mercedes Benz, there is hardly any sign of wealth. Niger is three times bigger than California, but two-thirds of it is desert, and its standard of living ranks 176th on the United Nations’ human development index of 177 countries, just ahead of Sierra Leone. About 60 percent of its 12 million people live on less than $1 a day, and most of the others not much more. It’s a landlocked country with little to sell to the world other than uranium. (Intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger have proved “highly dubious,” according to the State Department.) A2004 U.S. State Department report on Niger noted that it suffers from “drought, locust infestation, deforestation, soil degradation, high population growth rates [3.3%], and exceedingly low literacy rates.” In recent months, 2.5 million of Niger’s people have been on the verge of famine.<br /><br />A Nigerien is lucky to reach the age of 50. The child mortality rate is the world’s second worst, with a quarter of all children dying under the age of 5. “Niger is so poor that many people perish daily of starvation,” Jeremy Lester, the European Union’s head of delegation in Niamey, tells me.<br /><br />And Niger’s slaves are the poorest of the poor, excluded totally from the meager cash economy.<br /><br />Clad in a flowing robe, Soli Abdourahmane, a former minister of justice and state prosecutor, greets me in his shady mud-house compound in Niamey. “There are many, many slaves in Niger, and the same families have often been held captive by their owners’ families for centuries,” he tells me, speaking French, the country’s official language, though Hausa is spoken more widely. “The slave masters are mostly from the nomadic tribes—the Tuareg, Fulani, Toubou and Arabs.”<br /><br />A wry grin spreads across his handsome face. “The government claims there are no slaves in Niger, and yet two years ago it legislated to outlaw slavery, with penalties from 10 to 30 years. It’s a contradiction, no?”<br /><br />Moussa Zangaou, a 41-year-old member of Parliament, says he opposes slavery. He belongs to a party whose leaders say it does not exist in Niger, but he says he is working behind the scenes toward abolition. “There are more than 100,000 slaves in Niger, and they suffer terribly with no say in their destiny,” he tells me. “Their masters treat them like livestock, they don’t believe they are truly human.”<br /><br />I’m puzzled. Why does the government deny there is slavery in Niger, and yet, in the shadows, allow it to continue? “It’s woven into our traditional culture,” Zangaou explains, “and many tribal chieftains, who still wield great power, are slave owners and bring significant voting blocs of their people to the government at election time.”<br /><br />Also, the government fears international condemnation. Eighty percent of the country’s capital budget comes from overseas donors, mostly European countries. “The president is currently the head of the Economic Community of West African States,” Zangaou adds, “and he fears being embarrassed by slavery still existing in Niger.”<br /><br />In the meantime, slaves are risking terrible beatings or whippings to escape and hide in far-off towns—especially in Niamey, with a population of 774,000, where they can disappear.<br /><br />One afternoon, a Timidria worker takes me to Niamey’s outskirts to meet a woman he says is a runaway slave. With us is the BBC’s Niger correspondent, Idy Baraou, who is acting as my interpreter and sounding board.<br /><br />We enter a maze of mud huts whose walls form twisting channels that lead deep into a settlement that would not appear out of place in the Bible. It houses several thousand people. As camels loaded with straw amble by, children stare wide-eyed at me while their parents, sprawled in the shade, throw me hard glances. Many have fled here from rural areas, and strangers can mean trouble in a place like this.<br /><br />A woman comes out from a mud house, carrying a baby and with a 4-year-old girl trailing behind. Her name is Timizgida. She says she is about 30, looks 40, and has a smile that seems as fresh as her recent good fortune. She says she was born to slaves owned by fair-skinned Tuaregs out in the countryside but never knew her parents, never even knew their names; she was given as a baby to her owner, a civil servant. She was allowed to play with his children until she was 8, when she was yanked into the stark reality of captivity.<br /><br />Her fate from then on was much the same as Asibit’s; she rose before dawn to fetch water from a distant well for her owner’s thirsty herds and his family, and then toiled all day and late into the night, cooking, doing chores and eating scraps. “I was only allowed to rest for two or three days each year, during religious festivals, and was never paid,” she tells me. “My master didn’t pay his donkeys, and so he thought why should he pay me and his other slaves?”<br /><br />The spark in Timizgida’s eye signals a rebellious nature, and she says her owner and his family beat her many times with sticks and whips, sometimes so hard that the pain lingered for months. After one such beating three years ago, she decided to run away. She says a soldier took pity on her and paid her and her children’s bus fares to Niamey. “With freedom, I became a human being,” she tells me with a smile. “It’s the sweetest of feelings.”<br /><br />Her smile grows wider as she points to her kids. “My children were also my master’s slaves, but now they’re free.”<br /><br />Timizgida’s account echoes those I will hear from other slaves in far-off regions in a country where communications among the poor are almost nonexistent. But the president of Niger’s Human Rights Commission, Lompo Garba, tells me that Timizgida—and all other Nigeriens who claim they were or are slaves—is lying.<br /><br />“Niger has no slaves,” Lompo says, leaning across his desk and glaring. “Have you seen anyone in Niger blindfolded and tied up?”<br /><br />Niger’s prime minister, Hama Amadou, is equally insistent when we meet at his Niamey office, not far from the U.S. Embassy. He is Fulani and has a prominent tribal scar, an X, carved into his right cheek. “Niger has no slaves,” he tells me emphatically.<br /><br />And yet in July 2003, he wrote a confidential letter to the minister of internal affairs stating that slavery existed in Niger and was immoral, and listing 32 places around the<br />country where slaves could be found. When I tell him I know about the letter—I even have a copy of it—the prime minister at first looks astonished and then steadies himself and confirms that he wrote it.<br /><br />But still he denies that his country has slaves. “Try and find slaves in Niger,” he says. “You won’t find even one.”<br /><br />As I leave for Niger’s interior to take up the prime minister’s challenge, I am accompanied by Moustapha Kadi Oumani, the firstborn son of a powerful Tuareg chieftain and known among Nigeriens as the Prince of Illéla, the capital of his father’s domain. Elegant, sharp-minded and with the graceful command that comes from generations of unchallenged authority, he guides us by SUV to Azarori, about 300 miles northeast of Niamey and one of more than 100 villages under his father’s feudal command.<br /><br />Moustapha in boyhood was steeped in his tribal traditions, with slaves to wait on him hand and foot, but his exposure to their condition, and a few years studying in Italy and Switzerland, convinced him that no person should belong to another. Moustapha now works in the Department of Civil Aviation in Niamey, but he devotes much of his spare time working to end slavery in Niger and improve the living conditions of ordinary Nigeriens. In December 2003, he freed all ten of the slaves he had inherited in a public ceremony at Tahoua, about 110 miles from Azarori. On the government’s orders, police seized the audio- and videotapes of reporters and cameramen who were covering the event. “They didn’t want people to know,” says Idy, who was there for the BBC.<br /><br />The number of slaves in Niger is unknown. Moustapha scoffs at a widely quoted Timidria survey in 2002 that put it at 870,363. “There was double counting, and the survey’s definition of a slave was loose,” he says. Anti-Slavery International, using the same data, counted at least 43,000 slaves, but that figure has also been questioned—as both too high and too low.<br /><br />The countryside, facing a famine, looks sickly, and when the SUV pulls to the side of the road for a comfort stop, a blur of locusts clatter into the air from a stunted tree nearby. We arrive at Azarori (pop. 9,000) at midmorning as several men and children—all slaves, Moustapha says—herd goats to pasture.<br /><br />A stooped old man in a conical hat and purple robe tells me that he has worked hard for his owner for no pay since he was a child. Another man, Ahmed, who is 49, says that Allah ordained that he and his family are to be slaves through the generations. (Niger is 95 percent Muslim.) When I ask him to quote that command from the Koran, he shrugs. “I can’t read or write, and so my master, Boudal, told me,” he says.<br /><br />Like most of the slaves I would meet, Ahmed looks well fed and healthy. “Aslave master feeds his donkeys and camels well so they can work hard, and it’s the same with his slaves,” Moustapha says.<br /><br />This may explain the extraordinary devotion many slaves insist they offer their masters in this impoverished nation, especially if they are not mistreated. I ask Ahmed how he would feel if his owner gave away his daughter. “If my master asked me to throw my daughter down the well, I’d do it immediately,” he replies.<br />Truly?<br />“Truly,” he replies.<br /><br />Moustapha shakes his head as we sip the highly sugared bitter tea favored by the Tuareg. “Ahmed has the fatalistic mindset of many slaves,” he says. “They accept it’s their destiny to be a bellah, the slave caste, and obey their masters without question.”<br /><br />We journey to another village along dirt roads, framed by a sandy landscape with few trees but many mud villages. At one of them, Tajaé, an 80-year-old woman named Takany sits at Moustapha’s feet by her own choice and tells how she was given to her owner as an infant. Her great-grandson, who looks to be about 6 years old, sits by her side. Like many other child slaves I see, he is naked, while the village’s free children wear bright robes and even jeans. The naked children I see stay close to their relatives, their eyes wary and their step cautious, while the clothed children stroll about or play chase.<br /><br />The village chief, wearing a gold robe and gripping a string of prayer beads, asks Moustapha, as the son of his feudal lord, for advice. A man had recently purchased a “fifth wife” from a slave owner in the village, the chief says, but returned her after discovering she was two months pregnant. He wanted a new slave girl or his money back. Although Islam limits a man to four wives, a slave girl taken as a concubine is known as a “fifth wife” in Niger, and men take as many fifth wives as they can afford.<br /><br />Moustapha’s face tightens in barely concealed anger. “Tell him he’ll get neither, and if he causes trouble, let me know.”<br /><br />In late afternoon, we reach the outskirts of Illéla and enter wide, sandy streets lined with mud-house compounds. About 12,000 people live here, ruled by Moustapha’s father, Kadi Oumani, a hereditary tribal chieftain with more than a quarter of a million people offering fealty to him. “My ancestor Agaba conquered Illéla in 1678 and enslaved the families of warriors who opposed him,” Moustapha tells me. “Many of their descendants are still slaves.”<br /><br />Moustapha has surveyed the families of the 220 traditional chieftains in Niger, known as royal families, and found that they collectively own more than 8,500 slaves whose status has not changed since their ancestors were conquered. “When a princess marries, she brings slaves as part of her dowry,” he tells me. He has caused trouble for his highborn family by opposing slavery, but shrugs when I ask if this worries him. “What worries me is that there are still slaves in Niger.”<br /><br />Moustapha’s father sits on a chair in a mud-wall compound with a dozen chiefs perched cross-legged on the ground around him. Two dozen longhorn cattle, sheep and goats mill about, there for the Tuareg aristocrats to enjoy as a reminder of their nomadic origins. Kadi Oumani is 74 years old and wears a heavy robe and an open veil that reveals his dark, bluff face. Moustapha greets him with a smile and then leads me to the compound set aside for us during our visit.<br /><br />For the next hour Moustapha sits serenely on a chair at the compound’s far end, greeting clan leaders who have come to pay their respects. A special visitor is Abdou Nayoussa, one of the ten slaves Moustapha freed 20 months ago. Abdou’s broad face marks him as a member of the local tribe conquered by Moustapha’s ancestor.<br /><br />“As a boy I was chosen to look after the chieftain’s horses, feeding, exercising and grooming them,” he tells me. “I worked hard every day for no pay, was beaten many times and could never leave Illéla because I belonged to Moustapha’s family.” His eyes—which never once meet Moustapha’s—are dim with what I take to be pain. “At night I cried myself to sleep, thinking about my fate and especially the fate of the children I’d have one day.”<br /><br />Abdou still works as the chieftain’s horse handler, for which he is given little pay, but he is now free to do what he wants. “The difference is like that between heaven and hell,” he tells me. “When I get enough money, I’m going to Niamey<br />and never coming back.”<br /><br />As the sky darkens, we eat grilled lamb and millet. Nearby a courtier sings an ancient desert tune. Moustapha’s cousin Oumarou Marafa, a burly, middle-aged secondary school teacher, joins us. “He’s a slave owner and not ashamed of it,” Moustapha informs me.<br /><br />“When I was younger, I desired one of my mother’s slaves, a beautiful 12-year-old girl, and she gave her to me as a fifth wife,” Oumarou tells me. “There was no marriage ceremony; she was mine to do with her as I wished.”<br /><br />Did that include sex? “Of course,” he says. After a few years, he sent the girl away, and she married another man. But Oumarou still considers her his possession. “When I want to sleep with her, she must come to my bed,” he says without a hint of emotion.<br /><br />I find this hard to believe, but Moustapha says it is true. “It’s the custom, and her husband is too scared to object,” he adds.<br /><br />“There are many men in Illéla with fifth wives,” Oumarou goes on, even though the cost is about a thousand U.S. dollars, or three years’ pay for a laborer. “If you want a fifth wife and have the money, I can take you tomorrow to slave owners with girls for sale here in Illéla.”<br /><br />I squirm at the thought. Late into the night Moustapha and I attempt to convince his cousin of slavery’s evil nature, trying to change his belief that slaves are a separate, lower species. “Try and understand the enormous mental pain of a slave seeing his child given away as a present to another family,” I tell him.<br /><br />“You Westerners,” he replies. “You only understand your way of life, and you think the rest of the world should follow you.”<br /><br />Next morning, Moustapha takes me to the 300-year-old mud-brick palace where his father, in a daily ritual, is meeting chiefs who have come to honor him. Inside, Kadi Oumani sits on a modest throne from which he daily delivers judgments on minor disputes, principally about land and marriages.<br /><br />“There are no slaves in Niger,” he tells me.<br />“But I’ve met slaves.”<br />“You mean the bellah,” he says in his chieftain’s monotone. “They are one of the traditional Tuareg castes. We have nobles, the ordinary people and the bellah.”<br /><br />Just before dawn the morning after, I set out with Idy, my translator, to drive north more than 125 miles deeper into the desert near Tamaya, the home of Asibit, the woman who says she escaped from her master during the storm.<br /><br />There, we pick up Foungoutan Oumar, a young Tuareg member of Timidria, who will guide us across 20 miles of open desert to wells where he says slaves water their masters’ herds in the morning and late afternoon. Foungoutan wants to avoid meeting slave owners, especially Asibit’s former master, Tafan, who he says recently used his sword to lop off the hand of a man in a dispute. But it’s not necessarily Tafan’s anger we wish to sidestep. “If we go to the tents of the slave masters, they’ll know we’ve come to talk to their slaves, and they’ll punish them,” Foungoutan says.<br /><br />The sand stretches to the horizon, and the sun already burns our skin even though it’s just eight o’clock in the morning. There is no one at the first two wells we visit. “The slaves have already gone with the herds,” Foungoutan says with a shrug. The third well, nudged by a cluster of trees, is owned by a man named Halilou, Tafan’s brother.<br /><br />Six children are unloading water containers from donkeys. The younger children are naked. When they see us, they scream and bury their heads in the donkey’s flanks and necks. Shivering in apparent fear, they refuse to lift their heads or talk. Three women arrive balancing water containers on their heads, having walked the three miles from Halilou’s tents. They turn their faces away from us.<br /><br />Soon a middle-aged man appears with a naked child by his side. His face clouds when he sees us. “My master said he’ll beat me if I talk to strangers,” he says. He warns the others not to tell their master about us.<br /><br />With some coaxing he says their master’s name is Halilou and adds that they are all slaves in his camp. He says he has toiled for Halilou’s family since he was a child and has never received any money. Halilou has beaten him many times, but the man shrugs off more talk of punishment and refuses to give his name.<br /><br />Another man arrives, and the two of them begin drawing water from the well, helped by five donkeys hauling on a rope attached to a canvas bucket. They pour the water into troughs for the thirsty cows, sheep and goats and then fill the containers. As the women lead thewater-laden donkeys back to their master’s tents, the two men and children herd the livestock out into the desert to graze on the shriveled grass and plants that grow there.<br /><br />At Tamaya, a small village hemmed in by desert, we find Asibit at her usual spot in the bustling marketplace where robed Tuareg, Fulani, Hausa and Arabs buy and sell livestock, foodstuffs and swords. “Many of these men own slaves,” Foungoutan says. “I’ve reported them to the police, but they take no action against them.”<br /><br />When Asibit reached Tamaya on the morning after the thunderstorm, she was led to Foungoutan, who took her to the police. She made a formal complaint that Tafan was a slave owner, and the police responded by rescuing her children, including the daughter presented to Halilou. But Asibit says they left her husband with Tafan.<br /><br />Asibit squats in the shade, making a drink from millet and selling it for the equivalent of 10 cents. She smiles easily now. “You can’t understand what freedom is until you’ve been a slave,” she says. “Now, I can go to sleep when I want and get up any time I want. No one can beat me or call me bad names every day. My children and grandchildren are free.”<br /><br />Freedom, however, is relative. For former slaves, the search for a place in Nigerien society is harsh. “Former slaves suffer extreme discrimination in getting a job, government services, or finding marriage partners for their children,” says Romana Cacchioli, the Africa expert for Anti-Slavery International, speaking by telephone from the group’s London headquarters.<br /><br />The government is not likely to come forward to help exslaves on its own; to acknowledge ex-slaves would be to acknowledge slavery. And the government, lacking the power to confront the chieftains and fearing condemnation from the outside world, gives no signs of doing that.<br /><br />Within Niger, Timidria remains the most visible force for change, but it, too, faces a long road: many Nigeriens say they do not support the antislavery cause because they believe the group’s president, Ilguilas Weila, has profited from his association with Western aid organizations. (Both he and Anti-Slavery International insist he has not.)<br /><br />In April, the government arrested Weila and another Timidria leader in response to the failed release of the 7,000 slaves. Weila was freed on bail in June but is awaiting a ruling on whether there is enough evidence to try him. The charge against him amounts to fraud: he solicited funds overseas to fight slavery in his country, the government contends, but of course there are no slaves in Niger.<br /><br /><br /><br />Find this article at:<br />http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/10013271.html?page=3Thierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-53476616086818109702008-10-12T15:24:00.001-07:002008-10-12T15:24:50.692-07:00NIGER: Survey finds over 870,000 are still slavesNiger, where slavery is still prevalent<br />NIAMEY, 13 May 2003 (IRIN) - Although Niger recently passed new tougher laws against slavery, more than 870,000 people - about seven percent of the country's population - still live in conditions of forced labour, according to Timidria, a local human rights group.<br /><br />The organisation, whose name means "Brotherhood" in the Tuareg language, recently announced the results of a survey conducted in August last year in six of Niger's eights administrative regions. This showed that 870,364 people still worked in servitude. The vast majority - 602,000 - were in the southwestern Tillaberry region, where the capital Niamey is situated.<br /><br />Slavery is a long ingrained tradition in this poor landlocked country of 11 million people on the southern edge of the Sahara, which achieved independence from France in 1960.<br /><br />Timidria said the custom was especially prevalant amongst nomadic pastoralists of the Tuareg tribe.<br /><br />Its survey found that, apart from Tillaberry, the main concentrations of slaves were in Agadez region in the desert north, where 87,000 people were living conditions of forced labour, and in Tahoua region, adjacent to Tillaberry in the southwest, where it found 59,000 slaves.<br /><br />Over the years, numerous workshops and symposiums have been held to expose the continuation of slavery in Niger. Parliament recently passed a law which recognises "slavery and slave-like practices" as crimes punishable with a prison sentence of up to 30 years.<br /><br />The International Labour Organization defines as "forced labour" any activity which an individual is forced to perform services under threat of punishment without his or her own consent. This international definition excludes national military service, communal service or work imposed to an individual sentenced to communal service.<br /><br />In Africa, Niger, Mauritania and Sudan are considered the main countries were slavery persists.<br /><br />Many slave-owners interviewed by Timidria said the forced labourers were an inheritance and a responsibility.<br /><br />"We inherited these slaves from our parents, but I did not know it was slavery", the organisation quoted one Tuareg chief as saying. "They are victims who don't want to leave us".<br /><br />According to university professor, El Back Adam, Niger's slaves refuse to leave their masters despite the terrible conditions in which they live, because at least "they have a roof under their head and something to eat."<br /><br /><br /><br />Themes: (IRIN) Human Rights<br /><br />[ENDS]<br />Report can be found online at:<br />http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=43737Thierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-73032609226860302162008-10-12T15:23:00.002-07:002008-10-12T15:24:07.682-07:00On the way to freedom, Niger's slaves stuck in limbo7,000 slaves in Niger were set to be freed last Saturday - until the government denied slavery even existed there.<br /><br />By Mike Pflanz and Georgina Cranston | Contributors to The Christian Science Monitor<br /><br />NAIROBI, KENYA, AND TILLABERI, NIGER - More than 7,000 slaves owned by Arissal Ag Amdague, a Tuareg tribal chief, were due to be released at a desert ceremony last Saturday in the village of In Atès, 175 miles northwest of Niger's capital, Niamey.<br /><br />A new law that came into effect last year was supposed to finally punish masters, who had long held slaves with little hassle from the government. Anti-Slavery International, the world's oldest human rights group, billed the event as unlike anything seen since the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.<br /><br />Instead, no one was freed.<br /><br />Despite the government's positive move to announce the new law and its willingness to apply it, it sent out mixed messages later by saying slavery no longer exists in Niger. This contradicts eyewitness reports from international and local rights groups, and a signed statement from Chief Arissal promising to free his "enslaved people," a copy of which Anti-Slavery International has in its possession.<br /><br />Slavery is widespread across the Sahel Desert region, in countries that include Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Chad, and Sudan, according to rights groups. Anti-Slavery International ( www.antislavery.org) and Timidria, a local rights group, calculate there are at least 43,000 slaves still in Niger. Slavery dates back centuries but was outlawed at independence from France in 1960, however the Constitution carried no penalty, and the postcolonial administrations turned a blind eye.<br /><br />But a May 2003 change in Niger's penal code, which came into force a year later, criminalized slavery and introduced a 30-year maximum jail term. It was the fear of imprisonment that forced Chief Arissal initially to agree to free his slaves.<br /><br />However, a government delegation toured the chief's fiefdom in the weeks before Saturday, harassing the slaveholders into backtracking on their pledges to free their slaves, Anti-Slavery International claims.<br /><br />David Ould, deputy director of the London-based group, says: "The enactment of legislation that criminalizes and penalizes slavery does not automatically mean it has been eliminated. It is vital the Niger Government acknowledges that slavery is a serious problem throughout the country and ensures that those in slavery are made fully aware of the new law and released."<br /><br />Azara, 25, was born into slavery, and has two young children conceived when she was raped by her master. She escaped two years ago by running through the desert for two days and was taken into the care of Timidria. "I was worked so hard, I had to pound millet and fetch water, day and night," she says. "I was considered [my master's] animal. It was out of the question to say no. If I ever I refused I was beaten."<br /><br />It's not clear what the event marking no slaves being released was supposed to signal. But some see it as progress.<br /><br />Romana Cacchioli, Africa program officer for Anti-Slavery International, wishes the public was invited to Saturday's event so they could hear the declaration that Niger is slave free. She calls the announcement "a de facto release of all Nigerien slaves. Now they are equal citizens," she says. "Now we will redouble efforts on the ground for civic education, for human rights education, about what it means to be a citizen, what it means to be free."<br />from the March 10, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0310/p07s01-woaf.htmlThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-34144401544277595342008-10-12T15:23:00.001-07:002008-10-12T15:23:35.364-07:00Born to be a slave in NigerBy Hilary Andersson<br />BBC Africa Correspondent, Niger<br /><br />Slavery continues to blight the lives of many millions around the world. Although officially abolished in some countries two centuries ago, people trafficking, bonded labour and child labour still exist.<br /><br />There are some places on earth that few outsiders visit or know about, vast empty sections of the earth where time has stood still for centuries.<br /><br />Niger is one of those places. It is a country that you can drive through for hours without seeing a soul.<br /><br />A nation of vast, barren and windswept landscapes, a country of people who live almost entirely off cattle, and off the labour of human slaves.<br /><br />Slavery in Niger is not an obscure thing, nor a curious relic of the past, it is an intrinsic part of society today.<br /><br />A Nigerian study has found that almost 8% of the population are slaves.<br /><br />You wonder how this can be in the 21st Century and why people do not know about it?<br /><br />We began a journey to find out more.<br /><br />Humiliation<br /><br />We drove for hundreds of miles north across the desert. There were no roads for much of the journey and our cars rattled and jarred across plains set with, what seemed like, solidified waves of sand every few feet.<br /><br />We choked on the dust, hour after hour, wondering if we would ever see another human being at all in this desolate place, let alone a slave.<br /><br />We were heading for a well, owned by a local nomadic leader and we had been told he, like many here, owned slaves.<br /><br />We eventually found his tents and reversed our cars immediately, hoping to locate his slaves without his knowledge first, so that we could speak freely to them, without them being afraid of intimidation.<br /><br />We found the slaves' tents some way off, and there we met Fatima, a mother of seven children.<br /><br />She lived in a scrawny brown tent that rose no higher than my elbow off the ground. Her children were all around and one of them had a face bloated with a terrible infection for which she had no medicine.<br /><br /> She seemed humiliated by her status, but seemed to have no greater expectations of her life<br /><br />Fatima told us she had been working for her master for as long as she could remember.<br /><br />She said her master did not pay her, but fed and clothed her.<br /><br />"What can I do?" she said. "I have no money, I need food, I have children and so if I can work for a man who at least feeds me then that is good."<br /><br />When I asked her if she was a slave she looked at the ground, and said yes.<br /><br />She seemed humiliated by her status, but seemed to have no greater expectations of her life.<br /><br />Appalling abuse<br /><br />When we spoke to her masters they denied owning slaves. The practice of slavery was outlawed in Niger last year.<br /><br />Trading in slaves has been banned in Niger since the days of the French colonists in the last century, but ownership of slaves was never specifically banned.<br /><br />Most slaves in Niger today are the descendents of slaves who were kidnapped in wars and raids centuries ago, and were simply born into their status.<br /><br />Many slaves in Niger are appallingly abused by their masters.<br /><br />Slave children are taken away from their parents before they are two-years-old, to break the bonds between parent and child and to eliminate any sense of identity.<br /><br />The children grow up working in the house of the master.<br /><br />The slave owners encourage the slaves to reproduce to increase their numbers, sometimes even determining when they have sexual intercourse.<br /><br />They treat the slaves like their cattle.<br /><br />Slaves are often beaten for small misdemeanours.<br /><br />They work long hours and are sometimes deprived of food as punishment.<br /><br />There are documented cases of slaves being stripped naked in front of their families to humiliate them, of female slaves being raped by their owners, and even of male slaves being castrated by their owners as punishment.<br /><br />Hopes and fears<br /><br />Assibit, another slave we met, could not bear the punishment any longer and ran away from her master last July, leaving her husband, also a slave, behind.<br /><br />She undertook a traumatic journey back to her former owner with us and a human rights worker to see if, under Niger's new laws, her husband could be freed.<br /><br />When we got to his tents, she lowered herself in the seat so that she would not be seen.<br /><br />The human rights activist confronted the owner, a lanky thin older man, surrounded by his tall sons.<br /><br />They became aggressive and began to shout at us to turn off our cameras and leave.<br /><br />They screamed that the human rights activist was a slave too, and that he deserved a beating.<br /><br /> An entire section of the population would have to be taught that they are not intrinsically inferior to others<br /><br />We tried to retreat into the car, but our vehicle was stuck in the deep soft sand and would not move.<br /><br />Eventually, with the sons banging on the windows the car began to plough forward slowly, and we fled.<br /><br />When Assibit first ran away from her owners she was asked what it was like to be free, but she did not understand the question.<br /><br />She did not understand the concept of freedom, or even the word.<br /><br />When I arrived in Niger, I could barely believe that slavery exists in this century on such a scale, but when I left I could not see how it could end in our generation.<br /><br />Ending slavery in Niger would require a social revolution.<br /><br />An entire section of the population would have to be taught that they are not intrinsically inferior to others, but that is what they have believed for generations.<br /><br />The slave owners, and the establishment, are reluctant to teach them.<br /><br />From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 12 February, 2005, at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.<br /><br />Story from BBC NEWS:<br />http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4250709.stm<br /><br />Published: 2005/02/11 15:34:47 GMTThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-12607042533678421472008-10-12T15:22:00.000-07:002008-10-12T15:23:02.576-07:00Islam's black slavesRonald Segal,The author of a book on the 1,400-year history of the other slave trade talks about the power of eunuchs, the Nation of Islam's falsehoods and the persistence of slavery today.<br /><br />- - - - - - - - - - - -<br />By Suzy Hansen<br /><br />April 5, 2001 | Although slavery seems like an institution from a barbaric and uncivilized past, it survives today in both Sudan and Mauritania. The horrific details of the Atlantic slave trade -- the ruthless slave traders who pillaged Africa, the millions of Africans who died on treacherous sea journeys to America, the resulting "peculiar institution" of cheap, brutalized labor that spawned the Civil War -- weigh heavily on the American conscience. Another slave trade, however, the Islamic one, remains a mysterious aspect in the history of the black diaspora. Fourteen centuries old, this version of slavery spread throughout Africa, the Middle East, Europe, India and China. It is the legacy of this trade that continues to ravage Sudan and Mauritania today.