Slavery in al-Andalus

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v t e

Slavery in al-Andalus refers to the slavery in the Islamic states in Al-Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula in present day Spain and Portugal between the 8th-century and the 15th-century. This includes the Emirate of Córdoba (756–929), the Caliphate of Córdoba (929–1031), the Almoravid rule (1085–1145), Almohad rule (1147–1238) and the smaller Taifa principalities, notably the Emirate of Granada (1232–1492).

Background

Slavery existed in Muslim al-Andalus as well as in the Christian kingdoms, and both sides of the religious border followed the custom of not enslaving people of their own religion. Consequently, Muslims were enslaved in Christian lands, while Christians and other non-Muslims were enslaved in al-Andalus.^[1]

The Moors imported white Christian slaves from the 8th century until the end of the Reconquista in the late 15th century. European slaves were exported from the Christian section of Spain as well as Eastern Europe and referred to as Saqaliba. Saqaliba slavery in al-Andalus was especially prominent in the Caliphate of Córdoba where white female slaves constituted a big part of the slave concubines of the royal harem, and white male slaves constituted most of the administrative personnel in the courts and palaces.^[2]

Slave trade

Al-Andalus, the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula, (711–1492) imported a large number of slaves to its own domestic market, as well as served as a staging point for Muslim and Jewish merchants to market slaves to the rest of the Islamic world.^[3]

An early economic pillar of the Islamic empire in Iberia (Al-Andalus) during the eighth century was the slave trade. Due to manumission being a form of piety under Islamic law, slavery in Muslim Spain couldn't maintain the same level of auto-reproduction as societies with older slave populations. Therefore, Al-Andalus relied on trade systems as an external means of replenishing the supply of enslaved people.^[4][5]

Islamic law prohibited Muslims from enslaving other Muslims, and there was thus a big market for non-Muslim slaves in Islamic territory. The Vikings sold both Christian and Pagan European captives to the Muslims, who referred to them as saqaliba; these slaves were likely both Pagan Slavic, Finnic and Baltic Eastern Europeans ^[6] as well as Christian Western Europeans.^[7] Forming relations between the Umayyads, Khārijites and 'Abbāsids, the flow of trafficked people from the main routes of the Sahara towards Al-Andalus^[8] served as a highly lucrative trade configuration.

The archaeological evidence of human trafficking and proliferation of early trade in this case follows numismatics and materiality of text.^[9] This monetary structure of consistent gold influx proved to be a tenet in the development of Islamic commerce.^[10] In this regard, the slave trade outperformed and was the most commercially successful venture for maximizing capital.^[11] This major change in the form of numismatics serves as a paradigm shift from the previous Visigothic economic arrangement. Additionally, it demonstrates profound change from one regional entity to another, the direct transfer of people and pure coinage from one religiously similar semi-autonomous province to another.

Prague slave trade

The slave market of Prague was one route for saqaliba slaves to al-Andalus. Similarly to al-Andalus, the Duchy of Bohemia was a state in a religious border zone, in the case of Bohemia bordering to Pagan Slavic lands to the North, East and South East.

The Arabic Caliphate of Córdoba referred to the forrests of Central and Eastern Europe, which came to function as a slave source supply, as the Bilad as-Saqaliba ("land of the slaves").^[12] Bohemia were in an ideal position to become a supply source for Pagan saqaliba slaves to al-Andalus. The slaves were aquired through slave raids toward the Pagan Slavic lands North of Prague.

The Prague slave trade adjusted to the al-Andalus market, with females required for sexual slavery and males required for either military slavery or as eunuchs. Male slaves selected to be sold as eunuchs were subjected to castration in Verdun.^[13]

Traditionally, the slave traders aquiring the slaves in Prague and transporting them to the slave market of al-Andalus are said to have been dominated by the Jewish Radhanite merchants.^[14] How dominating the Jewish merchants were is unknown, but Jewish slave traders did have an advantage toward their non-Jewish colleagues, because they were able to move across the Christian-Muslim lands, which was not always to case for Christian and Muslim merchants, and act as mediators between Christian and Muslim commercial markets.^[15] While Christians were not allowed to enslave Christians and Muslims not allowed to enslave Muslims, Jews were able to sell Christian slaves to Muslim buyers and Muslim slaves to Christian buyers, as well as Pagan slaves to both.^[16] In the same fashion, but Christians and Muslims were prohibited from performing castrations, but there was no such ban for Jews, which made it possible for them to meet the great demand for eunuchs in the Muslim world.^[17]

