Islam and Slavery

Slavery of the Mind: Western Scholarship, African Slavery and Quranic Law

Seth J. Frantzman
Selected Topics in Islam
Fall 2004




















The 2004 edition of Lonely Planet’s African travel guide explains that “In Africa, slaves led similar lives to many other poor men and women, but they had even fewer rights.” The same volume goes on to wax poetic regarding the 14,000 slave girls of Mansa Kankan Musa of the Mali empire[1] and the “exotic” sultan of Zanzibar where slaves lived in underground cells 2 feet high.[2] Taking this as a starting point, let us examine the actual scholarship as it pertains to the question of the role of the Quran in the lives of Africans enslaved in Islam. The West first learned of Islamic slavery principally through the abolition movement in England and through a few narratives published by Whites enslaved by the Barbary pirates. The study of Islamic slavery quickly devolved to “western apologists” who “focused on the variety of personal statuses available to the slaves, or ex-slaves, under Muslim religious law.”[3] This coincided with an obsession to prove that Islamic slavery did not have racial overtones, thus shedding light on its favorable comparison to the mostly race based slavery of the Americas. Thus western approaches to Islamic slavery favored two avenues, first that Islamic slaves had better status under Quranic law and second that these slaves, once emancipated or while enslaved, were not being suppressed due to their race[4]. Westerners also “emphasized the exotic and – by western standards – anomalous military and harem slaves often found in Islamic states.”[5] This attitude framed much of the scholarship on Islamic slavery in the late 20th century.
There are several myths and problems facing the scholarship on African slaves in the Islamic world. The first problem surrounds the habit of most books to heavily weight the importance of the 'Quran' in terms of describing the status and livelihoods of slaves in Muslim societies. Scholarship seems to take it for granted that the Quranic law on slavery was strictly followed throughout the Islamic world. Thus it is common to find an introductory paragraph that reads something like "Under Islamic law the children of slaves were considered free and therefore Africans assimilated and were accepted into Islamic society as a whole.” Similar statements might include "Racism is not to be found in the Quran therefore racism did not exist in Muslim societies and African slaves assimilated at a pace not found in the Americas.” These gaps in logic seem to offer simple answers to any deep question regarding the actual treatment of African slaves or the actual ability of these slaves to supposedly intermarry and quickly become 'equal' members of Muslim society. This problem of the importance given to the Quran in western scholarship is more deeply confounded by the question of the fate of the descendants of African slaves. By some accounts as many as 11 million African slaves were deported to Muslim lands, with as many as 2.3 million being sent between 1600-1800. These large numbers of Africans being imported into the Arab societies of North Africa should have had a huge demographic impact, not simply in Africa but throughout the later Ottoman Empire when slave routes stretched into Anatolia and India. Yet research has not shed much light on the actual fate of these large numbers of slaves. If one uses the Americas as a comparison one finds huge numbers of the descendants of African slaves, in some cases entire countries such as Jamaica are composed of former slaves. Thus the question should be asked ‘what was the demographic affect of African slavery on Islamic civilization and what was the fate of the descendants of African slaves?’


The Quranic Law

When one begins a book on Slavery in America are they likely to begin with the Christian Bible? No. Then what is the impulse when discussing things Muslim to immediately leap to the conclusion that the answer must be found in the Quran. . When one begins a book on the African slave trade to Arab countries why do they begin by quoting the Quran. Is it because the West’s notion of Muslims is that everything they do is grounded in the Quran. Which came first, the Arab man or the Muslim? Since obviously the Arab came first then why not begin a discussion of slavery in Arab societies by discussing Arab society, as one would discuss American society when discussing slavery’s role in it. Moroccan slavery scholar Mohammed Ennaji writes that “The majority of authors dealing with the subject draw their information from collections of Muslim Law, travel books and fiction.”[6] So what is the course of this venerable Quranic Law that has influenced so many in describing Muslim slavery? The following references from the Quran are divided into three categories, with a notation at the end indicating the Arabic word used for ‘slave’, Riqab/riqaba meaning ‘necks’ or ma malakat aymanukum meaning ‘those your right hand possesses. Abd/abid is the other popular Arabic word for ‘slave’ but is not as common in Quranic descriptions of slaves.

Slaves as those one sets free:

2:177 The righteous man is he who…though he loves it dearly gives away his wealth… for the redemption of captives/slaves(Riqab/riqaba)
4:92 Whoever kills a believer accidentally must set free a believing slave(riqab/raqaba)
5:89 the expiation for (breaking an oath is) liberating a slave
58:2 Those who divorce their wives by so saying(that their wife is their mother) and afterward retract their words, shall free a slave. (riqab/raqaba)
90:13 Would that you knew what the Height is. It is the freeing of a bondsmen(slave). (riqab/raqaba)

Slaves as those one is allowed to marry or have sexual relations with:

2:221 You shall not wed Pagan women, unless they embrace the faith. A Believing slave-girl is better then an idolatress.
4:2 But if you fear that you cannot maintain equality among them(women), marry one only or any slave-girls you may own. (ma malakat aymanukum Those whom your right hand possesses)
4:25 If any one of you cannot afford to marry a free believing woman, let him marry a slave-girl. (ma malakat aymanukum)
4:36 …you may marry other women who seem good to you: two, three, or four of them. But if you fear that you cannot maintain equality among them, marry one only or any slave-girls you own. (ma malakat aymanukum)
24:32-33 Take in marriage those among you who are single and those of your male and female slaves who are honest. (ma malakat aymanukum)
23:1-6 Blessed are the believers…who restrain their carnal desires(except with their wives and slave girls, for these are lawful to them. (ma malakat aymanukum)
70:28-30 worshippers…who restrain their carnal desire(save with their wives and slave-girls, for these are lawful for them). (ma malakat aymanukum)
33: 52 It shall be unlawful for you to take more wives or to change your present wives for other women, though their beauty please you, unless they are slave-girls whom you own. (ma malakat aymanukum)

On the treatment of slaves:

4:36 Show kindness…to the slaves you own. (ma malakat aymanukum)
4:33 as for those of your slaves who you wish to buy their liberty, free them if you find in them any promise…(ma malakat aymanukum)
4:34 You shall not force slave-girls into prostitution in order that you may enrich yourselves, if they wish to preserve their chastity. (ma malakat aymanukum)
9:60 Alms shall be only for the poor…and the freeing of slaves. (riqab/raqaba
16:71 In what he has provided God has favored some among you above others. Those who are so favored will not allow their slaves an equal share in what they have. Would they deny God’s goodness. (ma malakat aymanukum)
24:58 Let your slaves and those who are under age ask your leave on three occasions when they come in to see you: before the dawn prayer, when you have put off your garments in the heat of the noon, and after the evening prayer. (ma malakat aymanukum)
47:4 When you meet the unbelievers on the battlefield…when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly. Then grant them their freedom or take a ransom from them, until War shall lay down her burdens.
30:28 He makes you this comparison, drawn from your own lives. Do your slaves share with you on equal terms the riches which We have given you? (ma malakat aymanukum)

(All quoted from The Koran translated by N.J Dawood penguin 1956 London, Notation for Arabic translation of ‘slave’ taken from The Human Commodity J.O Hunwick endnotes page 32)

This is the sum total of the mentioning of Slaves in the Quran, including the verses that mention “those your right hand possess’ which is commonly taken to mean slaves. By contrast the Tanach contains entire pages on the purchasing and treatment of slaves. Thus a cursory reading would lead one to the conclusion that Christian slaves would have been treated better. We know the horrors that Slaves crossing the Atlantic faced, thus we can conclude that the Bible had little impact on Christian slavery, although the Bible did influence those who came to abolish slavery in the 19th century.
The Quran’s treatment of slaves being as paltry as it is it is a wonder that so much scholarship was wasted on trying to ‘prove’ that Muslim slavery was affected in any way by Quranic law. Therefore much of the scholarship likewise focused on the Hadiths and their broadening of the rights and roles of Slaves in Islam. A small sampling of Hadiths as translated by John Hunwick.[7]

Hadith no 693 Abu Hurayra said: “The prophet said: ‘any man who frees a Muslim slave, God will spare him from Hell…’
Hadith no 696 Asma daughter of Abu Bakr said: “We used to be told to free slaves during a lunar eclipse’.
Hadith no. 720 Abu Musa said: “The Messenger of God-may God bless him and grant him peace-said: Whoever owns a slave girl and educates her, and is good to her, and frees her and marries her, shall have a double reward(from God).’”

