Islamic Law and Slavery

There is only very limited evidence for the life of the sixteenth century English renegade and eunuch slave, Hassan Agha, whose birth name was Samson Rowlie. Until now, he has been known from a single letter written in 1586, supplemented by a striking watercolour portrait from 1588. However, new research on early English diplomatic relations with the Ottomans has uncovered further evidence of Hassan Agha's later life and continued contacts with his fellow Englishmen. This previously unstudied evidence includes a report of Hassan Agha's premature death in sinister circumstances, presumed murdered. This paper will present these original research findings in the context of England's early diplomatic and commercial relations with the Ottoman Levant. Particular attention will be paid to the position of eunuch slaves within Ottoman government and society, as well as questions of personal identity and loyalty amongst renegade ministers and officials. This will address the proposed conference topics of 'consular, diplomatic and commercial interactions' and 'individual or family histories that reveal aspects of the Levantine world'.

To the modern mind, very few practices can be more morally unsettling than the concept of slavery. For Muslims, this becomes acute as the Quran - the word of God and the foundation of their moral ontology – fails to disrupt slavery. Worryingly, this practice has been used by twisted ideology that is ISIS to take slaves in the modern era. However, the Quran alone is not alone in this silence; throughout human history literally nobody condemned this “moral evil”. Not even those who we hold as our intellectual forebears in the West. Herein lies the slavery conundrum: Given our past has moral authority over us, why didn’t anyone condemn it? The book explores how the abolitionist movement has been successful in arguing for ending slavery through a discourse that condemned all its forms based on legal definitions (not conditions).

This book sheds light on the little-known phenomenon of the final process of slavery in Morocco during European colonialism in order to unravel the contemporary roots of servility and stereotypes of blackness in the Arab world. Unlike other generalist analyses, this research focuses on the practice of servitude through a case study, centred on the city of Tetouan. Until well into the twentieth century, bought women arrived in the city to feed the domestic labour market and also to become a sign of social distinction for the wealthy classes. This case is paradigmatic for reconstructing the relations between masters and domestics of slave origin, from the economic, familial and symbolic dimensions, giving names and faces to the subalterns in order to rescue them from oblivion. This historical ethnography is based on a complex and original triangulation of Moroccan and Spanish oral, visual and written sources, which serves as a methodological orientation for the transdisciplinary study of societies in their historical complexity. The research presents a wealth of challenges for collective memory studies, showing that past and present intermingle to discuss the very notion of slavery, based on the oral history of descendants and the documentary rhetorics of the classification of people in the buying and selling, transfer or manumission of slaves. The result is a complex narrative that weaves together the origins of these women, their life trajectories, and the paradoxes of subordination, highlighting the subtle mechanisms of physical and symbolic interdependence in extreme power relations.
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Este libro aporta luz a un fenómeno poco conocido como el proceso final de la esclavitud en Marruecos, en tiempos del colonialismo europeo, para desentrañar las raíces contemporáneas del servilismo y los estereotipos sobre la negritud en el mundo árabe. A diferencia de otros análisis generalistas, esta investigación pone la lupa sobre la praxis del servilismo a partir de un estudio de caso, centrado en la ciudad de Tetuán. Hasta bien entrado el siglo XX llegaron a la ciudad mujeres compradas para nutrir el mercado de trabajo doméstico y devenir también un signo de distinción social de las clases pudientes. Este caso es paradigmático para reconstruir las relaciones entre amos y domésticas de origen esclavo, desde la dimensión económica, familiar y simbólica, poniendo nombre y rostro a las personas subalternas para rescatarlas del olvido. Esta etnografía histórica se basa en una compleja y original triangulación de fuentes orales, visuales y escritas, marroquíes y españolas, que sirve de orientación metodológica para el estudio transdisciplinar de las sociedades en su complejidad histórica. La investigación presenta abundantes desafíos para los estudios de la memoria colectiva, al mostrar que el pasado y el presente se entremezclan para discutir la propia noción de esclavitud, a partir de la historia oral de los descendientes y las retóricas documentales sobre la clasificación de personas en la compra-venta, el traspaso o la manumisión de esclavas. El resultado es un complejo relato que entreteje los orígenes de aquellas mujeres, sus trayectorias vitales, y las paradojas de la subordinación, evidenciando los sutiles mecanismos de interdependencia física y simbólica en las relaciones extremas de poder.

