The American Thinker
April 13th, 2005
The living legacy of jihad slavery
Andrew G. Bostom
A public protest in Washington, DC, April 5, 2005 highlighted the current
(ongoing, for centuries) plight of black Mauritanians enslaved by Arab
masters. The final two decades of the 20th century, moreover, witnessed a
frank jihad genocide, including mass enslavement, perpetrated by the Arab
Muslim Khartoum government against black Christians and animists in the
Southern Sudan, and the same governments continued massacres and
enslavement of Animist-Muslim blacks in Darfur. These tragic contemporary
phenomena reflect the brutal living legacy of jihad slavery.
Jihad Slavery
The fixed linkage between jihad- a permanent, uniquely Islamic institution-
and enslavement, provides a very tenable explanation for the unparalleled
scale and persistence of slavery in Muslim dominions, and societies. This
general observation applies as well to “specialized” forms of slavery,
including the (procurement and) employment of eunuchs, slave soldiering
(especially of adolescents), other forms of child slavery, and harem
slavery. Jihad slavery, in its myriad manifestations, became a powerful
instrument for both expansive Islamization, and the maintenance of Muslim
societies.
Juridical Rationale and Role in “Islamization”
Patricia Crone, in her recent analysis of the origins and development of
Islamic political thought, makes an important nexus between the mass
captivity and enslavement of non-Muslims during jihad campaigns, and the
prominent role of coercion in these major modalities of Islamization.
Following a successful jihad, she notes:
Male captives might be killed or enslaved, whatever their religious
affiliation. (People of the Book were not protected by Islamic law until
they had accepted dhimma.) Captives might also be given the choice between
Islam and death, or they might pronounce the confession of faith of their
own accord to avoid execution: jurists ruled that their change of status was
to be accepted even though they had only converted out of fear. Women and
children captured in the course of the campaigns were usually enslaved,
again regardless of their faith.Nor should the importance of captives be
underestimated. Muslim warriors routinely took large numbers of them.
Leaving aside those who converted to avoid execution, some were ransomed and
the rest enslaved, usually for domestic use. Dispersed in Muslim households,
slaves almost always converted, encouraged or pressurized by their masters,
driven by a need to bond with others, or slowly, becoming accustomed to
seeing things through Muslim eyes even if they tried to resist. Though
neither the dhimmi nor the slave had been faced with a choice between Islam
and death, it would be absurd to deny that force played a major role in
their conversion. [1]
For the idolatrous Hindus, enslaved in vast numbers during the waves of
jihad conquests that ravaged the Indian subcontinent for well over a half
millennium (beginning at the outset of the 8th century C.E.), the guiding
principles of Islamic law regarding their fate were unequivocally coercive.
Jihad slavery also contributed substantively to the growth of the Muslim
population in India. K.S. Lal elucidates both of these points: [2]
The Hindus who naturally resisted Muslim occupation were considered to be
rebels. Besides they were idolaters (mushrik) and could not be accorded the
status of Kafirs, of the People of the Book – Christians and Jews. Muslim
scriptures and treatises advocated jihad against idolaters for whom the law
advocated only Islam or death. The fact was that the Muslim regime was
giving [them] a choice between Islam and death only. Those who were killed
in battle were dead and gone; but their dependents were made slaves. They
ceased to be Hindus; they were made Musalmans in course of time if not
immediately after captivity.slave taking in India was the most flourishing
and successful [Muslim] missionary activity.Every Sultan, as [a] champion of
Islam, considered it a political necessity to plant or raise [the] Muslim
population all over India for the Islamization of the country and countering
native resistance.
Vryonis describes how jihad slavery, as practiced by the Seljuks and early
Ottomans, was an important modality of Islamization in Asia Minor during the
11th through the 14th century 3:
A further contributing factor to the decline in the numbers of Christian
inhabitants was slavery.Since the beginning of the Arab razzias into the
land of Rum, human booty had come to constitute a very important portion of
the spoils. There is ample testimony in the contemporary accounts that this
situation did not change when the Turks took over the direction of the
djihad in Anatolia. They enslaved men, women, and children from all major
urban centers and from the countryside where the populations were
defenseless. In the earlier years before the Turkish settlements were
permanently affected in Anatolia, the captives were sent off to Persia and
elsewhere, but after the establishment of the Anatolian Turkish
principalities, a portion of the enslaved were retained in Anatolia for the
service of the conquerors
After characterizing the coercive, often brutal methods used to impose the
devshirme child levy, and the resulting attrition of the native Christian
populations (i.e., from both expropriation and flight), Papoulia concludes
that this Ottoman institution, a method of Islamization par excellence,
also constituted a de facto state of war: [4]
.that the sources speak of piasimo (seizure) aichmalotos paidon (capture)
and arpage paidon (grabbing of children) indicates that the children lost
through the devsirme were understood as casualties of war. Of course, the
question arises whether, according to Islamic law, it is possible to regard
the devsirme as a form of the state of war, although the Ottoman historians
during the empire’s golden age attempted to interpret this measure as a
consequence of conquest by force be’anwa. It is true that the Greeks and the
other peoples of the Balkan peninsula did not as a rule surrender without
resistance, and therefore the fate of the conquered had to be determined
according to the principles of the Koran regarding the Ahl-al-Qitb: i.e.