Further Hadiths deal with the question of a slave owned by two people(697, 702) and Mohammed the Prophet himself engaging in slave raiding(no 717) among other small points. Nowhere in the Hadith does one encounter the ‘myth’ that westerners have painted of a Muslim law encouraging men to free their female slaves upon those slaves conceiving children by them or of the requirement that a slave be free upon the death of the master. Lovejoy in his Transformations in Slavery repeats the myth explaining:

“Because the status of concubines and slave wives changed, often leading to assimilation or full emancipation, the size of the slave population decreased accordingly. The children of slave wives and concubines by free fathers were often granted a status that was completely or almost free. Under Islamic Law, this was the most pronounced. Concubines could not be sold once they gave birth, and they became free on the death of their master. The children of such unions were free on birth”

This statement, taken from a general history of slavery, leads the reader to conjure up an image of benevolent slavery where the slave happily awaits the death of his master or marries free men and his children roam freely, no discrimination, no hardship above that of poverty. But this description of African slavery is a figment of the imagination, although it may have existed from place to place at a few times, the general framework here is largely a myth, constructed by Westerners and fed by Muslim scholarship that seeks to re-write the history of the Islamic slave trade. It is important to see just how the Quranic myth meets the reality.


The Acquisition of the slaves

47:4 When you meet the unbelievers on the battlefield…when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly. Then grant them their freedom or take a ransom from them, until War shall lay down her burdens.


Although the Quran makes clear that one might possess ‘believing slaves’ it became the accepted and preferred practice to enslave only non-Muslims. Thus “according to Sharia, the reason why it is allowed to own (others) is (their) unbelief. Thus whoever purchases an unbeliever is allowed to own him, but not in the contrary sense.”[8] General E. Daumas explained “slaves come from raids made on the neighboring Negro states with which Hausa is at war, and into the mountains of the land where the Koholanes who have refused to recognize the Muslim religion are brought back.”[9] It is accepted that Africans had been practicing slavery for quite some time and it is even true that a light slave trade was already taking place north to the Red Sea with the coming of Islam in the 7th century. For the next 800 years, until the arrival of the Portuguese in 1450, Muslims would dominate that African slave trade, and Africa would provide a major reservoir for cheap human commodities. Because Africans were not quick to convert to Islam and because they were not ‘peoples of the book’ and since Africans already had an institution of slavery it was logical that the Arabs would look to Africa first for a supply of slaves. Later supplies of slaves would open up among the Georgians, and in the Balkans and even among captured British merchant shipping, but Africa remained the cheapest and least troublesome place to find slaves, and in the Sudan that remains true even today.
The enslavement of people captured in war had been envisioned in the Quran and the Hadiths but the practice that Islam became known for and the practice that became the staple of African slavery was the slave raid. Although some Muslim states had treaties that guaranteed slaves as tribute these frequently were not enough and thus the leader of a Muslim state might order his army or some merchant to procure slaves for the army or the Sultan. A common description begins “Towards the end of 1838, the viceroy ordered the province of Cordofan to procure 5000 slaves.”[10] More often though the raiding was done by individual parties, merchants and traders.
The question should be asked whether the creation of an economy of slave raiders was in practice with the teaching of the Quran or whether it was a separate creation, like its western counterpart, a logical outgrowth of the demand of the Muslim empire for slaves. First, did the slave raids take place as part of a general ‘war’ between the ‘unbelievers’ and the Muslims? Around the island of Zanzibar, East Africa’s principle base of slaving, the African countryside in concentric circles began to be become depopulated. The best sources we have for this is the many accounts by the English, German and Belgians who, in the 19th century, were busy colonizing South Africa, the Congo and Tanzania respectively. These sources are not altogether unbiased for “the search for a way to open Africa to Christianity and civilization was made still more urgent by the discovery that slavery was still thriving[11]”, but they are the only western sources we have on the East African slave trade.
The sources confirm the presence of ‘war’ to acquire slaves but show that slave raiding and the existence of slave caravans was the predominant method of slave acquisition. Henry Morton Stanley, on penetrating Tanzania to find Dr. Livingston mentioned in his diary that he had encountered a “minor war between Arabs and Africans.”[12] It is pointed out in accounts that to some extent the villages became depopulated as the African men found shelter through joining roving bands of “brigands” and in some instances resorted to enslaving each other. Thus it is easy to see how an Arab slave expedition found many women destitute and willing to sell themselves into slavery. It is accurate to say that Non-believing Africans were selling eachother to Arab slavers but it is also true that by 1885, the year Africa was carved up at the congress of Berlin, Tipoo Tip “King of Arab slavers was firmly entrenched in the eastern Congo.”[13] Henry Morton Stanley himself mentioned that he had encountered Arab slavers around the area of Lake Tanganyika, on the border of the then Belgium Congo[14], a distance roughly equal to that from Rome to Paris. In 1858 Burton and Speke had likewise met Arab slave caravans far from the coast. The Arabs would not have been penetrating so far inland had they not exhausted the slave potential around the coast. This then was the affect of Arab slave expeditions, a total disruption of the African tribal systems anywhere bordering the Islamic world. The dividend, of course, was the addition of believers to the Islamic faith, at the expense that those Africans could no longer be harvested as slaves, without some pretense.
But the question still follows, was the Arab slave raiding contrary to Quranic teaching. The Arabs “made themselves unwelcome through their slave trading and so they had to stick to the safest routes, in many cases counting on the Africans themselves to supply them with slaves.”[15] It seems accurate to conclude that those who claim that the Quran was responsible for “reducing the avenues to enslavement and closing them off” are in fact wrong. The Quran did not decrease the number of slaves imported from Africa, if anything the creation of a cohesive Islamic empire, with surplus wealth increased the need for slaves. The creation of a slave raiding economy was not something envisaged in the Quran. By the 19th century various European observers concluded that out of a population of 250,000 on the island of Zanzibar, two thirds were slaves.[16] Does this square when compared with the optimistic conclusions regarding Islamic slavery put forth in an Arab textbook:

“The system of law in Islam…ordained in regard to dealing with slavery was the highest order of wisdom, combining the general good with mercy. It taught the slave, refined him and perfected him, and raised his status and made him equal with his master. It provided a livelihood for him and then freed him. In order to reach this goal Islam followed a threefold path: (1) reducing the avenues to enslavement and closing them off; (2) caring for the slave and perfecting him; (3) opening wide the gates to freedom for the slave”[17].

If the majority of the people inhabiting the largest Muslim city in east Africa were slaves then either the Islamic ‘gates to freedom’ were simply not wide enough for so many people or the Islamic law simply was not the liberating influence many assume it was. The end of slavery in Zanzibar came in 1873, not because of Islamic initiative but because of European imperialism and the abolitionist impulse of England[18].

Freedom of Slave children and slaves upon the death of the owner

2:177 The righteous man is he who…though he loves it dearly gives away his wealth… for the redemption of captives/slaves.

4:92 Whoever kills a believer accidentally must set free a believing slave.

5:89 the expiation for (breaking an oath is) liberating a slave.

58:2 Those who divorce their wives by so saying(that their wife is their mother) and afterward retract their words, shall free a slave.

90:13 Would that you knew what the Height is. It is the freeing of a bondsmen(slave).


