Slavery in Syria

Ibn Battuta met a Syrian Arab Damascene girl who was a slave of a black African governor in Mali in the 14th-century.

[6][7] In the 20th-century, women and girls for the harem market were kidnapped not only from Africa and Baluchistan, but also from the Trucial States, the Nusayriyah Mountains in Syria, and the Aden Protectorate.

[9] Syrian girls were trafficked from Syria to slavery in Saudi Arabia right before World War II and married to legally bring them across the border but then divorced and given to other men.

[...] Of the slaves imported, one half is usually sent to the Muntefik town on the Euphrates, named Sook-ess-Shookh, from whence they are spread all over Southern Mesopotamia, and Eastern Syria; a quarter are exported directly to Baghdad and the remainder are disposed of in the Bussorah market.

[16]Ottoman Syria was a province close enough to Constantinople to be more affected by the official abolitionist policies to curb the slave trade initiated by the Ottoman regime during the Tanzimat Era than many other, and while the slave trade to Syria did not end, it slowed down during the late 19th-century, at least according to official reports.

The German consul at Mosul reported that the maximum price for an Armenian woman was "5 piastres" (about 20 Pence Sterling at the time).

Slaves in Islam were mainly directed at the service sector – concubines and cooks, porters and soldiers – with slavery itself primarily a form of consumption rather than a factor of production.

[21] The most telling evidence for this is found in the gender ratio; among slaves traded in Islamic empire across the centuries, there were roughly two females to every male.

[22][23] In Ottoman Syria, it was common for wealthy people, both Muslims, Christians and Jews, to own enslaved African women used as domestic servants.

[13] According to Ottoman law, non-Muslims or dhimmi were not allowed to own slaves, but this prohibition was normally not enforced, especially not in Syria and Lebanon, which had a big Christian and Jewish population.

On request from the European consuls, the Christian and Jewish communities then liberated their slaves, to avoid a violent attack from the Muslims.

[24] The Ottoman Empire issued decrees to restrict and gradually prohibit the slave trade and slavery between 1830 and 1909 in response to Western pressure.