either to be exterminated or be compelled to convert to Islam or to enter
the status of protection, of aman, by paying the taxes and particularly the
cizye (poll-tax). The fact that the Ottomans, in the case of voluntary
surrender, conceded certain privileges one of which was exemption from this
heavy burden, indicates that its measure was understood as a penalization
for the resistance of the population and the devshirme was an expression of
the perpetuation of the state of war between the conqueror and the
conquered. the sole existence of the institution of devshirme is sufficient
to postulate the perpetuation of a state of war.
Under Shah Abbas I (1588-1626 C.E.), the Safavid Shi’ite theocracy of Iran
expanded its earlier system of slave razzias into the Christian Georgian and
Armenian areas of the Caucasus. Georgian, Armenian, and Circassian
inhabitants of the Caucasus were enslaved in large numbers, and converted,
thereby, to Shi’a Islam. The males were made to serve as (primarily)
military or administrative slaves, while the females were forced into
harems. A transition apparently took place between the 17th and 18th
centuries such that fewer of the slaves came from the Caucasus, while
greater numbers came via the Persian Gulf, originating from Africa. [5]
Ricks notes that by the reign of Shah Sultan Husayn,
The size of the royal court had indeed expanded if the numbers of male and
female slaves including white and black eunuchs are any indicators.
According to a contemporary historian, Shah Sultan Husayn (d. 1722) made it
a practice to arrive at Isfahan’s markets on the first days of the Iranian
New Year (March 21) with his entire court in attendance. It was estimated by
the contemporary recorder that 5,000 male and female black and white slaves
including the 100 black eunuchs comprised the royal party. [6]
Clement Huart, writing in the early 20th century (1907), observed that
slaves, continued to be the most important component of the booty acquired
during jihad campaigns or razzias: [7]
Not too long ago several expeditions crossed Amoû-Dery, i.e. the southern
frontier of the steppes, and ravaged the eastern regions of Persia in order
to procure slaves; other campaigns were launched into the very heart of
unexplored Africa, setting fire to the inhabited areas and massacring the
peaceful animist populations that lived there.
Willis characterizes the timeless Islamic rationale for the enslavement of
such “barbarous” African animists, as follows: [8]
.as the opposition of Islam to kufr erupted from every corner of malice and
mistrust, the lands of the enslavable barbarian became the favorite hunting
ground for the “people of reason and faith”-the parallels between slave and
infidel began to fuse in the heat of jihad. Hence whether by capture or
sale, it was as slave and not citizen that the kafir was destined to enter
the Muslim domain. And since the condition of captives flowed from the
status of their territories, the choice between freedom and servility came
to rest on a single proof: the religion of a land is the religion of its
amir (ruler); if he be Muslim, the land is a land of Islam (dar al-Islam);
if he be pagan, the land is a land of unbelief (dar al-kufr). Appended to
this principle was the kindred notion that the religion of a land is the
religion of its majority; if it be Muslim, the land is a land of Islam; if
it be pagan, the land is a land of kufr, and its inhabitants can be reckoned
within the categories of enslavement under Muslim law. Again, as slavery
became a simile for infidelity, so too did freedom remain the signal feature
of Islam.The servile estate was hewn out of the ravaged remains of heathen
villages – from the women and children who submitted to Islam and awaited
their redemption.[according to Muslim jurist] al-Wanshirisi (d.1508),
slavery is an affliction upon those who profess no Prophecy, who bear no
allegiance to religious law. Moreover, slavery is an humiliation – a
subjection- which rises from infidelity.
Based on his study and observations of Muslim slave razzias gleaned while
serving in the Sudan during the Mahdist jihad at the close of the 19th
century, Winston Churchill wrote this description (in 1899): [9]
all [of the Arab Muslim tribes in The Sudan], without exception, were
hunters of men. To the great slave markets of Jeddah a continual stream of
negro captives has flowed for hundreds of years. The invention of gunpowder
and the adoption by the Arabs of firearms facilitated the traffic.Thus the
situation in the Sudan for several centuries may be summed up as follows:
The dominant race of Arab invaders was increasingly spreading its blood,
religion, customs, and language among the black aboriginal population, and
at the same time it harried and enslaved them.The warlike Arab tribes fought
and brawled among themselves in ceaseless feud and strife. The negroes
trembled in apprehension of capture, or rose locally against their
oppressors.