The most frequently cited example of Islamic law intervening in a specific way to curtail slavery is the idea that the children of slaves by a free man became free and that slaves received their freedom upon the deaths of their owner. The only truth to be found in this is that the owner could promise to free his slave upon the owners’ death. The declaration, however, must have been made while the owner was in ‘good health[19]’. Even after such a promise had been made the owner “may confiscate his slaves possessions, so long as the slave is not ill.”[20]
“Emancipation on the death of the owner(tabdir), which did not deprive him of his slaves services during his lifetime found much favor among the faithful…emancipation was hardly the rule despite some foreign observers allegations that freedom lay automatically at the end of any slave’s career”[21] One of these Europeans was a man named Morrell who wrote concerning Algeria in the 1850s that “scrupulous Musselmans think themselves bound to offer liberty after nine years’ good service.”[22] Nevertheless a separate source writing on slaves in Mekka claims “Of a black female slave the highest ideal is to work in a good house so long as her strength allows it, for then in her old age she is affectionately cared for”[23]. Little data exists on how many slaves were emancipated and at the end of how many years. One would imagine however that if a majority of slaves were emancipated after only 10 years service then a much larger population of freed slaves retaining their native cultures would exist in Muslim societies, as indeed they do in the Americas after being enslaved for generations.
When one thinks of the Harem, the wonderful erotic paintings of the French, English and American orientalists does one picture thousands of children? Yet the Harems of royalty did consist of many hundreds of women. One would have assumed using modern statistics for birth rates among Muslim women that a hundred Harem women would have produced 700 or more children. The owners of these ‘concubines’ had sexual access to them at any time, and thus one would wonder where are all the children. The reality was that since a slave mother upon conceiving became umm walad or ‘mother of a child’ she was entitled to certain rights(such as being freed upon the owners death and the master could no longer sell her) and therefore it became the practice for owners to either discourage or actively seek to not have their sexual slaves become pregnant. Had the Harems produced hundreds of slaves these children would have been entitled to equal portions of the owners estates and thus rivals with the children born to the free wives of the slave owner. In morocco “Contraception and abortion were in fact widespread among concubines”[24]. When contraception failed it was reported in Morocco in 1890 that “shameless masters pretending not to recognize their own children by slave women, in order to sell them with impunity.”[25] How common these practices were is not clear from the available first hand accounts, but it would be judicious of those studying Islamic slavery to not simply give the Islamic law the benefit of the doubt but rather to explore the realities of the situations of those involved.
“A slave mother, supposedly automatically free, did not benefit easily from her rights; once her master died, his family generally denied his paternity of her children”[26] This was possible because for a woman to be recognized as umm walad much of the responsibility for claiming paternity lay with the father. He may claim “that she underwent a period of waiting to ascertain absence of pregnancy and that he did not thereafter have sexual intercourse with her. In such a case he is to be believed and the child is not to be considered his.”[27] If he denies that the child is his then two witnesses are necessary. One might ponder where such witnesses would have come from in a society where group sex was frowned upon. Either way it is quite reasonable that in a situation where an owner of a slave is not interested in his ‘concubines’ having his children he could simply deny being the father without accusing them of adultery. Any resulting children would be the property of the owner of the female slave and he could sell them as he sees fit. Nevertheless it is mentioned by one writer that “As mother of one or more Mekkans she belongs to Mekkan society as a virtually free member, though nominally her slavery continues.”[28] Thus although the law provided that the children of a slave with her owner would be considered free the actual freeing of these children was most likely not the rule but the exception.
The avenues to freedom were certainly many but by contrast the avenues back into slavery or to be deprived of these avenues were also many. Slaves who bore their masters children sometimes found that the master simply denied the existence of those children. Slaves who were promised freedom were deprived of it. Since the word abid meant both slave and African in Arabic it was also common that former slaves would even find themselves victims of kidnappings and re-sale[29]. The subject of the kidnapping and sale of ‘believers’ is dealt with below as is the practice whereby men denied having children with their slaves.


The illegality of trading in Muslim slaves and Dhimmi

One of the most enduring myths in Islamic slavery is the claim that only non-Muslims were enslaved. Since as the Muslim scholar Ahmed Baba pointed out it was their unbelief which created the reason for their enslavement[30] and that slavery therefore provided a point of conversion for non-Muslims who emerged from their ordeal ‘believers’ and were subsequently assimilated into Muslim society. Mohammed is alleged to have said ‘On the day of resurrection, I will oppose three people’ one being those who sold a free person into slavery[31]. Therefore it was assumed that Muslims, being free, would not be enslaved.
Yet Muslims were enslaved. The primary way a Muslim found himself enslaved by one of his own was through a war between two Muslim states. The most obvious example of this was the war between various African states that had already converted to Islam, for instance between Songhai and Morocco that began when Morocco invaded her neighbor in 1591.[32] Since Islamic law permitted the enslavement of people during battle this event proved ‘tragic’ since both sides where Muslim. Arab countries had solved this problem by using slaves as soldiers, thus negating the possibility that freed Muslims would end up enslaved, but the African nations, with their surplus in manpower, were employing native troops. Since Africans had been slave-raiding eachother prior to the arrival of Islam the idea that their fellow Africans suddenly became un-enslaveable due to conversion was not altogether accepted. In fact in East Africa, the Sudan and in West Africa, all along the fluid borders of Islamic Africa, tribes that may have converted would be said to be insufficiently Muslim, and therefore enslaveble.
No figures exist for the total number of actual Muslims enslaved in this matter but Ahmed Baba, living in Timbuktu wrote an impassioned book in 1556 condemning the practice.[33] In 1391 the King of Borno, near lake Chad complained that his people, who had converted to Islam, were being enslaved by Arabs who were “selling them to the slave-dealers of Egypt, Syria and elsewhere.”[34] Likewise Ahmed b. Khalid al-Nasiri condemned the taking of Muslim slaves in the Sudan, explaining “how far the people of these lands had taken to Islam from ancient times.”[35] These slaves were frequently being taken under the auspices of a Jihad when in reality they were free Muslims not in any state of war with the raiders who had decided they were unbelievers. Such was the motivation of profits and the little attention to the laws of Islam that throughout the border states along Dar Al-Harb and Dar al-Islam Muslim slaves were taken and then sold.
The second major path to slavery for a Muslim was one in which former slaves, having converted to Islam or being the children of slaves and having been raised Muslim were sold back into slavery through their owners or through kidnapping after having been freed. Africans were the most vulnerable since they could easily pass for slaves, the word for Black itself being the same as slave in many Arabic speaking societies[36]. In the early 18th century the Moroccan ruler Mulay Ismail is reputed to have simply enslaved freed but dark skinned and poverty stricken haratin having accused them of being ‘runaways’. In 1882 “Caids…kidnapped blacks(haratin) by the dozen…losing all semblance of legality.” In one case 40 free women were carried off in a raid. Ennaji in his text on Moroccan slavery in the 19th century concludes that the “phenomenon of kidnapping had widespread currency; up to the beginning of the twentieth century”[37]. One can assume from these scant but powerful recollections that if Morocco couldn’t control its countryside in the 1800s then the phenomenon could have been even worse in past centuries. Certainly this is yet another clear example that those seeking slave trading as an occupation were not guiding themselves by the Holy Quran but rather by the almighty gold coin.
The last major path was the less frequent practice of freed people selling themselves into slavery. The sources for this are few and far between, but this usually resulted from a time of famine when destitute people found themselves so poor that enslavement and survival seemed the best option. Speaking of Morocco Ennaji remarks that “The custom” of selling family members into slavery reared its head “everytime a famine threatened.” It even happened that wives would allow their husbands to sell them into slavery so that the children and husband would not starve.[38] Perhaps the best example of Muslims selling themselves into slavery is the case of the Circassians and although this work is devoted to the African slave trade this case is worth noting for it may well be emblematic of a deeper more disturbing phenomenon.
The Circassians were a Muslim Caucasian people who were forcibly deported by the Russians between 1855 and 1866, thus their mass movement, although unique, also resembles what one might find in a famine starved country. The Circassians crowding onto the boats destined for the Ottoman empire were often asked by the captain of the boat to give over one child as a slave for every thirty people.[39] The practice of free people being sold as slaves among the Circassians and among the Turks became so widespread that the government worried it would “give Islam a bad name.” Nevertheless it was understood that “if parents sold their children out of their own free will, the sale…would be valid…but parents should be warned…they would incur the wrath of God.”[40] The degradation of the Circassians reached to the highest levels, for the palace looking for the best looking Circassian girls even found itself purchasing free born women from the governor of Konya(a province in Ottoman Turkey).[41] This is but one very well documented example of the selling of free born Muslims, a practice that although it incurred the ‘Wrath of God’ apparently didn’t dissuade people throughout the centuries.