The slaves were transported to Al-Andalus via France. While the church discouraged the sale of Christian slaves to Muslims, the sale of Pagans to Muslims was not met with such opposition. White European slaves were viewed as luxury goods in Al-Andalus, where they could be sold for as much as 1,000 dinars, a substantial price.^[18] The slaves were not always destined for the al-Andalus market; similar to Bohemia in Europe, al-Andalus was a religious border state for the Muslim world, and saqaliba slaves were exported from there further to the Muslim world in the Middle East.

The saqaliba slave trade from Prague to al-Andalus via France became defunct in the 11th-century, when the Pagan Slavs of the North started to gradually adopt Christianity from the late 10th-century, which prohibited Christian Bohemia to enslave and sell to Muslim al-Andalus.

Slave raids to Christian Iberia

The medieval Iberian Peninsula was the scene of episodic warfare among Muslims and Christians. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Christian Iberian kingdoms, bringing back booty and people. For example, in a raid on Lisbon in 1189 the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, and his governor of Córdoba took 3,000 Christian slaves in a subsequent attack upon Silves in 1191.^[19]

These raiding expeditions also included the Sa’ifa (summer) incursions, a tradition produced during the Amir reign of Cordoba. In addition to acquiring wealth, some of these Sa’ifa raids sought to bring mostly male captives, often eunuchs, back to Al-Andalus. They were generically referred to as Saqaliba, the Arab word for Slavs.^[20] Slavs’ status as the most common group in the slave trade by the tenth century led to the development of the word “slave.”^[21]

Saracen piracy

Moorish Saracen pirates from al-Andalus attacked Marseille and Arles and established a base in Camargue, Fraxinetum or La Garde-Freinet-Les Mautes (888-972), from which they made slave raids in to France ^[22] ; the population fled in fear of the slave raids, which made it difficult for the Frankish to secure their Southern coast ^[23], and the Saracens of Fraxinetum exported the Frankisk prisoners they captured as slaves to the slave market of the Muslim Middle East.^[24]

The Saracens captured the Baleares in 903, and made slave raids also from this base toward the coasts of the Christian Mediterranean and Sicily.^[25]

While the Saracen bases in France was eliminated in 972, this did not prevent the Saracen piracy slave trade of the Mediterranean; both Almoravid dynasty (1040-1147) and the Almohad Caliphate (1121–1269) aproved of the slave raiding of Saracen pirates toward non-Muslim ships in Gibraltar and the Mediterranean for the purpose of slave raiding.^[26]

Trans-Saharan slave trade

Along with Christians and Slavs, Sub-Saharan Africans were also held as slaves, brought back from the caravan trade in the Sahara.

Forming relations between the Umayyads, Khārijites and 'Abbāsids, the flow of trafficked people from the main routes of the Sahara towards Al-Andalus^[27] served as a highly lucrative trade configuration. The Ancient Trans-Saharan slave trade trafficked slaves to Al-Andalus from non-Muslim Pagan Sub-Saharan Africa.

Viking slave trade

According to Roger Collins, although the role of the Vikings in the slave trade in Iberia remains largely hypothetical, their depredations are clearly recorded. Raids on Al-Andalus by Vikings are reported in the years 844, 859, 966 and 971, conforming to the general pattern of such activity concentrating in the mid ninth and late tenth centuries.^[28]

The vikings performed slave raids toward the Christian parts of Iberia as well. It is known that the vikings sold people they captured in their raids in Christian Europe to the Islamic world via Arab merchants in Russia along the Volga trade route, slaves who were trafficked to the Middle East via Central Asia and was an important slave supply source to the Bukhara slave trade. However, it is not confirmed if the vikings sold the captives from their raids in Christian Iberia directly to Muslim Iberia.