All these elements of jihad slavery- its juridical rationale, employment as
a method of forcible Islamization (for non-Muslims in general, and directed
at Sub-Saharan African Animists, specifically), and its association with
devshirme-like levies of adolescent males for slave soldiering- are apparent
in the contemporary jihad being waged against the Animists and Christians of
southern Sudan, by the Arab Muslim-dominated Khartoum regime. [10]
Extent and Persistence
The scale and scope of Islamic slavery in Africa are comparable to the
Western trans-Atlantic slave trade to the Americas, and as Willis has
observed (somewhat wryly), [11] the former “.out-distances the more popular
subject in its length of duration.” Quantitative estimates for the
trans-Atlantic slave trade (16th through the end of the 19th century) of
10,500,000 (or somewhat higher [12]), are at least matched (if not exceeded
by 50%) by a contemporary estimate for the Islamic slave trade out of
Africa. Professor Ralph Austen’s working figure for this composite of the
trans-Saharan, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean traffic generated by the Islamic
slave trade from 650 through 1905 C.E., is 17,000,000. [13] Moreover, the
plight of those enslaved animist peoples drawn from the savannah and
northern forest belts of western and central Africa for the trans-Saharan
trade was comparable to the sufferings experienced by the unfortunate
victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. [14]
In the Nineteenth Century, slaves reached the ports of Ottoman Tripoli by
three main Saharan routes, all so harsh that the experience of slaves forced
to travel them bore comparison with the horrors of the so-called
“middle-passage” of the Atlantic.
This illuminating comparison, important as it is, ignores other vast domains
of jihad slavery: throughout Europe (Mediterranean and Western Europe, as
well as Central and Eastern Europe, involving the Arabs
[Western/Mediterranean], and later the Ottoman Turks and Tatars [Central and
Eastern Europe]); Muscovite Russia (subjected to Tatar depredations); Asia
Minor (under Seljuk and Ottoman domination); Persia, Armenia, and Georgia
(subjected to the systematized jihad slavery campaigns waged by the Shi’ite
Safavids, in particular); and the Indian subcontinent (razzias and jihad
campaigns by the Arabs in the 7th and 8th centuries, and later depredations
by the Ghaznavids, during the Delhi Sultanate, the Timurid jihad, and under
the Mughals). As a cursory introduction to the extent of jihad slavery
beyond the African continent, three brief examples are provided: the Seljuks
in Asia Minor (11th and 12th centuries); the Ottomans in the Balkans (15th
century); and the Tatars in southern Poland and Muscovite Russia (mid-15th
through 17th centuries).
The capture of Christians in Asia Minor by the Seljuk Turks was very
extensive in the 11th and 12th centuries. [15] Following the seizure and
pillage of Edessa, 16,000 were enslaved. [16] Michael the Syrian reported
that when the Turks of Nur al-Din were brought into Cilicia by Mleh the
Armenian, they enslaved 16,000 Christians, whom they sold at Aleppo. [17] A
major series of razzias conducted in the Greek provinces of Western Asia
Minor enslaved thousands of Greeks (Vryonis believes the figure of 100,000
cited in a contemporary account is exaggerated [18]), and according to
Michael the Syrian, they were sold in slave markets as distant as Persia.
[19] During razzias conducted by the Turks in 1185 and over the next few
years, 26,000 inhabitants from Cappadocia, Armenian, and Mesopotamia were
captured and sent off to the slave markets. [20] Vryonis concludes: [21]
.these few sources seem to indicate that the slave trade was a flourishing
one. In fact, Asia Minor continued to be a major source of slaves for the
Islamic world through the 14th century.
The Ottoman Sultans, in accord with Shari’a prescriptions, promoted jihad
slavery aggressively in the Balkans, especially during the 15th century
reigns of Mehmed I (1402-1421), Murad II (1421-1451), and Mehmed II
(1451-1481). [22] Alexandrescu-Dersca summarizes the considerable extent of
this enslavement, and suggests the importance of its demographic effect:
[23]
The contemporary Turkish, Byzantine and Latin chroniclers are unanimous in
recognizing that during the campaigns conducted on behalf of the unification
of Greek and Latin Romania and the Slavic Balkans under the banner of Islam,
as well as during their razzias on Christian territory, the Ottomans reduced
masses of inhabitants to slavery. The Ottoman chronicler Asikpasazade
relates that during the expedition of Ali pasha Evrenosoghlu in Hungary
(1437), as well as on the return from the campaign of Murad II against
Belgrade (1438), the number of captives surpassed that of the combatants.