The treatment of the slave

4:36 Show kindness…to the slaves you own.

4:33 as for those of your slaves who you wish to buy their liberty, free them if you find in them any promise…

9:60 Alms shall be only for the poor…and the freeing of slaves.

16:71 In what he has provided God has favored some among you above others. Those who are so favored will not allow their slaves an equal share in what they have. Would they deny God’s goodness.

47:4 When you meet the unbelievers on the battlefield…when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly. Then grant them their freedom or take a ransom from them, until War shall lay down her burdens.

30:28 He makes you this comparison, drawn from your own lives. Do your slaves share with you on equal terms the riches which We have given you?

The treatment of slaves during transport is described again and again by many sources in much the same manner. The tale runs something like this “The dead ones thrown overboard to drift down the tide.”[42] The idea that slaves were thrown aside during the slaving expeditions was as common in the Zanzibar centered East African trade as it was in the Sudanese/Ethiopian trade as it was in the cross Saharan trade. Especially along the Saharan route where the Caravans crossed miles of open desert it was common for slaves to simply be left by the wayside. In the Saharan trade “mortality was high by any standards. Estimates vary greatly and range between 7 percent and 40 percent.”[43] Despite the fact that slaves did die en route to market it is also a fact that the Slavers would have done all in their power to not have this happen, as the more slaves surviving the journey the more profit for the operation.
Upon arriving at their destination of Zanzibar the treatment of the slave did not improve, thus the idea that the maltreatment was due to the equal suffering of all those on the slave caravan is not entirely accurate. Certainly the suffering endured by those slaves crossing the Sahara was equally visited to some extent upon those slavers leading the caravan. At the slave quarters in Zanzibar Niall Ferguson writes “You can still see the slave cells in stone town today: dark, dank and stiflingly hot, they convey as starkly as anything I know the misery inflicted by slavery.[44] They were “less than two feet high.”[45] Certainly such treatment was neither envisaged in the Quran and the idea that Islamic law in any way explains it is ludicrous. Rather the treatment of the slaves was one of pure economics, as were the similar conditions experienced by slaves destined for the plantations of the Americas.
One of the famous injunctions regarding Islamic slavery was the law that called for the freeing of slaves one ‘injures’. Unfortunately injury was defined as “Mutilation” or “gross disfigurement.”[46] This included the cutting off of any part of the slaves’ body. Many have cited that “the slave had recourse to the judicial authorities(the muhtasib) if he or she was mistreated”[47] This regulation proves exceedingly problematic when squared against certain realities. Eunuchs were the most highly priced slaves and the creation of eunuchs was something practiced usually soon after capture in Africa. It has been estimated that as many as 9 out of 10 slaves operated on died of this procedure[48]. Sources point to Egyptian Coptic priests or native Africans as the major supplier of African eunuchs. Since the Slave was in the possession of a Muslim then wouldn’t the slave have recourse to the very obvious law allowing him to be freed after the dreadful mutilation caused by becoming a eunuch? Either the slaver was entering some short term bargain with the non-Muslim operator or it was permissible for someone to damage a slave provided that person was not the owner, although it was permissible for the owner to pay for the mutilation of the aforementioned slave. One could thus conclude either Islamic law didn’t apply, or their existed a major loophole in the law, or perhaps the law was simply not followed.
The second instance of major transgression of the law was the death of slaves en route to the market. The freed African Yao slave ‘Swema’ tells of being sold into slavery to an Arab caravan in present day Tanzania. Her mother likewise sold herself into slavery to accompany the daughter. Along the Journey the Mother became weak. “The Arab leader ordered that Swema’s mother be chased out of camp…she was all but dead.” Later on seeing the girl was barely alive the owner ordered that she be buried saying “place this cadaver in a straw mat and carry it to the cemetery.”[49] Since this was a common occurrence, the death of a slave en route, one must wonder how the law of not ‘mistreating’ slaves squares with not having a law against simply killing them. It seems plain that the Islamic injunction, although on the surface seeming to ‘regulate’ and “alleviate the conditions of slaves in Muslim society”[50] did little to prevent the death of slaves from the mistreatment inherent in slavery.
One last observation is that in Islamic law it has been popular to make the connection that Slaves, women and Jews all figure in at the same level in terms of rights and therefore assume that the slaves were treated as ‘good’ as women and Jews. Yet one could make the similar conclusion that women and Jews were simply treated as badly as slaves. Rather then increasing the status and rights of slaves by comparing them to women under the law rather it simply diminishes the rights of women in Islamic society, not improving the lot of the slave.

Sexual relations and the Slave

2:221 You shall not wed Pagan women, unless they embrace the faith. A Believing slave-girl is better then an idolatress.

4:2 But if you fear that you cannot maintain equality among them(women), marry one only or any slave-girls you may own. (ma malakat aymanukum Those whom your right hand possesses)

4:25 If any one of you cannot afford to marry a free believing woman, let him marry a slave-girl.

4:36 …you may marry other women who seem good to you: two, three, or four of them. But if you fear that you cannot maintain equality among them, marry one only or any slave-girls you own.

24:32-33 Take in marriage those among you who are single and those of your male and female slaves who are honest.

23:1-6 Blessed are the believers…who restrain their carnal desires(except with their wives and slave girls, for these are lawful to them.

70:28-30 worshippers…who restrain their carnal desire(save with their wives and slave-girls, for these are lawful for them).

33: 52 It shall be unlawful for you to take more wives or to change your present wives for other women, though their beauty please you, unless they are slave-girls whom you own.

4:34 You shall not force slave-girls into prostitution in order that you may enrich yourselves, if they wish to preserve their chastity.