One of the more controversial topics in the modern study of Islam, concerns the relative status of women and the treatment and civil rights of non-Islamic minorities within the context of Islamic law.  This qualitative research project will look at a very narrow topic within Islamic law which addresses both issues.  The aim of the research is to bring to light Muhammad’s teaching and practice on this subject through reading and analysis of primary source document references to al ‘azl and its rejection in the proper treatment of non-Muslim captive women.  If religious law (Sharia) is to change in the modern context, it must surely begin with the more problematical pronouncements found in the foundational texts of Islam.  The purpose of this study is to illustrate one such practice while attempting to answer the question, how is this aspect of the Prophet’s behavior (Sunnah) to be interpreted in the modern age?  My hope is that this study will benefit liberal Muslims who seek to reform Islam for the 21st century context.  It is not my purpose to offend any Muslim readers by this project, but to illustrate that all religions must find a way to deal with their darker texts in a globalized world where universal human rights across cultural and religious barriers will become the  most important issue of the 21st century.

The chapter raises new questions regarding the development of Islamic law, specifically as it relates to the figure of the umm al-walad (the concubine mother of the master’s child). It contends that the umm al-walad played an important role in the development of Islamic conceptions of sexuality, religious authority, and humanity. It turns on a close reading of the treatise of the great hadith scholar and historian Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), regarding the sale of the umm al-walad. The treatise demonstrates that, over many centuries, Muslim jurists struggled to define the umm al-walad’s standing. Debates of the kind, for example, divided Sunni and Shi’ite scholars. The treatise sheds important light on the rich spectrum of debate that took place in Mamluk society c. 12501517 over the question of slavery.

This paper analyzes how the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) appropriates Islamic tradition to justify sexual slavery, most notably the eschatological prophetic report “the slave girl will give birth to her master.” Contrary to the public discourse that constantly emphasizes the “medieval” nature of ISIS, I demonstrate that the movement has developed a modern interpretation of the tradition. The medieval Muslim scholars that the ISIS author quotes argue that the report should be read broadly and not be used in legal discussions or to expand slavery. In contrast, the ISIS author contends that the saying should be interpreted to mean the revival of slavery and justifies taking Yazidi women as sex slaves. The ISIS author thus presents a new understanding of the report, one that is unique within the history of Islam.

This study explores the different possibilities of what it meant to be a concubine in a late medieval setting. Conventional wisdom holds that concubinage was a gendered function of slavery, that is, a legal arrangement in which slave owners enjoyed licit sexual relations with their female property. While this was certainly the view of Muslim jurists and a historical reality for many enslaved women, this understanding of concubinage fails to take into account the different ways in which it was practiced in history. One notable example is found in the households of Timurid princes, who, as descendants of the famous conqueror Temur or Tamerlane (1336–1405), collectively ruled over the regions of Khurasan in eastern Iran and Transoxiana in Central Asia during the 15th century. Timurid sources from the later period list numerous women as royal concubines who were not slaves. Instead, they belonged to notable Muslim families whose pedigrees contemporaries deemed prestigious enough to record for posterity.

This unusual feature of Timurid concubinage raises a series of questions. First, what motivated the later Timurids to take freeborn Muslim women as concubines? The highly competitive political environment of late 15th century Iran and Central Asia required would-be potentates seek out a wide network of supporters, which was achieved in part through securing marital alliances with important amirs and local notables. Given the Islamic proscription of taking more than four wives, Timurid princes felt more at ease in engaging in a legal fiction that permitted them to take freeborn Muslim women as concubines rather than exceeding the number of legal marriages allowed to them by the law. Second, if concubinage was a means of securing power and authority, was it possible for concubines themselves to participate in the broader political economy of Timurid Iran and Central Asia? If so, how did contemporaries look upon their involvement? Here the career of Khadija Begi Agha, a concubine who eventually became the legal wife of a Timurid prince, serves as an instructive example of a politically active consort who cultivated a diverse network of allies and supporters that she mobilized in times of dynastic conflict. The strong reaction she engendered from her contemporaries suggests that while the Timurids are well known for their inclusion of women as active participants in dynastic politics, women who traced their origins as concubines in royal households nevertheless faced censure for their involvement.