<br /><br />South African-born Ronald Segal is the author of 13 books including "The Anguish of India," "The Americans" and "The Black Diaspora." In his latest book, "Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora," he offers one of the first historical accounts of the Islamic slave trade. Salon spoke with Segal by telephone from his home in London.<br /><br /> <br /><br />Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora<br /><br />By Ronald Segal<br /><br />Farrar, Straus & Giroux<br />241 pages<br /><br />How did the Atlantic and Islamic slave trades differ?<br /><br />The Atlantic slave trade exclusively used black slaves or agricultural labor on plantations. It started in a very small way in 1450 and ended in the middle of the 19th century. It was the basic labor supply for the plantations in the Americas since the indigenous people had been all but wiped out by a combination of imported diseases and forced labor. The number of slaves who landed alive in the Americas -- it was an important aspect in the development of capitalism, so the numbers are fairly accurate and organized by merchant banks and investors with stock market quotations -- was something like 10,600,000. Slaves became so cheap that it was more profitable to work them to death and buy new ones than to try to keep your labor supply alive. For example, some of the mortality rates in San Domingue -- which became, after the only successful slave revolution in history, Haiti -- were quite staggering.<br /><br />Slaves in the Atlantic trade came to be kept and regarded as units of labor, not as people. This was almost formalized by categorizing slaves as "pieces of the Indies." A male slave, able-bodied and in the prime of his life, was defined as a "piece of the Indies," and the other slaves, the women and children, were defined as "pieces of pieces of the Indies." That gives you an idea of how the exploitation of African slaves was rationalized in the West.<br /><br />But not in Islam?<br /><br />The slave trade in Islam was seriously different. It began in the middle of the seventh century and survives today in Mauritania and Sudan. With the Islamic slave trade, we're talking of 14 centuries rather than four.<br /><br />Whereas the gender ratio of slaves in the Atlantic trade was two males to every female, in the Islamic trade, it was two females to every male. Very large numbers of slaves were used for domestic purposes. Concubinage was for those who could afford it and there was no disrepute attached to having women as sexual objects. In fact, they married them. Some harems could be enormous. One ruler had 14,000 concubines. In one respect, women slaves were a status symbol. I hate to say it this way, but it's comparable to the way people in the West collect motorcars.<br /><br />The male slaves were used for the more exacting physical jobs in homes and palaces: porters, messengers, doorkeepers. In various places, from Islamic Spain to Egypt to Libya, there were black slaves used as soldiers. In Morocco, there was a whole generation of black slaves who became the army of Morocco, in which the young boys were bought at the age of 10 or 11 and trained in horse handling and military skills of various kinds. Young female slaves were instructed in household crafts and were then provided with resources to buy a home and get married.<br /><br />What about eunuchs?<br /><br />Strictly speaking, in Islam, castration was against the law. I don't think it was in the Koran, I think it was a hadith -- a saying attributed to the prophets -- which says he who castrates a slave will himself be castrated. But they got around this as people do. One contrivance was to buy already castrated slaves. Another was to employ those who were not Muslims to perform the operation. But then even these contrivances came to be abandoned and dealers would perform the operation themselves along the route. The mortality rates were absolutely huge.<br /><br />To be technical, there was a crucial difference between white eunuchs and black eunuchs. White eunuchs were made by the removal of testicles. Black eunuchs were made by what was called "level with the abdomen." Eunuchs were guardians of the harem [because] if they were castrated "level with the abdomen," there was no risk of their damaging any of the property in the harem.<br />For reasons that are not altogether clear or explicit, they came to be used increasingly by rulers as counselors, advisors and tutors and, eventually, to actually run the holy places of Mecca and Medina, where they were treated with enormous respect. One can speculate on the motivation -- if they were not sexually active or preoccupied they were more likely to be devoted and loyal or given to spiritual preoccupations instead of bodily ones.<br /><br />Were there other types of white slaves in Islam?<br /><br /> <br /><br />Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora<br /><br />By Ronald Segal<br /><br />Farrar, Straus & Giroux<br />241 pages<br />Nonfiction<br /><br />amazon.com<br /><br /><br />Print story<br /><br /><br />E-mail story<br /><br />Yes. The Atlantic trade didn't deal with white slaves, but the Islamic trade dealt with large numbers of white slaves.<br /><br />And in Islam black slaves were never used for the same purposes that they were used in America?<br /><br />In the early stages of Islam, they were used in the American way. In southern Iraq and neighboring Iran they were put to work in large quantities to clear the salt crust for agriculture and plantation labor. But in the ninth century, a prophet arrived who instigated a rebellion among the black slaves, the Zanj, in the area. This rebellion was enormous. It destroyed much of the commercial shipping in the region and came close to capturing the city of Baghdad, then the greatest city of Islam. It was eventually crushed after quite a protracted period. The impact across Islam was enormous. There developed a reluctance to allow very large concentrations of slaves for plantation agriculture. That is a parenthetical reason for the overwhelmingly domestic nature of the Islamic trade.<br /><br />Does the Koran specify how slaves should be treated?<br /><br />The Koran is the key. The relationship between slave and master in Islam is a very different relationship from that between the American plantation laborer and owner. It was a much more personalized relationship and relatively benevolent. Everything here is relative -- being a slave is being a slave and it shouldn't be romanticized.<br /><br />The institution of slavery is sanctioned in the Koran. To say that the Koran is in any way opposed to the institution of slavery would be wrong. It is never recommended, but it is influentially and explicitly benevolent in its attitude to the poor, the orphaned and slaves. And there is a specific injunction that to free a slave is an act of piety, which has its due reward in the other life.<br /><br />Incidentally, what was absolutely outlawed in the Koran was to separate an infant or a young child from his mother.<br /><br />Which was normal in America.<br /><br />Right. There is a specific statement in the Koran that says that he who separates the child from his mother will himself be separated from his loved ones on the day of judgment.<br /><br />Since it was an act of piety with immeasurable reward, the incidence of emancipation or enfranchisement was enormously more widespread in Islam than it was in the Western form of slavery. There wasn't a complete separation of master from former slave. Usually, a patron and client relationship developed between slave and master. For example, in Mauritania today there are freed slaves called Haratin whose descendants still pay tribute to the family of the owner. Specifically in the Koran, the owner of a slave is enjoined to provide that slave with an opportunity to purchase his freedom.<br /><br />There would be a binding contract in which the slave would be provided with the opportunity to earn money for himself and pay in installments to his owner, which by practice, if not by law, became a gratuity. There were then two motivations for freeing your slave -- a reward in heaven and money in this world.<br /><br />Was slave ownership only for the rich, as it was in America?<br /><br />Slave ownership was so widespread. Even small shopkeepers owned slaves. Paradoxically, although slaves were at the bottom of the hierarchy because they weren't free, they still stretched right across the economic hierarchy. It was not rare for slaves to become highly prized artists. There were academies that existed to teach young slave girls to play musical instruments. Any self-respecting merchant house would have a chamber orchestra.<br /><br />Slaves became generals and black slaves became rulers. In the 16th century, a slave, Ambar, became first a general and then the ruler of a large Indian state.<br /><br />I also thought it was fascinating that the child of a master by a slave was free.<br /><br />Definitely. A child born fathered by his master was freed, since a child could not be the slave of his parents.<br /><br />The great numbers of black female slaves must have ensured a great deal of miscegenation.<br /><br />There's no question about that. It is the major reason for the relatively small size of the black diaspora in Islam, though there were other reasons. A number of countries noted a low fertility rate among black women slaves. And not all women slaves used for domestic purposes had the opportunity to produce children<br /><br />The ultimate example of the distinction between the two trades is that in the greatest Islamic empire, the Ottoman Empire, after the sons of the first two sultans, no sultan mounted the throne who had not been born of a concubine. The Ottoman ruling family did not marry because they regarded the royal family as above any alliance. Occasionally, marriage would be used to ensure the loyalty of a Turkish tribe, but overwhelmingly the fertility of the Ottomans was through concubines.<br /><br />Why could Islamic slaves assimilate into the surrounding society so more easily than American blacks could?<br /><br /> <br /><br />Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora<br /><br />By Ronald Segal<br /><br />Farrar, Straus & Giroux<br />241 pages<br /><br /><br />Here we get to a further dimension of the difference between the two trades. Slavery in the West, because it was so cruel and had become so disreputable, required some kind of excuse or extenuation -- the idea of biological discrimination. Essentially, the concept of race developed and was popularized. The sort of pseudo-scientific view, in distinction from the pseudo-religious view, came about during the Victorian age, the 19th century, when you had Darwin's theory of evolution. You could irresponsibly and intellectually dishonestly subscribe to the idea that certain races were inferior.<br /><br />But the Koran, on the other hand, prohibits racism?<br /><br />The Koran very explicitly attacks it. According to the Prophet, Islam comes to do away with these distinctions of tribe and nation and color. There is a strong argument made by Patricia Crone that, initially, Mohammed was most influential in a political rather than a religious sense. He supplanted this intertribal rivalry by uniting a large part of the Arabian people into a political unit, and, of course, it then became an imperial power.<br /><br />Was there no stigma attached to being black in Islam?<br /><br />Nothing is ever quite so simple. There did develop an attitude toward color. There were distinctions in market value and general consumer appreciation between one sort of black slave and another. Some of this was aesthetic. One tends to think that anyone who looks like one's own people is more beautiful. For instance, the Ethiopians and the Nubians were highly favored because they had sharpish noses rather than flat noses and they were lighter colored. Clichés developed so that you had so-called Negro slaves for hard work and you had Ethiopians and Nubians for concubinage.<br /><br />But this was never institutionalized. This is another key to the difference between the two empires. Of course, there were Islamic pseudo scientists in the Middle Ages who said differences of character and temperament were the consequences of climate -- those who lived too far from the sun in the North had frigid temperaments, and those who were immediately beneath the sun were given to too much merriment and too little thought.<br /><br />But in the context of the development of Islam it would have been a real break with tradition had it been institutionalized in law. This is important for the assimilation aspect too, because once you were freed, there was no discrimination in law against you.<br /><br />They weren't confined to an underclass after they were freed?<br /><br />Many of them might have been, although the client/patron relationship was a sort of protection if you were in need -- that is, if your previous owner was a true practicing Muslim. And there isn't this history of separation. The nature of the Atlantic trade and therefore the survival of racism in the West has been one of segregation. In America, separation was the social clarion call and as bad in the Northern states as in the Southern. Generally, the geographical separation -- the kind of separation in individual churches where blacks were seated in one part of the congregation and whites in another -- produced this enormously creative black diaspora in America, as well as infinite suffering.<br /><br />There wasn't this separation in Islam. Whites didn't push blacks off the pavement. They didn't refuse to allow a black singer to sing in Constitution Hall. They didn't forbid restaurants to serve them. I don't think that there's any disputing that slavery was a more benevolent institution in Islam than it was in the West.<br /><br />Also, it is irrational to make the exclusive connection between slavery and color that existed in the West because there were white slaves in Islam in significant numbers.<br /><br />In comparable numbers to black slaves?<br /><br />With the enormous expansion of Islam and the conquests of huge territories, there were certainly large numbers of white slaves in the early periods. But, to be cautious, white slaves became increasingly more difficult and expensive to obtain. Black slaves became far more numerous than white ones. Certainly, when you get to the 19th century, which was the cruelest century, there were many more black slaves than white ones in Islam.<br /><br /><br />Beyond the tenets of the Koran, why was this so?<br /><br />Western capitalism and the development of the attitude of viewing people as units of labor and not as people.<br /><br /> <br /><br />Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora<br /><br />By Ronald Segal<br /><br />Farrar, Straus & Giroux<br />241 pages<br />From Publishers Weekly<br />Designed as a companion volume to Segal's The Black Diaspora, which traced the movements of blacks in the Western Hemisphere from the Atlantic slave trade to the present, this book undertakes the formidable task of recounting the dispersion of black Africans in Asia and the Middle East, most of which was forced by the Islamic slave trade. "In Islam, slavery was never the moral, political, and economic issue that it was in the West, so there are fewer sources about its history," notes Segal, the founding editor of the Penguin African Library and the author of 14 other books. Still, he pieces together a compelling drama of conquests and conversions, beginning with an illuminating chapter about the differences between the Atlantic and Islamic trades: the Islamic trade began some eight centuries before the Atlantic one, and preferred women slaves over men. His account then moves from early Islam, when laws did not subject slaves to any special racial discrimination, into the 19th century, when the process of enslaving blacks came to involve violence and brutality on a gigantic scale. Segal also discusses the extension of the Islamic trade into China, India and Spain, the role of the Ottoman Empire, slavery in Iran and Libya, and the effect of European colonization, which he argues "preserved the force if not the face of old subjugations." A preliminary dig in a little-explored area, this book has a rough-hewn quality about it; scholars may find it too general, even if it provides seeds for further study. General readers, however, will find much that is new, particularly in the early chapters, where Segal trains his eye on the part slaves played in the development of the high civilization attained by imperial Islam.<br /><br />Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.<br /><br /><br />From Library Journal<br />Segal (The Black Diaspora: Five Centureis of the Black Experience Outside Africa), founding editor of the Penguin African Library, has written an overview of black slavery in the Islamic world from its beginnings to modern Sudan and Morocco. Relying primarily on secondary sources, the author explores Islamic slavery in China, India, the Middle East, and Africa and focuses on the differences between Islamic and Western slavery. He notes that while most slaves in the Americas were male and worked as agricultural laborers, in Islam female black slaves outnumbered males, and most slaves worked as servants. Segal concludes his study with an interesting epilog on the Black Muslim faith in the United States. Though it breaks little new ground, this book is an essential survey that serves as a helpful introduction to the topic. Recommended for public and academic libraries.DA.O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, IN<br />Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.<br /><br />Was America so economically powerful because it exploited its cheap slave labor more brutally than any other leading empire -- such as the Ottoman?<br /><br />That's a valid point but there are many other reasons for the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Although opinions may differ over the extent of the relationship between the Atlantic trade and the development of industrial capitalism, it is unarguable that the Atlantic slave trade was immensely profitable. The Industrial Revolution was closely related to the Atlantic trade in two major respects. First, many of the products of early British industrialization were directly related to the slave trade. But also, the families who grew rich as a result of the slave trade invested their profits in industrialization. This was a dual fruitfulness that the slave trade produced for the development of industrial capitalism.<br /><br />The Islamic slave trade was not profitable?<br /><br />It was profitable for the dealers. But it was nowhere near the kind of sophisticated business that it became in the Atlantic trade.<br /><br />The Atlantic trade is a horrendous and fascinating story. Which is not to say that in Islam there weren't tremendous cruelties involved, particularly in the 19th century when all inhibitions were discarded. Of course, it must also be said that the West, for all the horrors for which it was responsible, did also engender (not always for benign reasons) the movement against the international slave trade.<br /><br />Was there an abolitionist movement in Islam?<br /><br />Initially, it was a source of great hostility that the West dared to intervene in Islamic affairs in contradiction to what was allowed by the Koran. But as Western influence, or modernism, became more and more [widespread], it became less fashionable as well as profitable in Islam to own slaves. And it became illegal over much of the area. The pressures against slavery were extremely great from Western powers. It was the moral issue. It became more scandalous because the conditions of procurement and transport became more and more horrendous.<br /><br />Was it similar to the Atlantic trade in this respect?<br /><br />Both slave trades wittingly and unwittingly encouraged warfare on a huge scale to provide the captives for the traders. In Islam, this was much less the case until the 19th century, when it became quite ghastly. The worst of the slavers were not Arabs but Afro-Arabs -- they were as black as the people they were enslaving. The casualties involved in enslavement wars were absolutely unspeakable.<br /><br />Where were the Afro-Arabs from?<br /><br />The great dealers of the 19th century? Some of them carved empires for waging war and for providing large numbers of slaves. The point must be made that the worst, the most costly in their ravages, were the Afro-Arabs. They were themselves Africans. There is nothing peculiar to Africa about this, though -- people are corrupted by circumstances and greed.<br /><br />Why has slavery survived in Sudan and Mauritania?<br /><br />The resurgence of fundamentalist Islam has a lot to do with slavery in both countries. Both describe themselves as Islamic states and pursue policies of Arab-Islamic religious law, but they are essentially exercises in the maintenance of control. Sudan is an imperial agglomeration of two countries -- one part of black Africa, one part of North Africa. Involved in the war is a question of control and power. In Mauritania, the so-called white Moors represent a third of the population, another third are the Haratin -- who are the descendants of freed slaves and largely black -- and the last third are blacks still held in slavery.<br /><br />Also, it is partly a reaction to the power differentials in the world at large. Islam was a civilization that for hundreds of years was arguably the central civilization of the world and certainly dwarfed the cultures and powers of a West that is now unquestionably supreme. So there is a sense of humiliation. In such a situation you get a backlash -- a "return to the future through the past" sort of thing -- a re-Islamization. There's nothing in the Koran that says someone can come along and free your slave.<br /> <br /><br />Islam's black slaves | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5<br /><br /><br />What interested you in the Nation of Islam?<br /><br />I find it personally inexplicable that the adhesion to Islam within the Black Muslim movement is apparently indifferent to the survival of black slavery within Islam.<br /><br /> <br /><br />Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora<br /><br />By Ronald Segal<br /><br />Farrar, Straus & Giroux<br />241 pages<br />Nonfiction<br /><br />amazon.com<br /><br /><br />Print story<br /><br /><br />E-mail story<br /><br />Louis Farrakhan doesn't acknowledge what goes on in Sudan and Mauritania?<br /><br />Does he want them to bring him the slaves as proof? I think it's based on a crude self-defense mechanism not unrelated to those who feel it necessary to defend the conduct of the Israeli government regardless of what it does. The attitude is: "These are yours, you belong to them, they are part of your past and part of your history, and therefore how can you associate yourself with outsiders who attack them?"<br /><br />But this isn't about the survival of Islam -- that's not in question. You're talking about two rogue states, which are condemned by Islamic countries, governments, preachers, writers. You become so much more credible if you show that you are altogether sensitive to suffering, that you are hostile to injustice across the board. If you become so selective that you can ignore outrages of this kind, well, how can you blame other people for ignoring outrages to you and your community?<br /><br />Farrakhan is a very paradoxical thinker because he's very, very intelligent, yet he makes statements that are so obviously stupid. It is incomprehensible that he doesn't know that they are stupid. He knows how to manipulate the media. He does it on the basis of short-term gain, without realizing that it is long-term loss. You don't build anything lasting on that basis.<br /><br />Do Black Muslims hold to the classic tenets of Islam?<br /><br />They break from the Koran immediately -- if we're talking functionally about their crude and open anti-Semitism. That is in complete conflict with the special relationship that Islam established, while the Prophet was alive, with Judaism and Christianity. There has been no long historical conflict between Jew and Muslim, though there has been a conflict since the crusades between Christian and Muslim.<br /><br />There are exceptions, but overall Islam proved most hospitable, and certainly a great deal more so than Christianity, to the Jews. When the Jewish population was expelled in 1492 from Spain, Islam took in those Jews who couldn't find havens in Christian countries. This isn't to say there haven't been tensions from time to time, but overall there is no comparison between the way Islam has behaved to Jews and the way Christianity has behaved to Jews.<br /><br />On what basis does the Black Muslim movement usually attack Jews?<br /><br />What I find most outrageous is that the leadership of the Black Muslim movement has judged it necessary and defensible to attack Jews on the basis -- for which there is no historical foundation whatsoever -- that they masterminded the slave trade, by which I think they mean specifically the Atlantic trade. And that is -- not to put to fine a point on it or to be excessively elegant -- unmistakable crap. Anyone who knows anything about the Atlantic trade knows that this is nonsense.<br /><br />So why do you think they keep on about this?<br /><br />I think that they are resentful -- and I understand the resentment but not the form it has taken -- that a great deal of fuss, an enormous amount of moral attention, is now paid to the Holocaust. And in my view, rightly so. The slave trade was the only comparable historical experience to the Holocaust -- comparable but not identical. No one seems to pay remotely the same attention to or have the same sense of guilt about the slave trade as about the combination of racism in the Holocaust.<br /><br />Now, that is a point that ought to be made. But you do not aggrandize one by belittling the other. On the contrary, you end up denying the importance of one by denying the importance of the other. Certainly you add nothing to your case by basing it on assertions that are so easy to confront and contradict.<br /><br />Do you think the Nation of Islam came out of pure despair with America or from a loss of faith in Christianity?<br /><br />They were explicably attracted by a sense or knowledge that there was no such history of specifically anti-black racism in Islam, as so conspicuously had existed for blacks in the West and, in particular, in the United States. Those who wished to believe in God or practiced some form of religion and were, as Louis Farrakhan was, disenchanted with Christianity were easily captivated by a religious alternative not all that far apart but distinctly different from Christianity.<br /><br />Do you think the Nation of Islam has helped American blacks?<br /><br />I have traveled widely in the United States and have visited communities in Michigan and Illinois. Secular black academics testify that in Black Muslim schools the emphasis placed on the history and dignity of blacks in Africa has had a marked effect on the reading ability of black children, who no longer feel disparaged and demoralized.<br /><br />There is a great deal of truth in a man like Farrakhan's indictment of some of the black middle class who flee the ghettos, for understandable reasons, but in the process think that they can turn their backs on those who are unable to buy new homes in these middle-class suburbs. There is a smugness there, and then there is the phenomenon of the black conservative, such as Clarence Thomas.<br /><br />It is outrageous that American democracy doesn't function for the objectives that it is almost perpetually enunciating. If you start looking at statistics on the disproportionate numbers of blacks executed, of young blacks in prison -- all these undeniable abuses of the system make people very angry. The problem occurs when this anger becomes irrational. Because it is such an obvious series of abuses, the anger doesn't need to be irrational. In fact, the only way it can be effectual is to be rational.<br /><br /><br />- - - - - - - - - - - -<br /><br />About the writer<br />Suzy Hansen is an assistant editor at Salon.<br /><br />http://archive.salon.com/books/int/2001/04/05/segal/index.htmlThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-19725558582411814622008-10-12T15:21:00.000-07:002008-10-12T15:22:23.536-07:00Slavery: Mauritania's best kept secretBy Pascale Harter<br />BBC News, Nouakchott<br /><br />Skyra is a runaway Mauritanian slave. Her earliest childhood memories are of fetching water, tending animals and cooking and cleaning.<br /><br />"I was tied up all night and all day. They only untied me so I could do my chores. In the end I could barely move my limbs."<br /><br />She never earnt a single penny.<br /><br />"All those years," she told me, "and I don't even own a goat".<br /><br />Mohamed could not tell me his surname or his age.<br /><br />As a slave he didn't own the right to either.<br /><br />But in a candlelit shack in the sandy outskirts of the capital, Nouakchott, he told me the story of his life.<br /><br />"I don't know how I became a slave," he told me.<br /><br />"I was just born one. My family were slaves. We did all the hard work for our master and all we received in return was beatings."<br /><br />Proof<br /><br />After three attempts at making slavery illegal, the latest as recently as 1981, Mauritania has finally enacted a law which goes further than ever before, making slave ownership punishable with a fine or prison sentence.<br /><br /> I would rather they shot me dead and buried me right there than return with my master<br />Mohamed<br />But a year on, and no-one has yet been prosecuted under the new law. "We enacted it just to meet international standards," says Bamariam Koita, director of the government's Human Rights Commission.<br /><br />Mr Koita maintains that no-one has been prosecuted because slavery was abolished long ago in Mauritania.<br /><br />"Have you seen a slave? Have you seen a slave market? Of course you haven't," he puffed, confidently answering his own question.<br /><br />He has a point. Human beings in chains are not bought and sold in the full glare of Nouakchott's market. It's even worse than that, according to Boubakar Messaoud, founder of the local association SOS Slaves.<br /><br />"A captured slave knows freedom, so to keep him you have to chain him," says Mr Messaoud.<br /><br />"But a Mauritanian slave, whose parents and grandparents before him were slaves, doesn't need chains. He has been brought up as a domesticated animal."<br /><br />Rape<br /><br />Skyra was born to a slave mother so there was never any question she would be anything else. She remembers the years she spent treated like an animal.<br /><br />"They raped me often," she says shaking with anger.<br /><br />"At night, when everyone was asleep, they came for me and I couldn't stop them. If I had been free I would never have let this happen to me".<br /><br />A living reminder of her slavery nestles in Skyra's lap, another sleeps at her feet, on the floor of her corrugated iron shack.<br /><br />"My master is the father of my first child, my master's son is the father of my second child and my baby girl's father was my master's nephew".<br /><br />In this way says Boubakar Messaoud, "We have achieved what the American plantation owners dreamed of - the breeding of perfectly submissive slaves".<br /><br />Count the slaves<br /><br />Skyra was not perfectly submissive. Her small insurrections earned her beatings until she found the strength - and the opportunity - to run away. She was determined that her children would not be born into slavery as she had been.<br /><br />Mohamed escaped his master when soldiers passed by his isolated village in the desert. "When my master demanded the soldiers hand me over, I told them I would rather they shot me dead and buried me right there than return with my master."<br /><br />In answer to the Mauritanian government's assertion that slavery no longer exists in Mauritania, Mohamed recites the names of the family members he left behind in slavery. "If I tell you their names, can you count them?" he asked shyly. "I was never taught". There are eight members of his immediate family still living as slaves, and Mohamed tells me there are many more in Mauritania.<br /><br />It is difficult to know how many though. International human rights organisations such as Amnesty International are prevented from entering the country to conduct research.<br /><br />"Not only has the government denied the existence of slavery and failed to respond to cases brought to its attention," says Amnesty, "it has hampered the activities of organisations which are working on the issue, including by refusing to grant such organisations official recognition."<br /><br />Boubakar Messaoud and other members of SOS Slaves have been imprisoned and harassed by the authorities for their anti-slavery campaigning.<br /><br />It seems the government has little interest in really wiping out slavery. Meanwhile slavery remains Mauritania's best kept open secret.<br /><br />"Everyone knew we were slaves," said Mohamed. "It's a normal thing, to have slaves in Mauritania."<br />Story from BBC NEWS:<br />http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/4091579.stm<br /><br />Published: 2004/12/13 11:53:28 GMTThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-3144460247610245462008-10-12T15:20:00.002-07:002008-10-12T15:21:49.130-07:00The Modern West African Slave TradeRecently, we have seen the revival of the once thriving slave trade routes across West Africa, after a lapse of 25 years. Slavers have reappeared following the old slave trade routes, except that trucks, jeeps and modern four-wheel drive vehicles and, on occasions, aircraft, have replaced the camels. The slavers often carry mobile telephones.<br /><br />Some things, however, have not changed. Cunning, deceit, the use of drugs to subdue the children and the whip still remain part of the essential equipment of the professional slaver.<br /><br />The trade involves most states in sub-Saharan West Africa.<br /><br />The children are kidnapped or purchased for $20 - $70 each by slavers in poorer states, such as Benin and Togo, and sold into slavery in sex dens or as unpaid domestic servants for $350.00 each in wealthier oil-rich states, such as Nigeria and Gabon.<br /><br />These children are bought and sold as slaves. They are denied an education, the chance to play or to use toys like other children, and the right to a future. Their lives are at the mercy of their masters, and suicide is often the only escape.<br /><br />The material in this report is based on a Mission to West Africa by the Society's Secretary-General, supplemented by material from Cleophas Mally of WAO-Afrique.