For a religion frequently seen as both moral and one that abhors the sexuality and promiscuity of the West, Islam in fact focused a disproportionate amount of time on sexual behavior. In terms of slavery this was most pronounced in the very liberal, one might say exploitative or libidinous, rules regarding the access to female slaves by male owners. Among these was “the masters unrestricted right to cohabit with any or all of his unmarried female slaves.”[51] At the same time “A slave girl who has not been brought up by her master from her childhood in his house is never bought as a virgin…her owner or some relation of her mistress deflowers her as soon as she has reached the age(12 to 14 years).”[52]
The reason for the taking of liberties with slaves was that “legal doctrine, very protective of the considerations shown a wife due a wife permitted much more concerning the black bodies of slaves, seemingly designed for pleasure.”[53] The sexuality of the Ethiopian Africans was ingrained rather early in Islamic fantasies and throughout the Muslim world Ethiopian women were highly valued for their sexual forte[54]. Sex was common with the enslaved African women, and many of them were sought out for that purpose. It was common for young men to lose their virginity to the female slaves owned by their parents, just as it was common for Latin American men to lose theirs to the maids of their households[55]. At the same time, as discussed in more detail below, the offspring of these unions were few due to the fact that they had not been purchased to produce children but rather to serve as sexual playthings in the bedrooms of the rich. Thus “The rich mans desire for black slave women was just as overwhelming as his disdain for similarly dark freedwomen.”[56]
Numerous sources confirm the sexual license taken by the slave traders themselves[57]. Since only the most attractive concubines destined for the best Harems were intended to be virgins it was common that sexual relations took place between those transporting the slaves and the female slaves themselves.[58] Once in the Harem the female ‘concubine’ slaves took on a special significance, jockeying for position and struggling to gain the ‘favor’ of their new owner. The obsession with these African ladies at the same time seems to have given the free Arab women a bad name. One remarks “If the ordinary Mekkan followed his inclination, he would unite himself only with Abyssinians(Ethiopians); it is however, part of ‘conveniences’ that a man should at least once in his life marry a freeborn woman.”[59] The common conception was that Black women were more exciting in bed. Sexual rules with them were more lax since they were not wives and Arab ‘white’ women were seen as ‘pale sickly with poor constitutions,”[60] with a “frigid unresponsive body.”[61]
Unfortunately for the slaves they were still chattel and although some did marry their owners it was not the rule since for the poor it was far too expensive to afford a slave whereas the rich had no interest in hundreds of children fighting over their estate. The treatment of the concubines did not in any way resemble the form of an Islamic marriage. But one might conclude that this area, in concubinage and sexuality, is the only place that Islamic law was certainly followed and exploited. Whereas laws enjoining owners to treat their slaves well or free the children they had with their slaves might have been gotten around, the laws regarding sexual advances on slaves was one that both in theory and in practice worked the way it was written. Slave women were envisaged in the Quran, it was seen that men would have sex with them and likewise men made use of those injunctions. The only mention of the breaking of the Islamic law in sources is that men may have had intercourse with their slaves before the required waiting period of several days had passed[62]. Mulay Abd al-Rahman reports “the sale of female slaves of concubine quality without observing the waiting period”[63] and Hurgronje Snouck reports similar “the Mekkans: it is to much for them to wait even two or three days(before sexual relations with new Concubines).”[64]
The Quran specifically forbade the using of Slave women as prostitutes and yet “Slave owners showed little consideration for the women they offered, in some rural regions, to overnight guests.” Other sources documented the same activity, explaining that “We have no clear indication how common it was for such women to be prostituted, the fact that writers on hisba warn the muhtasib to be on the watch for it, indicates that it cannot have been uncommon [also that] at the hands of a slave dealer prostitution was but a passing, though inevitably degrading experience.”[65] Similar reports from Sudan and Egypt in the 19th century as well as Libya in the 12th century indicate it was a regular practice.”[66] If an activity explicitly forbidden in the Quran was transgressed so much as to be reported as ‘common’ then one can conclude that many of the sexual injunctions regarding slaves were also not followed to the letter of the law.[67]

The Demographics of the Arab world today:

Bernard Lewis as well as others have tried to tackle the perplexing question of what became of the African slaves. If one compares the shear volume of African slaves taken to the Islamic lands they will find the numbers roughly correspond to those taken to the New World. Yet in the new world one finds entire countries populated by the descendants of slaves, history books filled with the stories of the slave trade, popular myths and vibrant tales associated with the same episode in history. A cursory glance at the Arab world will find no indication of a similar phenomenon. If the Atlantic slave trade, usually acknowledged to be far more harsh and cruel then its Islamic counterpart, produced so many African communities, then wouldn’t one expect to find more Africans retaining something of their identity in the Arab world? Perhaps the answer here lies in deciphering the fate of the roughly 11 million Africans exported to Islamic lands between the 7th century and the present[68]. Lewis provided two suggestions, first the existence of eunuchs among the male slaves, and the low birth rate among the female slaves. To these should be added a third hypothesis, that the structure of Arab society militated against the creation of vast numbers of slave offspring.[69]
Deducing accurate numbers for Arab slavery can be difficult but if one begins with the most modern period 1600-1900 there are at least some similarities between European sources based at the various embarkation and destination points of the slave trade. For the three main routes, the Saharan, Red Sea and Indian Ocean the numbers are 2.2 million between1600-1800 and 2,134,000 between 1800-1900 for a total of 4,334,000 for the period.[70] If one accepts the common perception that the slaves were purchased at a ratio of 1 male for every 2 females[71] then one would actually assume that more offspring would have been produced than had the ratio been reversed. However the mechanics of Islamic slavery were vastly different than its New World cousin. The male slaves roughly fit into two categories, that of slave soldiers or eunuchs. Since eunuchs were so expensive and since there was a heavy attrition rate among those selected for the operation it is conceivable that a low percentage of the male slaves became eunuchs. The African slave soldiers saw service throughout the Islamic empire, but like the foreigners the Romans had recruited into the legion, these slave soldiers were also to some degree expendable, especially since Africans were not prized as professional soldiers.[72] The Janissaries and the Mamluk Soldier armies, the best Islam produced were made up primarily of European, Caucasian or Central Asian slaves. With the male African slaves off on campaign or hemmed in at some barracks the major impetus for African reproduction became the female slaves. This is worth a closer look.
The primary role of African female slaves has been shown as that of household domestic or sexual partner or some combination of the two. Since African women performed most of the chores in their native society it became natural that they would be prized both as workers and as sex objects.[73] What sources do exist suggest that “female slaves had few children, and contrary to what we would expect if women were preferred to men for their reproductive potential, they didn’t even ensure simple reproduction.”[74]. Why weren’t the female slaves reproducing?
Of the female slaves selected to do ordinary household work, the ‘domestic slaves,’ these were usually selected because they were not the choice beauties of the African world. Although African women were prized for their sexual abilities, their bodies ‘seemingly designed for pleasure’, the female slaves chosen for household work were rarely taken as concubines.[75] Since these same household slaves were only allowed the privilege of marriage if their owner approved it appears as if not many were producing children. Among the slaves chosen for the Harems or to be concubines a number of circumstances mitigated against them having many offspring. First it was not uncommon for some form of birth control to be practiced, whether some antiquated contraceptive device or Coitus Interuptus or even abortion to be used to prevent pregnancy and offspring.[76] It is noted that “there is no evidence that slaves who had children were favored over those who did not”[77] thus it can be assumed that based on at least some sources that concubines were not being encouraged to have children. Certainly the much smaller minority of slave women that were married to freed men were encouraged to have children. Whereas in the New World the plantation owners maximized birthrates to increase investment returns, the Muslim world had a setup that virtually guaranteed low returns from the very same numbers of slaves.
Does the virtual non-existence of African post-slave societies prove that ‘assimilation’ was not emblematic of Islamic slavery?[78] Not necessarily. One could conclude that the African slaves simply disappeared from Islamic societies because there were so few left to absorb. If one can slice away the third of the slaves that were men, and the third of the slaves that were female domestic then one is left with the concubines, and due to low birth rates and even deaths from disease one could say that their simply were not many African slaves left to reproduce. This doesn’t negate the assimilation argument but it definitely makes it less accurate as a blanket explanation
If we take the example of Morocco in the mid to late 19th century we can see this working in microcosm. In the south where slaves were being used to some extent as plantation labor we find that they were still producing barely one child for every two slaves. In the rest of Morocco we find that “cases of systematic coupling(marriage among the slaves) were rare, because of the large imbalance in the numbers of men and women, with women predominating.[79]
Demographics are a good way of coming to understanding of the nature of the treatment of slaves. The American version of slavery is generally acknowledged to have been brutal and nefarious, yet the slaves, although converting to Christianity, retained some parts of their culture and identity. If Muslim slaves, as is conjectured, had a higher status and more rights then one would think to find large African societies in Muslim societies. The major themes and often stressed points relating to Islamic slavery are first that slaves were assimilated[80], second that slaves were released after a certain term of service and third that the children of slaves were often freed. If one takes these three points to be accurate then one would likewise find large populations of freed Africans living in Arab and Muslim lands. After all the American form of slavery which lasted for hundreds of years produced such huge African remnants then therefore if slaves were kept for short periods and freed by the second generation they would have likewise produced large residual populations. Lewis comments “There is nothing in the Arab, Persian and Turkish lands that resembles the great black and mulatto populations of North and South America.”[81] Hunwicks comment on the same problem is “there is simply not enough data at our disposal to make any general statements about the existence or size of residual black communities in the Mediterranean world or to the extant to which freed slaves and their descendants have integrated into society.”[82]
Trying to reconcile these two viewpoints in light of the question as to how literally Islamic slavery mirrored its outlines in Islamic law produces one important reconsideration. Perhaps Muslim slavers and slave owners didn’t follow Islamic guidelines regarding their slaves. As has been shown these guidelines were frequently broken, therefore if such breaking was widespread what would have been the influence on the demographics of African former slave populations in the Arab world? As for the assimilation argument it is quite possible that due to the mechanics of the slave trade, as shown above, that few assimilated offspring were in fact produced. As for the argument that slaves were released early it can be shown that this was not the standard practice and that even if they were released their chances of being re-enslaved was a threat. If the children of African slaves were not always freed and their masters did not admit paternity there is further evidence that slaves were not being assimilated or even freed in the manner one usually supposes. The affect this had would have been to create slave populations that it is documented did not reproduce themselves and had to be constantly replenished with more slaves.
As proof of the fact that slaves were not replenishing themselves one can assume that “quite probably, the conditions of existence of slave women and the social climate within which they lived did not encourage them to procreate or to keep their children. [therefore] It seems that the primary value of the female slave was not in her reproductive capacity, unless we assume that slavery functioned everywhere on the basis of a misunderstanding.”[83] Lastly “those women who did not become concubines may not have been allowed to marry…Male slaves may have had little chance to marry”[84]. It has been shown that “Slaves tended not to maintain their numbers naturally, and slave populations usually had to be replenished” despite the demographic imbalances in the populations.[85]
As an extreme example of this one might look to the Harem for the best evidence that the African women were not reproducing in sufficient numbers. Since they were prized so much for their sexual attributes, the youngest most attractive African women in the midst of their child bearing years were sent to the royal or upper class Harems. Since Muslim law allowed four wives but an unlimited number of female slaves it was common for men of higher standing to have female sex slaves as part of their status. It was noted that even the grinding of teeth was enough for the female slaves destined for the bedroom to be unacceptable to a choosy buyer.[86] Yet in these Harems one does not find that large numbers of children are recorded in any of the many chronicles dating from the 19th century. In the Harems that included sometimes hundreds of women, few children were actually being produced. This harkens back to the previously documented use of contraceptives and abortion to prevent pregnancy, since offspring of the Harem girls would share in the inheritance of the owner then such offspring would have created havoc in royal households where the legal wives expected their children to inherit the wealth of their husband, not the son of a slave girl. Therefore in 1891 alone 15-20 girls were purchased for the imperial Harem in Istanbul, yet certainly these slave girls didn’t produce the 5 children each that a normal Muslim housewife at the time was likely producing.[87] Lovejoy sums the problem up best by explaining that “These two opposites Castrated males and attractive females-demonstrate most clearly the aspect of slavery which involved the masters power of sexual and reproductive functions[88].” With that power came the ability to regulate within reason the number of offspring a slave produced.
Perhaps the best evidence for the frequent breaking of Quranic injunctions regarding slavery is the prevalence of Arab and Berber populations in North Africa and the virtual non-existence of former slave populations in Arab countries. One might surmise that had the Quranic laws and Hadiths been followed properly African populations would not just be prevalent but in fact the dominant element in many Arab countries owing to the large numbers of Africans imported over the years of Islamic enslavement of Africans. The non-existence of such populations, the demographics of the Arab world, is partial proof that Quranic law was not followed by the majority of slave owning Muslims, at least not in regards to African slaves in the Arab world.