In a world where princesses found themselves enslaved, kidnapped boys became army generals, and biblical Joseph was a role model, this book narrates the formation of the Middle Ages from the point of view of slavery, and outlines a new approach to enhance our understanding of modern forms of enslavement. Offering an analysis of recent scholarship and an array of sources, never before studied together, from distinct societies and cultures of the first millennium, it challenges the traditional dichotomy between ancient and medieval slaveries. Revealing the dynamic, versatile, and adaptable character of slavery it presents an innovative definition of slavery as a historical process.

If we wish to fight for the eradication of modern slavery we first need to understand its significance as a form of exploitation, adaptable to changing circumstances. The purpose of this book is to challenge perspectives that look at slavery as a discrete phenomenon and instead to examine the historical development of the first millennium through the eyes of slavery. Perceiving slavery not just as a social phenomenon but as a system that enabled the development of historical
societies and emerging economies reveals the role it plays as a historical process.

Resumen: Los términos que definen la personalidad de las cantoras y músicas en el con-texto del mundo árabe medieval se dividen en dos categorías: en aquellos que están rela-cionados con la música y en los que remiten a su condición social. Estos últimos se anali-zan detenidamente a lo largo del presente estudio, basado, fundamentalmente, en el Kitāb al-agānī de Abū l-Faraŷ al-Iṣfahānī.
Abstract: The terms which define the personality of female singers and musicians in the context of the medieval Arab world can be divided in two categories: the ones related to music and those referring to their social status. The latter are thoroughly analyzed in the present study, mainly based on Abū l-Faraŷ al-Iṣfahānī's Kitāb al-aghānī. Palabras clave: Qiyān. Ŷawārī. Mawālī. Esclavas cantoras. Kitāb al-agānī.

In the Arab world, the recognized children of elite men and slave women could adopt the status of their father, ignoring the slave origin of the mother, owing to a system of patrilineal transmission. This regime co-existed with negative stereotypes toward slaves and blackness, despite the very fact that—as this study of notable families in Tetouan between 1859 and 1956 demonstrates—skin color was not the determinant factor to form part of this group. Rather, it was based on the social definition
of filiation, leading to legal disputes between family members to elineate the boundaries of kinship.

The paper is dealing with a misconception about Islam and slavery.  Many people both Muslims and non-Muslims associated slave trade with Islam.  The researcher  has attempted to expose the really perpetrators of slave trade, and presented the Islamic concept on the same.

Can elites use cosmological imagery to sanction marital and slavery practices for their political aspirations? Can interactions between Late Antique legal systems be thought beyond “borrowings?” This work studies legal writings from the Zoroastrian, East Syrian, and Islamic traditions arguing that Late Antique matrimonial and slavery practices were significantly informed by cosmological imagery and repeatedly brought in line with the elites’ political aspirations. It suggests that these legal traditions should be thought in a shared epistemic framework to account for the changes and meaningfulness of legal concepts and institutions and cannot simply be reduced to a narrative of borrowings. Instead, this book shows that interactions between Late Antique legal systems were more complex and characterized by patterns of negotiation and competition mirroring the various entanglements of the Late Antique citizen’s life.

