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Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora
A comprehensive study of the Eastern slave trade by an eminent British scholar A companion volume to The Black Diaspora , this groundbreaking work tells the fascinating and horrifying story of the Islamic slave trade. Islam's Black Slaves documents a centuries-old institution that still survives, and traces the business of slavery and its repercussions from Islam's inception in the seventh century, through its history in China, India, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Libya, and Spain, and on to Sudan and Mauritania, where, even today, slaves continue to be sold. Ronald Segal reveals for the first time the numbers involved in this trade--as many millions as were transported to the Americas--and explores the differences between the traffic in the East and the West. Islam's Black Slaves also examines the continued denial of the very existence of this sector of the black diaspora, although it survives today in significant numbers; and in an illuminating conclusion, Segal addresses the appeal of Islam to African-American communities, and the perplexing refusal of Black Muslim leaders to acknowledge black slavery and oppression in present-day Mauritania and Sudan. A fitting companion to Segal's previous work, Islam's Black Slaves is a fascinating account of an often unacknowledged tradition, and a riveting cross-cultural commentary.
288 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2001
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About the author
Ronald Segal
27 books7 followersFrom the obituary in The Guardian (2008):
"At Cape Town University he majored in English and Latin and learned the raw facts of political life. Trinity College, Cambridge, followed, where he was more influenced by Enid Welsford, tutor in the English moralists, than by FR Leavis. An upper second was a disappointment. A dissertation on Paradise Lost won him a fellowship to the University of Virginia, but he found Charlottesville a 'museum world'. Within six months, in 1956, he was back in Cape Town to launch the magazine Africa South. Politics had won out."
From the book jacket for Islam's Black Slaves (2001):
"South African-born Ronald Segal, former editor and publisher of Africa South, left his country with the African National Congress leader Oliver Tambo in 1960 for political exile in England. Banned for more than thirty years, he returned briefly in 1992 and again in early 1994 to help the ANC run its campaign in the Western Cape for South Africa's first democratic election. Founding editor of the Penguin African Library, Segal is the author of thirteen books, including The Anguish of India, The Race War, The Americans, and, most recently, The Black Diaspora (FSG, 1996)."
From the book jacket for Into Exile (1963):
"From April 1960 to the end of 1961, Ronald Segal continued to publish Africa South in Exile from London, despite lack of funds (the South African Government had frozen all his assets) and the difficulties of smuggling copies back into the Union. In 1961 he published a book called Political Africa, a kind of Who's Who of the leading political personalities in Africa and of the aims and histories of their political parties. His personal knowledge of African affairs and his acquaintanceship with men like Nkrumah, Kaunda and Nyerere led him to expand some of the entries in Political Africa to form a book of African Profiles, published by Penguin a year later. In April 1961 he joined the Penguin staff as the editor of their new African Library. Recently he spent three months in India gathering material for a new book."
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 16, 2014
Thoughtful, engrossing and meticulously documented, Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora provides an excellent history of slavery in Islamic Africa starting with the Middle Ages through to the present-day.
For nearly 750 years, from the middle of the eighth century, Islam was the central civilization of the Old World serving as the carrier that transmitted innovations from one society to another. Islam itself spread through trade as much as through conquest and lucrative overland and maritime trade routes stretched from Morocco and Spain, to Persia, India and China. Luxury goods dominated trade and among the 'goods' were slaves--from the Balkans, the Caucasus and, also increasingly with time, from sub-Saharan Africa.
Economic booms have a way of creating their own special distortions. Starting in the seventh century, when Islam conquered the Persian Sassanid Empire and much of the Byzantine one, it acquired immense quantities of looted gold. In addition, supplies of newly minted gold arrived along trade routes that the empire inherited or developed; one reaching from the mines of Nubia to Aswan, others from central Africa to the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. This vast expansion of wealth encouraged a culture of conspicuous consumption and slaves were among the possessions that set the rich apart, though even small-holders and nomadic traders generally had a slave or two.
Female slaves were required in considerable numbers in the Medieval Islamic world. Female slave musicians, singers, dancers, reciters and even composers of poetry were highly prized and costly. There were schools in Baghdad, Cordoba and Medina that supplied tuition and training in musical and literary skills. Many more women were bought for domestic work or as concubines. Overall, the ratio of female to male slaves was about 2:1 in the Islamic world.
Homes of those who could afford the space were divided into separate quarters for men and women and the men were served by male slaves who functioned as grooms, guards, messengers and porters. To guarantee the virtue of the women of the household harems were secured not just by locks, but by slave guards, who were invariably eunuchs.