The proper place of the Quran in the Islamic trade in African slaves

Has the use of the Quran in describing African slavery in Muslim societies led scholarship to not sufficiently explore the question of African demographics among Arab and non-Arab Muslim societies? The assumption among much scholarship, despite evidence to the contrary, is that the Quran and Islamic law functioned as the determinative framework regarding the lives of African slaves exported to Muslim societies. This bias in favor of official Islamic legal opinions or traditions has led scholars to conclude that slaves ‘assimilated’ into Muslim society and that the treatment of those slaves was of a more gentle nature then the western version.
What is so convincing about referring to Quranic law that it seems to cloud the normally investigative judgment of scholarship? Is it perhaps the prejudice that leads many to assume either the best or worst regarding cultures other than ones own. Is it the same bias that directed scholars and researchers in the 1930s to believe that Stalin’s Russia was a socialist paradise? Most western scholars, although familiar with laws in America whereby racial discrimination was made illegal but the practice of racism still continued, seem to have been apt to disregard such obvious separation between what laws say and what people do when writing about Islamic societies and particularly Islamic law. Yet some scholarship has admitted that things are moving in a new direction.

“Islamic law is no longer the determinative framework, nor is the culture of the masters a transcending constant. Muslim masters like Romans or Brazilian planters turned to slavery where the opportunity presented itself…either side may have drawn where it could on Islamic ideals, but they did so in the midst of numerous other concerns... there were many kinds and experiences of slavery in Muslim lands, even as there were-and are-many versions of ‘Islam’.(Human commodity 251)”

Perhaps the best way to understand the non-application of clear Islamic laws is in understanding Ennaji’s point that “away from urban centers, the law indeed did fail…Even worse Sharia law often went unobserved in rural areas’[89] Thus like the Bedouin’s ancient customs which predated Islam, it was common as it is in most of the world for laws to lose their sting the farther one gets from the source. Today’s Islamic world, with a real time connection to Mecca has become increasingly homogenized in the dissemination of norms of behavior, but Islam in the past, although inhabiting a huge empire may have suffered from a breakdown in the following of the Quranic law. It is certainly plausible that scholarship when writing about Islam could see fit to cast away the aura surrounding a different religion and assume that Islamic societies have many of the commonalities to Western ones, so whereas the message of peace taught by Jesus rarely penetrated the slave plantations of the south, likewise the Quranic law did not penetrate into the outer regions of Islam. Islamic law may simply not be the best lens through which to see the Islamic world and certainly is not a good gauge as to the actual practices of Islamic slavery. .
At least part of the problem in dealing with Islamic slavery in Africa has been the absence of scholarship devoted to the subject. For example in a recent history of Slavery by Paul Lovejoy(Transformations in Slavery) four pages are devoted to the Islamic influence on African slavery before 1400. This radical bias in favor of the Atlantic slave trade cannot be attributed to the numbers of slaves actually taken, as is the popular reason given by most. As Lovejoy admits “Over 11 million slaves left the shores of the Atlantic coast of Africa; perhaps as many more found their way to Islamic countries of North Africa, Arabia and India.” Thus the bias can better be explained by a lack of western sources and a lack of interest in the subject. Certainly the only people originally interested in Islamic slavery were the abolitionists such as Dr. Livingston and the orientalist painters and writers interested in describing the ‘exotic’ scenes of the Harem and the eunuchs.
In the 1960s and 1970s scholarship shifted to focus on a comparison between western slavery and Islamic slavery. The remnant of this comparative literature lives on in recent works such as Teledano when he writes “True most sources are in agreement that, as a rule, Ottoman-Islamic chattel slavery was milder then its Western counterpart.”[90] Likewise Lovejoy explains that “A brief postscript is necessary to consider the special case of slavery in the Americas, because the American system was particularly a heinous development” turning to Islam he says “they were also more likely to be incorporated into Muslim society…In Islamic tradition slavery was perceived as a means of converting non-Muslims…assimilation into the society of the master as judged by religious observance was deemed a prerequisite for emancipation and was normally some guarantee of better treatment.[91]” Lastly Hunwick also digresses to claim that “Plantation slavery, with its concomitant brutality and degradation, was comparatively rare.”[92] This most recent scholarship can be added to works by Bernard Lewis and Mohammad Ennaji, which are finally painting a more accurate and deeper picture of all facets of Slavery in Islamic society.
Certainly slavery was sanctioned by the Koran and slavery clearly was destined to play a part in Islamic society but the idea that the treatment of slaves can in any way be determined by the lines written in the Koran is inaccurate, for once the slave trade became ingrained in Islamic life, the economics and the slave merchants became its driving force, neither war nor the certain ‘obligation’s’ of Islamic law served as a good determinant of the function of slaves in society. The proper role that the Quran should play in describing slavery in Islamic society is a cursory mention, certainly not the assumption that it was the bases for the treatment of slaves throughout the Islamic world. The various laws of the Islamic empire did include the basic assumptions that slaves should not be beaten, that the children of free men and slaves should be freed and the other important laws enumerated above. Yet, like the Catholic cannon law, it provides but a framework and not a true predictor of societal behavior. Since it is rare in western scholarship to include chapters on slavery in the Bible when discussing the New World slave trade it seems likewise appropriate that when dealing with the Islamic slave trade that the Quran not be given the focus that has been.