Der Orientalist und Islamexperte Bernard Lewis (1916-2018) zeigt in seiner 1990 publizierten und leider nie ins Deutsche übersetzten Abhandlung, dass der „myth of Islamic racial innocence” (101) ein Produkt von Idealisierungen der islamischen Kultur zum Zwecke innerwestlicher politischer Auseinandersetzungen im 19. Jahrhundert war. Man wollte, so Lewis, die brutale transatlantische Sklaverei und den damit verbundenen Hautfarbenrassismus kritisieren, indem man ihnen die tatsächlich etwas anders gelagerte islamische Sklaverei entgegenhielt. Als weiteres Motiv konstatiert Lewis eine „white man’s burden … of guilt“, die den Rest der Welt bevormundete, infantilisierte und zu bloßen Opfern erklärte, während der Westen die „responsibility for the world and its ills“ (102) für sich reklamierte – eine Diagnose, die heute aktueller denn je ist.

There remains uncertainty as to the real nature of pre-Islamic Arabian society, Islamic portrayals of this period appearing to be part of the polemics against paganism, and with the paucity of information available it is difficult to establish the nature of slavery there.

Reflexión sobre el mundo de la identificación de los esclavos y libertos en los territorios valencianos a través de la documentación de la serie "Presentació y manifestació de catius ordinaris i fugitius" del fondo "Bailía General", conservada en el Arxiu del Regne de València. El artículo se concluye con unas hipótesis sobre los prejuicios raciales.

The other day in Ivry, France, some tense and dense exchanges between me and an African-American turned short and bitter due to the arrogance of not asking the person she wanted to attack who he was. And what she considered as my ignorance on my part was, in fact, the pure reflection of her ignorance on her part. She was confronted to a challenge with Indian Ocean slavery that she did not know, so she rejected me without inquiring if I knew transatlantic slave trade. American Academic Arrogance, AAA. Nothing ethnic but intellectually tribal.
I have met that arrogance a few times, but it is a shame because we could have exchanged information on the two main slave trades of the planet. But when someone does not want to discuss it is better to shift to another media, which I am doing right now.

This essay on Islamic slavery will consider evidence in the Qur'an, in line with Hebrew slavery as evidenced in Pentateuch from where the Qur'an appears to have obtained its inspiration. I have freely chosen translations. It will also briefly consider slavery laws elsewhere in the early medieval period. The Qur'an considers slavery on various occasions, but its position seems not to be that of later prohibitions. In bloodwit, a pre-Islamic revenge code, Qur'an 2.178 makes 3 distinctions, 'free, slaves and women'. Slaves inhabit an accepted social strata common

Slavery ingrained into human life in such way that it never came to the minds of slaves that their condition was unjust or brutal. Both the slaves and their masters accepted their status of birth without undue question. Anthropological and sociological changes coloured slavery with tints and shades of human desires. Slaves in most societies were despised. For an insightful comprehension of the system of slavery it is essential to trace out the attitudes of the world's great religions and civilizations towards it. In the passing of time slavery got faded as an institution but not yet uprooted from human psyche. It is still playing its dice in the form of class, caste, race and gender exploitation. Without proper check in the present times if we continue exploding science and stripping off the dignity of the weak, soon we might pay a heavy price for that.

Fezzeh Khanom (c. 1835–82), an African woman, was a slave of Sayyed ‘Ali-Mohammad of Shiraz, the Bab. Information about her life can be recovered from various pious Baha'i histories. She was honored, and even venerated by Babis, though she remained subordinate and invisible. The paper makes the encouraging discovery that a history of African slavery in Iran is possible, even at the level of individual biographies. Scholars estimate that between one and two million slaves were exported from Africa to the Indian Ocean trade in the nineteenth century, most to Iranian ports. Some two-thirds of African slaves brought to Iran were women intended as household servants and concubines. An examination of Fezzeh Khanom's life can begin to fill the gaps in our knowledge of enslaved women in Iran. The paper discusses African influences on Iranian culture, especially in wealthy households and in the royal court. The limited value of Western legal distinctions between slavery and freedom w...