The Byzantine chronicler Ducas states that the inhabitants of Smederevo,
which was occupied by the Ottomans, were led off into bondage. The same
thing happened when the Turks of Mentese descended upon the islands of
Rhodes and Cos and also during the expedition of the Ottoman fleet to Enos
and Lesbos. Ducas even cites numbers: 70,000 inhabitants carried off into
slavery during the campaign of Mehmed II in Morée (1460). The Italian
Franciscan Bartholomé de Yano (Giano dell’Umbria) speaks about 60,000 to
70,000 slaves captured over the course of two expeditions of the akingis in
Transylvania (1438) and about 300,000 to 600,000 Hungarian captives. If
these figures seem exaggerated, others seem more accurate: forty
inhabitants captured by the Turks of Mentese during a razzia in Rhodes,
7,000 inhabitants reduced to slavery following the siege of Thessalonika
(1430), according to John Anagnostes, and ten thousand inhabitants led off
into captivity during the siege of Mytilene (1462), according to the
Metropolitan of Lesbos, Leonard of Chios. Given the present state of the
documentation available to us, we cannot calculate the scale on which slaves
were introduced into Turkish Romania by this method. According to
Bartholomé de Yano, it would amount to 400,000 slaves captured in the four
years from 1437 to 1443. Even allowing for a certain degree of exaggeration,
we must acknowledge that slaves played an important demographic part during
the fifteenth-century Ottoman expansion.
Fisher [24] has analyzed the slave razzias conducted by the Muslim Crimean
Tatars against the Christian populations of southern Poland and Muscovite
Russia during the mid-15th through late 17th century (1463-1794). Relying
upon admittedly incomplete sources (“.no doubt there are many more slave
raids that the author has not uncovered” [25]), his conservative tabulations
[26] indicate that at least 3 million (3,000,000) persons – men, women, and
children – were captured and enslaved during this so-called “harvesting of
the steppe”. Fisher describes the plight of those enslaved: [27]
.the first ordeal [of the captive] was the long march to the Crimea. Often
in chains and always on foot, many of the captives died en route. Since on
many occasions the Tatar raiding party feared reprisals or, in the
seventeenth century, attempts by Cossack bands to free the captives, the
marches were hurried. Ill or wounded captives were usually killed rather
than be allowed to slow the procession. Heberstein wrote. “the old and
infirm men who will not fetch much as a sale, are given up to the Tatar
youths either to be stoned, or thrown into the sea, or to be killed by any
sort of death they might please.” An Ottoman traveler in the mid-sixteenth
century who witnessed one such march of captives from Galicia marveled that
any would reach their destination – the slave markets of Kefe. He complained
that their treatment was so bad that the mortality rate would unnecessarily
drive their price up beyond the reach of potential buyers such as himself. A
Polish proverb stated: “Oh how much better to lie on one’s bier, than to be
a captive on the way to Tartary”
The persistence of Islamic slavery is as impressive and unique as its
extent. Slavery was openly practiced in both Ottoman Turkey [28], and Shi’ite
(Qajar) Iran [29], through the first decade of the 20th century. As Toledano
points out, [30] regarding Ottoman Turkey, kul (administrative)/ harem
slavery,
.survived at the core of the Ottoman elite until the demise of the empire
and the fall of the house of Osman in the second decade of the 20th century.
Moreover, Ricks [31] indicates that despite the modernizing pressures and
reforms culminating in the Iranian Constitutional Movement of 1905-1911,
which effectively eliminated military and agricultural slavery,
The presence of domestic slaves, however, in both the urban and rural
regions of Southern Iran had not ceased as quickly. Some Iranians today
attest to the continued presence of African and Indian slave girls.
Slavery on the Arabian peninsula was not abolished formally until 1962 in
Saudi Arabia, 32 and 1970 in Yemen and Oman. 33 Writing in 1989, Gordon [34]
observed that although Mauritania abolished slavery officially on July 15,
1980,
.as the government itself acknowledges, the practice is till alive and well.
It is estimated that 200,000 men, women, and children are subject to being
bought and sold like so many cattle in this North African country, toiling
as domestics, shepherds, and farmhands.