Notes

[1] Lonely planet Africa on a Shoestring page 25
[2] ibid 602
[3] Hunwick, John. The Human Commodity, 249
[4] Since this paper does not concern race but rather the legal aspects of Islamic slavery as they have been presented to a western English language audience and since as many have noted race is not mentioned in the Quran, I have not dealt with the fascinating subject here. One comment though, despite the often repeated remark that Islam is not a ‘racist religion’ one might wonder ‘is there a religion that is racist?’. Just because the religion of a people is not racist does not make individual members of that faith not racist. Bernard Lewis in Race and Slavery examines this subject in much detail.
[5] Hunwick, John. The Human commodity, 249
[6] Ennaji, Mohammed. Serving the Master, xxi
[7] Hunwick. The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam pages 6-7
[8] Lewis, Bernard page 148 quotes a fifteenth century fatwa from North Africa which makes slavery a punishment for unbelief: “slavery is a humiliation and a servitude caused by previous or current unbelief and having as its purpose to discourage unbelief.” And the same is found in Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam 24
[9] Daumas, Gen E. Le Grand Desert. in Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam 62
[10] Daumas, Gen E. Le Grand Desert. in Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam 53
[11] Ferguson Empire 128
[12] Ibid
[13] Legum, Colin. Congo. 27
[14] Ferguson Empire 161
[15] Theroux Dark Star Safari 249
[16] Beachey The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa 155
[17] Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam 19
[18] Ferguson Empire 237 The colonizing of Africa ended the slave trade but it did not end slavery. Well into the 20th century slavery was alleged to have existed in Nigeria, the Seychelles and the Sudan. An interesting testament to the ongoing trade can be found in the testimony of John Rhys Davies:
“I grew up in colonial Africa. And I remember in 1955, it would have to be somewhere between July the 25th when the school holiday started and September the 18th when the holidays ended. My father took me down to the quayside in Dar-Es-Salaam harbor. And he pointed out a dhow in the harbor and he said, “You see that dhow there? Twice a year it comes down from Aden. It stops here and goes down [South]. On the way down it's got boxes of machinery and goods. On the way back up it’s got two or three little black boys on it. Now, those boys are slaves. And the United Nations will not let me do anything about it.””

[19] Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam 30
[20] ibid
[21] Ennaji, Mohammed. Serving the Master 54
[22] Hunwick Human Commodity 24
[23] Hurgronje, Snouk. Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th century. in Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam. 117
[24] Ennaji Mohammed. Serving the Master 55
[25] Ennaji Mohammed. Serving the Master 56
[26] Ennaji, Mohammed. Serving the Master 55
[27] Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam 30
[28] Hurgronje, Snouk. Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th century. in Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam. 117. The same is true of the late King Hussein of Jordan whose mother was Circassian, and either born a slave or most probably the descendant of slaves, as well as Anwar Sadat. To say that no men married their slaves or that the children of such marriages did not inherit their fathers position is not accurate, but to assume that all children born of freed men were recognized as such is also not accurate.
[29] Hunwick Diaspora xix
[30] Lovejoy Transformations in Slavery 31
[31] Ennaji Serving the Master 76, he also writes of Morocco “Shamelessly immoral people took part in the lowest form of trafficking, handing over their fellow Muslims for sale.
[32] Lovejoy Transformations in Slavery 31
[33] Lovejoy Transformations in Slavery 31
[34] ibid
[35] From The Kitab al-istiqsa in Hunwick Diaspora. 44
[36] Hunwick Human Commodity 30
[37] Ennaji. Serving The Master 76 Also in A Slave Narrative in Hunwick page 246 describes one slave families recollections of being afraid to leave their masters village even after being freed for fear of being re-enslaved and Sultan Mulay Abd al-Hafiz. Kunnasha in Hunwick 43-44 describes the re-raking of African slaves.
[38] Ennaji Serving the Master 83 “the oft-invoked wife’s consent to enslavement indicates the misery and privations they endured.”
[39] Toledano, Ehud. The Ottoman Slave trade and its suppression. 154
[40] ibid 158
[41] ibid 187
[42] Beachey East African Slave Trade 61
[43] Toledano The Ottoman Slave trade and its suppression. 30
[44] Ferguson Empire 128
[45] Lonely Planed Africa on a Shoestring 602
[46] Hunwick 27 Diaspora
[47] Hunwick Human commodity 31
[48] Lovejoy Transformations in Slavery 35. The process is described below:
Black eunuchs were captured from Egypt, Abyssinia and the Sudan. Black slaves were captured from the upper Nile and transported to markets on the Mediterranean Sea - Mecca, Medina, Beirut, Izmir and Istanbul. All eunuchs were castrated en route to the markets by Egyptian Christians or Jews, as Islam prohibited the practice of castration but not the usage of castrated slaves. Sandali, or clean-shaven: The parts are swept off by a single cut of a razor, a tube (tin or wooden) is set in the urethra, the wound is cauterized with boiling oil, and the patient is planted in a fresh dung-hill. His diet is milk, and if under puberty he often survives. Black eunuchs tended to be of the first category: Sandali, From: www.allaboutturkey.com/ harem.htm.

[49] Alpers. Women and Slavery in Africa 198
[50] Hunwick Human Commodity 7
[51] Hunwick Human Commodity 31
[52] Hurgronje, Snouk. Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th century. in Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam.116
[53] Ennaji Serving the Master 34
[54] Hurgronje, Snouk. Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th century. in Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam. 117 and Ennaji Serving the Master 34.
[55] Ennaji Serving the Master 34, “a mans very initiation to sex was often the work of a concubine.” Hunwick Diaspora 120 “the negresses that well-off burghers are in the habit of giving to a son as soon as he reaches the age of puberty.” Likewise Che Guevara confirms that he and most of mates in Argentina lost their virginity to the household help.
[56] ibid
[57] “most of the Abyssinian and black slave girls are abominably corrupted by the gellabs or Slave traders” Hunwick Diaspora 112
[58] William, Edward Lane Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, written in Egypt during the years 1833-34. found on page 112 of Hunwick Diaspora.
[59] Hurgronje, Snouk. Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th century. in Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam. 115
[60] Tharaud, Jerome and Jean. Fez, ou les bourgegeoise de l’Islam. in Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam. 119
[61] Ennaji Serving the Master 34
[62] Hurgronje, Snouk. Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th century. in Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam.116 “the law is much transgressed.” For a look at the idea that ‘concubines did not resemble wives’ see Ennaji Serving the Master 33 or Hunwick Diaspora 113.
[63] Ennaji Serving the Master 37
[64] Hurgronje Snouk Mekka in the Latter part of the 19th century in Diaspora.
[65] Hunwick Human commodity 16
[66] Hunwick Human commodity 16
[67] Other references for the place of female sexual slaves:
An insight into the purchasing of female slaves “three days trial is generally allowed to the purchaser…snoring, grinding of the teeth, or talking during sleep, are commonly sufficient enough reasons for returning her. Hunwick Diaspora 112 “in practice a master would short of money would use a single slave for everything from servant to concubine…one could find plenty of pregnant slaves on the market…buyers rarely scorned them” Ennaji Serving the Master 37