"Anthropologist Pedram Khosronejad has embarked on a new and controversial topic in Iranian studies, developing a narrative on African slavery in Persia through archival photography, interviews and scattered text. Here he curates from his burgeoning collection..." (full article with photos
http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2016/jan/14/african-slavery-in-qajar-iran-in-photos)

The work Mi,raj al-su,ud, written in 17th century Timbuktu by Ahmad Baba (1556-1627), an Islamic scholar that adhered to the Maliki law school, is a fatwa or legal opinion that addresses the issue of the black (sudan) slaves that claimed their freedom in the markets of North Africa, for having been captured while being Muslims, something not allowed in pre-Modern Islamic law. According to it, only infidels without the protection of a pact or of the dhimma status can be legally enslaved. Ahmad Baba repetes this doctrine, while emphasising that the black skin colour has nothing to do with slavery in islam, and that the peoples of pre-Modern West Africa (bilad al-sudan) are not slaves by nature. Besides this, and as a means of preventing the capture and sale of free African Muslims, the author classifies the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa according to their adherence (or lack of) to islam, a system that, however, could be hardly put into practice, as perhaps intended by the author himself.

The establishment of Islam changed Arab society in many significant ways, paramount in Muslim society, was social equality; which affected many aspects of daily life for people of various social strata including non-Muslims, slaves, and women.

The study of slavery in the Medieval World has been largely marginalized in the past.  Despite large amounts of evidence, medievalists have traditionally opted to focus their attentions elsewhere or to have seen slavery as being of only marginal importance in the societies and economies of the world from late antiquity until the opening of the Atlantic trade.  While some important studies have been done in the past, a new interest in the subject has been growing with research looking more and more at the subject and its ramifications.

While it seems that the International Medieval Congress at Leeds this summer has barely ended, it is already time to begin thinking about next year.  This summer, of course, there were more papers and sessions devoted to the subject of slavery (and related topics) in the medieval world than ever before.  As a result, some were even scheduled to run against each other.  In order to avoid this next summer and to better promote understanding of the topic, it is hoped to organize a strand of sessions to be held next year at the IMC Leeds 2016 (4 to 7 July 2016, at the University of Leeds).

The overall topic will be ‘Slavery in the Medieval World’ with separate sessions focusing on various eras and topics under the overall theme.

The individual sessions will be numbered and will have sub-titles relevant to what their particular focus is (as well as individual session organizers).    Possible topics might include such areas as "Slavery in Medieval Arabia", "Manumission", "Children in Slavery", "Slavery and the End of the Western Empire" and so on and so forth.

The total number of sessions will, of course, be determined by the number of participants; ideally, we will have a mix of early career and more senior scholars as well as of people working on a range of geographic and temporal areas.

By bringing together scholars working on different areas and periods of the history of medieval Europe, Asia, and Africa, we hope to address the question of whether there is a single subject of slavery in the medieval world, whether some practices and activities can be seen as being of global importance, and how the earlier modes of slavery found in antiquity shaped later practice.  Whether the teachings of the monotheistic religions served to ameliorate slave-systems inherited from the past or whether they served to make them stronger could be discussed while the role of slavery itself in the systems of exchange and of personal relationship might also be usefully addressed.

All proposals addressing the topic, whether of single papers or of organized sessions, are welcome and will be examined.

Practical issues
If you are interested in giving a paper or organizing a session, please send an email by 23 August 2015 to  [email protected]

While we look forward to proposals for individual papers, we also encourage potential collaboration, respondents, and moderators.  Of course, please feel free to forward this call for papers to any student or colleague who might be interested in participating in our strand!

When you write, include the following information:
1) paper title
2) a short abstract/brief description indicating what the paper will be about (max. 200 words)
3) your contact details and affiliation
4) Equipment needed? (Laptop, Beamer, etc.)

We will determine how papers of 20 minutes each best fit and we’ll let you know the results as soon as possible (no later than mid-September). We are unable to cover travel, registration and accommodation expenses for speakers. Please consider the bursary application offered by the IMC (deadline 17 October): https://imc.leeds.ac.uk/dbsql02/AQueryServlet?*context=IMC&*id=0&*formId=83&conference=2016&*servletURI=https://imc.leeds.ac.uk/dbsql02/AQueryServlet 
For general information on the IMC, see http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/info/125137/international_medieval_congress
We’re looking forward to lots of interesting papers and proposals!

