Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate

Chattel slavery was a major part of society, culture and economy in the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) of the Islamic Golden Age, which during its history included most of the Middle East.

While slavery was an important part also of the preceding practice of slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), it was during the Abbasid Caliphate that the slave trade to the Muslim world reached a more permanent commercial industrial scale, establishing commercial slave trade routes that were to remain for centuries.

[2] Many of the survivors were released after a truce in 841, but prominent officials were taken to the caliph's capital of Samarra and executed years later after refusing to convert to Islam, becoming known as the 42 Martyrs of Amorium.

The Christian kingdom of Makuria in Dongola Reach (in today's Sudan) was obliged to provide between 360 and 400 slaves every year to Islamic Egypt (then an Abbasid province) in accordance with the terms of the Baqt treaty.

While in Pre-Islamic Arabia, Arab war captives were common targets of slavery, importation of slaves from Ethiopia across the Red Sea also took place.

[5] The Red Sea slave trade appear to have expanded significantly during the Islamic period, particularly during the Abbasid Caliphate.

[6][7] The Red Sea slave between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula continued for centuries until its final abolition in the 1960s, when slavery in Saudi Arabia was abolished in 1962.

[6][7] Warfare and tax revenue policies was the cause of enslavement of Indians for the Central Asian slave market already during the Umayyad conquest of Sindh in the 8th century, when the armies of the Umayyad commander Muhammad bin Qasim enslaved tens of thousands of Indian civilians and well as soldiers.

[8] During the Ghaznavid campaigns in India in the 11th century, hundreds of thousands of Indians were captured and sold on the Central Asian slave markets; in 1014 "the army of Islam brought to Ghazna about 200,000 captives ("qarib do sit hazar banda"), and much wealth, so that the capital appeared like an Indian city, no soldier of the camp being without wealth, or without many slaves", and during the expedition of the Ghaznavid ruler Sultan Ibrahim to the Multan area of northwestern India 100,000 captives were brought back to Central Asia, and the Ghaznavids were said to have captured "five hundred thousand slaves, beautiful men and women".

[8] During his twelfth expedition into India in 1018–1019, the armies of Mahmud of Ghazni captured so many Indian slaves that the prices fell and according to al-'Utbi, "merchants came from distant cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Ma wara3 an-nahr (Central Asia), 'Iraq and Khurasan were filled with them, and the fair and the dark, the rich and the poor, mingled in one common slavery".

Turkic people from the Central Asian Steppe, were a major supply source for slaves to the Abbasid Caliphate during the entire Middle Ages.

[12] European slaves were viewed as luxury goods and primarily served in the households of royalty and rich people.

[13] People taken captive during the Viking raids in Western Europe could be sold to Moorish Spain via the Dublin slave trade[14] or transported to Hedeby or Brännö and from there via the Volga trade route to Russia, where slaves and furs were sold to Muslim merchants in exchange for Arab silver dirham and silk, which have been found in Birka, Wollin and Dublin;[15] initially this trade route between Europe and the Abbasid Caliphate passed via the Khazar Kaghanate,[16] but from the early 10th-century onward it went via Volga Bulgaria and from there by caravan to Khwarazm, to the Samanid slave market in Central Asia and finally via Iran to the Abbasid Caliphate.

[14] Saracens from Aghlabids of Ifriqiya managed an extensive slave trade of Italians captured in Southern Italy to Abbasid Maghreb from the early the mid 9th-century.

Thousands and possibly millions of Africans, Berbers, Turks, and European saqaliba are estimated to have been enslaved in this time period.

The sex slave-concubines of rich Urban men who had given birth to the son of their enslaver were counted as the most privileged, since they became an Umm Walad and became free upon the death of their enslaver; the concubine of a Beduoin mainly lived the same life as the rest of the tribal members and the women of the family.

[25] Women were trafficked to the royal Abbasid harem from Europe via the Volga trade route, as well as from Africa and Asia.

While Islamic law dictated that a free Muslim woman should veil herself entirely, except for her face and hands, in order to hide her awrah (intimate parts) and avoid sexual harassment, the awrah of slave women where defined differently, and she was only to cover between her navel and her knee.

[27] This difference became even more prominent during the Abbasid Caliphate, when free Muslim women, in particular those of the upper classes, where subjected to even more sex segregation and harem seclusion, in contrast to the qiyan slave artists, who performed unveiled in male company.

All free Muslim women where expected to be secluded from men in such a high degree as their financial circumstances made practically possible.

[33] During reign of the Caliph al-Amin (r. 809–813) in Bahgdad, there was a category known as ghulamyyat, slave-girls dressed as boys, who were trained to perform as singers and musicians and who attended the drinking parties of the sovereign and his male guests, and this custom is known in al-Andalus in the reign of Caliph al-Hakam II (r.

[35] Ibn Butlan noted that the ideal training of a qiyan slave girl was long: it was recommended that a slave-girl was taken from her country age of nine; spent three years of training at Madinah, three years at Makkah, and taken to Iraq at the age of fifteen to be trained in cultural refinement (adab) at age fifteen, before she was sold for performance as a qiyan entertainer, in order to acquire the feminine qualities of the Medinese women, the delicacy of Makkah and the cultural refinement of Iraqi.

[36] In al-Isbahani's Kitab al-Aghani, Ibrahim al-Mawsili noted that originally slave girls with dark complexion had been selected to be trained as qiyan, because they were viewed as unattractive, but that this custom had changed and white slave-girls, who were considered more beautiful and were therefore more expensive, had started to be trained as qiyan to increase their market value even more: The qiyan-slaves were not secluded from men in harem as free women or slave concubines, but in contrast performed for male guests - sometimes from behind a screen and sometimes visible - and are the perhaps most well documented of all female slaves.

[39] During the Middle Ages, the first aghawat, eunuchs of Indian, Byzantine (Greek) and African heritage are noted as the guards of the grave of Prophet Muhammed in Medina.

These conditions included:[43] It was noted that boys from Africa were still openly bought to become eunuch novices to serve at Medina in 1895.

[47] It was during the Abbasid Caliphate that the royal women where finally fully secluded in harem sex segregation.

A category of female slaves were active as entertainers, performing as singers, dancers and recited poetry to the Caliph and the women of the harem.

The visual ethnic diversion was noticed by the contemporary writers, and ascribed different temperament, talents, abilities, advantages and disadvantages.

[54] During the first century of Islam, Black slaves and freedmen could achieve fame and recognition, but from the Umayyad Caliphate onward, Black freedmen (unlike white), are with rare exceptions no longer noted to have achieved any higher positions of wealth, power, privilege or success, and contemporary Arab Muslim writers contributed this factor to a lack of capacity.

Since slaves where considered to have different abilities because of their race, slave-breeding was practiced to produce offspring of desired traits.