Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (16 page)

The attitude to black Africans remains on the whole negative. Some Muslim authors give balanced and factual accounts, based on personal knowledge,
of the black kingdoms; a few even write pious treatises to defend the dark
peoples against their detractors. Such defense was clearly felt to be necessary,
because of the survival of old prejudices." Even the great geographer Idrisi,
in concluding his account of the first climate (geographical zone) with some
general remarks on its inhabitants, repeats the old cliches about furrowed feet and stinking sweat and ascribes "lack of knowledge and defective minds" to
the black peoples. Their ignorance, he says, is notorious; men of learning and
distinction are almost unknown among them, and their kings only acquire
what they know about government and justice from the instruction of learned
visitors from farther north. The thirteenth-century Persian writer Nasir al-Din
Tusi remarks that the Zanj differ from animals only in that "their two hands
are lifted above the ground" and continues, "Many have observed that the
ape is more teachable and more intelligent than the Zanji."14 A century later,
a similar point was made by Ibn Khaldun. Distinguishing between white
slaves and black slaves he remarks:

Therefore, the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because
[Negroes] have little [that is essentially] human and have attributes that are
quite similar to those of dumb animals, as we have stated.15

As Muslim power and the Islamic religion advanced farther into black
Africa and a succession of black kingdoms became an accepted part of the
House of Islam, such extravagant accounts of African manners and customs
became less and less frequent.16 But the perception remained, disputed but
widespread, that African Muslims were somehow different from other Muslims and that Africa was a legitimate source of slaves. A unique letter, preserved by an Egyptian historian, vividly illustrates how black African Muslims
must have felt. The letter, dated 794 A.H. (= 1391-92 A.D.), was sent by the
black king of Bornu, now in northern Nigeria, to the sultan of Egypt. The
king, his family, and his people were free Muslims and therefore by Muslim
law not enslavable. To strengthen this status, he claims that his tribe was
founded by an Arab, of the Prophet's tribe of Quraysh. Yet despite this, Arab
tribesmen "have devastated all our land, all the land of Bornu ... they took
free people among us captive, of our kin among Muslims . . . they have taken
our people as merchandise." These raiders carried off free women, children,
and infirm men. Some they kept as slaves for their own use; the rest they sold
to slave dealers in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere. The king urges the sultan of
Egypt to send orders to his governors, judges, and inspectors of markets, to
search out these captives and restore them to freedom and Islam."

No answer to this letter has been preserved; and it is unlikely that the
sultan of Egypt, whose power did not extend to the Western Sudan, would
have been able to do much about it, even had he wished. The enslavement of
free Muslims was of course totally forbidden by the Shari'a, and from time to
time voices were raised, urging the slaveraiders to desist from this offense and
to direct their efforts against pagans in other places. But the practice continued, especially in Africa.

The Qur'an gives no countenance to the idea that there are superior and
inferior races and that the latter are foredoomed to a subordinate status; the
overwhelming majority of Muslim jurists and theologians share this rejection.
There are some early traditions, and early juridical opinions and rulings citing
them, which assign a privileged status to the Arabs, as against other peoples
within the Islamic community. The Caliph `Umar is even quoted, improbably,
as saying that no Arab could he owned. Some pagan Arabs were in fact
enslaved by the early caliphs and even by the Prophet himself, and the idea of
Arab exemption from the normal rules regarding enslavement was not approved by later jurists.'

Such an opinion did indeed reflect the social realities in the early centuries
of the Islamic Empire, created by Arab conquests. By the ninth century,
however, this privileged status had for all practical purposes ended. Some
jurists, citing early traditions and the Qur'an itself, totally reject the idea of
Arab or any other ethnic privilege. Even those who grant some limited acceptance to the idea, do so on the basis of kinship with the Prophet and reduce it
to a kind of social prestige, of limited practical significance. At no time did
Muslim theologians or jurists accept the idea that there may be races of
mankind predisposed by nature or foredoomed by Providence to the condition of slavery.

Such ideas were, however, known from the heritage of antiquity and found
echoes in Muslim writings, the more so when they began to correspond to the
changing realities of Muslim society. Aristotle, in his discussion of slavery, had
observed that while some are by nature free, others are by nature slaves. For
such, the condition of slavery is both "beneficial and just," and a war undertaken to reduce them to that condition is a just war.`

This idea, along with others from the same source, was taken up and echoed by a few Muslim Aristotelians.3 Thus the tenth-century philosopher
al-Farabi lists, among the categories of just war, one the purpose of which is to
subjugate and enslave those whose "best and most advantageous status in the
world is to serve and be slaves" and who nevertheless refuse to accept slavery.' The idea of natural slavery is mentioned, though not developed, by some
other Aristotelian philosophers. Al-'Amiri, for example, follows Aristotle in
comparing the natural superiority of master to slave with the equally natural
superiority of man to woman.'

Aristotle does not specify which races he has in mind, merely observing
that barbarians are more slavish (doulikoteroi) than Greeks, and Asiatics
more so than Europeans. That, according to Aristotle, is why they are willing
to submit to despotic government-that is, one that rules them as a master
(despotes) rules his slaves.' By the tenth and eleventh centuries, some Muslim
philosophers were more specific. The great physician and philosopher Avicenna (980-1037) notes as part of God's providential wisdom that he had
placed, in regions of great heat or great cold, peoples who were by their very
nature slaves, and incapable of higher things-"for there must be masters and
slaves."7 Such were the Turks and their neighbors in the North and the blacks
in Africa. Similar judgments were pronounced by his contemporary, the
Ismaili theologian Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani (d. 1021), who was chief of missions of the Fatimid Caliphate in Cairo. In a philosophical work, he dismisses
"the Turks, Zanj, Berbers, and their like" as "by their nature" without interest in the pursuit of intellectual knowledge and without desire to understand
religious truth.'

By this time, the great majority of Muslim slaves were either Turks or
blacks, and Aristotle's doctrine of natural slavery, brought up to date, provided a convenient justification of their enslavement.

Another attempt to justify the enslavement of a whole race, this time in
religious rather than philosophical terms and restricted to the dark-skinned
people of Africa, is the Muslim adaptation of the biblical story of the curse of
Ham.9 In the biblical version (Genesis 9:1-27) the curse is servitude, not
blackness, and it falls on Canaan, the youngest son of Ham, and not on his
other sons, including Kush, later seen as ancestor of the blacks. The rationale
of the story is obvious-the slaves of the Israelites were their near kinsmen
the Canaanites, and a religious (i.e., ideological) justification was required for
their enslavement, hence the story of the curse of Canaan. The slaves of the
Arabs were not Canaanites but blacks-so the curse was transferred to them,
and blackness added to servitude as part of the hereditary burden. This story,
though widespread, was by no means universally accepted. Ibn Khaldun and
some other Arab writers reject it as absurd, and attribute blackness to climatic
and geographical factors. The idea, however, that blackness and slavery are
somehow associated, as expressed in this story, was derived less from tradition
than from reality.

Such ideas have no place in the writings of Muslim jurists, who unanimously reject the enslavement of free Muslims, of whatever race or origin.
Nor did the total identification of blackness with slavery, which occurred in North and South America, ever take place in the Muslim world. There were
always white slaves as well as black ones, and free blacks as well as slaves.
Nevertheless, the identification of blackness with certain forms of slavery
went very far-and in later centuries white slaves grew increasingly rare.

Already in medieval times it became customary to use different words for
black and white slaves. White slaves were normally called mamluk, an Arabic
word meaning "owned," while black slaves were called 'abd. "' In time, the
word 'abd ceased to be used of any but black slaves and eventually, in many
Arabic dialects, simply came to mean a black man, whether slave or free. This
transition from a social to an ethnic meaning is thus the reverse of the semantic development of our own word "slave," which began as the designation of
an ethnic group and became a social term. In Western Islam-in North Africa
and Spain-the word khadim, "servant" (dialectal form, khadem) is often
specialized to mean "black slave," "slave woman," or "concubine.""

It is not only in terminology that black and white slaves were distinguished. For one thing, white slaves, especially females, were more expensive;' for another, black slaves were far more severely restricted in their
social and occupational mobility. In early times black singers were greatly
admired, and some of them won fame and fortune-if not for themselves,
then for their trainers and owners. Jahiz, in his essay on singing girls, mentions an Ethiopian slave girl who was worth 120,000 dinars and brought much
profit to her master, in the form of gifts and offerings from aspiring and
frustrated admirers." Later, the black musicians seem to have been overtaken
by whites. The change is ascribed to the great musician Ibrahim al-Mawsili
(742-804), whose son is quoted as saying: "They used not to train beautiful
slave girls to sing, but they used only to train yellow and black girls. The first
to teach valuable girls to sing was my father." The price of these girls, he adds,
was very much higher. 14

Ibn Butlan, in his handbook, suggests a proper ethnic division of labor for
both male and female slaves. As guards of persons and property, he recommends Indians and Nubians; as laborers, servants, and eunuchs, Zanj; as
soldiers, Turks and Slavs. On female slaves he goes into somewhat greater
detail, discussing their racial attributes, of both body and character, and the
different functions for which they are best fitted.' In the central Islamic
lands, black slaves were most commonly used for domestic and menial purposes, often as eunuchs, sometimes also in economic enterprises, as for
example in the gold mines of `Allagi in Upper Egypt (where, according to
Ya`qubi, "the inhabitants, merchants and others, have black slaves who work
the mines")," in the salt mines, and in the copper mines of the Sahara,
where both male and female slaves were employed." The most famous were
the black slave gangs who toiled in the salt flats of Basra. Their task was to
remove and stack the nitrous topsoil, so as to clear the undersoil for cultivation, probably of sugar, and at the same time to extract the saltpeter. Consisting principally of slaves imported from East Africa and numbering some tens
of thousands, they lived and worked in conditions of extreme misery. They
were fed, we are told, on "a few handfuls" of flour, semolina, and dates. They rose in several successive rebellions, the most important of which lasted
fifteen years, from 868 to 883, and for a while offered a serious threat to the
Baghdad Caliphate.''