[68] Lovejoy Transformations in Slavery 12
[69] The second myth is harder to seek an answer to. One would assume that if the volume of the slaves being imported to North Africa and throughout the Islamic empire was high enough then large remnants of these slave populations would exist today, as they do in the New World. The usual excuse that the slaves “blended and intermarried” with society would mean that the resulting offspring would be Africanized, Mulatto, resembling the Cape Coloureds of South Africa or the people of Sao Tome, of mixed complexion, but obviously retaining some link to their African ancestors. Or one could look at the issue from a separate demographic viewpoint and ask ‘how much of the demographics of North Africa are due to the importation of Slaves’ which is to say to wonder if Hannibal and the Carthaginians resemble modern day Tunisians. If one accepts the first argument, namely that Africans have not demographically changed the look of North Africa or other Arab countries, then what happened to the slaves and their offspring? If one accepts the second argument, that the African slaves did have a major impact on North African demographics then one still is left with the question of what happened to the offspring of slaves shipped throughout the Ottoman empire.
Even an eminent scholar such as Lovejoy seems to have been taken in by the myth of Islamic slavery. He writes that children of slave concubines “were technically free and usually recognized as such(Lovejoy 2).” Then he explains that “Most children of slaves were assimilated into Muslim society, only to be replaced by new imports(Lovejoy 16).” And then there is the more interesting theoretical logic twisting where we learn that “the wives of slave origin in societies based on kinship were seldom sold either, and their status was closer to that of becoming a member of the kin group and hence free.” By this logic every slave is basically “free” as long as his chances of being resold are low. An extension of this argument would be to say that every slave is ‘hence free’. If we take this to be an accurate description then we must combine this fact of ‘most’ children being assimilated into Muslim society and deduce that of the 2.3 million slaves being imported to Muslim lands from 1600-1800(Lovejoy 62) then they would have produced perhaps 6 million ‘assimilated’ children. That would have created a largely Africanized Muslim world. But in traveling in most Muslim lands the majority of people are not African, nor do they have African features, in fact outside of North Africa and a few small islands in southern Iran it is rare to ever see anyone even remotely resembling an African in a Muslim country. So where did these children who were being assimilated in a paradise free from the ‘racial’ aspect of slavery(Lovejoy 8) . It is noted by North African countries themselves that their heritage is either ‘Arab’ or ‘Berber’ or a mixture of the two.
The volume of slaves exported to Islamic lands was 11 million(Lovejoy 12). In the case of the Americas we see that the resulting descendants today account for roughly 16% of the United States, as well as the vast majority of islands such as Jamaica, with mixed populations of Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil and Trinidad also containing the descendants of African slaves. These numbers reach close to 100 million today. Where is the resulting 100 million slave descendants one would then expect to find spread throughout Islamic lands.

[70] For more discussion as to the volume of the trade see Transformations in Slavery by Paul Lovejoy page 62 and 142 or Ralph Austen ‘The trans-Saharan slave trade: a tentative analysis. In H.A Gemery and J.S Hogendorn(eds.) The Uncommon Market: Essays in the economic history of the Atlantic slave trade, pp 23-76. New York.
[71] Hunwick, The Human Commodity 26, further discussion can be found in Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam as to the fact that female slaves were worth twice that amount of males. Also Lovejoy page 20 makes the same point.
[72] Ennaji Serving the Master 76
[73] Women and Slavery in Africa 54 explains that women were doing most of the traditional work in African society.
[74] Meillassoux, Women in African Slavery 52.
On demographics it is observed that “Slaves tended not to maintain their numbers naturally, and slave populations usually had to be replenished(Lovejoy 7).” Also the “Demographic imbalance between the sexes in slaves populations(Lovejoy 7)” is a second reason for this phenomenon. Europeans imported approximately 2 men for every woman(Lovejoy 20).
[75] Ennaji, Mohammed. Serving the Master 34
[76] Mentioned in Mohommed Serving the Master 35, and Hunwick The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam 30. “concubines are often inclined to use the temporary preservative against fruitfulness(Hunwick Diaspora 117)” Also Ennaji, Mohammed. Serving the Master 55
[77] Strobel Women and Slavery in Africa 121
[78] Iran proves to be the exception, where large numbers of Africans and dark skinned Bedouins exist in southern Iran.
[79] Ennaji. Serving the Master 38.
[80] This idea is presented and not refuted in almost all English language texts and references regarding Islamic slavery. Lovejoy writes “Women and children were wanted in greater numbers then men. They were more likely to b e incorporated into Muslim society. Boys either eunuch or virile were trained for military or domestic service(Lovejoy 16). “Emancipation, concubinage, domestic servitude, political appointment, and military position also militated against the establishment of a slave class with a distinct class consciousness(Lovejoy 16).” Then: “they were also more likely to be incorporated into Muslim society(Lovejoy 16)…In Islamic tradition slavery was perceived as a means of converting non-Muslims…assimilation into the society of the master as judged by religious observance was deemed a prerequisite for emancipation and was normally some guarantee of better treatment.(Lovejoy 16).”Or “Emancipation was an implicit assumption of the Islamic system and many avenues were provided for it, some voluntary and some obligatory” and “Islamic law recognized only two basic conditions: freedom, which is the basic assumption regarding the human condition, and slavery, which is a state of legal incapacitation(hajr) of limited duration.”( Hunwick Human Commodity 31). If this was true then why did some slave populations create enslaved children as testified by Toledano when describing the Ottoman slave trade:
“when still in bondage, many parents-with the consent of their masters-sought to better their children’s lot, as well as their own, by selling them to harems in big cities.(Toledana 189)”

As an example here is a letter I received:
This is the full text of the letterFrom: "Alistair Boddy-Evans" <africanhistory.guide@about.com>To: "seth frantzman" <sfrantzman@hotmail.com>>Subject: Re: QuestionDate: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:23:36 +0200Dear sethThe simple answer to this question is that African slaves became incorporated into Muslim society. Unlike America, families were not necessarily allowed to stay together or new "familes" develop. Female slaves, usually used for domestic work or for sex, may have escaped by "marrying" into the Muslim family, once they had satisifed a basic condition of accepting Islam completely. (This proviso is often mentioned, but in reality was not asoften acted upon, slaves were just too precious a comodity.) Children would have been of mixed heritage. Over the years African culture was effectiviely eradicated (you became a Muslim or you died a slave), and decendents look just like everyone else. In Egypt's case, slaves were co-opted into the army, and there they were able to achieve a sort of freedom, and maintain families. There was also a longer history of use of African slaves in the particular region.>Regards
>Alistair

in response too:Dear Sir,I am doing reasearch on Islams African slaves and have been unable to fill in one major gap. What happened to the descendants of these African slaves imported to Muslim countries. Paintings and travelers from the 1800s show the presence of Africans in Muslim societies. We know that the ratio of women taken to men was 2:1, but we don’t see large African communities in any Muslim country accept Egypt. Yes in the western countries that imported slaves, like say America, one find huge communities of their descendants. What happened to the children of these Africans? Do you have any idea where to look? Thank you for any help,Seth Frantzman

[81] Lewis, Bernard. Race and Slavery 84
[82] Hunwick Human Commodity 26
[83] Meillassoux Women in African Slavery 51
[84] Hunwick, The Human Commodity 26
[85] Lovejoy Transformations in Slavery 7 a demographic breakdown might look something like this:

A demographic model for Islamic slavery: of 10,000 taken as many as 10 percent die en route leaving 9000. Of the 9000, 3000 are men. 3000 of the women are destined for household work. 3000 of the women are destined for some for sexual relationship with their owners. Of those who survive disease they may bear as few as 390 children[85]. Of these maybe a third would be considered ‘free’. If by assimilation authors have really meant disappearance then this is exactly what was happening, although most readers over time have come to think of assimilation not as extermination, but rather as incorporation into society, as a melting pot.

[86] The purchasing of ‘negresses of the bedroom’ is described in detail in Tharaud, Jerome and Jean. Fez, ou les bourgegeoise de l’Islam in Hunwick 119-120. and in Hurgronje, Snouk. Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th century. in Hunwick pages 114-118.
[87] Toledano The Ottoman Slave trade and its suppression. 191
[88] Lovejoy Transformations in Slavery 6
[89] Ennaji Serving the Master 84
[90] Toledano The Ottoman Slave trade and its suppression. 4
[91] Lovejoy Transformations in Slavery 8 and 16
[92] Hunwick Human commodity 31










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