The vikings did provide slaves to al-Andalus via the Norse Kingdom of Dublin. Slaves captured primarily in the British islands and put on sale in Dublin, which was one of the biggest slave markets in Europe in the 9th- and 11th-centuries, are known to have been sold all over Europe; one of the destinations of slaves from the Dublin slave trade were Muslim Spain in al-Andalus.^[29]

Slave market

The slave market in the Muslim world prioritized women for the use of domestic servants and concubines (sex slaves) and men as eunuchs, laborers and slave soldiers.

The slaves of the Caliph were often European saqaliba slaves trafficked from Northern or Eastern Europe. The Saqaliba were mostly assigned to palaces as guards, concubines, and eunuchs, although they were sometimes privately owned.^[30] While male saqaliba could be given work in a number of tasks, such as offices in the kitchen, falconry, mint, textile workshops, the administration or the royal guard (in the case of harem guards, they were castrated), female saqaliba were placed in the harem.^[31] The Sub-Saharan African Pagans were often given more laborous chores than the saqaliba-slaves

Female slaves

In the Islamic world, female slaves were targeted for either use as domestic house slave maidservants, or for sexual slavery as concubines; in certain Islamic periods such as Al-Andalus, female slaves could also be selected for training as slave artists known as qiyan.

Domestic slavery was a common enslavement for women in the Muslim world. Since free Muslim women were expected to live in gender segregated seclusion in as high degree as possible, they generally did not work as maidservants, which created a high demand for domestic female slaves in the Muslim world.

The second category was that of sexual slavery. Islamic law prohibited a man from having sexual intercourse with any woman except his wife or his female slave. Female slaves were used for both prostitution as well as private concubines. Islamic Law formally prohibited prostitution. However, since Islamic Law allowed a man to have sexual intercourse with his female slave, prostitution was practiced by a pimp selling his female slave on the slave market to a client, who returned his ownership of her to her former owner (the pimp) on the pretext of discontent after having had intercourse with her, which was a legal and accepted method for prostitution in the Islamic world.^[32]

While slaves could be of different ethnicities, this did not exclude enslavers from categorizing slaves by their ethnic origin in to racial stereotypes. Ibn al-Khaṭīb classified female sex slaves by racial stereotypes:

"The Arabic women from the desert [are] well experienced, the houris of paradise with red colors, thin and slim waists, adorned necks, honey-colored lips, big eyes, characteristic perfume suitable for all natures, gentle movements, courteous spirits, kind meanings, dry vulvas, soft kisses, and a straight nose. The Maghribī women, with black hair, a kind face, sweet smile, honey-colored and very red lips with a dark shade, and wrists whose beauty is perfected by mirrors and the indigo drawing of the tattoo. The Christians, of diaphanous whiteness, movable breasts, thin bodies, balanced fat, superb flesh in a narrow build of brocades, bodies and backs embellished with beautiful jewels and gorgeous beads; they stand out for the peculiarity of being foreign and for how they blandish [...]."^[33][34]

The slave traders were known to prepare their slave girls in order to aquire the highest price for them at the slave market. A document from the 12th-century noted how slave traders smeared female slaves of dark complexion with ointments and dyed the hair of brunettes "golden" (blonde) in order to appear lighter, and how they instructed slave girls to flirt and dressed them in transparent clothing in order to attract potential buyers, in colors adjusted to make their skin color appear more attractive; white slave girls were dressed in pink, and black slave girls in yellow or red. ^[35]

The use of female sex slaves of foreign ethnicity had unwanted consequences in the racialized society of al-Andalus, where Arab Muslims were considered to be the most high status ethnicity in the racial hierachy, followed by Berber Muslims, Christians, Jews and slaves.^[36] In order to achieve the status and privilegies reserved for ethnic Arabs, such as tax reduction, many Andalusians forged their genealogy to appear pure blood Arab.^[37] The fact that the rulers of al-Andalus preferred and could afford to buy white European female sex slaves had the unwanted consequence that many Caliphs, who were sons of European slave concubines, became lighter in color for each generation; many Caliphs had fair complexion and blue eyes, and dyed their hair black in order to appear more stereotypically Arab.^[38]

Royal harem

The harem system that developed in the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphate, illustrated by the Abbasid harem, was reproduced by the Islamic realms developing from them, such as in the Emirates and Caliphates in Muslim Spain, Al-Andalus, which attracted a lot of attention in Europe during the Middle Ages until the Emirate of Granada was conquered in 1492.