<br /><br /><br /><br />THE SOCIETY IN ACTION<br /><br />The Society, in discharging its historic role, is currently working for the suppression of the slave trade in West Africa and the rescue of slave children.<br />http://www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/slavetrade.htmThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-46246336184059190462008-10-12T15:20:00.001-07:002008-10-12T15:20:36.355-07:00Slavery in modern AfricaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia<br /><br />Slavery in Africa continues today. Slavery existed in Africa before the arrival of Europeans - as did a slave trade that exported millions of sub-Saharan Africans to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf.[1] However, slavery and bondage are still African realities. Hundreds of thousands of Africans still suffer in silence in slave-like situations of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation from which they cannot free themselves. Modern-day enslavers also exploit lack of political will at the highest levels of some African governments to effectively tackle trafficking and its root causes. Weak interagency co-ordination and low funding levels for ministries tasked with prosecuting traffickers, preventing trafficking and protecting victims also enable traffickers to continue their operations. The transnational criminal nature of trafficking also overwhelms many countries’ law enforcement agencies, which are not equipped to fight organised criminal gangs that operate across national boundaries with impunity.<br /><br />Slavery by African country<br /><br />- Chad<br /><br />IRIN (Integrated Regional Information Networks) of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports children being sold to Arab herdsmen in Chad. As part of a new native dialect, ban them from conversing with people from their own ethnic group and make them adopt Islam as their religion."[2]<br /><br />- Mali<br /><br />The Malian government denies that slavery exists, however, the slavery in Timbuktu is obvious. Slavery still continues with some Tuaregs holding Bella people.[3]<br /><br />- Mauritania<br /><br /> Main article: Slavery in Mauritania<br /><br />A system exists now by which Arab Muslims -- the bidanes -- own black slaves, the haratines.[4] An estimated 90,000 black Mauritanians remain essentially enslaved to Arab/Berber owners.[5] The ruling bidanes (the name means literally white-skinned people) are descendants of the Sanhaja Berbers and Beni Hassan Arab tribes who emigrated to northwest Africa and present-day Western Sahara and Mauritania during the Middle Ages.[6] According to some estimates, up to 600,000 black Mauritanians, or 20% of the population, are still enslaved, many of them used as bonded labour.[7] Slavery in Mauritania was finally criminalized in August 2007.[8] Malouma Messoud, a former Muslim slave has explained her enslavement to a religious leader:<br /><br /> "We didn't learn this history in school; we simply grew up within this social hierarchy and lived it. Slaves believe that if they do not obey their masters, they will not go to paradise. They are raised in a social and religious system that everyday reinforces this idea.[9]"<br /><br />In Mauritania, despite slave ownership having been banned by law in 1981, hereditary slavery continues.[10] Moreover, according to Amnesty International:<br /><br /> "Not only has the government denied the existence of slavery and failed to respond to cases brought to its attention, it has hampered the activities of organisations which are working on the issue, including by refusing to grant them official recognition".[11]<br /><br />Imam El Hassan Ould Benyamin of Tayarat in 1997 expressed his views about earlier proclamations ending slavery in his country as follows:<br /><br /> "[it] is contrary to the teachings of the fundamental text of Islamic law, the Quran ... [and] amounts to the expropriation from muslims of their goods; goods that were acquired legally. The state, if it is Islamic, does not have the right to seize my house, my wife or my slave."[12]<br /><br />- Niger<br /><br />In Niger, where the practice of slavery was outlawed in 2003, a study found that almost 8% of the population are still slaves.[13] Slavery dates back for centuries in Niger and was finally criminalised in 2003, after five years of lobbying by Anti-Slavery International and Nigerien human-rights group, Timidria.[14] More than 870,000 people still live in conditions of forced labour, according to Timidria, a local human rights group.[15][16]<br /><br />Descent-based slavery, where generations of the same family are born into bondage, is traditionally practised by at least four of Niger’s eight ethnic groups. The slave masters are mostly from the nomadic tribes — the Tuareg, Fulani, Toubou and Arabs.[17] It is especially rife among the warlike Tuareg, in the wild deserts of north and west Niger, who roam near the borders with Mali and Algeria.[18] In the region of Say on the right bank of the river Niger, it is estimated that three-quarters of the population around 1904-1905 was composed of slaves.[19]<br /><br />Historically, the Tuareg swelled the ranks of their slaves during war raids into other peoples’ lands. War was then the main source of supply of slaves, although many were bought at slave markets, run mostly by indigenous peoples.[20][21]<br /><br />- Sudan<br />Francis Bok, former Sudanese slave. At the age of seven, he was captured during a raid in Southern Sudan, and enslaved for ten years.(Courtesy Unitarian Universalist Association/Jeanette Leardi)<br />Francis Bok, former Sudanese slave. At the age of seven, he was captured during a raid in Southern Sudan, and enslaved for ten years.[22](Courtesy Unitarian Universalist Association/Jeanette Leardi)<br /><br /> Main article: Slavery in Sudan<br /><br />Sudan has seen a resurgence of slavery since 1983, associated with the Second Sudanese Civil War.[23][24]<br /><br />Slavery in the Sudan predates Islam, but continued under Islamic rulers and has never completely died out in Sudan. In the Sudan, Christian and animist captives in the civil war are often enslaved, and female prisoners are often used sexually, with their Muslim captors claiming that Islamic law grants them permission.[25] According to CBS news, slaves have been sold for $50 apiece. [1] In 2001 CNN reported the Bush administration was under pressure from Congress, including conservative Christians concerned about religious oppression and slavery, to address issues involved in the Sudanese conflict.[26] CNN has also quoted the U.S. State Department's allegations: "The [Sudanese] government's support of slavery and its continued military action which has resulted in numerous deaths are due in part to the victims' religious beliefs." [2]<br /><br />Jok Madut Jok, professor of History at Loyola Marymount University, states that the abduction of women and children of the south by north is slavery by any definition. The government of Sudan insists that the whole matter is no more than the traditional tribal feuding over resources.[27]<br /><br />It is estimated that as many as 200,000 people had been taken into slavery during the Second Sudanese Civil War. The slaves are mostly Dinka people.[28][29]<br /><br />- Child slave trade<br /><br />The trading of children has been reported in modern Nigeria and Benin.[30] The children are kidnapped or purchased for $20 - $70 each by slavers in poorer states, such as Benin and Togo, and sold into slavery in sex dens or as unpaid domestic servants for $350.00 each in wealthier oil-rich states, such as Nigeria and Gabon.[31] [32]<br /><br />- Ghana, Togo, Benin<br /><br />In parts of Ghana, a family may be punished for an offense by having to turn over a virgin female to serve as a sex slave within the offended family.[33] In this instance, the woman does not gain the title of "wife". In parts of Ghana, Togo, and Benin, shrine slavery persists, despite being illegal in Ghana since 1998. In this system of slavery, sometimes called trokosi (in Ghana) or voodoosi in Togo and Benin, or ritual servitude, young virgin girls are given as slaves in traditional shrines and are used sexually by the priests in addition to providing free labor for the shrine.[34]<br /><br />- Ethiopia<br /><br />Mahider Bitew, Children's Rights and Protection expert at the Ministry of Women's Affairs, says that some isolated studies conducted in Dire Dawa, Shashemene, Awassa and three other towns of the country indicate that the problem of child trafficking is very serious. According to a 2003 study about one thousand children were trafficked via Dire Dawa to countries of the Middle East. The majority of those children were girls, most of whom were forced to be sex workers after leaving the country. The International Labor Organization (ILO) has identified prostitution as the Worst Form of Child Labor.[35]<br /><br />In Ethiopia, children are trafficked into prostitution, to provide cheap or unpaid labor and to work as domestic servants or beggars. The ages of these children are usually between 10 and 18 and their trafficking is from the country to urban centers and from cities to the country. Boys are often expected to work in activities such as herding cattle in rural areas and in the weaving industry in Addis Ababa, and other major towns. Girls are expected to take responsibilities for domestic chores, childcare and looking after the sick and to work as prostitutes.[35]<br /><br /><br /><br />References<br /><br /> 1. ^ Historical survey > Slave societies, Encyclopædia Britannica<br /> 2. ^ IRIN Africa: CHAD: Children sold into slavery for the price of a calf<br /> 3. ^ Kayaking to Timbuktu, Writer Sees Slave Trade,slavery is a very important matyter that shoulsd not be found amusing:) More<br /> 4. ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Islam_and_slavery&action=edit&section=24<br /> 5. ^ Islam and Slavery<br /> 6. ^ Fair elections haunted by racial imbalance<br /> 7. ^ The Abolition season on BBC World Service<br /> 8. ^ Mauritanian MPs pass slavery law<br /> 9. ^ The Johns Hopkins News-letter 'SMIR talk exposes modern slavery' - Brendan Schreiber and Maria Andrawis, 5 December 2003<br /> 10. ^ "The last law, in 1981, banned it but failed to criminalise it. However much it is denied, an ancient system of bondage, with slaves passed on from generation to generation, still plainly exists." Steady progress in Mali and Mauritania, The Economist<br /> 11. ^ Slavery: Mauritania's best kept secret<br /> 12. ^ Segal, p.206, in "Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora," quoted by Suzy Hansen of Salon.com on 5 April 2001 - http://archive.salon.com/books/int/2001/04/05/segal/index.html . The book cite is Ronald Segal (2002) http://www.amazon.com/Islams-Black-Slaves-Other-Diaspora/dp/0374527970/<br /> 13. ^ Born to be a slave in Niger By Hilary Andersson, BBC Africa Correspondent, Niger<br /> 14. ^ On the way to freedom, Niger's slaves stuck in limbo<br /> 15. ^ Set my people free<br /> 16. ^ NIGER: Survey finds over 870,000 are still slaves<br /> 17. ^ Born into Bondage<br /> 18. ^ Fresh hope for slaves as Tuareg chief frees 7,000<br /> 19. ^ Slavery in Niger<br /> 20. ^ NIGER: Slavery - an unbroken chain<br /> 21. ^ The Shackles of Slavery in Niger<br /> 22. ^ Public Speakers || Francis Bok || Speaking Matters, a Speakers Bureau || Powerful Lectures, Personal Narratives, Transformative Stories<br /> 23. ^ The Middle East Quarterly. December 1999, Vol.6:Number 4. John Eibner, “My career redeeming slaves”<br /> 24. ^ http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17747 under 'Extent and Persistence', final para<br /> 25. ^ Islam and Slavery<br /> 26. ^ CNN.com - Danforth to be named U.S. envoy to Sudan - September 4, 2001<br /> 27. ^ Jok Madut Jok (2001), p.3<br /> 28. ^ War and Genocide in Sudan<br /> 29. ^ The Lost Children of Sudan<br /> 30. ^ West Africa's child slave trade<br /> 31. ^ West is master of slave trade guilt<br /> 32. ^ Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery - Nigeria<br /> 33. ^ Slavery in Ghana. The Trokosi Tradition<br /> 34. ^ Ghana's trapped slaves, By Humphrey Hawksley in eastern Ghana, 8 February 2001. BBC News<br /> 35. ^ a b ""Ethiopian Slave Trade"".<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_modern_AfricaThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-18324833320768779892008-10-12T15:19:00.002-07:002008-10-12T15:20:05.038-07:00Slavery in IslamSlavery was common in pre-Islamic times and continued under Islam<br /><br /> Slaves were owned in all Islamic societies, both sedentary and nomadic, ranging from Arabia in the centre to North Africa in the west and to what is now Pakistan and Indonesia in the east. Some Islamic states, such as the Ottoman Empire, the Crimean Khanate, and the Sokoto caliphate [Nigeria], must be termed slave societies because slaves there were very important numerically as well as a focus of the polities' energies.Encyclopaedia Britannica - Slavery<br /><br />Many societies throughout history have practised slavery, and Muslim societies were no exception.<br /><br />It's thought that as many people were enslaved in the Eastern slave trade as in the Atlantic slave trade.<br /><br />It's ironic that when the Atlantic slave trade was abolished the Eastern trade expanded, suggesting that for some Africans the abolition of the Atlantic trade didn't lead to freedom, but merely changed their slave destination.<br /><br />It's misleading to use phrases such as 'Islamic slavery' and 'Muslim slave trade', even though slavery existed in many Muslim cultures at various times, since the Atlantic slave trade is not called the Christian slave trade, even though most of those responsible for it were Christians.<br />Slavery before Islam<br /><br />Slavery was common in pre-Islamic times and accepted by many ancient legal systems and it continued under Islam.<br /><br /> Although Islam is much credited for moderating the age-old institution of slavery, which was also accepted and endorsed by the other monotheistic religions, Christianity and Judaism, and was a well-established custom of the pre-Islamic world, it has never preached the abolition of slavery as a doctrine.Forough Jahanbaksh, Islam, Democracy and Religious Modernism in Iran, 1953-2000, 2001<br /><br /> The condition of slaves, like that of women, may well have improved with the coming of Islam, but the institution was not abolished, any more than it was under Christianity at this period.Malise Ruthven, Islam in the World, 2000<br /><br />How Islam moderated slavery<br /><br />Islam's approach to slavery added the idea that freedom was the natural state of affairs for human beings and in line with this it limited the opportunities to enslave people, commended the freeing of slaves and regulated the way slaves were treated:<br /><br /> * Islam greatly limited those who could be enslaved and under what circumstances (although these restrictions were often evaded)<br /> * Islam treated slaves as human beings as well as property<br /> * Islam banned the mistreatment of slaves - indeed the tradition repeatedly stresses the importance of treating slaves with kindness and compassion<br /> * Islam allowed slaves to achieve their freedom and made freeing slaves a virtuous act<br /> * Islam barred Muslims from enslaving other Muslims<br /><br />But the essential nature of slavery remained the same under Islam, as elsewhere. It involved serious breaches of human rights and however well they were treated the slaves still had restricted freedom, and, when the law was not obeyed their lives could be very unpleasant.<br />The paradox<br /><br />A poignant paradox of Islamic slavery is that the humanity of the various rules and customs that led to the freeing of slaves created a demand for new slaves that could only be supplied by war, forcing people into slavery or trading slaves.<br />Muslim slavery continued for centuries<br /><br />The legality of slavery in Islam, together with the example of the Prophet Muhammad, who himself bought, sold, captured, and owned slaves, may explain why slavery persisted until the 19th century in many places (and later still in some countries). The impetus for the abolition of slavery came largely from colonial powers, although some Muslim thinkers argued strongly for abolition.<br />Slaves came from many places<br /><br />Unlike the Atlantic slave traders, Muslims enslaved people from many cultures as well as Africa. Other sources included the Balkans, Central Asia and Mediterranean Europe.<br />Slaves could be assimilated into Muslim society<br /><br />Muhammad's teaching that slaves were to be regarded as human beings with dignity and rights and not just as property, and that freeing slaves was a virtuous thing to do, may have helped to create a culture in which slaves became much more assimilated into the community than they were in the West.<br />Muslim slaves could achieve status<br /><br />Slaves in the Islamic world were not always at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Slaves in Muslim societies had a greater range of work, and took on a wider range of responsibilities, than those enslaved in the Atlantic trade.<br /><br />Some slaves earned respectable incomes and achieved considerable power, although even such elite slaves still remained in the power of their owners.<br />Muslim slavery was not just economic<br /><br />Unlike the Western slave trade, slavery in Islam was not wholly motivated by economics.<br /><br />Although some Muslim slaves were used as productive labour it was not generally on the same mass scale as in the West but in smaller agricultural enterprises, workshops, building, mining and transport.<br /><br />Slaves were also taken for military service, some serving in elite corps essential to the ruler's control of the state, while others joined the equivalent of the civil service.<br /><br />Another category of slavery was sexual slavery in which young women were made concubines, either on a small scale or in large harems of the powerful. Some of these women were able to achieve wealth and power.<br /><br />These harems might be guarded by eunuchs, men who had been enslaved and castrated.<br />Where did the slaves come from?<br /><br />Muslim traders took their slaves from three main areas:<br /><br /> * Non-Muslim Africa, in particular the Horn<br /> * Central and Eastern Europe<br /> * Central Asia<br /><br />The legality of slavery today<br /><br />While Islamic law does allow slavery under certain conditions, it's almost inconceivable that those conditions could ever occur in today's world, and so slavery is effectively illegal in modern Islam. Muslim countries also use secular law to prohibit slavery.<br /><br />News stories do continue to report occasional instances of slavery in a few Muslim countries, but these are usually denied by the authorities concerned.<br />http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/slavery_1.shtmlThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-68135485232813580172008-10-12T15:19:00.001-07:002008-10-12T15:19:29.570-07:00Bernard Lewis. Race and Slavery in the Middle EastOxford Univ Press 1994.<br />Chpt. 1 Slavery<br />In 1842 the British Consul General in Morocco, as part of his government's worldwide endeavor to bring about the abolition of slavery or at least the curtailment of the slave trade, made representations to the sultan of that country asking him what measures, if any, he had taken to accomplish this desirable objective. The sultan replied, in a letter expressing evident astonishment, that "the traffic in slaves is a matter on which all sects and nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam . . . up to this day." The sultan continued that he was "not aware of its being prohibited by the laws of any sect, and no one need ask this question, the same being manifest to both high and low and requires no more demonstration than the light of day.''<br /><br />The sultan was only slightly out of date concerning the enactment of laws to abolish or limit the slave trade, and he was sadly right in his general historic perspective. The institution of slavery had indeed been practiced from time immemorial. It existed in all the ancient civilizations of Asia, Africa, Europe, and pre-Columbian America. It had been accepted and even endorsed by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as other religions of the world.<br /><br />In the ancient Middle East, as elsewhere, slavery is attested from the very earliest written records, among the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, and other ancient peoples. The earliest slaves, it would seem, were captives taken in warfare. Their numbers were augmented from other sources of supply. In pre-classical antiquity, most slaves appear to have been the property of kings, priests, and temples, and only a relatively small proportion were in private possession. They were employed to till the fields and tend the flocks of their royal and priestly masters but otherwise seem to have played little role in economic production, which was mostly left to small farmers, tenants, and sharccroppers and to artisans and journeymen. The slave population was also recruited by the sale, abandonment, or kidnapping of small children. Free persons could sell themselves or, more frequently, their offspring into slavery. They could be enslaved for insolvency, as could be the persons offered by them as pledges. In some systems, notably that of Rome, free persons could also be enslaved for a variety of offenses against the law.<br /><br />Both the Old and New Testaments recognize and accept the institution of slavery. Both from time to time insist on the basic humanity of the slave, and the consequent need to treat him humanely. The Jews are frequently reminded, in both Bible and Talmud, that they too were slaves in Egypt and should therefore treat their slaves decently. Psalm 123, which compares the worshipper's appeal to God for mercy with the slave's appeal to his master, is cited to enjoin slaveowners to treat their slaves with compassion. A verse in the book of Job has even been interpreted as an argument against slavery as such: "Did not He that made me in the womb make him [the slave]? And did not One fashion us both?" (Job 31:15). This probably means no more, however, than that the slave is a fellow human being and not a mere chattel. The same is true of the much-quoted passage in the New Testament, that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." These and similar verses were not understood to mean that ethnic, social, and gender differences were unimportant or should be abolished, only that they conferred no religious privilege. From many allusions, it is clear that slavery is accepted in the New Testament as a fact of life. Some passages in the Pauline Epistles even endorse it. Thus in the Epistle to Philemon, a runaway slave is returned to his master; in Ephesians 6, the duty owed by a slave to his master is compared with the duty owed by a child to his parent, and the slave is enjoined "to be obedient to them that are your masters, according to the flesh, in fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ." Parents and masters are likewise enjoined to show consideration for their children and slaves. All humans, of the true faith, were equal in the eyes of God and in the afterlife but not necessarily in the laws of man and in this world. Those not of the true faith -- whichever it was -- were in another, and in most respects an inferior, category. In this respect, the Greek perception of the barbarian and the Judeo-Christian-lslamic perception of the unbeliever coincide.<br /><br />There appear indeed to have been some who opposed slavery, usually as it was practiced but sometimes even as such. In the Greco-Roman world, both the Cynics and the Stoics are said to have rejected slavery as contrary to justice, some basing their opposition on the unity of the human race, and the Roman jurists even held that slavery was contrary to nature and maintained only by "human" law. There is no evidence that either jurists or philosophers sought its abolition, and even their theoretical opposition has been questioned. Much of it was concerned with moral and spiritual themes -- the true freedom of the good man, even when enslaved, and the enslavement of the evil freeman to his passions. These ideas, which recur in Jewish and Christian writings, were of little help to those who suffered the reality of slavery. Philo, the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, claims that a Jewish sect actually renounced slavery in practice. In a somewhat idealized account of the Essenes, he observes that they practiced a form of primitive communism, sharing homes and property and pooling their earnings. Furthermore,<br /><br />"not a single slave is to be found among them, but all are free, exchanging services with each other, and they denounce the owners of slaves, not merely for their injustice in outraging the law of equality, but also for their impiety in annulling the statute of Nature, who mother-like bore and reared all men alike, and created them genuine brothers, not in mere name, but in very reality, though this kinship has been put to confusion by the triumph of malignant covetousness, which has wrought estrangement instead of affinity and enmity instead of friendship. "<br /><br />This view, if it was indeed held and put into practice, was unique in the ancient Middle East. Jews, Christians, and pagans alike owned slaves and exercised the rights and powers accorded to them by their various religious laws. In all communities, there were men of compassion who urged slaveowners to treat their slaves humanely, and there was even some attempt to secure this by law. But the institution of slavery as such was not seriously questioned, and was indeed often defended in terms of either Natural Law or Divine Dispensation. Thus Aristotle defends the condition of slavery and even the forcible enslavement of those who are "by nature slaves, for whom to be governed by this kind of authority is beneficial"; other Greek philosophers express similar ideas, particularly about enslaved captives from conquered peoples. For such, slavery is not only right; it is also to their advantage.<br /><br />The ancient Israelites did not claim that slavery was beneficial to the slaves, but, like the ancient Greeks, they felt the need to explain and justify the enslavement of their neighbors. In this, as in other matters, they sought a religious rather than a philosophical sanction and found it in the biblical story of the curse of Ham. Significantly, this curse was restricted to one line only of the descendants of Ham, namely, the children of Canaan, whom the Israelites had subjugated when they conquered the Promised Land, and did not affect the others.<br /><br />The Qur'an, like the Old and the New Testaments, assumes the existence of slavery. It regulates the practice of the institution and thus implicitly accepts it. The Prophet Muhammad and those of his Companions who could afford it themselves owned slaves; some of them acquired more by conquest. But Qur'anic legislation, subsequently confirmed and elaborated in the Holy Law, brought two major changes to ancient slavery which were to have far-reaching effects. One of these was the presumption of freedom; the other, the ban on the enslavement of free persons except in strictly defined circumstances .<br /><br />The Qur'an was promulgated in Mecca and Medina in the seventh century, and the background against which Qur'anic legislation must be seen is ancient Arabia. The Arabs practiced a form of slavery, similar to that which existed in other parts of the ancient world. The Qur'an accepts the institution, though it may be noted that the word 'abd (slave) is rarely used, being more commonly replaced by some periphrasis such as ma malakat aymanukum, "that which your right hands own." The Qur'an recognizes the basic inequality between master and slave and the rights of the former over the latter (XVI:71; XXX:28). It also recognizes concubinage (IV:3; XXIII:6; XXXIII:50-52; LXX:30). It urges, without actually commanding, kindness to the slave (IV:36; IX:60; XXIV:58) and recommends, without requiring, his liberation by purchase or manumission. The freeing of slaves is recommended both for the expiation of sins (IV:92; V:92; LVIII:3) and as an act of simple benevolence (II:177; XXIV:33; XC:13). It exhorts masters to allow slaves to earn or purchase their own freedom. An important change from pagan, though not from Jewish or Christian, practices is that in the strictly religious sense, the believing slave is now the brother of the freeman in Islam and before God, and the superior of the free pagan or idolator (II:221). This point is emphasized and elaborated in innumerable hadlths (traditions), in which the Prophet is quoted as urging considerate and sometimes even equal treatment for slaves, denouncing cruelty, harshness, or even discourtesy, recommending the liberation of slaves, and reminding the Muslims that his apostolate was to free and slave alike.<br /><br />Though slavery was maintained, the Islamic dispensation enormously improved the position of the Arabian slave, who was now no longer merely a chattel but was also a human being with a certain religious and hence a social status and with certain quasi-legal rights. The early caliphs who ruled the Islamic community after the death of the Prophet also introduced some further reforms of a humanitarian tendency. The enslavement of free Muslims was soon discouraged and eventually prohibited. It was made unlawful for a freeman to sell himself or his children into slavery, and it was no longer permitted for freemen to be enslaved for either debt or crime, as was usual in the Roman world and, despite attempts at reform, in parts of Christian Europe until at least the sixteenth century. It became a fundamental principle of Islamic jurisprudence that the natural condition, and therefore the presumed status, of mankind was freedom, just as the basic rule concerning actions is permittedness: what is not expressly forbidden is permitted; whoever is not known to be a slave is free. This rule was not always strictly observed. Rebels and heretics were sometimes denounced as infidels or, worse, apostates, and reduced to slavery, as were the victims of some Muslim rulers in Africa, who proclaimed jihad against their neighbors, without looking closely at their religious beliefs, so as to provide legal cover for their enslavement. But by and large, and certainly in the central lands of Islam, under regimes of high civilization, the rule was honored, and free subjects of the state, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, were protected from unlawful enslavement.<br /><br />Since all human beings were naturally free, slavery could only arise from two circumstances: (1) being born to slave parents or (2) being captured in war. The latter was soon restricted to infidels captured in a jihad.<br /><br />These reforms seriously limited the supply of new slaves. Abandoned and unclaimed children could no longer be adopted as slaves, as was a common practice in antiquity, and free persons could no longer be enslaved. Under Islamic law, the slave population could only be recruited, in addition to birth and capture, by importation, the last either by purchase or in the form of tribute from beyond the Islamic frontiers. In the early days of rapid conquest and expansion, the holy war brought a plentiful supply of new slaves, but as the frontiers were gradually stabilized, this supply dwindled to a mere trickle. Most wars were now conducted against organized armies, like those of the Byzantines or other Christian states, and with them prisoners of war were commonly ransomed or exchanged. Within the Islamic frontiers, Islam spread rapidly among the populations of the newly acquired territories, and even those who remained faithful to their old religions and lived as protected persons (dhimmis) under Muslim rule could not, if free, be legally enslaved unless they had violated the terms of the dhimma, the contract governing their status, as for example by rebelling against Muslim rule or helping the enemies of the Muslim state or, according to some authorities, by withholding pa'yment of the Kharaj or the Jizya, the taxes due from dhimmls to the Muslim state.<br /><br />In the Islamic empire, the humanitarian tendency of the Qur'an and the early caliphs was to some extent counteracted by other influences. Notable among these was the practice of the various conquered peoples and countries which the Muslims encountered after their expansion, especially in provinces previously under Roman law. This law, even in its Christianized form, was still very harsh in its treatment of slaves. Perhaps equally important was the huge increase in the slave population resulting first from the conquests themselves, and then from the organization of a great network of importation. These led to a fall in the cash value and hence the human value of slaves, and to a general adoption of a harsher tone and severer rules. But even after this stiffening of attitudes and laws, Islamic practice still represented a vast improvement on that inherited from antiquity, from Rome, and from Byzantium.<br /><br />Slaves were excluded from religious functions or from any office involving jurisdiction over others. Their testimony was not admitted at judicial proceedings. In penal law, the penalty for an offense against a person, a fine or bloodwit, was, for a slave, half of that for a freeman. While maltreatment was deplored, there was no fixed shari'a penalty. In what might be called civil matters, the slave was a chattel with no legal powers or rights whatsoever. He could not enter into a contract, hold property, or inherit. If he incurred a fine, his owner was responsible. He was, however, distinctly better off, in the matter of rights, than a Greek or Roman slave, since Islamic jurists, and not only philosophers and moralists, took account of humanitarian considerations. They laid down, for example, that a master must give his slave medical attention when required, must give him adequate upkeep, and must support him in his old age. If a master defaulted on these and other obligations to his slave, the qadi could compel him to fulfill them or else either to sell or to emancipate the slave. The master was forbidden to overwork his slave, and if he did so to the point of cruelty, he was liable to a penalty which was, however, discretionary and not prescribed by law. A slave could enter into a contract to earn his freedom, in which case his master had no obliation to pay for his upkeep. While in theory the slave could not own property, he could be granted certain rights of ownership for which he paid a fixed sum to his master.