Este estudio analiza la práctica de la manumisión de esclavos y esclavas entre los notables de Tetuán entre 1800 y 1956, a partir de fuentes notariales inéditas combinadas con fuentes orales y coloniales. Esta documentación nos permite concluir que la manumisión formaba parte de un mecanismo moral según el cual los propietarios esperaban adquirir un mérito religioso antes de morir para asegurarse una recompensa y un lugar en el paraíso. La liberación contenía también una dimensión pública y ritual. En sus testamentos, los notables, tanto hombres como mujeres, expresaban su generosidad redistribuyendo su riqueza entre los pobres y otorgando dinero en metálico o el usufructo de sus residencias a sus libertos. Este material notarial permite analizar las desigualdades en la estructura social marroquí desde el punto de vista de los propietarios, pero también ofrece valiosas informaciones sobre las características físicas, nombres y estatus de sus esclavos y esclavas, así como de sus trayectorias una vez liberados.

Abstract: This study analyzes the practice of slave manumission by notables in Tetouan between 1800 and 1956, using unpublished notarial sources in combination with oral and colonial sources. The documentation indicates that manumission was part of a moral mechanism through which slave owners hoped to gain religious merit before they died, thus securing a reward and a place in paradise. The liberation of slaves also contained a public and ritual dimension. In their wills, the notables, both men and women, expressed their generosity by redistributing their wealth among the poor and bequeathing money or the usufruct of their residences to former slaves. This notarial material is extremely useful in analyzing the inequalities of Morocco"s social structure from the point of view of the owners, but it also provides valuable information about the names, status and physical characteristics of their male and female slaves, and their trajectories after release.

Dans la société maure de Mauritanie, la catégorie statutaire de ḥarāṭīn, formée d'anciens esclaves ou de leurs descendants, loin d'être homogène, est constituée d'une pluralité de statuts, empruntant largement son vocabulaire au lexique chromatique. Je propose une nouvelle explication du terme ḥarṭāni dans la société maure, applicable aux autres sociétés sahariennes du Maghreb où ce terme est usité. Par ailleurs, le fait qu'il existe un terme spécifique pour désigner les femmes esclaves en arabe classique comme en ḥassāniyya, souligne l'importance de la différence des sexes au sein de cette catégorie sociale. Récemment, on observe un mouvement d'ethnicisation des ḥarāṭīn en Mauritanie dans la mesure où certains des partis politiques qui leur sont liés revendiquent qu'ils ne soient plus reconnus comme une catégorie statutaire au sein de la société maure mais comme une « ethnie » à part entière ou qu'ils soient rattachés à la catégorie ethno-raciale de « Négro-africains ». Abstract In Mauritania's Moorish society, the statutory category of ḥarāṭīn, composed of former slaves or their descendants, is far from homogeneous ; it includes a plurality of statuses that borrow their descriptive vocabulary largely from a chromatic lexicon. I propose a new explanation of the term ḥarṭāni in Moorish society that is

There is a growing interest in the study of Ottoman foreign policy in the nineteenth century especially in regards to the ways in which Ottomans utilized international law for defending their empire. This paper is interested in the question of slavery at the time when the British increased its pressure on the Ottoman Empire to suppress the African slave-trade. I will be using diplomatic correspondences regarding runaway slaves who take refuge at the British missions. Particularly, I will be focusing on a certain young black man who was detained by the Malta police while he was traveling with his master on the grounds that he was a slave and had to be freed. Ensuing diplomatic scuffle surrounding the case tells us a great deal about how Ottomans imagined their slavery to be, and how they created a difference between themselves and the West in an effort to strengthen their imperial legitimacy. In this regard, the debate around the issue of domestic slavery was about the status of slaves as much as it was about sovereign independence and compassion. I argue in this paper that, for the Ottomans, European intervention was a type of moral intervention that violated the customs and traditions of the Ottoman family. Studies on the history of colonialism have shown how managing of inter-racial relations, master-slave, or free-freed relations, in the colonies, were important instances and questions through which imperial categories of inclusion and exclusion were developed. In this regard, the case of the Ottoman Empire is an important addition to the study of slavery, domestic arrangements, and politics of intimacy