The most famous of the Andalusian harems was perhaps the harem of the Caliph of Cordoba. Except for the female relatives of the Caliph, the harem women consisted of his slave concubines. The slaves of the Caliph were often European saqaliba slaves trafficked from Northern or Eastern Europe. While male saqaliba could be given work in a number offices such as: in the kitchen, falconry, mint, textile workshops, the administration or the royal guard (in the case of harem guards, they were castrated), but female saqaliba were placed in the harem.^[39]

The harem could contain thousands of slave concubines; the harem of Abd al-Rahman I consisted of 6,300 women.^[40] The saqaliba concubines were appreciated for their light skin.^[41] The concubines (jawaris) were educated in accomplishments to make them attractive and useful for their master, and many became known and respected for their knowledge in a variety of subjects from music to medicine.^[41] A jawaris concubine who gave birth to a child acknowledge by her enslaver as his attained the status of an umm walad, and a favorite concubine was given great luxury and honorary titles such as in the case of Marjan, who gave birth to al-Hakam II, the heir of Abd al-Rahman III; he called her al-sayyida al-kubra (great lady).^[42]

However, concubines were always slaves subjected the will of their master. Caliph Abd al-Rahman III is known to have executed two concubines for reciting what he saw as inappropriate verses, and tortured another concubine with a burning candle in her face while she was hold be two eunuchs after she refused sexual intercourse.^[43] The concubines of Abu Marwan al-Tubni (d. 1065) were reportedly so badly treated that they conspired to murder him; women of the harem were also known to have been subjected to rape when rivaling factions conquered different palaces.^[44] Several concubines were known to have had great influence through their masters or their sons, notably Subh during the Caliphate of Cordoba, and Isabel de Solís during the Emirate of Granada.

The Royal Nasrid Harem of the Emirate of Granada (1238-1492) was modelled after the former Royal Harem of Cordoba. The rulers of the Nasrid dynasty normally married their cousins, (al-hurra), who became their legal wives (zawŷ), but additionally bought enslaved concubines (ŷawārī, mamlūkāt); the concubines were normally Christian girls (rūmiyyas) kidnapped in slave raids to the Christian lands in the North. A concubine who gave birth to a child who was recognized by her enslaver as his, was given the status of ummahāt al-awlād, which meant she could no longer be sold and would be free (hurra) after the death of her enslaver.^[45]

Male slaves

In the Islamic world, male slaves could be used for a number of chores, but the main tasks were two. Either they were targeted for military slavery as slave soldiers; or they were subjected to castration and selected to serve in administration in our outside of the harem, tasks for which they were expected to be eunuchs.

A ready market, especially for men of fighting age, could be found in Umayyad Spain, with its need for supplies of new mamelukes.

Al-Hakam was the first monarch of this family who surrounded his throne with a certain splendour and magnificence. He increased the number of mamelukes (slave soldiers) until they amounted to 5,000 horse and 1,000 foot. ... he increased the number of his slaves, eunuchs and servants; had a bodyguard of cavalry always stationed at the gate of his palace and surrounded his person with a guard of mamelukes .... these mamelukes were called Al-haras (the Guard) owing to their all being Christians or foreigners. They occupied two large barracks, with stables for their horses.^[28]

During the reign of Abd-ar-Rahman III (912–961), there were at first 3,750, then 6,087, and finally 13,750 Saqaliba, or Slavic slaves, at Córdoba, capital of the Umayyad Caliphate. Ibn Hawqal, Ibrahim al-Qarawi, and Bishop Liutprand of Cremona note that the Jewish merchants of Verdun specialized in castrating slaves, to be sold as eunuch saqaliba, which were enormously popular in Muslim Spain.^[46][47][48]

See also

• Radhanite
• Tribute of 100 virgins
• Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
• Slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate
• Crimean slave trade
• Barbary slave trade
• History of slavery in the Muslim world
• History of concubinage in the Muslim world
• Medieval Arab attitudes to Black people

References

This page was last edited on 15 April 2024, at 01:14