<br /><br />A slave could marry, but only by consent of the master. Theoretically, a male slave could marry a free woman, but this was discouraged and in practice prohibited. A master could not marry his own slave woman unless he first freed her. Islamic law provides a number of ways in which a slave could be set free. One was manumission, accomplished by a formal declaration on the part of the master and recorded in a certificate which was given to the liberated slave. The manumission of a slave included the offspring of that slave, and the jurists specify that if there is any uncertainty about an act of manumission, the slave has the benefit of the doubt. Another method is a written agreement by which the master grants liberty in return for a fixed sum. Once such an agreement has been concluded, the master no longer has the right to dispose of his slave, whether by sale or gift. The slave is still subject to certain legal disabilities, but in most respects is virtually free. Such an agreement, once entered into, may be terminated by the slave but not by the master. Children born to the slave after the entry into force of the contract are born free. The master may bind himself to liberate a slave at some specified future time. He may also bind his heirs to liberate a slave after his death. The law schools differ somewhat on the rules regarding this kind of liberation.<br /><br />In addition to all these, which depend on the will of the master, there are various legal causes which may lead to liberation, independently of the will of the master. The commonest is a legal judgment by a qadi ordering a master to emancipate a slave whom he has maltreated. A special case is that of the umm walad, a slave woman who bears a son to her master, and thereby acquires certain irrevocable legal rights.<br /><br />Non-Muslim subjects of the Muslim state, that is, dhimmis, were in practice allowed to own slaves; and Christian and Jewish families who could afford it owned and employed slaves in the same way as their Muslim counterparts. They were not permitted to own Muslim slaves; and if a slave owned by a dhimmi embraced Islam, his owner was legally obliged to free or sell him. Jews and Christians were of course not permitted to have Muslim concubines, and were indeed usually debarred by their own religious authorities -- not always effectively -- from sexual access to their slaves. Jewish slaves, acquired through privateering in the Mediterranean and slave raiding in Eastern Europe, were often redeemed and set free by their local co-religionists. The vastly more numerous Christian slaves -- apart from West Europeans, whose ransoms could be arranged from home -- were for the most part doomed to remain. Sometimes, Christian and Jewish slaveowners tried to convert their domestic slaves to their own religions. Jews were indeed required by rabbinic law to try to persuade their slaves to accept conversion with circumcision and ritual immersion. A form of semi-conversion, whereby the slave accepted some basic commandments and observances, but not the full rigor of the Mosaic law, was widely practiced. According to Jewish law, a converted or even semi-converted slave could not be sold to a Gentile. If the owner in fact so sold him or her, the slave was to be set free. Conversely, a slave who refused even semi-conversion was, after a stipulated interval of time, to be sold to a Gentile. Muslim authorities, both jurists and rulers, took different views of this. Conversion from Islam was of course a capital offense, and some jurists held that only conversion to Islam was lawful. Others, however, saw no objection to conversion between non-Muslim religions, provided that the converted slaves had reached the age of reason and changed their religion of their own free will.<br /><br />Though a free Muslim could not be enslaved, conversion to Islam by a non-Muslim slave did not require his liberation. His slave status was not affected by his Islam, nor was that of a Muslim child born to slave parents.<br /><br />There were occasional slave rebellions and, from the rules and regulations about runaway slaves, it would appear that such escapes were not infrequent. Slaves from neighboring countries might have some chance of returning to their homes, and examples are known of European slaves in the Ottoman lands escaping to Europe, where some indeed wrote memoirs or accounts of their captivity. The chances of a slave from the steppe-lands or from Africa finding his way back were remote.<br /><br />As we have seen, the slave population was recruited in four main ways: by capture, tribute, offspring, and purchase.<br /><br />Capture: In the early centuries of Islam, during the period of the conquest and expansion, this was the most important source. With the stabilization of the frontier, the numbers recruited in this way diminished, and eventually provided only a very small proportion of slave requirements. Frontier warfare and naval raiding yielded some captives, but these were relatively few and were usually exchanged. In later centuries, warfare in Africa or India supplied some slaves by capture. With the spread of Islam, and the acceptance of dhimml status by increasing numbers of non-Muslims, the possibilities for recruitment by capture were severely restricted.<br /><br />Tribute: Slaves sometimes formed part of the tribute required from vassal states beyond the Islamic frontiers. The first such treaty ever made, that of the year 31 of the Hijra (= 652 A.D.), with the black king of Nubia, included an annual levy of slaves to be provided from Nubia. This may indeed have been the reason why Nuhia was for a long time not conquered. The stipulated delivery of some hundreds of male and female slaves, later supplemented by elephants, giraffes, and other wild beasts, continued at least until the twelfth century, when it was disrupted by a series of bitter wars between the Muslim rulers of Egypt and the Christian kings of Nubia. Similar agreements, providing for the delivery of a tribute of slaves, were imposed by the early Arab conquerors on neighboring princes in Iran and Central Asia, but were of briefer duration.<br /><br />Offspring: The recruitment of the slave population by natural increase seems to have been small and, right through to modern times, insufficient to maintain numbers. This is in striking contrast with conditions in the New World, where the slave population increased very rapidly. Several factors contributed to this difference, perhaps the most important being that the slave population in the Islamic Middle East was constantly drained by the liberation of slaves -- sometimes as an act of piety, most commonly through the recognition and liberation, by a freeman, of his own offspring by a slave mother. There were also other reasons for the low natural increase of the slave population in the Islamic world. They include<br /><br /> * 1. Castration. A fair proportion of male slaves were imported as eunuchs and thus precluded from having offspring. Among these were many who otherwise, by the wealth and power which they acquired, might have founded families .<br /> * 2. Another group of slaves who rose to positions of great power, the military slaves, were normally liberated at some stage in their career, and their offspring were therefore free and not slaves.<br /> * 3. In general, only the lower orders of slaves -- menial, domestic, and manual workers -- remained in the condition of servitude and transmitted that condition to their descendants. There were not many such descendants -- casual mating was not permitted and marriage was not encouraged.<br /> * 4. There was a high death toll among all classes of slaves, including great military commanders as well as humble menials. Slaves came mainly from remote places, and, lacking immunities, died in large numbers from endemic as well as epidemic diseases. As late as the nineteenth century, Wes ern travelers in North Africa and Egypt noted the high death rate among imported black slaves.<br /><br />Purchase: This came to be by far the most important means for the legal acquisition of new slaves. Slaves were purchased on the frontiers of the Islamic world and then imported to the major centers, where there were slave markets from which they were widely distributed. In one of the sad paradoxes of human history, it was the humanitarian reforms brought by Islam that resulted in a vast development of the slave trade inside, and still more outside, the Islamic empire. In the Roman world, the slave population was occasionally recruited from outside, when a new territory was conquered or a barbarian invasion repelled, but mostly, slaves came from internal sources. This was not possible in the Islamic empire, where, although slavery was maintained, enslavement was banned. The result was an increasingly massive importation of slaves from the outside. Like enslavement, mutilation was forbidden by Islamic law. The great numbers of eunuchs needed to preserve the sanctity of palaces, homes, and some holy places had to be imported from outside or, as often happened, "manufactured" at the frontier. In medieval and Ottoman times the two main sources of eunuchs were Slavs and Ethiopians (Habash, a term which commonly included all the peoples of the Horn of Africa). Eunuchs were also recruited among Greeks (Rum), West Africans (Takrurl, pl. Takarina), Indians, and occasionally West Europeans.<br /><br />The slave population of the Islamic world was recruited from many lands. In the earliest days, slaves came principally from the newly conquered countries -- from the Fertile Crescent and Egypt, from Iran and North Africa, from Central Asia, India, and Spain. Most of these slaves had a cultural level at least as high as that of their Arab masters, and by conversion and manumission they were rapidly absorbed into the general population. As the supply of slaves by conquest and capture diminished, the needs of the slave market were met, more and more, by importation from beyond the frontier. Small numbers of slaves were brought from India, China, Southeast Asia, and the Byzantine Empire, most of them specialists and technicians of one kind or another. The vast majority of unskilled slaves, however, came from the lands immediately north and south of the Islamic world -- whites from Europe and the Eurasian steppes, blacks from Africa south of the Sahara. Among white Europeans and black Africans alike, there was no lack of enterprising merchants and middlemen, eager to share in this profitable trade, who were willing to capture or kidnap their neighbors and deliver them, as slaves, to a ready and expanding market. In Europe there was also an important trade in slaves, Muslim, Jewish, pagan, and even Orthodox Christian, recruited by capture and bought for mainly domestic use.<br /><br />Central and East European slaves, generally known as Saqaliba (i.e., Slavs), were imported by three main routes: overland via France and Spain, from Eastern Europe via the Crimea, and by sea across the Mediterranean. They were mostly but not exclusively Slavs. Some were captured by Muslim naval raids on European coasts, particularly the Dalmatian. Most were supplied by European, especially Venetian, slave merchants, who delivered cargoes of them to the Muslim markets in Spain and North Africa. The Saqaliba were prominent in Muslim Spain and to a lesser extent in North Africa but played a minor role in the East. With the consolidation of powerful states in Christian Europe, the supply of West European slaves dried up and was maintained only by privateering and coastal raiding from North Africa.<br /><br />Black slaves were brought into the Islamic world by a number of routes -- from West Africa across the Sahara to Morocco and Tunisia, from Chad across the desert to Libya, from East Africa down the Nile to Egypt, and across the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Turkish slaves from the steppe-lands were marketed in Samarkand and other Muslim Central Asian cities and from there exported to Iran, the Fertile Crescent, and beyond. Caucasians, of increasing importance in the later centuries, were brought from the land bridge between the Black Sea and the Caspian and were marketed mainly in Aleppo and Mosul.<br /><br />By Ottoman times, the first for which we have extensive documentation, the pattern of importation had changed. At first, the expanding Ottoman Empire, like the expanding Arab Empire of earlier times, recruited its slaves by conquest and capture, and great numbers of Balkan Christians were forcibly brought into Ottoman service. The distinctively Ottoman institution of the devsirme, the levy of boys from the Christian village population, made it possible, contrary to previous Islamic law and practice, to recruit slaves from the subject peoples of the conquered provinces. The devsirme slaves were not servants or menials, however, but were groomed for the service of the state in military and civil capacities. For a long time, most of the grand viziers and military commanders of the Ottoman forces were recruited in this way. In the early seventeenth century, the devsirme was abandoned; by the end of the seventeenth century, the Ottoman advance into Europe had been decisively halted and reversed. Sea raiders operating out of North African ports continued to bring European captives, but these did not significantly add to the slave populations. Pretty girls disappeared into the harem; men often had the choice of being ransomed or joining their captors -- a choice of which many availed themselves. The less fortunate, like the Muslim captives who fell to the European maritime powers, served in the galleys.<br /><br />The slave needs of the Ottoman Empire were now met from new sources. One of these was the Caucasians -- the Georgians, Circassians, and related peoples, famous for providing beautiful women and brave and handsome men. The former figured prominently in the harems, the latter in the armies and administrations of the Ottoman and also the Persian states. The supply of these was reduced but not terminated by the Russian conquest of the Caucasus in the early years of the nineteenth century. Another source of supply was the Tatar khanate of the Crimea, whose raiders every year rode far and wide in Central and Eastern Europe, carrying off great numbers of male and female slaves. These were brought to the Crimea and shipped thence to the slave markets in Istanbul and other Turkish cities. This trade came to an end with the Russian annexation of the Crimea in 1783 and the extinction of Tatar independence.<br /><br />Deprived of most of their sources of white slaves, the Ottomans turned more and more to Africa, which in the course of the nineteenth century came to provide the overwhelming majority of slaves used in Muslim countries from Morocco to Asia. According to a German report published in 1860,<br /><br />"the black slaves, at that time, were recruited mainly by raiding and kidnapping from Sennaar, Kordofan, Darfur, Nubia, and other places in inner Africa; the white mostly through voluntary sale on the part of their relatives in the independent lands of the Caucasus (Lesghi, Daghestani, and Georgian women, rarely men). Those offered for sale were already previously of servile status or were slave children by birth."<br /><br />The need, from early medieval times onward, to import large and growing numbers of slaves led to a rapid increase, in all the lands beyond the frontiers of the Islamic world, of both slave raiding and slave trading -- the one to procure and maintain an adequate supply of the required commodity, the other to ensure its efficient distribution and delivery. In the ancient world, where most slaves other than war captives were of local provenance, slave trading was a simple and mostly local affair, often combined with other articles of commerce. In the Islamic world, where slaves were transported over great distances from their places of origin, the slave trade was more complex and more specialized with a network of trade routes and markets extending all over the Islamic world and far beyond its frontiers and involving commercial relations with suppliers in Christian Europe, in the Turkish steppe-lands, and in black Africa. In every important city there was a slave market, usually called Suq al-Raqiq. When new supplies were brought, government inspectors usually took the first choice, then officials, then private persons. It would seem that slaves were not normally sold in open markets but in decently covered places -- a practice which continued in some areas to the nineteenth, in others till the twentieth, century.<br /><br />There is a fair amount of information on slave prices, most of it too heterogeneous in date and provenance to provide more than a general impression. The best-documented data come from medieval Egypt and show a remarkable consistency in price levels. Slave girls averaged twenty dinars (gold pieces), corresponding, at the rate of gold to silver current at that time, to 266 dirhams (silver pieces). Other medieval data show somewhat higher prices. Black slaves seem to have cost from two to three hundred dirhams; black eunuchs, at least two or three times as much. Female black slaves were sold at five hundred dirhams or so; trained singing girls or other performers, at ten or even twenty thousand. White slaves, mainly for military purposes, were more expensive. Prices of three hundred dirhams are quoted for Turks near the source in Central Asia, and much higher prices elsewhere. In Baghdad they fetched four to five hundred dirhams, while a white slave girl could be sold for a thousand dinars or more. The mid-nineteenth-century German report from Turkey quotes prices of four thousand to five thousand piasters, or two hundred to three hundred dollars, as the current price in Istanbul for a "trained, strong, black slave," while "for white slave girls of special beauty, fifty thousand piasters and more are paid." In general, eunuchs fetched higher prices than other males, younger slaves were worth more than older slaves, and slave women, whether for work or pleasure, were more expensive than males. Olufr Eigilsson, an Icelandic Lutheran pastor who was carried off to captivity with his family and many of his flock when his native village was raided by Barbary Corsairs in 1627 and who wrote an account of his adventures, notes that his young maidservant was sold for seven hundred dollars and later resold for a thousand.<br /><br />Slaves were employed in a number of functions -- in the home and the shop, in agriculture and industry, in the military, as well as in specialized tasks. The Islamic world did not operate on a slave system of production, as is said of classical antiquity, but slavery was not entirely domestic either. Slave laborers of various kinds were of some importance in medieval times, especially where large-scale enterprises were involved, and they continued to be into the nineteenth century. The most important slaves, however, those of whom we have the fullest information, were domestic and commercial, and it is they who were the characteristic slaves of the Muslim world. They seem to have been mainly blacks, with some Indians, and some whites. ln later times, for which we have more detailed evidence, it would seem that while the slaves often suffered appalling privations from the moment of their capture until their arrival at their final destination, once they were placed with a family they were reasonably well treated and accepted in some degree as members of the household. In commerce, slaves were often apprenticed to their masters, sometimes as assistants, sometimes advancing to become agents or even business partners.<br /><br />The slave and also the liberated ex-slave played an important part in domestic life. Eunuchs were required for the protection and maintenance of harems, as confidential servants, as palace staff, and also as custodians of mosques, tombs, and other sacred places. Slave women were required mainly as concubines and as menials. A Muslim slaveowner was entitled by law to the sexual enjoyment of his slave women. While free women might own male slaves, they had of course no equivalent right.<br /><br />The economic exploitation of slaves, apart from some construction work, took place mainly in the countryside, away from the cities, and like almost everything else about rural life is sparsely documented. The medieval Islamic world was a civilization of cities. Both its law and its literature deal almost entirely with townspeople, their lives and problems, and remarkably little information has come down to us concerning life in the villages and the countryside. Sometimes a dramatic event like the revolt of the Zanj in southern Iraq or an occasional passing reference in travel literature sheds a sudden light on life in the countryside. Otherwise, we remain ignorant of what was happening outside the cities until the sixteenth century, when for the first time the surviving Ottoman archives make it possible to follow in some detail the life and activities of rural populations -- and the exploration of this material has still barely begun. The common view of Islamic slavery as primarily domestic and military may therefore reflect the bias of our documentation rather than the reality. There are occasional references, however, to large gangs of slaves, mostly black, employed in agriculture, in the mines, and in such special tasks as the drainage of marshes. Some, less fortunate, were hired out by their owners for piecework. These working slaves had a much harder life. The most unfortunate of all were those engaged in agricultural and other manual work and large-scale enterprises, such as for example the Zanj slaves used to drain the salt flats of southern Iraq, and the blacks employed in the salt mines of the Sahara and the gold mines of Nubia. These were herded in large settlements and worked in gangs. Large landowners, or crown lands, often employed thousands of such slaves. While domestic and commercial slaves were relatively well-off, these lived and died in wretchedness. Of the Saharan salt mines it is said that no slave lived there for more than five years. The cultivation of cotton and sugar, which the Arabs brought from the East across North Africa and into Spain, most probably entailed some kind of plantation system. Certainly, the earliest relevant Ottoman records show the extensive use of slave labor in the state-maintained rice plantations. Some such system, for cultivation of cotton and sugar, was taken across North Africa into Spain and perhaps beyond. While economic slave labor was mainly male, slave women were sometimes also exploited economically. The pre-lslamic practice of hiring out female slaves as prostitutes is expressly forbidden by Islamic law but appears to have survived nonetheless.<br /><br />The military slaves were in a sense the aristocrats of the slave population. By far the most important among these were the Turks imported from the Eurasian steppe, from Central Asia, and from what is now Chinese Turkistan. A similar position was occupied by Slavs in medieval Muslim Spain and North Africa and, later, by slaves of Balkan and Caucasian origin in the Ottoman Empire. Black slaves were occasionally employed as soldiers, but this was not common and was usually of brief duration.<br /><br />Certainly the most privileged of slaves were the performers. Both slave boys and slave girls who revealed some talent received musical, literary, and artistic education. In medieval times most singers, dancers, and musical performers were, at least in origin, slaves. Perhaps the most famous was Ziryab, a Persian slave at the court of Baghdad who later went to Spain, where he became an arbiter of taste and is credited with having introduced asparagus to Europe. Not a few slaves and freedmen have left their names in Arabic poetry and history.<br /><br />In a society where positions of military command and political power were routinely held by men of slave origin or even status and where a significant proportion of the free population were born to slave mothcrs, prejudice against the slave as such, of the Roman or American type, could hardly develop. Where such prejudice and hostility appear -- and they are often expressed in literature and other evidence -- they must be attributed to racial more than to social distinction. The developing pattern of racial specialization in the use of slaves must surely have contributed greatly to the growth of such re judice .<br /><br />Chpt. 9 Slaves in Arms<br />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.<br /><br />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. During the great expansion of the Arab armies and the accompanying spread of the Islamic faith in the seventh and early eighth centuries, mally of the peoples of the conquered countries were captured, enslaved, convcrted, 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, non-Arabs 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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />This was a new institution in Islam. The patriarchal caliphs, and their successors for more than a hundred years, had no slave praetorian guards, but were protected in their palace by a small force of free Arabs and, under the early Abbasids, freed soldiers and their descendants from Khurasan. Within a remarkably short time, the slave palace guard became the norm for Muslim rulers, and rapidly developed into a slave army, serving both to maintain the ruler in his palace and his capital and, for a sultan, to uphold his imperial authority in the provinces. In the East, slave soldiers were recruited mainly among the Turkish and to a lesser extent among the Iranian peoples of the Eurasian steppe and of Central and inner Asia; in the West, from the Berbers of North Africa and from the Slavs of Europe. Some soldiers, particularly in Egypt and North Africa, were brought from among the black peoples farther south. As the frontiers of Islam steadily expanded through conversion and annexation, the periphery was pushed farther and farther away, and the enslaved barbarians came from ever-remoter regions in Asia, Africa, and, to a very limited extent, Europe.<br /><br />Some of these soldiers were captured in wars, raids, and forays. The more usual practice, however, was for them to be purchased, for money, on the Islamic frontiers. It was in this way that Muslims bought and imported the Central Asian Turks who came to constitute the vast majority of eastern Muslim armies. Captured and sold to the Muslims at a very tender age, they were given a careful and elaborate education and training, not only in the military arts but also in the norms of Islamic civilization. From their ranks were drawn the soldiers, then the officers, and finally the commanders of the armies of Islam. From this it was only a step to the ultimate paradox, the slave kings who ruled in Cairo, in Delhi, and in other capitals. Even the Ottomans, though themselves a freeborn imperial dynasty, relied for their infantry on the celebrated slave corps of Janissaries, and most of the sultans were themselves sons of slave mothers.<br /><br />Various explanations have been offered for the reliance of Muslim sovereigns on slave armies. An obvious merit of the military slave, for the kings or generals who owned him, was his habit of prompt and unquestioning obedience to orders -- a quality less likely to be found among freeborn volunteers or even among conscripts, in the relatively few times and places when conscription was known or feasible before the nineteenth century. Perhaps the most convincing explanation of the growth of the slave armies is the eternal need of autocratic rulers for an armed force which would support and maintain their rule yet neither limit it with intermediate powers nor threaten it with the challenge of opposing loyalties. An army constantly renewed by slaves imported from abroad would form no hereditary nobility; an army manned and commanded by aliens could neither claim nor create any loyalties or bases of support among the local population.<br /><br />Such soldiers, it was assumed, would have no loyalty but to their masters, that is, to the monarchs who bought and employed them. But their loyalty, all too often, was to the regiment and to its commanders, many of whom ultimately themselves became kings. The mamluk sultans and emirs who ruled Egypt, Syria, and western Arabia for two-and-a-half centuries, until the Ottoman conquest in 1517, rigorously excluded their own freeborn and locally born offspring from the apparatus of political and military power, including even the sultanate itself. They nevertheless succeeded in maintaining their system for centuries. In part, the common bond of mamluk regiments was ethnic. Many regiments, and the quarters which they inhabited, were based on ethnic and even tribal groups. But in the main, the bond was social rather than racial. At a certain stage in his career, the mamluk was emancipated, and, on becoming a freeman, himself bought and owned mamluks who, rather than his physical sons, were his true successors. The most powerful bond and loyalty, within the mamluk system, was that owed by the slave to his master, and, after manumission, by the freedman to his patron.<br /><br />In the military sense, the slave armies were remarkably effective. In the later Middle Ages, it was the mamluks of Egypt who finally defeated and expelled the Crusaders and halted the Mongol advance across the Middle East, the Ottoman Janissary infantry who conquered Southeastern Europe. It was in accordance with the logic of the system that the mamluk armies of Egypt consisted mainly of slaves imported from the Turkish and Circassian peoples of the Black Sea area, while the Ottoman Janissaries were recruited mainly from the Slavic and Albanian populations of the Balkans.<br /><br />Ibn Khaldun, surely the greatest of all Arab historians, writing in the fourteenth century, saw in the coming of the Turks and in the institution of slavery by which they came, the manifestation of God's providential concern for the safety and survival of the Muslim state and people:<br /><br />"When the [Abbasid] state was drowned in decadence and luxury. . . and overthrown by the heathen Tatars . . . because the people of the faith had become deficient in energy and reluctant to rally in defense . . . then it was God's benevolence that He rescued the faith by reviving its dying breath and restoring the unity of the Muslims in the Egyptian realms.... He did this by sending to the Muslims, from among this Turkish nation and its great and numerous tribes, rulers to defend them and utterly loyal helpers, who were brought . . . to the House of Islam under the rule of slavery, which hides in itself a divine blessing. By means of slavery they learn glory and blessing and are exposed to divine providence; cured by slavery, they enter the Muslim religion with the firm resolve of true believers and yet with nomadic virtues unsullied by debased nature, unadulterated by the filth of pleasure, undefiled by ways of civilied living, and with their ardor unbroken by the profusion of luxury.... Thus one intake comes after another and generation follows generation, and Islam rejoices in the benefit which it gains through them, and the branches of the kingdom flourish with the freshness of youth."<br /><br />Most of the military slaves of Islam were white -- Turks and Caucasians in the East, Slavs and other Europeans in the West. Black military slaves were, however, not unknown and indeed at certain periods were of importance. Individual black fighting men, both slaves and free, are mentioned as having participated in raiding and warfare in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times. According to the biographies and histories of the Prophet, there were several blacks, both in his army and in the armies of his pagan enemies. One of them, called Wahshi, an Ethiopian slave, distinguished himself in the battles against the Prophet at Uhud and at the Ditch; and later, after the Muslim capture of Mecca, he fought for the Muslims in the wars that followed the death of the Prophet. Black soldiers appear occasionally in early Abbasid times, and after the slave rebellion in southern Iraq, in which blacks displayed terrifying military prowess, they were recruited into the infantry corps of the caliphs in Baghdad. Ahmad b. Tulun (d. 884), the first independent ruler of Muslim Egypt, relied very heavily on black slaves, probably Nubians, for his armed forces; at his death he is said to have left, among other possessions, twenty-four thousand white mamluks and forty-five thousand blacks. These were organized in separate corps, and accommodated in separate quarters at the military cantonments. When Khumarawayh, the son and successor of Ahmad ibn Tulun. rode in procession, he was followed, according to a chronicler,<br /><br />"by a thousand black guards wearing black cloaks and black turbans, so that a watcher could fancy them to be a black sea spreading over the face of the earth, because of the blackness of their color and of their garments. With the glitter of their shields, of the chasing on their swords, and of the helmets under their turbans, they made a really splendid sight. "<br /><br />The black troops were the most faithful supporters of the dynasty, and shared its fate. When the Tulunids were overthrown at the beginning of 905, the restoration of caliphal authority was followed by a massacre of the black infantry and the burning of their quarters:<br /><br />"Then the cavalry turned against the cantonments of the Tulunid blacks, seized as many of them as they could, and took them to Muhammad ibn Sulayman [the new governor sent by the caliph]. He was on horseback, amid his escort. He gave orders to slaughter them, and they were slaughtered in his presence like sheep."<br /><br />A similar fate befell the black infantry in Baghdad in 930, when they were attacked and massacred by the white cavalry, with the help of other troops and of the populace, and their quarters burned. Thereafter, black soldiers virtually disappear from the armies of the eastern caliphate.<br /><br />In Egypt, the manpower resources of Nubia were too good to neglect, and the traffic down the Nile continued to provide slaves for military as well as other purposes. Black soldiers served the various rulers of medieval Egypt, and under the Fatimid caliphs of Cairo black regiments, known as 'Abid al-Shira', "the slaves by purchase," formed an important part of the military establishment. They were particularly prominent in the mid-eleventh century, during the reign of al-Mustansir, when for a while the real ruler of Egypt was the caliph's mother, a Sudanese slave woman of remarkable strength of character. There were frequent clashes between black regiments and those of other races and occasional friction with the civil population. One such inci- dent occurred in 1021, when the Caliph al-Hakim sent his black troops against the people of Fustat (old Cairo), and the white troops joined forces to defend them. A contemporary chronicler of these events describes an orgy of burning, plunder, and rape. In 1062 and again in 1067 the black troops were defeated by their white colleagues in pitched battles and driven out of Cairo to Upper Egypt. Later they returned, and played a role of some importance under the last Fatimid caliphs.