Finally, as discussed earlier, there has been a recrudescence of jihad
slavery, since 1983 in the Sudan. [35]
An Overview of Eunuch Slavery-the “Hideous Trade”
Eunuch slaves – males castrated usually between the ages of 4 and 12 (due to
the high risk of death, preferentially, between ages 8 and 12), [36] were in
considerable demand in Islamic societies. They served most notably as
supervisors of women in the harems of the rulers and elites of the Ottoman
Empire, its contemporary Muslim neighbors (such as Safavid Iran), and
earlier Muslim dominions. The extent and persistence of eunuch slavery –
becoming prominent within 200 years of the initial 7th century Arab jihad
conquests [37], through the beginning of the 20th century [38] – are
peculiar to the Islamic incarnation of this aptly named “hideous trade”. For
example, Toledano documents that as late as 1903, the Ottoman imperial harem
contained from 400 to 500 female slaves, supervised and guarded by 194 black
African eunuchs. [39]
But an equally important and unique feature of Muslim eunuch slavery was the
acquisition of eunuchs from foreign “slave producing areas” [40] , i.e.,
non-Muslim frontier zones subjected to razzias. As David Ayalon observed,
[41]
.the overwhelming majority of the eunuchs, like the overwhelming majority of
all other slaves in Islam, had been brought over from outside the borders of
Muslim lands.
Eunuch slaves in China, in stark contrast, were almost exclusively Chinese
procured locally. [42]
Hogendorn [43] has identified the three main slave producing regions, as
they evolved in importance over time, from the 8th through the late 19th
centuries:
These areas were the forested parts of central and eastern Europe called by
Muslims the “Bild as-Saqaliba” (“slave country”), the word saqlab meaning
slave in Arabic (and related to the ethnic designation “Slav”); the steppes
of central Asia called the “Bilad al-Atrak” (“Turks’ country” or Turkestan);
and eventually most important, the savanna and the fringes of the wooded
territory south of the Sahara called the country of the blacks or “Bilad
as-Sudan”.
Lastly, given the crudeness of available surgical methods and absence of
sterile techniques, the human gelding procedure by which eunuchs were
“manufactured” was associated with extraordinary rates of morbidity and
mortality. Hogendorn describes the severity of the operation, and provides
mortality information from West and East Africa: [44]
Castration can be partial (removal of the testicles only or removal of the
penis only), or total (removal of both). In the later period of the trade,
that is, after Africa became the most important source for Mediterranean
Islam, it appears that most eunuchs sold to the markets underwent total
removal. This version of the operation, though considered most appropriate
for slaves in constant proximity to harem members, posed a very high danger
of death for two reasons. First was the extensive hemorrhaging, with the
consequent possibility of almost immediate death. The hemorrhaging could not
be stopped by traditional cauterization because that would close the urethra
leading to eventual death because of inability to pass urine. The second
danger lay in infection of the urethra, with the formation of pus blocking
it and so causing death in a few days.
.when the castration was carried out in sub-Saharan West and West-Central
Africa.a figure of 90% [is] often mentioned. Even higher death rates were
occasionally reported, unsurprising in tropical areas where the danger of
infection of wounds was especially high. At least one contemporary price
quotation supports a figure of over 90% mortality: Turkish merchants are
said to have been willing to pay 250 to 300 (Maria Theresa) dollars each for
eunuchs in Borno (northeast Nigeria) at a time when the local price of young
male slaves does not seem to have exceeded about 20 dollars.Many sources
indicate very high death rates from the operation in eastern Africa..
Richard Millant’s [1908] general figure for the Sudan and Ethiopia is 90%
Conclusion
Contemporary manifestations of Islamic slavery-certainly the razzias (raids)
waged by Arab Muslim militias against their black Christian, animist, and
animist-Muslim prey in both the southern Sudan and Darfur-and even in its
own context, the persistence of slavery in Mauritania (again, black slaves,
Arab masters)-reflect the pernicious impact of jihad slavery as an enduring
Muslim institution. Even Ottoman society, arguably the most progressive in
Muslim history, and upheld just recently at a United Nations conference as a
paragon of Islamic ecumenism, never produced a William Wilberforce, much
less a broad, religiously-based slavery abolition movement spearheaded by
committed Muslim ulema. Indeed, it is only modern Muslim freethinkers,
anachronistically referred to as “apostates,” who have had the courage and
intellectual integrity to renounce the jihad, including jihad slavery,
unequivocally, and based upon an honest acknowledgement of its devastating
military and social history. When the voices of these Muslim freethinkers
are silenced in the Islamic world-by imprisonment and torture, or
execution-the outcome is tragic, but hardly unexpected. That such insightful
and courageous voices have been marginalized or ignored altogether in the
West is equally tragic and reflects the distressing ignorance of Western
policymaking elites.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress