Slave-owning slaves

Accordingly, talented slaves were gradually promoted to positions of great trust, including military command, management of palace affairs, and sometimes high political office.

Societies of this kind existed in the Islamic world including the Ottoman Empire, Mughal India and large parts of West Africa; elite harem slaves were a parallel case.

This article has been compiled from a diversity of secondary sources; they seem to show that slave-owning slaves can indeed be found in many eras and cultures, though not universally (and though eventually forbidden in Russia).

[11][12] Paradoxically, while ordinary free plebeians ended up packed into unmarked graves (“a uniform mass of black, viscid, pestilential, unctious matter”), ex-slaves commemorated themselves in marble or other durable substances.

[37] In the Eastern Roman Empire under Christian emperors conditions improved in some respects; for example, slaves were forbidden to be forcibly prostituted, though they remained open to abuse and exploitation.

[46] "As a general rule, supervision of the master's holdings was entrusted to an entire hierarchy of financial agents working in both city and country, who carried out the wishes of their dominus and whom we know from inscriptions".

[45] It has been pointed out that most of the unjust servants mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew were managerial slaves of this class; the author takes it for granted they will be tortured with "weeping and gnashing of teeth".

"[108] In this society investing in enslaved persons was the main road to prosperity and prestige, and negotiation — albeit between highly unequal beings — was a favoured strategy, more effective than beating, though that too was employed, quite often.

Philip D. Morgan reviewed the records of the Southern Claims Commission, from which it was apparent that by the outset of the Civil War field hands in some counties owned horses, cows, buggies, wagons, hogs, sheep and trading commodities; these they bought, sold, hired out, or bequeathed to kinfolks.

[138] The anthropologist Polly Hill found that a kind of farm-slavery flourished among the people of Hausaland, north Nigeria; her characterisation resembles peculium slavery as described in this article.

The first to do so were the wealthier, slave-owning slaves since "these men had almost eliminated the restrictions between themselves and the freeborn" yet were being denied participation in social rites, the status symbols of the truly free.

Though the French colonial authorities were supposed to stop slavery (and told Paris they had succeeded), the practice was persistent, and survived long enough to be recalled by old people interviewed as recently as 1991 (see quotebox).

Scholar Andrew F. Clark found thatA strong moral code, which reflects the dominant, free-born Fulbe ideology, underpins the narratives... Slaves are frequently portrayed as 'knowing their place', or faithfully serving their masters.

Some traditions deal with the bravery, hard work or good deeds of slaves; others relate stories of undisciplined, clever or runaway slaves.Because of the recency of slavery, in some West African countries it is illegal to refer to a person's servile origins.

The nobles, who called themselves the "Black-bone Yi" ('black-bone' denoted aristocracy) had strict marriage laws meant to ensure racial 'purity' for themselves,[145] and were a warlike people whose tradition was to go on slaving raids in which they captured members of the Han (Chinese majority ethnic group).

Yet there is nothing of rigour used by the Master to his Slave, except it be the very meanest, such as do all sorts of servile work: but those who can turn their hands to any thing besides drudgery, live well enough by their industry.

Maxwell transcribed from Arabic and Malay a Perak law which ordained that a slave who assaulted a free man should have his hands nailed down while his wife could be violated.

The most spectacular case was the imperial slave Musicus Scurranus, a provincial administrator, who on his last journey to Rome was attended by a retinue of sixteen personal sub-slaves including cooks, butlers, footmen, secretaries,[162] and 'Secunda' (function unspecified).

Highly impressionable adolescents, selected for their quick wit and physical prowess, would be trained not only to excel in the martial arts but also to bestow their undivided loyalty upon their benefactors.

[citation needed] The archetype of the youth who is enslaved in a distant land where by his intelligence he rises to wield immense power was the biblical Joseph, who also features in the Quran; and the parallel was understood in Mamluk Egypt by the elite slaves themselves, as well as by European visitors.

The Ottoman system took boys from the cattle-run and the plow and made them courtiers, administrators and army officers...[182] Some scholars have doubted that persons of such high standing could really have been slaves,[183] and have argued the youths were manumitted upon graduation.

[187] There is an anecdote that the famous Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha was not allowed to testify in an Islamic court because, being a slave, his evidence was inadmissible; to soothe his wounded pride, the sultan promptly manumitted him.

Eunuchs (Persian: khwājasarā; lit., “lord of the palace”) served not only as guardians of the women's quarters but as military commanders, tax farmers, administrators and advisers to the ruling nawabs.

[citation needed] Emirs kept numbers of elite slaves to serve as cavalrymen, collect taxes and otherwise administer their territories, tasks that required specialist knowledge.

[216] The original founders of the Sokoto Caliphate were religious purists who intended to reform corrupt customs[217] and do away with extravagance and so much reliance on royal slaves, which they considered un-Islamic.

[220] From the fact that the polity could not be reformed from within, even by strict Islamists, but had "to fall back on the expedient of slave soldiers as officials", American historian John Edward Philips argued that in no land was the Mamluk system a historical accident.

[224] "Should a royal slave lose his [office], he effectively lost his ability to manage land, confiscate property and provide for his household, who usually left him to join a more prosperous title-holder", said Stilwell.

[239] [S]ince they were not sure of when their privileges would be withdrawn, or when they would die or fall out of favor with their masters, some believed they should have the best out of life by engaging in excessive eating and drinking and also in a reckless exercise of power.

[250] Columbia historian C. Martin Wilbur, by compiling a large number of these incidental passages and putting the events in chronological sequence, was the first to write a monograph on slavery during the early Han dynasty.

The chief suspect, concubine Brilliant Companion, fearing three middle-ranking slave women might talk, gave each of them ten sub-slaves for their entourage, presumably to keep an eye on them.