<br /><br />With the fall of the Fatimids, the black troops again paid the price of their loyalty. Among the most faithful supporters of the Fatimid Caliphate, they were also among the last to resist its overthrow by Saladin, ostensibly the caliph's vizier but in fact the new master of Egypt. By the time of the last Fatimid caliph, al-'Adid, the blacks had achieved a position of power. The black eunuchs wielded great influence in the palace; the black troops formed a major element in the Fatimid army. It was natural that they should resist the vizier's encroachments. In 1169 Saladin learned of a plot by the caliph's chief black eunuch to remove him, allegedly in collusion with the Crusaders in Palestine. Saladin acted swiftly; the offender was seized and decapitated and replaced in his office by a white eunuch. The other black eunuchs of the caliph's palace were also dismissed. The black troops in Cairo were infuriated by this summary execution of one whom they regarded as their spokesman and defender. Moved, according to a chronicler, by "racial solidarity" (jinsiyya), they prepared for battle. In two hot August days, an estimated fifty thousand blacks fought against Saladin's army in the area between the two palaces, of the caliph and the vizier.<br /><br />Two reasons are given for their defeat. One was their betrayal by the Fatimid Caliph al-'Adid, whose cause they believed they were defendrng against the usurping vizier:<br /><br />"Al-'Adid had gone up to his belvedere tower, to watch the battle between the palaces. It is said that he ordered the men in the palace to shoot arrows and throw stones at [Saladin's] troops, and they did so. Others say that this was not done by his choice. Shams al-Dawla [Saladin's brother] sent naphtha-throwers to burn down al-'Adid's belvedere. One of them was about to do this when the door of the belvedere tower opened and out came a caliphal aide, who said: "The Commander of the Faithful greets Shams al-Dawla, and says: 'Beware of the [black] slave dogs! Drive them out of the country!'" The blacks were sustained by the belief that al-'Adid was pleased with what they did. When they heard this, their strength was sapped, their courage waned, and they fled."<br /><br />The other reason, it is said, was an attack on their homes. During the battle between the palaces, Saladin sent a detachment to the black quarters, with instructions "to burn them down on their possessions and their children." Learning of this, the blacks tried to break off the battle and return to their families but were caught in the streets and destroyed. This encounter is variously known in Arabic annals as "the Battle of the Blacks" and "the Battle of the Slaves.'' Though the conflict was not primarily racial, it acquired a racial aspect, which is reflected in some of the verses composed in honor of Saladin's victory. Maqrizi, in a comment on this episode, complains of the power and arrogance of the blacks:<br /><br />"If they had a grievance against a vizier, they killed him; and they caused much damage by stretching out their hands against the property and families of the people. When their outrages were many and their misdeeds increased, God destroyed them for their sins."<br /><br />Sporadic resistance by groups of black soldiers continued, but was finally crushed after a few years. While the white units of the Fatimid army were incorporated by Saladin in his own forces, the blacks were not. The black regiments were disbanded, and black fighting men did not reappear in the armies of Egypt for centuries. Under the mamluk sultans, blacks were em- ployed in the army in a menial role, as servants of the knights. There was a clear distinction between these servants, who were black and slaves, and the knights' orderlies and grooms, who were white and free.<br /><br />Though black slaves no longer served as soldiers in Egypt, they still fought occasionally -- as rebels or rioters. In 1260, during the transition from the Ayyubid to the mamluk sultanate, black stableboys and some others seized horses and weapons, and staged a minor insurrection in Cairo. They proclaimed their allegiance to the Fatimids and followed a religious leader who "incited them to rise against the people of the state; he granted them fiefs and wrote them deeds of assignment."<br /><br />The end was swift: "When they rebelled during the night, the troops rode in, surrounded them, and shackled them; by morning they were crucified outside the Zuwayla gate."<br /><br />The same desire among the slaves to emulate the forms and trappings of the mamluk state is expressed in a more striking form in an incident in 1446, when some five hundred slaves, tending their masters' horses in the pasturages outside Cairo, took arms and set up a miniature state and court of their own. One of them was called sultan and was installed on a throne in a carpeted pavilion; others were dignified with the titles of the chief of ficers of the mamluk court, including the vizier, the commander in chief, and even the governors of Damascus and Aleppo. They raided grain caravans and other traffic and were even willing to buy the freedom of a colleague. They succumbed to internal dissensions. Their "sultan" was challenged by another claimant, and in the ensuing struggles the revolt was suppressed. Many of the slaves were recaptured and the rest fled.<br /><br />Toward the end of the fifteenth century, black slaves were admitted to units using firearms -- a socially despised weapon in the mamluk knightly society. When a sultan tried to show some favor to his black arquebusiers, he provoked violent antagonism from the mamluk knights, which he was not able to resist. In 1498 "a great disturbance occurred in Cairo." The sultan (according to the chronicler) had outraged the mamluks by conferring two boons on a black slave called Farajallah, chief of the firearms personnel in the citadel -- first, giving him a white Circassian slave girl from the palace as wife, and second, granting him a short-sleeved tunic, a characteristic garment of the mamluks:<br /><br />"On beholding this spectacle [says the chronicler] the Royal mamluks expressed their disapproval to the sultan, and they put on their. . . armour. . . and armed themselves with their full equipment. A battle broke out between them and the black slaves, who numbered about five hundred. The black slaves ran away and gathered again in the towers of the citadel and fired at the Royal mamluks. The Royal mamluks marched on them, killing Farajallah and about fifty of the black slaves; the rest fled; two Royal mamluks were killed. Then the emirs and the sultan's maternal uncle, the Great Dawadar, met the sultan and told him: "We disapprove of these acts of yours [and if you persist in them, it would be better for you to ride by night in the narrow by-streets and go away together with those black slaves to far-off places!" The sultan answered: "I shall desist from this, and these black slaves will be sold to the Turkmans."<br /><br />In the Islamic West black slave troops were more frequent, and sometimes even included cavalry -- something virtually unknown in the East. The first emir of Cordova, 'Abd al-Rahman I, is said to have kept a large personal guard of black troops; and black military slaves were used, especially to maintain order, by his successors. Black units, probably recruited by purchase via Zawila in Fezzan (now southern Libya), figure in the armies of the rulers of Tunisia between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Black troops became important from the seventeenth century, after the Moroccan military expansion into the Western Sudan. The Moroccan Sultan Mawlay Ismaili (1672-1727) had an army of black slaves, said to number 250,000. The nucleus of this army was provided by the conscription or compulsory purchase of all male blacks in Morocco; it was supplemented by levies on the slaves and serfs of the Saharan tribes and slave raids into southern Mauritania. These soldiers were mated with black slave girls, to produce the next generation of male soldiers and female servants. The youngsters began training at ten and were mated at fifteen. After the sultan's death in 1727, a period of anarchic internal struggles followed, which some contemporaries describe as a conflict between blacks and whites. The philosopher David Hume, writing at about the same time, saw such a conflict as absurd and comic, and used it to throw ridicule on all sectarian and factional strife:<br /><br />"The civil wars which arose some few years ago in Morocco between the Blacks and Whites, merely on account of their complexion, are founded on a pleasant difference. We laugh at them; but, I believe, were things rightly examined, we afford much more occasion of ridicule to the Moors. For, what are all the wars of religion, which have prevailed in this polite and knowing part of the world? They are certainly more absurd than the Moorish civil wars. The difference of complexion is a sensible and a real difference; but the controversy about an article of faith, which is utterly absurd and unintelligible, is not a difference in sentiment, but in a few phrases and expressions, which one party accepts of without understanding them, and the other refuses in the same manner.... Besides, I do not find that the Whites in Morocco ever imposed on the Blacks any necessity of altering their complexion . . . nor have the Blacks been more unreasonable in this particular."<br /><br />In 1757 a new sultan, Sidi Muhammad Ill, came to the throne. He decided to disband the black troops and rely instead on Arabs. With a promise of royal favor, he induced the blacks to come to Larache with their families and worldly possessions. There he had them surrounded by Arab tribesmen, to whom he gave their possessions as booty and the black soldiers, their wives, and their children as slaves. "I make you a gift," he said, "of these 'abid, of their children, their horses, their weapons, and all they possess. Share them among you.''<br /><br />Blacks were occasionally recruited into the mamluk forces in Egypt at the end of the eighteenth century. "When the supply [of white slaves] proves insufficient," says a contemporary observer, W. G. Browne, "or many have been expended, black slaves from the interior of Africa are substituted, and if found docile, are armed and accoutred like the rest." This is confirmed by Louis Frank, a medical officer with Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt, who wrote an important memoir on the Negro slave trade in Cairo.<br /><br />In the nineteenth century, black military slaves reappeared in Egypt in considerable numbers; their recruitment was indeed one of the main purposes of the Egyptian advance up the Nile under Muhammad 'Ali Pasha (reigned 1805-49) and his successors. Collected by annual razzias (raids) from Darfur and Kordofan, they constituted an important part of the Khedivial armies and incidentally furnished the bulk of the Egyptian expeditionary force which Sa'id Pasha sent to Mexico in 1863, in support of the French. An English traveler writing in 1825 had this to say about black soldiers in the Egyptian army:<br /><br />"When the negro troops were first brought down to Alexandria, nothing could exceed their insubordination and wild demeanour; but they learned the military evolutions in half the time of the Arabs; and I always observed they went through the manoeuvres with ten times the adroitness of the others. It is the fashion here, as well as in our colonies, to consider the negroes as the last link in the chain of humanity, between the monkey tribe and man in intellect; and I do not suffer the eloquence of the slave driver to convince me that the negro is so stultified as to be unfit for freedom.<br /><br />Even in Turkey, liberated black slaves were sometimes recruited into the armed forces, often as a means to prevent their reenslavement. Some of these reached of ficer rank. A British naval report, dated January 25,1858, speaks of black marines serving with the Turkish navy:<br /><br />"They are from the class of freed slaves or slaves abandoned by merchants unable to sell them. There are always many such at Tripoli. I believe the government acquainted the Porte with the embarrassment caused by their numbers and irregularities, and this mode of relief was adopted. Those brought by the Faizi Bari, about 70 in number, were on their arrival enrolled as a Black company in the marine corps. They are in exactly the same position with respect to pay, quarters, rations, and clothing as the Turkish marines, and will equally receive their discharge at the expiration of the allotted term of service. They are in short on the books of the navy. They have received very kind treatment here, lodged in warm rooms with charcoal burning in them day and night. A negro Mulazim [lieutenant] and some negro tchiaoushes [sergeants], already in the service have been appointed to look after and instruct them. They have drilled in the manual exercise in their warm quarters, and have not been set to do any duty on account of the weather. They should not have been sent here in winter. Those among them unwell on their arrival were sent at once to the naval hospital. Two only have died of the whole number. The men in the barracks are healthy and appear contented. No amount of ingenuity can conjure up any conncxion between their condition and the condition of slavery."<br /><br />While the slave in arms was, with few exceptions, an Islamic innovation, the slave in authority dates back to remote antiquity. Already in Sumerian times, kings appointed slaves to positions of prestige and even power -- or, perhaps more accurately, treated certain of their court functionaries as royal slaves. Different words were used to denote such privileged slaves, distinct from those applied to the menial and laboring generality. Under the Abbasid caliphs and under later Muslim dynasties, men of slave origin, usually but not always manumitted, figured prominently in the royal entourage. The system of court slavery reached its final and fullest development in the Ottoman Empire, where virtually all the servants of the state, both civil and military, had the status of kul, "slave," of the Gate, that is, of the sultan. The only exceptions were the members of the religious establishment. The Ottoman kul was not a slave in terms of Islamic law, and was free from most of the restraints imposed on slaves in such matters as marriage, property, and legal responsibility. He was, however, subject to the arbitrary power of the sultan, who was free to dispose of his assets, his person, and his life in ways not permitted by the law in relation to free- or freedmen. This perception of the status of political officeholders and their relationship to the supreme sovereign power was of course by no means limited to the Ottoman Empire, or indeed to the Islamic world.<br />http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/lewis1.htmlThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-33191357549018386622008-10-12T15:17:00.002-07:002008-10-12T15:18:25.807-07:00ARAB SLAVE TRADEDarfur TruthThroughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph. Darfur report<br /><br />- Haile Selassie<br /><br />SLAVERY IN ARABIAN SOCIETIES ( FROM DARK VOYAGES)<br /><br />Owen Alik Shahadah<br /><br />Editor's note: These extracts are taken from the upcoming book Maafa: African Holocaust. Full sources and references are given in the book.<br /><br />While Europeans targeted men in West Africa, the 'Arab' trade primarily harvested the women of East Africa to serve as domestic slaves, wet nannies and sex-slaves in the infamous harems. This trade trickled over millennia is estimated to have taken 10 million Africans via the Eastern route to India, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and also via the Trans-Saharan route to North Africa and the Mediterranean, where in slave markets such as Ceuta, Morocco, Africans were purchased to work as servants in Spain, Portugal, and other European countries. Maafa: Audio sample of Dark Voyage: Arab Slave Trade<br /><br />This trickle trade really only boomed in the 18 th and 19 th century, prior to this period the trade between Arabia and Africa was more focused on iron, ivory and animal products. There is very little evidence in the sources to support the claim that slaving was ever a major enterprise of any significance prior to the 18 th century boom.<br /> <br /><br />Slaving Routes out of Africa<br /><br /><br /><br />LEGACY AND DIFFERENCE<br /><br />Arab enslavement of Africans was radically different from its European counterpart. It was more complex and varied depending on time and place. Thus the slavery seen in Iraq with the zanj was not similar to slavery in Zanzibar. Also 'Arab' is not a racial group, some Arabs are African and some are White and Jewish.<br /><br />One of the biggest differences between Arab slaving and European slaving was that slaves were drawn from all racial groups and they were rarely used as a means of crop production; slaves were not the economic engine behind Arab economies. Arab slavery generally lacked large droves of sugar plantations where slaves toiled to the crack of a whip in the hot sun . Unlike the European trade in enslaved Africans the physical remnants of this trade are very hard to measure. There are no Ghettos, mental institutions or prisons holding African people. Many women stolen from Africa were stolen to serve the infamous Arabian harems; their children were thus born free to Arab fathers and thus would have been heirs to wealth and status, fully and equally assimilated into the population. Many African people thus rose to great stations by virtue of their Arab fathers. The infamous eunuchs were infertile, and the other men who were enslaved would have gradually married non-African women, hence facilitating the absorption of African culture and lineage into an Arab one. The contrasting differences between racial definitions on the Arabian continent as oppose to Europe assist in blending the majority of Africans stolen from Africa into the general population of Arabia. However, in the West there was no transcending “racial stigmas.”<br /><br />ISLAM AND SLAVERY<br /><br />When Islam arrived, war and servitude were features of African and Arabian life. Judaism existed among certain Arab tribes as well as Christianity, and like them Islam did not blatantly out law slavery; Islam did however blatantly outlawed chattel enslavement. The Qu'ran with every reference to slavery ask the believer to free the slave as atonement for sin, the term "emancipating a slave and feeding an orphan" are repeated constantly throughout the Qu'ran as acts which gain God's favor. Also there were regulations which enhanced the pre-Islamic laws with respect to the treatment of enslaved people. They were entitled to good care, to the same clothing and food as their masters. These enslaved people were more akin to indentured servants in Europe than Chattel slaves in the Americas.<br />Darfur TruthThey are your brothers whom Allah placed under your hands. Feed them with what you eat, clothe them with what you wear and do not impose duties upon them which will overcome them. If you so impose duties, then assist them.Darfur report<br />Darfur TruthWhoever kills his slave, we will kill him.Darfur report<br />Darfur TruthWhoever slaps his slave or strikes him, his atonement is to free him" (narrated by Muslim by the way of ibn Umar).Darfur report<br /><br />It became a fundamental principle of Islamic jurisprudence that the natural condition, and therefore the presumed status, of mankind was freedom. Despite this, there were the greedy and the vindictive that sought to make slaves of their Muslim brothers and sisters as well as other Africans. There were also many Christian and Jewish Arab tribes and well as other indigenous Arabs that continued their tradition of slaving. Because Islamic Sharia had laws pertaining to slavery it was seen by the opportunist as a natural God sanctioned feature of life. Conveniently, the numerous laws of manumission were given a social back seat.<br /><br />Overzealous Europeans have always over-documented the Arab trade in enslaved Africans to alleviate their guilt concerning their own trade. "Well the Arabs did it too " became the common tone of contemporary historians. Sadly, many African-American historians who have only these European sources to infer history from have taken these second-hand guilt-massaging accounts as gospel. However, it is a well-known fact that Europeans in their artistic depictions of slave raids have always intentionally portrayed slave raiders as Muslim Africans or Arabs .<br /> <br /><br /><br />EUNUCHS OF THE ARAB SLAVE TRADE<br /><br />The most expensive enslaved group in Arabian societies were the eunuchs who were castrated men drawn from Europe but also Darfur, Abyssinia, Korodofan and other African nations. Ironically because of their lack of sexual function they obtained great privileges while the women's privileges were due to their sexuality. Eunuchs were generally made by Coptic priest in Egypt but also a group of Arabs know as the Chamba. Young boys, victims from raids and wars were subjected to the horrid monstrous unspeakable inhumane process of castration without anaesthesia which had a 60% mortality. To stop the bleeding hot coals were casted into the naked wound, which was followed by the most blood curdling alien scream a human could make. The price for surviving this ungodly brutal act was a life of influence and luxury; silk garments, Arabian thoroughbreds, jewels, were bestowed on them to reflect the wealth of their masters . Strangely eunuchs were both distinguished and greatly revered as elites in Arab society, despite being enslaved. Clearly slave did not mean downtrodden and oppressed. The actual word slave was far from taboo as the most pious people were self-professed “slaves of Allah.”<br /><br />ARABS AND AFRICANS<br /><br />The Afro-Arab relationship was riddled with complexities lined in a cultural nexus. The greatest thing to appreciate is that the 18 th century definition of "Black" did not exist in this period and some so-called Arabs were Arab linguistically but racially African. Thus, the Arab trade in enslaved Africans was not only conducted by Asiatic and Caucasian Arabs, but also African Arabs: Africans speaking Arabic as a first language embracing an Arab culture. These Africans would have been part of the Arab society; they would have permanently resided within Arabia for generations. They would have seen themselves as Arab as African-Americans define themselves as American it was their nationality and did not conflict with their greater African identity.<br /><br />There is however no doubt that the status of the African in Arabian society became associated with the enslaved. The word for slave (Abid) became the colloq. word for African. Other words such as Haratin speak to the social inferior class of Africans. Also Caucasoid Arab scholarship has its collection of racist such as Hanns Vischer who believed African "black" skin made them a slave-race. But equal evidence exist of the contempt for the trade as evident in the writings of Al-Nasiri. Books such as Tanwir al-Gabbash fi fasl al al-Sudan wa al-Habash by Ibn al-Jawzi, and Black and their Superiority over Whites by Ibn al-Marzuban testify to this. So, the legacy of the African presents in these Arab and later Turkish lands were far from that of absolute subjugation. Africans occupied senior military ranks, they administer provinces and managed the scared Mosque of Mecca. In the mid-eleventh century, the African caliph Al-Mustansir ruled Egypt with his mother, a Sudanese enslaved woman of remarkable strength of character. There are no such parallels in the New World. Africans, even enslaved Africans, played important roles in the history and politics of these regions up until and even including the 1st World War.<br />THE ZANJ REVOLT<br /><br />The most celebrated resistance to Arab enslavement occurred by the Zanj . The Zanj were predominately-enslaved peoples from East Africa. The Zanj were subjected to work in the cruel and humid saltpans of Shatt-al-Arab, near Basra in modern day Iraq. Conscious of their large numbers and oppressive working conditions the Zanj rebelled three times. The largest of these rebellions lasted from 868 (eight hundred and sixty eight) to (883) eight hundred and eighty three, during which time they inflicted defeat after defeat upon the Arab armies sent to suppress the revolt. For some 14 years, they succeeded in achieving remarkable military victories and even building their own capital--Moktara, the Elect City, which at its peak was within 70 miles of Baghdad. Moktara had huge resources that allowed the building of no less than six impregnable towns in which there were arsenals for the manufacture of weapons and battleships. Their achievements are even more impressive considering that they occurred at the height of the Abbasid Empire. An Empire that presided directly over Iraq, Mesopotamia, and Western Persia, and indirectly over territories from North Africa to Central Asia, and from the Caspian Sea to the Red Sea.<br /><br />After the Zanj were finally crushed the victorious Abbasid general Muwaffaq dismissed all claims of their masters who sought their return. Instead, Muwaffaq recognised their strength and incorporated thousands of Zanj into his own government forces. The effects of this powerful rebellion would echo in the Arab world, dampening all attempts at mass labour enslavement until the 19 th Century when European markets where furnished with spices and coconuts from Arab controlled Zanzibar.<br /><br />Arab and Turkish history is littered with furious African uprisings. One other notable battle echoes in Arab history until today and was referred to as “ the battle of the Blacks ” which occurred by loyal Fatimids against Saladin forces in Egypt in 1169.<br />ISLAM AND AFRICA<br /><br />See African Contributions to Islam<br /><br />Islam was founded in a multi-ethnic Arabia which lay 22 km of the coast of the African continent. Prior to the rise of Islam, Ethiopia, a super power of that time, had annexed modern day Yemen and parts of Saudi Arabia for centuries. The Qu'ranic accounts of the mighty forces of the Ethiopian general Abraha, who marched towards Mecca with an arsenal of elephants, this testifies to the power of the ancient Ethiopian Empire.<br />Islam In Africa: Photo copyright Underthissun.com Photographer Betelihem Zelealem c 2006<br />Muslim in Ethiopia<br /> <br /><br />Africans were among the first handful of people to accept the new religion brought by the Prophet Muhammad. It is said that when Bilal the Ethiopian, one of the most revered legends of Islam, first heard of Islam he called it the ancient religion. The call to pray which echoes over Muslims lands today was first carried on African lungs (by Bilal).<br /><br />Islam became a permanent feature in Africa when the prophet Muhammad in 612 sent the first group of the early Muslims to be protected from Arab persecution by the Negus of Ethiopia; this was the first Hijirah. Islam was thus spreading in Africa before it even reached Medina.<br /><br />It is important to note that while Islam generally disseminated in Africa peacefully it took wars, such as the Riddah wars, to conquer the Arabs into accepting Islam. In the mid-tenth century during the rule of the Umayed Caliph Abdul-Rahman III (929-961), Muslims of African origin sailed westward from the Spanish port of Delba (Palos) into the “Ocean of darkness an fog.” They returned after a long absence with much booty from a “strange and curious land.” It is evident that people of Muslim origin are known to have accompanied Columbus and subsequent Spanish explorers to the New World. Also it is reported that the descendants of Kanka Musa of Mali made and epic voyage with a 2000 strong fleet in search of the Americas. Recent linguistic, cultural and archaeological finds in Brazil and Peru offer documentary evidence" that West African Mandinka Muslims explored the early Americas. Islam spread across to West Africa (by African traders such as the Fulani people)from as early as the 8 th century by African traders and was firmly established by the 11 th century. The peaceful non-obstructive course Islam took in West Africa was mainly because those propagating the faith were culturally and ethnically identical to those receiving it. Also the indigenous African had many features in common, such as animal immolation, communal pray, celebrating ancestors, circumcision, polygamy, dowry bride gifts, and the spirit or jinn world. The African spirit world of Bori and Zar was bridged to the Islamic world of jinns whom like African spirits could be friend or foe.<br /><br />Such similarities between Islam and indigenous African religions facilitated a general peaceful conversion and religious tolerance in West Africa. Islam hence left African culture uniquely African and a traditional African Sufi Islam was formed over the centuries. This brand of Islam in time even reshaped Islamic culture in the lands beyond Africa.<br /><br />Diop: The primary reason for the success of Islam in Africa, with one exception, consequently stems from the fact that solitary Arabo-Berber Travellers to certain Black kings and notables, who then spread it about them to those under their jurisdiction, promulgated it peacefully, at first... What is to be emphasized here is the peaceful nature of this conversion, regardless of the legend surrounding it. (Pre-colonial Black Africa, page 163.)<br /><br />Asante: The religion of Islam made each Muslem merchant or traveller an embryonic missionary and the appeal of the religion with its similarities to the African religions was far more powerful than the Christian appeal. (Asante, Genocide in Africa 1991 10) Diop: The Arab conquests dear to sociologists are necessary to their theories but did not exist in reality. To this day no reliable historical documents substantiate such theories. ((Pre-colonial Black Africa, page 102)<br />Timbuktu, photo Owen Alik Shahadah copyright Underthissun.com<br />Mosque at Timbuktu<br /> When Islam proliferated in West Africa around the 9 th century, one of the first universities was founded by African Muslims. It was called Sankore, Arabs and others came to Sankore which was built in Timbuktu to learn from the African erudites who lectured on Islamic belief, Islamic jurisprudence, astrology, science, and many other subjects. Timbuktu was reputed for African erudition where books and those who traded in books were the wealthiest elites of the merchant society.<br /><br />The bulk of African history after the Ancient Egyptians Medew Netjer , was written in the Arabic language by both Africans and Arabs. The Arabic script also served as an agami to write languages such as Swahili, Wolof and Mande. For thousands of years Arabic served as the international language of trade as English is today. Some of the hidden histories of Africa are locked in as many as 700,000 Arabic manuscripts written by ancient African scholars. One of these the Tariq-ul-Sudan, details the history of Islamic West Africa, but this manuscript remains inaccessible to non-Arabic speakers. Western historians would rather these documents, like the Dead Sea scrolls, remain in their sandy graves until they can find ways to twist and decimate their contents.<br /><br />18th CENTURY BOOM<br />Slavery in Zanzibar, 500 Years Later (film)<br /> During the 18 th century, the Arab slave trade took a brutal turn. The Portuguese had destroyed the Swahili coast and Zanzibar emerged as the hub of wealth for the Arabian state of Muscat. By 1839, slaving became the prime Arab enterprise. The demand for slaves in Arabia, Egypt, Persia and India, but more notability by the Portuguese who occupied Mozambique created a wave of destruction on Eastern Africa. 45,000 slaves were passing through Zanzibar every year.<br />Arab Slavery<br />Slavery in Zanzibar, 500 Years Later (film)<br /> To satisfy this demand the Arabs hunted deep into the interiors of Africa, they following ancient trails from Bagamoyo, Kilwa, Tanga, where terror and destruction followed in their wake. The Arab plunders met with savage resistance, which meant that the trade had a very high mortality rate. Many documents speak of the roads littered with the weak and the dying, the abandoned and the maimed, left with yokes around their necks. Many as in the case of Tsavo, Kenya became food for lions. Children who became a burden to the coffle gang were brutally murdered in front of their mothers.<br />The likes of Livingston would have witness this devastation first-hand but history penned by Europeans recorded it as an endemic characteristic of Africa, as oppose to a very recent genocide that was previously unprecedented in African history. Livingston was the precursor to colonialism, the colonial template was written on salvaging heathen souls for Jesus and civilising them to be the cultural stepchildren of Europeans. Livingston is portrayed as the great White hope whom delivered Africa's from this hell. <br /><br />(...)<br /><br /><br />REFERENCES<br /><br /> * The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (Princeton Series on the Middle East) by Eve Troutt Powell (Editor), John O. Hunwick (Editor) "2:177: Righteousness does not consist in turning your faces toward the East<br /> * Van Sertima, Ivan. ed. The Journal of African Civilization.<br /><br /> * United West Africa (or Africa) at the Bar of the Family of Nations.Ghana: Privately published. 1927.<br /><br /> * Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience Cambridge, Ma.: Belnap Press, Harvard University. 1970.<br /><br />http://www.arabslavetrade.com/Thierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-42029604365900881212008-10-12T15:17:00.001-07:002008-10-12T15:17:45.484-07:00Islam and slaveryFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia<br /><br />The major juristic schools of Islam traditionally accepted the institution of slavery.[1] Muhammad and many of his companions bought, sold, freed, and captured slaves. Slaves benefited from Islamic dispensations which improved their situation relative to that in pre-Islamic society.[1] At the end of 19th century a shift in Muslim thought and interpretation of the Qur'an occurred, and slavery became seen as opposed to Islamic principles of justice and equality.[2] This interpretation has not been accepted by Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia.[3]<br /><br />In Islamic law , the topic of Islam and slavery is covered at great length.[1] The Qur'an, the holy book, and the hadith, the sayings of Muhammad, see slavery as an exceptional condition that can be entered into under certain limited circumstances.[3] They also consider manumission of a slave to be one of many meritorious deeds available for the expiation of sins.[4] For a variety of reasons, internal growth of the slave population was not enough to fulfill the demand in Muslim society. This resulted in massive importation, which involved enormous suffering and loss of life from the capture and transportation of slaves from non-Muslim lands.[5] In theory, slavery in Islamic law does not have a racial or color component, although this has not always been the case in practice.[6]<br /><br />The Arab slave trade was most active in West Asia, North Africa and East Africa. and by the end of the 19th century such activity had reached a low ebb. In the early 20th century (post World War I) slavery was gradually outlawed and suppressed in Muslim lands, largely due to pressure exerted by Western nations such as Britain and France.[3] However, slavery claiming the sanction of Islam is documented presently in the African republics of Chad, Mauritania, Niger, Mali and Sudan.[7][8][9]<br /><br />Slavery in pre-Islamic Arabia<br /><br />Slavery was widely practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia, as well as in the rest of ancient and early medieval world. The majority of slaves within Arabia were of Ethiopian origin, through whose sale merchants grew rich. The minority were white slaves of foreign race, likely brought in by Arab caravaners (or the product of Bedouin captures) stretching back to biblical times. Native Arab slaves had also existed, a prime example being Zayd ibn Harithah, later to become Muhammad's adopted son. Arab slaves, however, usually obtained as captives, were generally ransomed off amongst nomad tribes.[3] The slave population was added to by the custom of child abandonment (see also infanticide), the kidnapping, or, occasionally, the sale of small children.[10] There is no conclusive evidence of the existence of enslavement for debt or the sale of children by their families; the late and rare accounts of such occurrences show them to be abnormal, Bruschvig states[3] (According to Brockopp, the debt slavery was persistent.[2]) Free persons were also able to sell their offspring, or even themselves, into slavery. Enslavement was also possible as a consequence of committing certain offenses against the law, as in the Roman Empire.[10]<br /><br />Two classes of slave were apparent: A purchased slave, and a slave born in the master's home. Over the latter, the master had complete rights of ownership, though these slaves were unlikely to be sold or disposed of by the master. Female slaves were at times forced into prostitution for the benefit of their masters in accordance with Near Eastern customs.[3][11][12]<br /><br />The historical accounts of the early years of Islam report that "slaves of non-Muslim masters ... suffered brutal punishments. Sumayya bint Khubbat is famous as the first martyr of Islam, having been killed with a spear by Abū Jahl when she refused to give up her faith. Likewise, Bilal was freed by Abu Bakr when his master, Umayya ibn Khalaf, placed a heavy rock on his chest to force his conversion."[2]<br /><br />Slavery in the Qur'an<br /><br />The Qur'an includes multiple references to slaves, slave women, slave concubinage, and the freeing of slaves. It accepts the institution of slavery. It may be noted that the word 'abd' (slave) is rarely used, being more commonly replaced by some periphrasis such as ma malakat aymanukum ("that which your right hands own"). The Qur'an recognizes the basic inequality between master and slave and the rights of the former over the latter. The historian Bruschvig states that from a spiritual perspective, "the slave has the same value as the free man, and the same eternity is in store for his soul; in this earthly life, failing emancipation, there remains the fact of his inferior status, to which he must piously resign himself."[3] [13] The Qur'an also recognizes concubinage.[14][15] A master may make his female slave as his concubine and, if she is a Muslim, he can marry her. Abstinence however is said to be a better choice.[2] The Qur'an urges, without commanding, kindness to the slave[16] and recommends, their liberation by purchase or manumission. The freeing of slaves is recommended both for the expiation of sins[17] and as an act of simple benevolence.[18] It exhorts masters to allow slaves to earn or purchase their own freedom (manumission contracts)."[14]<br /><br />Slaves are mentioned in at least twenty-nine verses of the Qur'an, most of these are Medinan and refer to the legal status of slaves. The legal material on slavery in the Qur'an is largely restricted to manumission and sexual relations.[2] According to Sikainga, the Qur'anic references to slavery as mainly contain "broad and general propositions of an ethical nature rather than specific legal formulations."[19]<br /><br />The Quran accepts the distinction between slave and free as part of the natural order and uses this distinction as an example of God's grace,[20] regarding this discrimination between human beings as in accordance with the divinely-established order of things.[2][21] "The Qur'an, however, does not consider slaves to be mere chattel; their humanity is directly addressed in references to their beliefs,[22] their desire for manumission and their feelings about being forced into prostitution.[23] In one case, the Qur'an refers to master and slave with the same word, rajul. Later interpreters presume slaves to be spiritual equals of free Muslims. For example,[24] urges believers to marry 'believing maids that your right hands own' and then states: "The one of you is as the other," which the Jalaalayn interpret as "You and they are equal in faith, so do not refrain from marrying them." The human aspect of slaves is further reinforced by reference to them as members of the private household, sometimes along with wives or children.[2] Pious exhortations from jurists to free men to address their slaves by such euphemistic terms as "my boy" and "my girl" stemmed from the belief that God, not their masters, was responsible for the slave's status.[25]<br /><br />There are many common features between the institution of slavery in the Qur'an and that of neighboring cultures. However, the Qur'anic institution had some unique new features.[2] Bernard Lewis states that the Qur'anic legislation brought two major changes to ancient slavery which were to have far-reaching effects: presumption of freedom, and the ban on the enslavement of free persons except in strictly defined circumstances.[14] According to Brockopp, the idea of using alms for the manumission of slaves appears to be unique to the Qur'an, assuming the traditional interpretation of verses [Qur'an 2:177] and [Qur'an 9:60]. Similarly, the practice of freeing slaves in atonment for certain sins appears to be introduced by the Qur'an (but compare Exod 21:26-7).[2] The forced prostitution of female slaves, a Near Eastern custom of great antiquity, is condemned in the Qur'an.[12][26]Murray Gordon notes that this ban is "of no small significance."[27] Brockopp writes: "Other cultures limit a master's right to harm a slave but few exhort masters to treat their slaves kindly, and the placement of slaves in the same category as other weak members of society who deserve protection is unknown outside the Qur'an. The unique contribution of the Qur'an, then, is to be found in its emphasis on the place of slaves in society and society's responsibility toward the slave, perhaps the most progressive legislation on slavery in its time."[2]<br /><br />Muhammad's traditions<br /><br />The Islamic prophet Muhammad encouraged manumission of slaves, even if one had to purchase them first. On many occasions, Muhammad's companions, at his direction, freed slaves in abundance. Muhammad personally freed 63 slaves, and his wife Aisha freed 67.[28] In total his household and friends freed 39,237 slaves.[29] The most notable of Muhammad's slaves were: Safiyya bint Huyayy, whom he freed and married; Maria al-Qibtiyya, given to Muhammad by a Byzantine official, whom he freed and who may have become his wife;[30] Sirin, Maria's sister, whom he freed and married to the poet Hassan ibn Thabit[31] and Zayd ibn Harithah, whom Muhammad freed and adopted as a son.[32]<br /><br />Islamic jurisprudence<br /><br />Traditional Islamic jurisprudence<br /><br />Principles<br /><br />In Islamic jurisprudence, slavery was an exceptional condition, with the general rule being a presumption of freedom (al-'asl huwa 'l-hurriya — "The basic principle is liberty") for a person if his or her origins were unknown[3], though enslavement was sanctioned by God as punishment for unbelief.[33] Lawful enslavement was restricted to two instances: capture in war (on the condition that the prisoner is not a Muslim), or birth in slavery. Islamic law did not recognize the classes of slave from pre-Islamic Arabia including those sold or given into slavery by themselves and others, and those indebted into slavery.[3] Though a free Muslim could not be enslaved, conversion to Islam by a non-Muslim slave did not require that he or she then should be liberated. Slave status was not affected by conversion to Islam.[34]<br /><br />Treatment<br /><br />In the instance of illness it would be required for the slave to be looked after. Manumission is considered a meritorious act. Based on the Quranic verse ([Qur'an 24:33]), the Islamic law permits a slave to ransom himself upon consent of his master through a contract known as mukataba.[3] Azizah Y. al-Hibri, a professor of Law specializing in Islamic jurisprudence, states that both the Qur’an and Hadith are repeatedly exhorting Muslims to treat the slaves well and that Muhammad showed this both in action and in words.[35] Levy concurs, adding that "cruelty to them was forbidden."[36] Al-Hibri quotes the famous last speech of Muhammad and other hadiths emphasizing that all believers, whether free or enslaved, are siblings.[35] Lewis explains, "the humanitarian tendency of the Qur'an and the early caliphs in the Islamic empire, was to some extent counteracted by other influences,"[1] notably the practice of various conquered people and countries Muslims encountered, especially in provinces previously under Roman law (even the Christianized form of slavery was still harsh in its treatment of slaves). In spite of this, Lewis also states, "Islamic practice still represented a vast improvement on that inherited from antiquity, from Rome, and from Byzantium."[1] Murray Gordon writes: "It was not surprising that Muhammad, who accepted the existing socio-political order, looked upon slavery as part of the natural order of things. His approach to what was already an age-old institution was reformist and not revolutionary. The Prophet had not in mind to bring about the abolition of slavery. Rather, his purpose was to improve the conditions of slaves by correcting abuses and appealing to the conscience of his followers to treat them humanely."[37] The adoption of slaves as members of the family was common, according to Levy. If a slave was born and brought and brought up in the master's household he was never sold, except in exceptional circumstances.[36]<br /><br />Legal status<br /><br />Within Islamic jurisprudence, slaves were excluded from religious office and from any office involving jurisdiction over others.[38] Freed slaves are able to occupy any office within the Islamic government, and instances of this in history include the Mamluk who ruled Egypt for almost 260 years and the eunuchs who have held military and administrative positions of note.[39] With the permission of their owners they are able to marry.[40] Annemarie Schimmel, a contemporary scholar on Islamic civilization, asserts that because the status of slaves under Islam could only be obtained through either being a prisoner of war (this was soon restricted only to infidels captured in a holy war)[1] or born from slave parents, slavery would be theoretically abolished with the expansion of Islam.[39] Fazlur Rahman agrees, stating that the Qur'anic acceptance of the institution of slavery on the legal plane was the only practical option available at the time of Muhammad since "slavery was ingrained in the structure of society, and its overnight wholesale liquidation would have created problems which it would have been absolutely impossible to solve, and only a dreamer could have issued such a visionary statement."[41] Islam's reforms stipulating the conditions of enslavement seriously limited the supply of new slaves.[1] Murray Gordon does not: "Muhammad took pains in urging the faithful to free their slaves as a way of expiating their sins. Some Muslim scholars have taken this mean that his true motive was to bring about a gradual elimination of slavery. Far more persuasive is the argument that by lending the moral authority of Islam to slavery, Muhammad assured its legitimacy. Thus, in lightening the fetter, he riveted it ever more firmly in place."[42] In the early days of Islam, a plentiful supply of new slaves were brought due to rapid conquest and expansion. But as the frontiers were gradually stabilized, this supply dwindled to a mere trickle. The prisoners of later wars between Muslims and Christians were commonly ransomed or exchanged.<br /><br />According to Lewis, this reduction resulted in Arabs who wanted slaves having to look elsewhere to avoid the restrictions in the Qur'an, meaning an increase of importing of slaves from non-Muslim lands,[43] primarily from Africa. These slaves suffered a high death toll.[43][1] Patrick Manning states that Islamic legislations against the abuse of the slaves convincingly limited the extent of enslavement in Arabian peninsula and to a lesser degree for the whole area of the whole Umayyad Caliphate where slavery had existed since the most ancient times. He however notes that with the passage of time and the extension of Islam, Islam by recognizing and codifying the slavery seems to have done more to protect and expand slavery than the reverse.[44]<br /><br />In theory free-born Muslims could not be enslaved, and the only way that a non-Muslim could be enslaved was being captured in the course of holy war.[45] (In early Islam, neither a Muslim nor a Christian or Jew could be enslaved.[46]) Slavery was also perceived as a means of converting non-Muslims to Islam: A task of the masters was religious instruction. Conversion and assimilation into the society of the master didn't automatically lead to emancipation, though there was normally some guarantee of better treatment and was deemed a prerequisite for emancipation.[47] The majority of Sunni authorities approved the manumission of all the "People of the Book". According to some jurists -especially among the Shi’a- only Muslim slaves should be liberated.[48] In practice, traditional propagators of Islam in Africa often revealed a cautious attitude towards proselytizing because of its effect in reducing the potential reservoir of slaves.[49]<br /><br />Rights and restrictions<br /><br />"Morally as well as physically the slave is regarded in law as an inferior being," Levy writes.[50] Under Islamic law, a slave possesses a composite quality of being both a person and a possession.[3] The slave is entitled to receive sustenance from the master, which includes shelter, food, clothing, and medical attention. It is a requirement for this sustenance to be of the same standard generally found in the locality and it is also recommended for the slave to have the same standard of food and clothing as the master. If the master refuses to provide the required sustenance, the slave may complain to a judge, who may then penalize the master through sale of her or his goods as necessary for the slave's keep. If the master does not have sufficient wealth to facilitate this, she or he must either sell, hire out, or manumit the slave as ordered. Slaves also have the right to a period of rest during the hottest parts of the day during the summer.[51]<br /><br />Evidence from slaves is rarely viable in a court of law. As slaves are regarded as inferior in Islamic law, death at the hands of a free man does not require that the latter be killed in retaliation.[52] The killer must pay the slave's master compensation equivalent to the slave's value, as opposed to blood-money. At the same time, slaves themselves possess a lessened responsibility for their actions, and receive half the penalty required upon a free man. For example: where a free man would be subject to a hundred lashes due to pre-marital relations, a slave would be subject to only fifty. Slaves are allowed to marry only with the owner's consent. Jurists differ over how many wives a slave may possess, with the Hanafi and Shafi'i schools allowing them two, and the Maliki school allowing four. Slaves are not permitted to possess or inherit property, or conduct independent business, and may conduct financial dealings only as a representative of the master. Offices of authority are generally not permitted for slaves, though a slave may act as a the leader (Imam) in the congregational prayers, and he may also act as a subordinate officer in the governmental department of revenue.[3][53] Masters may sell, bequeath, give away, pledge, hire out or compel them to earn money.[36]<br /><br />By the view of some madh'hab (but not others), a master may compel his/her slave(s) to marriage and determine the identity of their marriage partner(s)[54][55]<br /><br />The mahr that is given for marriage to a female slave is taken by her owner, whereas all other women possess it absolutely for themselves[56]<br /><br />Marriage and concubinage<br /><br />Slave women were required mainly as concubines and menials. A Muslim slaveholder was entitled by law to the sexual enjoyment of his slave women. While free women might own male slaves, they had no such right.[57] The purchase of female slaves for sex was lawful from the perspective of Islamic law, and this was the most common motive for the purchase of slaves throughout Islamic history.[58]The property of a slave was owned by his or her master unless a contract of freedom of the slave had been entered into, which allowed the slave to earn money to purchase his or her freedom and similarly to pay bride wealth. The marriage of slaves required the consent of the owner. Under the Hanafi and Shafi'i schools of jurisprudence male slaves could marry two wives, but the Maliki permitted them to marry four wives like the free men. According to the Islamic law, a male slave could marry a free woman but this was discouraged in practice.[45] Islam permits sexual relations between a male master and his female slave outside of marriage. This is referred to in the Qur'an as ma malakat aymanukum or "what your right hands possess".[59][60] There are some restrictions on the master; he may not co-habit with a female slave belonging to his wife,[3] neither can he have relations with a female slave if she is co-owned, or already married, but Islam allowed the master to dissolve marriages among his slaves with or without the slaves' consent.<br /><br />In ancient Arabian custom, the child of a freeman by his slave was also a slave unless he was recognized and liberated by his father.[61] In theory, the recognition by a master of his offspring by a slave woman was optional in Islamic society, and in the early period was often withheld. By the high Middle Ages it became normal and was unremarkable in a society where the sovereigns themselves were almost invariably the children of slave concubines.[62] The mother receives the title of "umm walad" (lit. mother of a child), which is an improvement in her status as she can no longer be sold. Among Sunnis, she is automatically freed upon her master's death, however for Shi'a, she is only freed if her child is still alive; her value is then deducted from this child's share of the inheritance.[3] Lovejoy writes that as an umm walad, they attained "an intermediate position between slave and free" pending their freedom, although they would sometimes be nominally freed as soon as they gave birth.[47]<br /><br />There is no limit on the number of concubines a master may possess. However, the general marital laws are to be observed, such as not having sexual relations with the sister of a female slave.[3][47] In Islam, "men are enjoined to marry free women in the first instance, but if they cannot afford the bridewealth for free women, they are told to marry slave women rather than engage in wrongful acts."[63] One rationale given for recognition of concubinage in Islam is that "it satisfied the sexual desire of the female slaves and thereby prevented the spread of immorality in the Muslim community."[64] Most schools restrict concubinage to a monogamous relationship between the slave woman and her master,[65] According to Sikainga, "in reality, however, female slaves in many Muslim societies were prey for members of their owners' household, their neighbors, and their guests."[66] In Shia jurisprudence - for which a good source is Al-Hilli - a master of a female slave may grant a third party the use of her for sexual relations.[3]<br /><br />Under the legal doctrine of kafa'a(lit."efficiency"), the purpose of which was to ensure that a man should be at least the social equal of the woman he marries, a freedman is not as good as the son of a freedman, and he in turn not as good as the grandson of a freedman. This principle is pursued up to three generations, after which all Muslims are deemed equally free.[67] Lewis asserts that since kafa'a "does not forbid unequal marriages", it is in no sense a "Muslim equivalent of Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany or the apartheid laws of South Africa. His purpose, he states, is not to try to set up a moral competition - to compare castration and apartheid as offenses against humanity."[68][3]<br /><br />Manumission<br /><br />The Qur'an and Hadith, the primary Islamic texts, make it a praiseworthy act for masters to set their slaves free. There are numerous ways in which a slave may become free. One way is through expiation for certain sins committed by the master, such as involuntary manslaughter or perjury. Other ways include emancipation through becoming an umm walad, who is freed upon her master's death along with her children, or an independent act of piety by the master, as recommended by the Qur'an. It is also commendable to manumit a slave who demands his freedom and is considered worthy of it. Another method is the mukataba contract: Levy states that "the slave may redeem himself if his master agrees and contracts to let him go on payment of a stipulated sum of money, which may be paid in two or more instalments, or on the giving of stipulated services or other consideration. If the consideration is a sum of money, the master must grant the slave the right to earn and to own property."[69][3]<br /><br />If the master makes a declaration of the slave's freedom, whether in jest or earnest, in the presence of the slave or another, then such a declaration becomes legally binding. Similarly, the master may promise manumission (verbally or in writing) that the slave is to be freed upon the former's death. Lastly, a slave is also freed automatically if she or he comes into the possession of a master who is directly related to her or him.[69]<br /><br />Gordon opines that the Quran in particular and Islamic jurisprudence in general have not placed a premium on manumission but held it out as one way for atonement of sin. He states that "Manumission was only one of several virtuous observances that the pious could avail themselves of and was by no means the most important,"[4] noting that other options include reaffirming faith in God and giving food to the poor. He concludes that "there was no contradiction between being a devout Muslim and a slave-owing one as well."[70]<br /><br />Modern interpretations<br /><br />The abolition movement starting in 19th century in England and later in other Western countries influenced the slavery in Muslim lands both in doctrine and in practice.[3] One of the first religious decrees comes from the two highest dignitaries of the Hanafi and Maliki rites in the Ottoman Empire. These religious authorities declared that slavery is lawful in principle but it is regrettable in its consequences. They expressed two religious considerations in their support for abolition of slavery: "the initial enslaving of the people concerned comes under suspicion of illegality by reason of the present-day expansion of Islam in their countries; masters no longer comply with the rules of good treatment which regulate their rights and shelter them from wrong-doing."[3]<br /><br />According to Brunschvig, although the total abolition of slavery might seem a reprehensible innovation and contrary to the Qur'an and the practice of early Muslims, the realities of the modern world caused a "discernible evolution in the thought of many educated Muslims before the end of the 19th century."[3] These Muslims argued that Islam on the whole has "bestowed an exceptionally favourable lot on the victims of slavery" and that the institution of slavery is linked to the particular economic and social stage in which Islam originated. According to the influential thesis of Ameer Ali, Islam only tolerated slavery through temporary necessity and that its complete abolition was not possible at the time of Muhammad.[3]<br /><br />According to Brockopp, some modern interpreters have accused the medieval interpreters of having subverted the Qur'an's demand for manumission contracts (see Mukataba). They have used the dramatic change in the institution of slavery in the seventh and eighth centuries to argue that the Qur'an would not have condoned the slaving practices common in Islamic history. Others have argued that the original intent of the Qur'an, when understood properly, was to abolish slavery altogether (cf. Arafat, Attitude).[2]<br /><br />The idea that Islam only tolerated slavery due to necessity has to some extent found its way into the circle of the Ulema.[2] It has been unable to gain support among the Wahhabis of Arabia who are the uncompromising restorers of the example of Muhammad.[3]<br /><br />History of slavery under Muslim rule<br /><br />Reasons for low natural increase in the internal slave population<br />Harem pool with black eunuch slave. 19th century painting. Black slaves serving harems were desirably castrated 'level with the abdomen'.<br />Harem pool with black eunuch slave. 19th century painting. Black slaves serving harems were desirably castrated 'level with the abdomen'.[71]<br /><br />According to Bernard Lewis, the growth of internal slave populations through natural increase was insufficient to maintain numbers right through to modern times, which contrasts markedly with rapidly rising slave populations in the New World. He writes that a contributing factor was the liberation of slaves as an act of piety, but the primary drain was the liberation by freemen of their own offspring born by slave mothers. Other factors Lewis describes for the low natural increase of slave populations in the Islamic world include:<br /><br /> 1. Castration: A fair proportion of male slaves were imported as eunuchs. Levy states that according to the Qur'an and Islamic traditions, such emasculation was objectionable. Jurists such as al-Baydawi considered castration to be mutilation, stipulating law enforcement to prevent it. However, in practice, emasculation was frequent.[36] In nineteenth century Mecca, the majority of eunuchs were in the service of the mosques.[72]<br /> 2. Liberation of military slaves: Military slaves that rose through the ranks were usually liberated at some stage in their careers.<br /> 3. Restrictions on procreation: Among the menial, domestic, and manual worker slaves, casual mating was not permitted and marriage was not encouraged.<br /> 4. High death toll: There was a high death toll among all classes of slaves. Slaves usually came from remote places and, lacking immunities, died in large numbers. As late as the nineteenth century, Western travellers in North Africa and Egypt noted the high death rate among imported black slaves.[73]<br /><br />Segal notes that recent slaves, weakened by their initial captivity and debilitating journey, would have been easy victim to climate changes and infection.[74] Children were especially at risk, and the Islamic market demand for children was much greater than the American one. Many blacks, both slave and free, lived in conditions conducive to malnutrition and disease, with effects on their own life expectancy, the fertility of women, and the infant mortality rate.[75]<br /><br />Consequences of Muhammad's prescriptions on slavery<br /><br />Early Islamic history<br /><br />W. Montgomery Watt points out that Muhammad's expansion of Pax Islamica to the Arabian peninsula reduced warfare and raiding, and therefore cut off the sources of enslaving freemen.[76] According to Patrick Manning, the Islamic legislations against the abuse of the slaves convincingly limited the extent of enslavement in Arabian peninsula and to a lesser degree for the whole area of the whole Umayyad Caliphate where slavery existed since the most ancient times.[44]<br /><br />Later periods<br /><br />Bernard Lewis writes: "In one of the sad paradoxes of human history, it was the humanitarian reforms brought by Islam that resulted in a vast development of the slave trade inside, and still more outside, the Islamic empire." He notes that the Islamic injunctions against the enslavement of Muslims led to massive importation of slaves from the outside.[77] According to Patrick Manning, Islam by recognizing and codifying the slavery seems to have done more to protect and expand slavery than the reverse.[44]<br /><br />Oriental slave trade<br />13th century slave market in Yemen<br />13th century slave market in Yemen<br />The Slave Market (c. 1884), painting by Jean-Leon Gerome<br />The Slave Market (c. 1884), painting by Jean-Leon Gerome<br /><br /> Main article: Arab slave trade<br /><br />The 'Oriental' or 'Arab' slave trade is sometimes called the 'Islamic' slave trade. Bernard Lewis writes that "polytheists and idolaters were seen primarily as sources of slaves, to be imported into the Islamic world and molded in Islamic ways, and, since they possessed no religion of their own worth the mention, as natural recruits for Islam."[78] Patrick Manning states that religion was hardly the point of this slavery.[79] Also, this term suggests comparison between Islamic slave trade and Christian slave trade. Furthermore, usage of the terms "Islamic trade" or "Islamic world" implicitly and erroneously treats Africa as it were outside of Islam, or a negligible portion of the Islamic world.[79] Propagators of Islam in Africa often revealed a cautious attitude towards proselytizing because of its effect in reducing the potential reservoir of slaves.[80]<br /><br />The author Ronald Segal[81] distinguishes the Islamic slave trade from that of the Atlantic or European slave trade by highlighting the aspects of its duration and nature: "It began in the middle of the seventh century and survives today in Mauritania and Sudan. With the Islamic slave trade, we're talking of 14 centuries rather than four." Further, "whereas the gender ratio of slaves in the Atlantic trade was two males to every female, in the Islamic trade, it was two females to every male."<br /><br />In the 8th century Africa was dominated by Arab-Berbers in the north: Islam moved southwards along the Nile and along the desert trails. The Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia often exported Nilotic slaves from their western borderland provinces, or from newly conquered or reconquered Muslim provinces. Native Muslim Ethiopian sultanates (rulership) exported slaves as well, such as the sometimes independent sultanate (rulership) of Adal (a sixteenth century province-cum-rulership located in East Africa north of Northwestern Somalia).[82]<br /><br />For a long time, until the early 18th century Crimean Khanate maintained massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. Between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.[83]<br /><br />On the coast of the Indian Ocean too, slave-trading posts were set up by Arabs.[84] The archipelago of Zanzibar, along the coast of present-day Tanzania, is undoubtedly the most notorious example of these trading colonies. East Africa and the Indian Ocean continued as an important region for the Oriental slave trade up until the 19th century.[3] Livingstone and Stanley were then the first Europeans to penetrate to the interior of the Congo basin and to discover the scale of slavery there.[84] The Arab Tippu Tib extended his influence and made many people slaves.[84] After Europeans had settled in the Gulf of Guinea, the trans-Saharan slave trade became less important. In Zanzibar, slavery was abolished late, in 1897, under Sultan Hamoud bin Mohammed.[85] The rest of Africa had no direct contact with Muslim slave-traders.<br /><br />Roles filled by slaves<br /><br />A system of plantation labor, much like that which would emerge in the Americas, developed early on, but with such dire consequences that subsequent engagements were relatively rare and reduced. Moreover, the need for agricultural labor, in an Islam with large peasant populations, was nowhere near as acute as in the Americas.[86] Slaves in Islam were mainly directed at the service sector - concubines and cooks, porters and soldiers - with slavery itself primarily a form of consumption rather than a factor of production.[75] The most telling evidence this is found in the gender ratio; among black slaves traded in Islam across the centuries, there were roughly two females to every male.[75]<br /><br />Almost all female slaves had domestic occupations. This included the gratification of the master's sexual impulses. This was a lawful motive for their purchase, and the most common one.[58]<br /><br />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.[87] 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.[88]<br /><br />Rebellion<br /> Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (August 2008)<br /><br />In some cases slaves joined to rebels or even uprose against governors. The most renowned of this rebellions was Zanj Rebellion.<br /><br />The Zanj Revolt took place near the city of Basra, located in southern Iraq over a period of fifteen years (869-883 AD). It grew to involve over 500,000 slaves who were imported from across the Muslim empire and claimed over “tens of thousands of lives in lower Iraq” [89]. The revolt was said to have been led by Ali ibn Muhammad, who claimed to be a descendent of Caliph Ali ibn Abu Talib. Several historians, such as Al-Tabari and Al-Masudi, consider this revolt one of the “most vicious and brutal uprising” out of the many disturbances that plagued the Abbasid central government. [89]<br /><br />Capturing political power<br /><br /> Main articles: Ghilman, Mamluk identity, and Mamluk<br /><br /> Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (August 2008)<br />A Mamluk cavalryman, drawn in 1810<br />A Mamluk cavalryman, drawn in 1810<br /><br />Mamluk was a slave soldier who converted to Islam and served the Muslim caliphs and the Ayyubid sultans during the Middle Ages. Over time, they became a powerful military caste numerously defeating the Crusaders and, on more than one occasion, they seized power for themselves, for example ruling Egypt in the Mamluk Sultanate from 1250-1517.<br /><br />19th century and post 19th century<br />Bishop Samuel Adjai Crowther of Nigeria (c. 1807 - 1891). He was captured by Islamic Fulani slave raiders at the age of 14 and emancipated by the intervention of the Royal Navy. He converted to Christianity and was later ordained as the first African bishop of the Anglican Church.<br />Bishop Samuel Adjai Crowther of Nigeria (c. 1807 - 1891). He was captured by Islamic Fulani slave raiders at the age of 14 and emancipated by the intervention of the Royal Navy. He converted to Christianity and was later ordained as the first African bishop of the Anglican Church.<br /><br />Slavery in Muslim lands was influenced by the revolution against slavery in 19th century in England and later in other Western countries which gave rise to a strong abolitionist movement in Europe. Contrasting with ancient and colonial systems, slaves in Muslim lands had a certain legal status and had obligations to as well as rights over the slave owner. Slavery was not only recognized but was elaborately regulated by Sharia law. Although emancipation of slaves was recommended, it was not compulsory. Lewis elucidates that it was for this reason that "the position of the domestic slave in Muslim society was in most respects better than in either classical antiquity or the nineteenth-century Americas" and that the economic situation of such slaves were no worse than (and even in some cases better than) free poors.[90]<br /><br />Ironically, the enlightened incentives and opportunities for slaves to be emancipated meant there was a strong market for new slaves and thus strong incentive to enslave and sell human beings.[91] The processes of acquisition and transportation of slaves to Muslim lands often imposed appalling loss of life and hardships. The hardships of acquisition and transportation of slaves to Muslim lands drew attention of European opponents of slavery. The continuing pressure from European countries eventually overcame the strong resistance of religious conservatives who were holding that forbidding what God permits is just as great an offence as to permit what God forbids. Slavery, in their eyes, was "authorized and regulated by the holy law".[92] Even masters persuaded of their own piety and benevolence sexually exploited their concubines, without a thought of whether this constituted a violation of their humanity.[93] There were also many pious Muslims who refused to have slaves and persuaded others to do so.[94] Eventually, the Ottoman Empire's orders against the traffic of slaves were issued and put into effect.[90]<br /><br />According to Brockopp, in 19th century, "Some authorities made blanket pronouncements against slavery, arguing that it violated the qurʾānic ideals of equality and freedom. The great slave markets of Cairo were closed down at the end of the nineteenth century and even conservative Qurʾān interpreters continue to regard slavery as opposed to Islamic principles of justice and equality."[2]<br /><br />Slavery in the forms of carpetweavers, sugarcane cutters, camel jockeys, sex slaves, and even chattel exists even today in some Muslim and non-Muslim countries (Some have questioned the use of the term slavery as an accurate description[95]).[96]<br /><br />Twentieth Century suppression and outlawry<br /><br /> See also: Abolitionism#National abolition dates<br /><br />Hamoud bin Mohammed, Sultan of Zanzibar from 1896 to 1902. He complied with British demands that slavery be banned in Zanzibar and that all the slaves be freed. For this he was decorated by Queen Victoria and his son and heir, Ali bin Hamud, was brought to England to be educated.<br />Hamoud bin Mohammed, Sultan of Zanzibar from 1896 to 1902. He complied with British demands that slavery be banned in Zanzibar and that all the slaves be freed. For this he was decorated by Queen Victoria and his son and heir, Ali bin Hamud, was brought to England to be educated.<br /><br />Unlike Western societies which in their opposition to slavery spawned anti-slavery movements whose numbers and enthusiasm often grew out of church groups, no such grass-roots organizations ever developed in Muslim societies. In Muslim politics the state unquestioningly accepted the teachings of Islam and applied them as law. Islam, by sanctioning slavery - however mild a form it generally took - also extended legitimacy to the nefarious traffic in slaves.[97]<br /><br />Writing about 1862 the English traveler W.G. Palgrave says that in Arabia he constantly met with black slaves in large numbers. The effects of concubinage were apparent in the number of persons of mixed race and the emancipation of slaves he found to be common.[98] Doughty, writing about 25 years later, made similar reports.[99]<br /><br />Slavery was common in the East Indies until the end of the 19th century. In Singapore in 1891 there was a regular trade in Chinese slaves by Muslim slaveowners, with girls and women used for concubinage.[100]<br /><br />At Istanbul, the sale of black and Circassian women was conducted openly until the granting of the Constitution in 1908.[101]<br />Emir Faisal I at Versailles in 1919. His slave (unnamed) is pictured at top right. Faisal served as King of Iraq from 1921 to 1933.<br />Emir Faisal I at Versailles in 1919. His slave (unnamed) is pictured at top right. Faisal served as King of Iraq from 1921 to 1933.<br /><br />It was in the early 20th century (post World War I) that slavery gradually became outlawed and suppressed in Muslim lands, largely due to pressure exerted by Western nations such as Britain and France.[3]<br /><br />In 1925 slaves were still being bought and sold at Mecca in the ordinary way of trade.[102] The slave market there consisted of the offspring of local slaves as well as those imported from the Yemen, Africa, and Asia Minor.<br /><br />By the Treaty of Jedda, May 1927 (art.7), concluded between the British Government and Ibn Sa'ud (King of Nejd and the Hijaz) it was finally agreed to suppress the slave trade in Saudi Arabia. Then by a decree issued in 1936 the importation of slaves into Saudi Arabia was prohibited unless it could be proved that they were slaves at that date.[103]<br /><br />In 1953, sheikhs from Qatar attending the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II included slaves in their retinues, and they did so again on another visit five years later.[104]<br /><br />It was not until 1962 that all slavery practice or trafficking in Saudi Arabia was prohibited.<br /><br />By 1969 it could be observed that most Muslim states had abolished slavery although it existed in the deserts of Iraq bordering Arabia and it still flourished in Saudi Arabia, the Yemen and Oman.[105] Slavery was not formally abolished in Yemen and Oman until the following year.[106] The last nation to formally enact the abolition of slavery practice and slave trafficking was the Islamic Republic of Mauritania in 1981.[107]<br /><br />Gordon describes the lack of homegrown Islamic abolition movements as owing much to the fact that it was deeply anchored in Islamic law. By legitimizing slavery and - by extension - traffic in slaves, Islam elevated those practices to an unassailable moral plain. As a result, in no part of the Muslim world was an ideological challenge ever mounted against slavery. The political and social system in Muslim society would have taken a dim view of such a challenge.[108]<br /><br />Slavery in the contemporary Muslim world<br /><br />The issue of slavery in the Islamic world in modern times is controversial. Critics argue there is hard evidence of its existence and destructive effects. Others maintain slavery in central Islamic lands has been virtually extinct since mid-twentieth century, and that reports from Sudan and Somalia showing practice of slavery is in border areas as a result of continuing war[109] and not Islamic belief.<br /><br />Salafi and traditionalist juridical support for slavery<br /><br />In recent years, according to some scholars,[110] there has been a "worrying trend" of "reopening" of the issue of slavery by some conservative Salafi Islamic scholars after its "closing" earlier in the 20th century when Muslim countries banned slavery and "most Muslim scholars" found the practice "inconsistent with Qur'anic morality."[111][112]<br /><br />In 2003 a high-level Saudi jurist, Shaykh Salih al-Fawzaan, issued a fatwa claiming “Slavery is a part of Islam. Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam.”[113] He attacked Muslim scholars who said otherwise maintaining, “They are ignorant, not scholars ... They are merely writers. Whoever says such things is an infidel.” At the time of the fatwa, al-Fawzaan was a member of the Senior Council of Clerics, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious body, a member of the Council of Religious Edicts and Research, the Imam of Prince Mitaeb Mosque in Riyadh, and a professor at Imam Mohamed Bin Saud Islamic University, the main Wahhabi center of learning in the country.<br /><br />According to multiple sources, religious calls have also been made to capture and enslave Jewish women. As American journalist John J. Miller said, "It is hard to imagine a serious person calling for America to enslave its enemies. Yet a prominent Saudi cleric, Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik, recently urged Palestinians to do exactly that with Jews: 'Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women?'" [114]<br /><br />Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri of Karbala expressed the view in 1993 that the enforcement of servitude can occur but is restricted to war captives and those born of slaves.[115]<br /><br />Dr. Abdul-Latif Mushtahari, the general supervisor and director of homiletics and guidance at the Azhar University, has said on the subject of justifications for Islamic permission of slavery:[116]<br /><br /> "Islam does not prohibit slavery but retains it for two reasons. The first reason is war (whether it is a civil war or a foreign war in which the captive is either killed or enslaved) provided that the war is not between Muslims against each other - it is not acceptable to enslave the violators, or the offenders, if they are Muslims. Only non-Muslim captives may be enslaved or killed. The second reason is the sexual propagation of slaves which would generate more slaves for their owner."<br /><br />Islamist opinions<br /><br />Earlier in the 20th century, prior to the "reopening" of slavery by Salafi scholars like Shaykh al-Fawzaan, Islamist authors declared slavery outdated without actually clearly affirming and promoting its abolition. This has caused at least one scholar (William Clarence-Smith[117]) to bemoan the 'dogged refusal of Mawlana Mawdudi to give up on slavery' and the notable 'evasions and silences of Muhammad Qutb.'[118]<br />Syed Qutb<br />Syed Qutb<br /><br />Syed Qutb, the most renowned scholar of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood said in his (Tafsir) of the Quran<br /><br /> "And concerning slavery, that was when slavery was a world-wide structure and which was conducted amongst Muslims and their enemies in the form of enslaving of prisoners of war. And it was necessary for Islam to adopt a similar line of practise until the world devised a new code of practise during war other than enslavement"[119]<br /><br />Qutb's brother Muhammad Qutb contrasted sexual relations between Muslim slaveowners and their female slaves with what is, in his view, the widespread and depraved practice of casual consensual sex in contemporary Europe:<br /><br /> Islam made it lawful for a master to have a number of slave-women captured in wars and enjoined that he alone may have sexual relations with them ... Europe abhors this law but at the same gladly allows that most odious form of animalism according to which a man may have illicit relations with any girl coming across him on his way to gratify his animal passions[120]<br /><br />Maulana Mawdudi of Jamaat-e-Islami has said:<br /><br /> Islam has clearly and categorically forbidden the primitive practice of capturing a free man, to make him a slave or to sell him into slavery. On this point the clear and unequivocal words of [Muhammad] are as follows:<br /><br /> "There are three categories of people against whom I shall myself be a plaintiff on the Day of Judgement. Of these three, one is he who enslaves a free man, then sells him and eats this money" (al-Bukhari and Ibn Majjah).<br /><br /> The words of this Tradition of the Prophet are also general, they have not been qualified or made applicable to a particular nation, race, country or followers of a particular religion.....After this the only form of slavery which was left in Islamic society was the prisoners of war, who were captured on the battlefield. These prisoners of war were retained by the Muslim Government until their government agreed to receive them back in exchange for Muslim soldiers captured by them.....[121]<br /><br />Taqiuddin Al Nabhani.<br />Taqiuddin Al Nabhani.<br /><br />Shiekh Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, a shariah judge accredited by Al-Azhar University and founder of Hizb ut-Tahrir movement, gives the following explanation:<br /><br /> When Islam came, for the situations where people were taken into slavery (e.g. debt), Islam imposed Shari’ah solutions to those situations other than slavery. For example Islam clarified in relation to the bankrupt debtor that the creditor should wait until a time of ease for the debtor to pay. The Supreme (Allah) said in the Quran: "And if he is one in difficulty then waiting to a time of ease"'....It (Islam) made the existing slave and owner form a business contract, based upon the freedom, not upon slavery...It forbade the enslaving of free people with a comprehensive prohibition ... So Allah will deal with the seller of the free person. As for the situation of war, Islam prevented the enslaving of captives or prisoners of war absolutely. In the second year of the Hijrah, it clarified the rule of the captive in that either they are favoured by releasing without any exchange, or they are ransomed for money or exchanged for Muslims or non-Muslim citizens of the Caliphate.[122]<br /><br />Slavery in the contemporary Muslim world<br /><br />While slavery is illegal in Saudi Arabia despite Shaykh al-Fawzaan's fatwa, the proclamation carries weight among many Salafi Muslims. According to reformist jurist and author Khaled Abou El Fadl, it "is particularly disturbing and dangerous because it effectively legitimates the trafficking in and sexual exploitation of so-called domestic workers in the Gulf region and especially Saudi Arabia."[123] Organized criminal gangs smuggle children into Saudi Arabia where they are enslaved, sometimes mutilated, and forced to work as beggers. When caught, the children are deported as illegal aliens.[124]<br /><br />According to the U.S. State Department:<br /><br /> Saudi Arabia is a destination for men and women from South and East Asia and East Africa trafficked for the purpose of labor exploitation, and for children from Yemen, Afghanistan, and Africa trafficking for forced begging. Hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers from India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Kenya migrate voluntarily to Saudi Arabia; some fall into conditions of involuntary servitude, suffering from physical and sexual abuse, non-payment or delayed payment of wages, the withholding of travel documents, restrictions on their freedom of movement and non-consensual contract alterations. The Government of Saudi Arabia does not comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so.[125]<br /><br /> Main article: Slavery in modern Africa<br /><br />Slavery continues today in modern Africa, with hereditary-, child- and prisoner of war-slavery taking place in various Islamic countries.<br /><br />References<br /><br />General<br /><br /> * Al-Hibri, Azizah Y. (2003). "An Islamic Perspective on Domestic Violence". 27 Fordham International Law Journal 195.<br /> * "Abd". Encyclopaedia of Islam Online. Ed. P.J. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill Academic Publishers. ISSN 1573-3912.<br /> * Bloom, Jonathan; Blair, Sheila (2002). Islam: A Thousand Years of Faith and Power. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09422-1.<br /> * Clarence-Smith, Willian Gervase (2006). Islam and the Abolition of Slavery. Oxford University Press.<br /> * Davis, Robert C. (2004). Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters. Palgrave, macmillian. ISBN 1-4039-4551-9. [2]<br /> * Esposito, John (1998). Islam: The Straight Path. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511233-4. - First Edition 1991; Expanded Edition : 1992.<br /> * Javed Ahmed Ghamidi (2001). Mizan. Lahore: Al-Mawrid. OCLC 52901690.<br /> * Gordon, Murray (1987). Slavery in the Arab World. New York: New Amsterdam Press.<br /> * Hasan, Yusuf Fadl; Gray, Richard (2002). Religion and Conflict in Sudan. Nairobi: Paulines Publications Africa. ISBN 9966-21-831-9.<br /> * Hughes, Thomas Patrick; Patrick (1996). A Dictionary of Islam. Asian Educational Services. ISBN 9788120606722.<br /> * Ed.: Holt, P. M ; Lambton, Ann; Lewis, Bernard (1977). The Cambridge History of Islam. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29137-2.<br /> * Ingrams, W. H. (1967). Zanzibar. UK: Routledge. ISBN 0-7146-1102-6.<br /> * Jok, Madut Jok (2001). War and Slavery in Sudan. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1762-4.<br /> * Juynboll (1910). Handbuch des Islamischen Gesetzes.<br /> * Khalil bin Ishaq. Mukhtasar tr. Guidi and Santillana (Milan, 1919).<br /> * Levy, Reuben (1957). The Social Structure of Islam. UK: Cambridge Univerisity Press.<br /> * Lewis, Bernard (1990). Race and Slavery in the Middle East. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505326-5.<br /> * Lovejoy, Paul E. (2000). Transformations in Slavery. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78430-1.<br /> * Manning, Patrick (1990). Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-34867-6.<br /> * Mendelsohn, Isaac (1949). Slavery in the Ancient Near East. New York: Oxford University Press. OCLC 67564625.<br /> * Nasr, Seyyed (2002). The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity. US: HarperSanFrancisco. ISBN 0-06-009924-0.<br /> * Pankhurst, Richard (1997). The Ethiopian Borderlands: Essays in Regional History from Ancient Times to the End of the 18th Century. The Red Sea Press. ISBN 0-932415-19-9.<br /> * Sachau (1897). Muhammedanisches Recht [cited extensively in Levy,R 'Social Structure of Islam'].<br /> * Schimmel, Annemarie (1992). Islam: An Introduction. US: SUNY Press. ISBN 0-7914-1327-6.<br /> * Segal, Ronald (2001). Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.<br /> * Sikainga, Ahmad A. (1996). Slaves Into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan. University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-77694-2.<br /> * Tucker, Judith E.; Nashat, Guity (1999). Women in the Middle East and North Africa. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21264-2.<br /> * Ahmad A. Sikainga, "Shari'a Courts and the Manumission of Female Slaves in the Sudan 1898-1939", The International Journal of African Historical Studies > Vol. 28, No. 1 (1995), pp. 1-24<br /><br />Notes<br /><br /> 1. ^ a b c d e f g h Lewis 1994, Ch.1<br /> 2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, Slaves and Slavery<br /> 3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Brunschvig. 'Abd; Encyclopedia of Islam<br /> 4. ^ a b Gordon 1987, page 40.<br /> 5. ^ Lewis 1990, page 10<br /> 6. ^ Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam, Harper and Row, 1970, quote on page 38. The brackets are displayed by Lewis.<br /> 7. ^ Segal, page 206. See later in article.<br /> 8. ^ Segal, page 222. See later in article.<br /> 9. ^ Person-Lynn, Kwaku. "AfricaSpeaks.com - Christianity, Islam and Slavery". www.africaspeaks.com. Retrieved on 2008-01-18.<br /> 10. ^ a b Lewis (1992) p. 4<br /> 11. ^ Mendelsohn (1949) pp. 54—58<br /> 12. ^ a b John L Esposito (1998) p. 79<br /> 13. ^ ([Qur'an 16:71], [Qur'an 30:28])<br /> 14. ^ a b c Lewis 1990, page 6. All Qur'anic citations are his.<br /> 15. ^ ([Qur'an 6:3], [Qur'an 23:6], [Qur'an 33:50], [Qur'an 70:30])<br /> 16. ^ ([Qur'an 4:36], [Qur'an 9:60], [Qur'an 24:58])<br /> 17. ^ ([Qur'an 4:92], [Qur'an 5:92], [Qur'an 58:3])<br /> 18. ^ ([Qur'an 2:177], [Qur'an 24:33], [Qur'an 90:13])<br /> 19. ^ Sikainga (2005), p.5-6<br /> 20. ^ [Qur'an 16:71]<br /> 21. ^ EoI<br /> 22. ^ ([Qur'an 2:221], [Qur'an 4:25])<br /> 23. ^ ([Qur'an 24:33])<br /> 24. ^ [Qur'an 4:25]<br /> 25. ^ Marmon in Marmon (1999), page 2<br /> 26. ^ [Qur'an 24:33]<br /> 27. ^ Gordon 1989, page 37.<br /> 28. ^ 'Human Rights in Islam'. Published by The Islamic Foundation (1976) - Leicester, U.K.<br /> 29. ^ Nadvi (2000), pg. 453<br /> 30. ^ from "Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir" (Book of the Major Classes) by Ibn Sa'd's<br /> 31. ^ Aydin, p.17 (citing Ibn Abdilberr, İstîâb, IV, p. 1868; Nawavî, Tahzib al Asma, I, p. 162; Ibn al Asîr, Usd al Ghâbe, VI, p. 160)<br /> 32. ^ Hughes (1996), p. 370<br /> 33. ^ Shaun E. Marmon, ed. Slavery in the Islamic Middle East, Markus Wiener Publishers, Princeton (1999), page vii.<br /> 34. ^ Lewis 1990, page 9.<br /> 35. ^ a b Azizah Y. al-Hibri, 2003<br /> 36. ^ a b c d Levy (1957) p. 77<br /> 37. ^ Gordon 1987, page 19.<br /> 38. ^ Lewis 1990, page 7<br /> 39. ^ a b Schimmel (1992) p. 67<br /> 40. ^ Esposito (2002) p.148<br /> 41. ^ Fazlur Rahman, Islam, University of Chicago Press, p.38<br /> 42. ^ Murray Gordon, “Slavery in the Arab World.” New Amsterdam Press, New York, 1989. Originally published in French by Editions Robert Laffont, S.A. Paris, 1987. Page 19.<br /> 43. ^ a b Lewis (1990) p. 10<br /> 44. ^ a b c Manning (1990) p.28<br /> 45. ^ a b Sikainga (1996) p.5<br /> 46. ^ John Esposito (1998) p.40<br /> 47. ^ a b c Paul Lovejoy (2000) p.2<br /> 48. ^ Lewis(1990) 106<br /> 49. ^ Murray Gordon, “Slavery in the Arab World.” New Amsterdam Press, New York, 1989. Originally published in French by Editions Robert Laffont, S.A. Paris, 1987, page 28.<br /> 50. ^ Levy, p.78<br /> 51. ^ Khalil b. Ishaq, quoted in Levy (1957) p. 77<br /> 52. ^ Except according to Hanafis, who make a free man liable to retaliation in cases of murder<br /> 53. ^ Levy (1957) pp. 78-79<br /> 54. ^ Khalil bin Ishaq, II, 4<br /> 55. ^ Sachau, p.173<br /> 56. ^ Levy, p.114<br /> 57. ^ Lewis 1990, page 14.<br /> 58. ^ a b Brunschvig. 'Abd; Encyclopedia of Islam, page 13.<br /> 59. ^ See Tahfeem ul Qur'an by Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, Vol. 2 pp. 112-113 footnote 44; Also see commentary on verses [Qur'an 23:1]: Vol. 3, notes 7-1, p. 241; 2000, Islamic Publications<br /> 60. ^ Tafsir ibn Kathir 4:24<br /> 61. ^ Lewis 1990, page 24.<br /> 62. ^ Lewis 1990, page 91.<br /> 63. ^ Nashat (1999) p. 42<br /> 64. ^ Sikainga(1996), p.22<br /> 65. ^ Bloom and Blair (2002) p.48<br /> 66. ^ Sikainga (1996) p.22<br /> 67. ^ Lewis 85–86<br /> 68. ^ John Joseph, Review of Race and Color in Islam by Bernard Lewis, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3. (Jun., 1974), pp. 368-371.<br /> 69. ^ a b Levy pp. 80-81<br /> 70. ^ Gordon 1987, pages 42-43.<br /> 71. ^ "To be technical, there was a crucial difference between white eunuchs and black eunuchs. White eunuchs were made by the removal of testicles. Black eunuchs were made by what was called "level with the abdomen." Eunuchs were guardians of the harem [because] if they were castrated "level with the abdomen," there was no risk of their damaging any of the property in the harem." - Quoted in Hansen, Suzy (2001). "Islam's black slaves". Salon.com book review. Salon.com. Retrieved on 2007-04-05.<br /> 72. ^ Brunschvig. 'Abd; Encyclopedia of Islam, page 16.<br /> 73. ^ Hansen, Suzy (2001). "Islam's black slaves". Salon.com book review. Salon.com. Retrieved on 2007-04-05. - See under 'What about eunuchs?'<br /> 74. ^ Segal, page 62.<br /> 75. ^ a b c ibid<br /> 76. ^ Watt, Muhammad at Medina, 1956, p. 296<br /> 77. ^ Lewis 1990, page 10.<br /> 78. ^ Lewis (1990), page 42.<br /> 79. ^ a b Manning (1990) p.10<br /> 80. ^ Murray Gordon, “Slavery in the Arab World.” New Amsterdam Press, New York, 1989. Originally published in French by Editions Robert Laffont, S.A. Paris, 1987, page 28.<br /> 81. ^ http://archive.salon.com/books/int/2001/04/05/segal/index.html Interview with Salon.com in 2001 on the subject of his book "Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora"<br /> 82. ^ Pankhurst (1997) p. 59<br /> 83. ^ http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm Ohio State Research News with reference to "Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800" (Palgrave Macmillan).<br /> 84. ^ a b c Holt et. al (1970) p.391<br /> 85. ^ Ingrams (1967) p.175<br /> 86. ^ Segal, page 4.<br /> 87. ^ Lewis 1990, page 63.<br /> 88. ^ Lewis 1990, page 62.<br /> 89. ^ a b “Revisiting the Zanj and Re-Visioning Revolt: Complexities of the Zanj Conflict - 868-883 Ad - slave revolt in Iraq”.<br /> 90. ^ a b Bernard Lewis, (1992), pp. 78-79<br /> 91. ^ Lewis, Bernard Race and Slavery in the Middle East (1990) p.9-11<br /> 92. ^ Lewis, Bernard Race and Slavery in the Middle East (1990) p.111, 149-156<br /> 93. ^ Segal, page 5.<br /> 94. ^ Seyyed Hossein Nasr (2004), p.182<br /> 95. ^ Jok Madut Jok (2001), p.3<br /> 96. ^ James R. Lewis and Carl Skutsch, The Human Rights Encyclopedia, v.3, p. 898-904<br /> 97. ^ Gordon 1989, page 21.<br /> 98. ^ In his narrative of 'A Years Journey Through Central and Eastern Arabia' 5th Ed. London (1869), p.270<br /> 99. ^ Doughty(author), Arabia Deserta (Cambridge, 1988), I, 554<br /> 100. ^ S.Hurgronje, Verspreide Geschriften (Bonn, 1923), II, II ff<br /> 101. ^ Levy, p.88<br /> 102. ^ E. Rutter, The Holy Cities of Arabia (London and New York, 1928), II, 93<br /> 103. ^ Levy, p.85<br /> 104. ^ http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-85410331.html 'The Unknown Slavery: In the Muslim world, that is -- and it's not over. (From: National Review | Date: 5/20/2002 | Author: Miller, John J.)<br /> 105. ^ op cit. p.89<br /> 106. ^ Murray Gordon. 'Slavery in the Arab World', New York: New Amsterdam, 1989, p. 234.<br /> 107. ^ BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Slavery: Mauritania's best kept secret<br /> 108. ^ Gordon 1989, pages 44-45.<br /> 109. ^ The Oxford Dictionary of Islam,slavery, p.298<br /> 110. ^ Khaled Abou El Fadl and William Clarence-Smith<br /> 111. ^ Abou el Fadl, Great Theft, HarperSanFrancisco, c2005.<br /> 112. ^ "Islam and Slavery", William G. Clarence-Smith<br /> 113. ^ Shaikh Salih al-Fawzaan "affirmation of slavery" was found on page 24 of "Taming a Neo-Qutubite Fanatic Part 1" when accessed on February 17, 2007 http://www.salafipublications.com/sps/downloads/pdf/GRV070005.pdf<br /> 114. ^ findarticles.com<br /> 115. ^ In 'The Elements of Islam' (1993) cited in Clarence-Smith, p.131<br /> 116. ^ "You Ask and Islam Answers", pp. 51-2<br /> 117. ^ http://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staffinfo.cfm?contactid=36<br /> 118. ^ at p.6 - 'Islam and Slavery' by William Gervase Clarence-Smith<br /> 119. ^ in Fi Zilal al-Qur'an, Surah Tawbah 3/1669) also in Tafsir of Surah Baqarah (/230), tafsir of Surah Mu'minoon (4/2455), tafsir of Surah Muhammad (6/3285)<br /> 120. ^ Qutb, Muhammad, Islam, the Misunderstood Religion, Markazi Maktabi Islami, Delhi-6, 1992 p.50<br /> 121. ^ From "Human Rights in Islam" by 'Allamah Abu Al-'A'la Mawdudi. Chapter 3, subsection 5 [1]<br /> 122. ^ al-Shakhsiyah al-Islamiyyah (The Islamic Personality) by Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, Volume 3, Slavery Section<br /> 123. ^ The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists, by Khaled Abou El Fadl, Harper San Francisco, 2005, p.255<br /> 124. ^ BBC News the child slaves of Saudi Arabia<br /> 125. ^ V. Country Narratives - Countries Q through ZThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-34226939535366304482008-10-12T15:13:00.000-07:002008-10-12T15:16:21.867-07:00SLAVERY IN ISLAMIslam institutionalized slavery. Muhammad began to take slaves after he moved to Medina, and had power. Slaves were usually taken in raids on nearby Arab tribes, or war, either through offensive or defensive actions. Islam allows the taking of slaves as "booty", or reward for fighting. This has led to numerous "jihads" by Muslim states and tribes to attack other non-Muslim groups and obtain slaves. Islamic jurisprudence laid down regulations for the proper treatment of slaves. However, abuses have occurred throughout history.<br /><br /><br /><br />INTRODUCTION<br /><br /><br /><br /> The West is familiar with the history of slavery in the new world. It was sinful and terrible, and it lasted for several hundred years. And it was abolished mainly through the efforts of Christians in England (Wilberforce, Clarkson) and America (the Abolitionists, primarily Protestant).<br /><br /><br /><br /> However, few people in the west know about Islam and slavery. Most would be surprised that Islam authorizes the taking of slaves as spoils of war. From the days that Muhammad drew his sword to rob and conquer non-Muslims to this very day, Muslims have been taking non-Muslims, and even other black Muslims, as slaves.<br /><br /><br /><br /> Muslims were enslaving black Africans long before any slave ships sailed for the New World. Muslims were taking and making slaves all over the lands they had conquered. Later, when slave ships were loaded with black slaves, often, a Muslim slave broker had the human cargo all ready to go. American slavers rarely had to go into inland to capture slaves, they were already waiting there, courtesy of some Muslim ruler, and/or slave broker! In many cases, if the black slaves were not sent to the New World, they were sent to the Mideast to be enslaved by Arabs, or kept by other black Muslims as slaves.<br /><br /><br /><br />--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br /><br /><br />MUHAMMAD, MUSLIMS, THE QURAN, AND SLAVERY<br /><br /><br /><br /> To begin with, the Quran justifies slavery, and often mentions slaves. Here are some relevant verses:<br /><br /><br /><br />33:50 - "Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives to whom you have granted dowries and the slave girls whom God has given you as booty."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> This verse clearly shows that Muslims believe that taking slaves in war was a God-given right. These slaves were considered 'booty' or the spoils of war. As the saying goes: to the victors go the spoils.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />23:5 - "... except with their wives and slave girls, for these are lawful to them:..."<br /><br /><br /><br /> The passage's context here (not quoted in full) details how Muslim males are allowed to have sexual relations with their wives and slave girls. Implicit in this is that Muslim males had slave-concubines. 70:30 is basically a repeat of 23:5.<br /><br /><br /><br /> Ibn Sa'd's "Tabaqat", gives a clear description of Muhammad having "relations" with at least one of his slave girls. Muhammad had sexual relations with Mariyah, his Coptic slave. Mariyah and her sister, Sirin were slaves given as gifts to Muhammad. Muhammad gave Sirin to Hasan Thabit, the poet. Ibn Sa'd says that Muhammad "liked Mariyah, who was of white complexion, with curly hair and pretty." [Taken from Ibn Sa'd's "Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir" (Book of the Major Classes), p151].<br /><br /><br /><br /> Ibn Sa'd also writes that Mariyah bore Muhammad a son named Ibrahim. He died 18 months later. Sa'd writes: "If he had lived, no maternal uncle of his would have remained in bondage", p164. This shows that there were other Coptic slaves owned by the Muslims.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> The Quran also instructs Muslims NOT to force their female slaves into prostitution (24:34), and even allows Muslims to marry slaves if they so desire (4:24), and to free them at times as a penalty for crime or sin (4:92, 5:89, 58:3) and even allows slaves to buy their liberty, if they meet certain of their master's conditions (24:33). [90:10 'freeing of a bondsman' refers to Muslims ransoming other Muslims who were slaves of non-Muslims.]<br /><br /><br /><br /> While I think it's nice to allow a slave to obtain his freedom, (at his master's discretion) it is tragic that Islam allows them to be enslaved in the first place. That's like robbing a bank and giving some of the money back to the bank, and thinking you did the right thing!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> The above verses show that taking slaves was ordained by Allah, and that it was permissible for Muslim males to have sex with their female slaves. It also shows that slaves were a valuable commodity to the Muslims, otherwise, Allah would not have imposed the penalty of freeing a slave to make up for a crime.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br /><br /><br />BUKHARI'S HADITH AND SLAVERY<br /><br /><br /><br /> There are hundreds of Hadith that deal with slavery. Whole chapters of Hadith are dedicated to dealing with the taxation, treatment, sale, and jurisprudence of slaves. In addition to this, numerous Hadith mention slaves, and their relation to their Muslim masters. Here is a selection of Hadith on slaves: [all Hadith are from Sahih Bukhari, unless noted.]<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Vol. 7-#137 Narrated Abu al-Khudri: "We got female captives in the war booty and we used to do coitus interruptus with them. So we asked Allah's messenger about it and he said, "Do you really do that?" repeating the question thrice, "There is no soul that is destined to exist but will come into existence, till the Day of Resurrection.""<br /><br /><br /><br /> Here, Muslims had taken female slaves, and had sex with them. Muhammad approved of this. He only admonished them not to practice coitus interruptus.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Vol. 5-#459 [This Hadith is similar to the above. However, additional details are added]. Narrated Ibn Muhairiz: "I entered the mosque and saw Abu Khudri and sat beside him and asked him about coitus interruptus. Abu said, "We went out with Allah's messenger for the Ghazwa (attack upon) Banu Mustaliq and we received captives from among the Arab captives and we desired women and celibacy became hard on us and we loved to do coitus interruptus. So when we intended to do coitus interruptus we said "How can we do coitus interruptus without asking Allah's messenger while he is present among us?" We asked (him) about it and he said "It is better for you not to do so, for if any soul (till the Day of Resurrection) is predestined to exist, it will exist.""<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Here, the Muslims attacked the Banu Mustaliq, and took slaves. The female slaves were distributed as booty to the Muslim soldiers. Being away from home, the soldiers became horny, and want to have sexual relations with the newly captured female slaves. They went to Muhammad and asked about coitus interruptus. He told them not to practice that, but to complete the sexual act with the slaves. Related Hadith show that they didn't want to get the women pregnant because they wanted to be able to sell them later on. Under Islamic law they were not allowed to sell pregnant female slaves.<br /><br /><br /><br /> In effect, Muhammad okayed the rape of female prisoners.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Vol. 3-#765<br /><br /><br /><br /> Narrated Kuraib: the freed slave of Ibn 'Abbas, that Maimuna bint Al-Harith told him that she manumitted a slave-girl without taking the permission of the Prophet. On the day when it was her turn to be with the Prophet, she said, "Do you know, O Allah's Apostle, that I have manumitted my slave-girl?" He said, "Have you really?" She replied in the affirmative. He said, "You would have got more reward if you had given her (i.e. the slave-girl) to one of your maternal uncles."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Here a woman frees a slave girl, but Muhammad says that she would have gotten more (heavenly) reward if she had given the slave one of her uncles, thus keeping the slave in slavery.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Vol. 7-#734 "....At the door of the [Muhammad's] room there was a slave to whom I went and said, "Ask the permission for me to enter".....<br /><br /><br /><br /> This is a long Hadith, and the quote reveals that Muhammad has slaves working in his house.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Vol. 7-#344 Narrated Anas: "Allah's messenger went to the house of his slave tailor, and he was offered a dish of gourd of which he started eating. I have loved to eat gourd since I saw Allah's messenger eating it."<br /><br /><br /><br /> This Hadith shows that another one of Muhammad's slaves was a tailor. #346 gives additional details.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Vol. 5-#541 Narrated Abu Huraira: When we conquered Khaibar, we gained neither gold nor silver as booty, but we gained cows, camels, goods and gardens. Then we departed with Allah's apostle to the valley of Al-Qira, and at that time Allah's messenger had a slave called Midam who had been presented to him by one of Banu Ad-Dibbab. While the slave was dismounting the saddle of Allah's messenger an arrow the thrower of which was unknown, came and hit him.....<br /><br /><br /><br /> This Hadith shows that Muhammad held a slave, who was struck with an arrow.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Vol. 5-#637 Narrated Buraida: The prophet sent Ali to Khalid to bring the Khumus ([one fifth] of the booty) and I hated Ali, and Ali had taken a bath (after a sexual act with a slave girl from the Khumus). I said to Khalid, "Don't you see this (i.e. Ali)?" When we reached the prophet I mentioned that to him. He said, "O Buraida! Do you hate Ali?" I said, "Yes" He said, "Do you hate him, for he deserves more than that from the Khumus."<br /><br /><br /><br /> The note for this Hadith says "Buraida hated Ali because he had taken a slave girl form the booty and considered that as something not good."<br /><br /><br /><br /> Here Ali took a newly captured slave girl, and had sex with her. When Muhammad was told about it, he approved of it. Note that slaves were considered as booty, and as a man’s property, they can use the female slave for sex, i.e., rape them.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Vol. 5-#512 Narrated Anas: ".....The prophet had their warriors killed, their offspring and woman taken as captives...."<br /><br /><br /><br /> This Hadith details the attack on the Jews of Khaibar. Again, many of the women and children were taken and made into slaves.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Vol. 5-Chapter 67 Narrated Ibn Ishaq: The Ghazwa (attack upon) Uyaina bin Hisn waged against Banu Al-Anbar, a branch of Banu Tamim. The prophet sent Uyaina to raid them. He raided them and killed some of them and took some others as captives.<br /><br /><br /><br /> Here, Muhammad sent out his men to attack another tribe. The killed some of them and took others as captives. Once again, the Muslims attacked a neighboring tribe.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Vol. 5-#182 Narrated Aisha: "Abu Bakr had a slave who used to give him some of his earnings.<br /><br /><br /><br />Vol. 5-#50 Narrated Amr Maimun: "....The slave of Al-Mughira..."<br /><br />[another Muslim who owned the slave that killed Umar.]<br /><br /><br /><br /> ....Al-Abbas had the greatest number of slaves....<br /><br />[Al-Abbas, the future Muslim leader had many slaves].<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Vol. 9-#462 Narrated Aisha: "...Furthermore you may ask the slave girl who will tell you the truth". So the prophet asked Barira (my slave girl)...<br /><br /><br /><br /> Aisha had her own slave.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Also, volume 7-#s 845, 341, 352, 371, 410, 413, 654, ch. 22, ch. 23, and<br /><br />volume 1-#s 29, 439, 661,<br /><br />volume 9-#s ch. 23, ch. 32, #293, 296, 277, 100, 80.<br /><br /><br /><br />All these Hadith detail that many other Muslims owned slaves.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br /><br /><br />MUHAMMAD, ABU DAWUD'S HADITH, AND SLAVERY<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Abu Dawud, vol. 2, chapter 597 - "On a Man who Beats His Slave While he is in the Sacred State (wearing Ihram)."<br /><br /><br /><br />#1814- "(Abu Bakr) began to beat him (Bakr's slave) while the apostle of Allah was smiling and saying: "Look at this man who is in the sacred state, what is he doing?" [The note for this Hadith says "Abu Bakr beat his slave to teach him sense of responsibility."]<br /><br /><br /><br />Abu Dawud, vol. 2, chapter 683 - "On the Marriage of a Slave without the Permission of His Masters"<br /><br /><br /><br />#2074- "Ibn Umar reported the prophet as saying: "If a slave marries without the permission of his master, his marriage is null and void."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Abu Dawud, vol. 2, chapter 1317 - "Contractual Obligation of a Slave."<br /><br /><br /><br />#3499, 3500- "The contractual obligation of a slave is three days. If he finds defect in the slave within three days, he may return it without any evidence; if he finds a defect after three days, he will be required to produce evidence that the slave had the defect when he brought it."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />MUHAMMAD, THE MUWATTA OF IMAM MALIK, AND SLAVERY<br /><br /><br /><br /> The chapters mentioned below show just how intrinsic slavery was during Muhammad's life, and the lives of the Caliphs. The Muwatta is a book of Islamic jurisprudence. It is full of regulations on dealing with slaves. Slaves were used throughout the Islamic world. Judging from the amount of Hadith here, it is safe to assume that many Muslims owned slaves.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Chapter 368 - "Who takes the Property of a Slave When He is Freed"<br /><br /><br /><br />Chapter 371 - "Slaves who cannot be set Free in the Obligatory Freeing of a Slave"<br /><br /><br /><br />Chapter 383 - "Cohabitation with a Slave Girl after Declaring Her 'Mudabbir'" (free after the master's death).<br /><br /><br /><br />Chapter 387 - "Who is Entitled to the Property of a Slave or Slave Girl at the time of Sale."<br /><br /><br /><br />Chapter 388 - "The Limit of Responsibility of the Seller in the Sale of a Slave or Slave Girl."<br /><br /><br /><br />Chapter 390 - "On the Conditional Sale of a Slave Girl."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> There are additional chapters dealing with slaves. This list is enough to show that dealing with slaves during and after Muhammad's time was extensive.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br /><br /><br />OTHER ISLAMIC WRITINGS ON MUSLIMS OWNING SLAVES<br /><br /><br /><br /> There are additional Islamic writings that document how Muhammad took purchased, sold, and gave away slaves. The following quotes are from "Behind the Veil".<br /><br /><br /><br /> Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, a great scholar and Islamic historian says in his book "Zad al-Ma'ad", part 1, p160:<br /><br /><br /><br /> "Muhammad had many male and female slaves. He used to buy and sell them, but he purchased more slaves then he sold. He once sold one black slave for two. His purchases of slaves were more than he sold."<br /><br /><br /><br /> "Muhammad had a number of black slaves. One of them was named 'Mahran'. Muhammad forced him to do more labor than the average man. Whenever Muhammad went on a trip and he, or his people, got tired of carrying their stuff, he made Mahran carry it. Mahran said "Even if I were already carrying the load of 6 or 7 donkeys while we were on a journey, anyone who felt weak would throw his clothes or his shield or his sword on me so I would carry that, a heavy load". Tabari and Jawziyya both record this, so Islam accepts this as true."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Ali, who was Muhammad's son-in-law, whipped Aisha's slave in front of Muhammad to make her talk about the adultery charges against Aisha. Muhammad did not say a word to Ali about beating the female slave. [From the Sirat Rasulallah, p496.]<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> In the Sirat Rasulallah, Muhammad massacred 800 males and took their women and children as slaves. He kept at least one Jewish female named Rayhana as his concubine, and gave the rest away to the Muslims. The Sirat says (p466) "Then the apostle divided the property, wives, and children of Banu Qurayza among the Muslims....<br /><br />and<br /><br /><br /><br /> "Then the apostle sent Sa'd Zayd brother of Ashhal with some of the captive women of Banu Qurayza to Najd and he sold them for horse and weapons."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> One thing for certain: MUHAMMAD WAS A SLAVER. The names of many of Muhammad's slaves are detailed in Muslim writings and they can be found in "Behind the Veil".<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Some Muslims claim that slaves under Islam were always treated fairly and kindly, and that slaves in the West were always treated like "chattel". The fact is that the real treatment slaves in both the west and under Islam has varied. Some slaves were treated fairly, others were treated brutally. Both the Quran and New Testament command masters to treat slaves fairly. Compare Ephesians 6:9 with Sura 4:36. Both are similar. However, the New Testament condemns slave trading in 1 Tim 1:10 (menstealers is the same word for slave-traders), the Quran allows for, even urges slave-taking.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />THE RIGHTS OF SLAVES UNDER ISLAM<br /><br /> <br /><br /> According to the Hughes Dictionary of Islam, slaves had few civil or legal rights. For example:<br /><br /><br /><br />a) Muslim men were allowed to have sex anytime with females slaves - Sura 4:3, 4:29, 33:49.<br /><br /><br /><br />b) Slaves are as helpless before their masters as idols are before God - Sura 16:77<br /><br /><br /><br />c) According to Islamic Tradition, people at the time of their capture were either to be killed, or enslaved. Shows you that they were at the bottom of the barrel to start with.<br /><br /><br /><br />d) According to Islamic jurisprudence, slaves were merchandise. The sales of slaves was in accordance with the sale of animals.<br /><br /><br /><br />e) Muhammad ordered that some slaves who were freed by their master be RE-ENSLAVED!<br /><br /><br /><br />f) It is permissible under Islamic law to whip slaves.<br /><br /><br /><br />g) According to Islam, a Muslim could not be put to death for murdering a slave. Ref. 2:178 and the Jalalayn confirm this.<br /><br /><br /><br />h) According to Islam, the testimony of slaves is not admissible in court. Ibn Timiyya and Bukhari state this.<br /><br /><br /><br />i) According to Islamic jurisprudence, slaves cannot choose their own marriage mate. - Ibn Hazm, vol. 6, part 9.<br /><br /><br /><br />j) According to Islamic jurisprudence, slaves can be forced to marry who their masters want. - Malik ibn Anas, vol. 2, page 155.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Slavery continued in Islamic lands from about the beginning to this very day. Muslim rulers always found support in the Quran to call 'jihad', partly for booty, part for the purpose of taking slaves. As the Islamic empire disintegrated into smaller kingdoms, and each ruler was able to decide what Islam's theology really meant. Usually, he always found it in support of what he wanted to do. Their calls of jihad against their neighbor facilitated the taking of slaves for Islam. The Quran and Islamic jurisprudence support the taking of slaves, so, those petty Muslim rulers were following the Quran when they needed slaves.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />WHO COULD BE MADE SLAVES UNDER ISLAM?<br /><br /><br /><br />1) Islam allows Muslims to make slaves out of anyone who is captured during war.<br /><br /><br /><br />2) Islam allows for the children of slaves to be raised as slaves<br /><br /><br /><br />3) Like #1, Islam allows for Christians and Jews to be made into slaves if they are captured in war. After Muslim armies attacked and conquered Spain, they took thousands of slaves back to Damascus. The key prize was 1000 virgins as slaves. They were forced to go all the way back to Damascus.<br /><br /><br /><br />4) Christians and Jews, who had made a treaty with the ruling Muslims could be made into slaves if they did not pay the "protection" tax. This paying for 'protection' was just like paying a Mafia racketeer! This allowed Muslim rulers to extort money from non-Muslim people.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />POST MUHAMMAD SLAVERY<br /><br /><br /><br />WHERE DID MANY OF THE MUSLIM'S SLAVES COME FROM?<br /><br /><br /><br /> Although Muslims took slaves from all over the lands they conquered, many of the Muslim slaves were black Africans. There were forced to do the harshest labor.<br /><br /><br /><br /> There was a famous black slave revolt in Iraq where thousands of black slaves revolted and killed tens of thousands of Arabs in Basrah. There slaves were forced to work in the large Muslim saltpeter mines. During their revolt, they conquered the city of Basrah, in Iraq. They conquered city after city, and they couldn't be stopped. Their uprising and drive for freedom lasted for about 11 years. ["The History of Islam", Robert Payne, p.185.]<br /><br /><br /><br /> As the Muslim armies continued to conquer land, they acquired many slaves. Bernard Lewis in "The Arabs in History" writes: "polytheists and idolaters were seen primarily as sources of slaves."<br /><br /><br /><br /> In the early years of the Arab conquests, vast numbers of slave were acquired by capture. C.E. Bosworth in "The Islamic Dynasties" writes: "the use of this labor enabled the Arabs to live on the conquered land as a rentier class and to exploit some of the economic potential of the rich Fertile Crescent."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Ibn Warraq writes: "Arabs were deeply involved in the vast network of slave trading - they scoured the slave markets of China, India, and Southeast Asia. There were Turkish slaves from Central Asia, slaves from the Byzantine Empire, white slave from Central and East Europe, and Black slaves from West and East Africa. Every city in the Islamic world had its slave market."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />ABUSES OF SLAVES IN MODERN ISLAM TODAY<br /><br /><br /><br /> Muhammad did say that slaves should be treated fairly. But they were still a Muslim's property. Just as abuses occurred under Christianity, so too, many abuses occurred, and still occur under Islam. The difference between the two is that Islam ordains the taking of slaves during war, thus perpetuating slavery. Christianity does not. In slavery's perpetual existence, Islam has seen great abuses of slaves.<br /><br /><br /><br /> Everyone knows about the abuses of slaves in the new world. What do you know about the abuses of slaves under Islam? I found two very good books on slavery and Islam.<br /><br /><br /><br />1) "Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa", by Allan Fisher, pub in 1971, and<br /><br /><br /><br />2) "The Slave Trade Today" by Sean O'Callaghan, pub in 1961.<br /><br /><br /><br /> Both books really opened my eyes to how terrible slavery under Islam really is. I use the present tense, because it is obvious that these abuses continue to this day.<br /><br /><br /><br /> I also have a number of other references concerning slavery in Islam. A general survey is Hughes Dictionary of Islam. It notes a few basic points:<br /><br /><br /><br />a) Slaves have no civil liberty, but are entirely under the authority of their owners.<br /><br /><br /><br />b) Slavery is in complete harmony with the spirit of Islam. Islam did make life better for the average slave, but Muhammad intended it to be a perpetual institution.<br /><br /><br /><br />c) Hughes also says that it is a righteous act to free a slave. I just find it hard to understand that the god who told Muhammad to take slaves later tells him it's good to free slaves?<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> In 'The Slave Trade Today', Sean O'Callaghan toured the Mideast and Africa and covertly visited many slave markets. Since Islam allows for slavery and slave trading, he was able to see much of the real world of Islamic slavery. Remember O'Callaghan saw this less than 40 years ago. This probably still continues today, albeit more discreetly.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />In Djibouti he writes:<br /><br /> "Ten boys were ranged in a circle on the dais (used to display the slaves), their buttocks toward us. They were all naked, and I saw with horror that five had been castrated. The (slave dealer) said that usually 10% of the boys are castrated, being purchased by Saudi homosexuals, or by Yemenis, who own harems, as guards." p 75<br /><br /> "Why had the girls (female slaves who had just been sold) had accepted their fate without a murmur, the boys howled and cried?" "Simple" said the Somali, we tell the girls from a very early age - 7 or 8 that they are made for love, at age NINE we let them practice with each other, and a year later with the boys".<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />In Aden he writes:<br /><br /> "The Yemeni told me that the girls (slave girls used as prostitutes) were encouraged to have children, especially by white men. For if a slave girl had a white child, she was given a bonus of 20 pounds when the child was taken from her". As you can see, the child of a slave remained a slave, the owner could sell the child and make money. This sale is allowable under Islamic law.<br /><br /><br /><br /> "Only one offense was severely punished; attempting to escape from the harem... The wretched girl was stripped and spread eagle in the courtyard...punishment was administer by a eunuch, a huge powerful Negro who seemed to enjoy his task. 70 lashes were given."<br /><br /><br /><br /> "Because of this (the fact that eunuchs can perform sexually), the eunuch often has his penis removed as well as his testicles"! This is also legal under Islamic law, since it is preparing the slave for service.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />In Saudi Arabia he writes:<br /><br /> 'The slave population was estimated at 450,000"!. ....Slave auctions are no longer held regularly, only in an alley in Mecca."<br /><br /><br /><br /> 'I was awakened by shouts and screams coming from the courtyard. Rushing to the window I looked down to see a dozen slaves being herded through a door at the far end of the yard. They were being driven in like cattle by three hefty guards armed with long lashed whips. Even as I watched, one of the poor wretches, a Sudanese girl with huge breasts, received a savage lash across her naked buttocks let out a shriek of agony'<br /><br /><br /><br /> 'As the next slave was led in, a murmur of excitement went up among the buyers and they crowded closer around the rostrum. He was a slender boy of about 12 years old with beautiful classical Arab features. Although much has been written about Arab brotherhood and solidarity, I knew that the Arab has no compunction in enslaving his fellows should they fall into his hands.<br /><br /> The boy was naked and tried to cover his privates with his little hands and he ran up the steps of the rostrum......there is an age old saying among the Bedouin: "A goat for use, a girl for enjoyment, but a boy for ecstasy". He (the now purchased slave boy) was claimed by a tall bearded Arab who led him from the rostrum with an arm around his waist".<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> This is just a portion of what O'Callaghan saw. This happens because Islam has made it legal for slavery. Yes, some of this is against Islam, but because Islam has made it into an institution, abuses will occur.<br /><br /><br /><br />Remember, this happened just 35 years ago or so, and it is probably still happening today.<br /><br /><br /><br /> It is also noted that as the slaves get too old to perform service or sexually satisfy their masters, their masters 'manumits' the slaves. Now, aged, worn out, they are put out on the streets to fend for themselves. These ex-slaves are left to fend for themselves. Their former owner has committed a great, righteousness act in freeing a slave! He gets rid of the burdensome slave, and gets a bonus in heaven. What a religion!<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> In Fisher's book, other observations are recorded:<br /><br />In Mecca:<br /><br />"We take note of 20 tall Negroes in turbans walking near the Kaba. They are eunuch slaves and are employed as police in the great Mosque. There are about 50 of them all together."<br /><br /><br /><br /> "The streets are full of slaves... we see a few old slave women. They are recognized by the poverty of clothing... but we see nothing of the younger women slaves who are kept in the houses of the city."<br /><br /><br /><br /> "As we move along we see two or three very old men and women who look like black skeletons. If we go to the mosque at sunrise we shall see some of these, if we go at sunset they will be there too, and if we pass by at midnight, we shall see them there still .. Sleeping on the stones in their rags. They have no home but the mosque, and no food but what they receive in alms; (they were) turned out to seek the bounty of Allah, as their masters would say."<br /><br /><br /><br /> Speaking of how Saudi obtains so many black slaves: "they (the slave traders) pose as Muslim missionaries who guide their compatriots (black African Muslims), to the Holy Places of Islam, to make the Pilgrimage, and be instructed in the Quran in Arabic." Once transported, they are made into slaves.<br /><br /><br /><br /> "So with the connivance of the Saudi authorities the ancient trade in black ivory is perpetuated in our time in spite of the international conventions".<br /><br /><br /><br /> Fisher also notes that white slaves are most highly prized.<br /><br /><br /><br /> Another interesting comment I've come across is that there were regions in black Africa that Muslim missionaries wouldn't go into. The reason is that if those blacks became Muslim, they could no longer enslave them. So, the Muslims banned spreading the word of Islam among certain black tribes. It was from these tribes that local Muslim rulers would harvest slaves, and sell them throughout the Islamic world.<br /><br /><br /><br /> Time and time again, slavery in Islam is abused. The west has finished with slavery, Islam continues it, and with that, the abuses go on.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> A recent article on the slavery in Sudan is found in Newsweek, Oct. 12, 1992. Since that time, there have been numerous articles written by every form of press on Islamic slavery in Sudan. Basically, southern Sudanese, who are not Muslim, are attacked, and rounded up, and sold into slavery. Anyone willing to do a search at a library could find these articles quite easily.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> Lastly, I remember watching a Tony Brown's Journal show. It covered the slavery existing in Muslim lands today, the torture of slaves, the hobbling by breaking the young boys ankles, the seizure of Negro lands by Arabs, etc. Anyone is able to call the show and order this tape. A Negro Muslim from Mauritania was on the show. He described what the Arabs in Mauritania were doing to the Negroes (all Muslim) there. Recent human rights publications have also stated that the same is happening in Mali. Arab Muslims are forcibly taking land, and enslaving Negro Muslims there.<br /><br /><br /><br /> Just a short while ago, a group of Negro pastors in the US, formed a group to combat Islamic slavery amongst the blacks, both Muslim and non-Muslim in Africa. The information on this can be found in the August 1997 issue of Charisma magazine, and in the 11-17-97 issue of Christianity. The group is called "Harambee" and is affiliated with the Loveland Church in Los Angeles, CA.<br /><br /><br /><br /> Islam, when compared to Christianity is a step backwards; a step into "justification" of the enslavement of others.<br /><br /><br /><br />The book "Behind the Veil" can be obtained from The Voice of the Martyrs @ 1-918-337-8015.<br />http://www.answering-islam.org/Silas/slavery.htmThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6277577951512572958.post-44240580007111688122008-07-30T04:15:00.000-07:002008-07-30T05:02:27.518-07:00Arab Muslim stave trade“What do expect, the Arabs used to sell us during the era of the slave trade, now they buy us.”one Africa diplomat comment.<br /><br />Slavery and bondage still persist in the 21st century. An estimated 27 million people around the globe suffer in situations of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation from which they cannot free themselves. Trafficking in people has become increasingly transnational in scope and highly lucrative. After illegal drug sales and arms trafficking, human trafficking is today the third most profitable criminal activity in the world, generating $31 billion annually. As many as half of all those trafficked worldwide for sex and domestic slavery are children under 18 years of age.<br /><br />Many societies worldwide possess oral histories and long memories, reaching back many centuries, particularly of wars and events of great trauma. The pre-colonial history of Southern Sudan is usely forgotten: it is a region that, according to some, "has no history." The region's largest ethnic group today, the Dinka, from their original homelands in the central Sudanese Gezira between the Blue and White Niles, in the fourteenth century, moved into their more recently adopted homelands in Southern Sudan. Early pre-colonial stresses play a critical role in modern-day South Sudan, in what has since become the world's longest civil war, fought externally against the fundamentalist Islamic Northern Sudanese government as well as internally within the South itself.<br />Despite damning reports from humanitarian organisations of continuing slavery and the continuing use of cruel punishments such as whipping and amputation, the Sudanese government slipped through the net for the first time, thereby resulting in the end of the mandate of the special UN rapporteur for Sudan.<br /><br />The massacres in Darfur are an open wound for Sudan, and one which the government does not want anyone to touch.<br />The misery, the poverty, the long demographic stagnation and the current developmental delays of the black continent, are not merely the consequences of the transatlantic slave trade, as many imagine. The transatlantic drain is well known and has been debated for decades. Studies and syntheses on this slave trade are legion. And yet, even though one cannot speak of degrees of horror or a monopoly on cruelty, it is possible to declare that the Negro slave trade and the wars provoked by the Arab-Muslims were, for black Africa through the centuries, much more devastating than the transatlantic trade. Likewise the Islamization of many Negro-African peoples and all that it engendered, such as jihad, were no less the source of innumerable implosions. But to this day, only the genocide of black peoples by the Arab-Muslim nations has not been clearly acknowledged by those who research the responsible parties. Even though this crime is historically, juridically and morally forbidden.<br /><br />Arab muslim slave trade history<br />Its begun in the 7th century A.D., the Arabs, having conquered Egypt, proceeded to enslave numerous peoples of Nubia, Somalia, Mozambique, and elsewhere, during the first Islamic expansion. The Nubians had been harshly dealt with in the fierce attacks by Arab forces. They defended themselves courageously, but faced with superior numbers and the determination of the soldiers of the jihad and the repeated assaults by Arab jihadists, the Nubians preferred to negotiate peace, concluding in 652 the treaty known as Bakht. This treaty committed the vanquished African monarch to turn over annually a supply of 360 captives to become slaves in the Arab-Muslim world. Thus it was that a large-scale Negro slave trade was for the first time invented by Arab-Muslims. The term Arab-Muslim means that after the Bakht, this trade became trans-Saharan and Eastern, implicating more and more peoples and regions and extending far beyond the Arab world. The traders who took part were also Berbers from the Maghreb, Turks of the Ottoman Empire and Iranians, hence Persians. Many African captives were sold by the Arabs as far away as India, since the king of Bengal possessed about 8000 slaves in the 15th century. The majority of men deported at the start of this trade came from the population of Darfur. It all began there, and apparently it has never ceased.<br /><br />In the Arab world - the Wahhabi system (Saudi Arabia) for example - did not favor economic and social development through the hard work of its inhabitants. It condemned them to an endless need for servile labor furnished by the Negro trade. Moreover, for an Arab of those times, a man is never poor so long as his neighbor possesses something. The Holy War came in handy, if you wanted to become rich. Since every believer had the obligation to lead a jihad, they said, it was imperative to subject and enslave the non-converted. They took the Koran abusively as a pretext to stage raids on their infidel neighbors, stripping them of all they possessed. And so it was that with a clear conscience and using methods that were convenient as well as blessed, most of these converted Arab tribes ended up not living from their own resources. Thus the permanence of the plague of the Negro slave trade and of Arab-Muslim slavery in Africa was due to the traditions of these peoples dating from a time when they could not, out of debauchery and laziness, do without servile men to infuse strength and new blood into them. For example, in the middle of the 19th century, one third of the population of Oman was African or of African origin. In Arab societies, Africans played a central role. They had no specific function but they took part in a great many common activities.<br /><br />There were first sudden raids and massacres followed by terrible and massive castrations . For example, in the Holy War led by that Sudanese Arab chieftain, a mystic, enlightened, who considered himself a Mahdi (descendant of the Prophet), the whole of Sudan from the ocean to Egypt, taking in all the plateaux of Africa - from the Nile to the Zambezi - was subject to manhunts and the sale of captives. This space was twice the size of Europe, and certain explorers estimated its population to be around 100 million in the the 19th century. To have an idea of the evil, you must realize that these same observers stated that to hunt down and carry off 500,000 individuals, it was necessary to kill almost two million others (who resisted or tried to flee). So if births had ceased at the time, then, in less than a half-century, the interior of Africa would be nothing but a desolate wasteland today.<br /><br />It must be stated that the disdain of the Arabs towards Africans was a catalyst for this unprecedented enterprise with a desire to annihilate the African Negro populations. The famous Arab historian of the 14th century, Ibn-Khaldum, wrote: "The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, because of an inferior degree of humanity, their place being closer to the level of animals." The question then was: how to see to it that these "animals" did not reproduce in Arab-Muslim lands. For from the outset of the slave trade, the traders wanted to prevent them from becoming rooted. Since there was nothing metaphysical about it, castration appeared to be a practical solution. And so, in this effort to abase human beings, if the Arabs sent most black women to harems, they mutilated the men, using rudimentary procedures that caused a terrifying mortality. The figures on this slave trade are quite simply harrowing. (...)<br /><br />About the current situation in Darfur, there is a Stockholm syndrome African-style:<br />Very numerous are those who would like to see the Arab-Muslim slave trade forever veiled in oblivion, often in the name of a certain religious, or even ideological solidarity. It is in fact a virtual pact signed and sealed between the descendants of the victims and those of the executioners, that leads to this denial. Because in this sort of "Stockholm syndrome African-style," all of these fine people agree to place everything on the shoulders of the West. The selective silence surrounding the Arab-Muslim crimes against black peoples and this effort to minimize it, so as to better point the projectors solely at the transatlantic trade, is a cement being used to bring about a fusion of Arabs and Negro-African peoples - who have long been " fellow victims" of Western colonialism. That Arab-Muslim writers and other intellectuals attempt to make even the simplest memory of this infamy disappear, as if it had never existed, is easily understood.<br /><br />On the other hand, what is harder to grasp is the attitude of many researchers, and even of African Americans who are converting more and more to Islam. This attitude is not always healthy and is strongly influenced by a sort of self-censorship. As if evoking the slave trading past of Arab-Muslims is in some way tantamount to minimizing the transatlantic trade.<br /><br />Thierry MenardThierry Menardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09410492197202954253noreply@blogger.com0