Slave eunuchs sold for up to seven times the price of uncastrated male slaves reflecting the high death rate from the operation, but also high demand. In addition to their role as harem guards eunuchs served as administrators, tutors and secretaries and as male concubines. The Caliph in Baghdad in the early 10th century had seven thousand black eunuchs and four thousand white ones in his palace.
While the North Atlantic slave trade arose primarily to provide agricultural workers, that role was filled in the Medieval Islamic world largely by local peasants rather than slaves. In theory, the Koran's injunctions should have guaranteed much kinder treatment of slaves in the land of Islam than was the case in the Americas. To some extent that was true: slaves were more often freed, integration into the broader social fabric was quite common and there were pathways to very high rank for both white and black slaves (though these were more common for the former); but practices forbidden by Koran, such as castration, were in fact commonplace.
The number of Africans enslaved is obviously difficult to estimate and Segal does a good job reviewing various sources drawing on tax records, business documents in such repositories as the Cairo geniza, and Islamic and European writers. Spread over thirteen and a half centuries a number of 14 million for the total Islamic black slave trade (an average of about 10,000 per year) seems, if anything, a bit conservative. The number of Africans enslaved was thus roughly equal to the numbers enslaved in the Atlantic trade, but spread out over a much longer period of time.
I found the overviews of the Caliphates and the Ottoman Empires and the spread of Islam concise and helpful. The chapters detailing the collision of European powers with the Afro-Islamic world were particularly thought-provoking. Colonization of Africa by European powers, some of which had committed to eliminating the Atlantic slave trade, had a curiously mixed effect on the actual practice of slavery in Islamic African provinces. European administrators, unwilling to disrupt the effective pursuit of profits or antagonize local Arab strong men and landowners, were inconsistent about the issue, often doing more harm than good.
Detailed and thoughtful examinations of colonial policies in Nigeria (Britain), Somalia (Italy), Mauritania (France) and Zanzibar and the Kenya Coast (Britain) illustrate how uneven, careless policy-making created populations of squatters, impoverished day-laborers and vagrants who were often conscripted for government projects or even as labor gangs or fighting units in Europe's world wars.
Slavery still persists in Mauritania, the Sudan and elsewhere in the Arab and African world; against a background of fourteen centuries of Islamic colonization and slave-owning, the practice becomes more comprehensible, if no less painful and dehumanizing to those enslaved.
The final chapter leaps rather incongruously to a puzzled essay on African-America's fascination with Islam as an alternative to Christianity. I don't get it either, but it doesn't really fit the overall narrative. I would have much preferred to see the book summarize the state of the African diaspora in the Arab world and/or discuss how the dysfunctional mix of Arab and European colonialism helped create a series of failed and violent states. But that's nit-picking: overall, this is a very valuable book on a woefully understudied topic.
Content Rating: PG Warning for dark thematic material. Some short sentences about the violence done to slaves, particularly as regards castration and concubinage. He doesn't overdo it with the gore or sexual elements, but without these few spare, shocking sentences the reality of the slaves' terrible experience would be lost.
For nearly 750 years, from the middle of the eighth century, Islam was the central civilization of the Old World serving as the carrier that transmitted innovations from one society to another. Islam itself spread through trade as much as through conquest and lucrative overland and maritime trade routes stretched from Morocco and Spain, to Persia, India and China. Luxury goods dominated trade and among the 'goods' were slaves--from the Balkans, the Caucasus and, also increasingly with time, from sub-Saharan Africa.
Economic booms have a way of creating their own special distortions. Starting in the seventh century, when Islam conquered the Persian Sassanid Empire and much of the Byzantine one, it acquired immense quantities of looted gold. In addition, supplies of newly minted gold arrived along trade routes that the empire inherited or developed; one reaching from the mines of Nubia to Aswan, others from central Africa to the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. This vast expansion of wealth encouraged a culture of conspicuous consumption and slaves were among the possessions that set the rich apart, though even small-holders and nomadic traders generally had a slave or two.
Female slaves were required in considerable numbers in the Medieval Islamic world. Female slave musicians, singers, dancers, reciters and even composers of poetry were highly prized and costly. There were schools in Baghdad, Cordoba and Medina that supplied tuition and training in musical and literary skills. Many more women were bought for domestic work or as concubines. Overall, the ratio of female to male slaves was about 2:1 in the Islamic world.
Homes of those who could afford the space were divided into separate quarters for men and women and the men were served by male slaves who functioned as grooms, guards, messengers and porters. To guarantee the virtue of the women of the household harems were secured not just by locks, but by slave guards, who were invariably eunuchs.
Slave eunuchs sold for up to seven times the price of uncastrated male slaves reflecting the high death rate from the operation, but also high demand. In addition to their role as harem guards eunuchs served as administrators, tutors and secretaries and as male concubines. The Caliph in Baghdad in the early 10th century had seven thousand black eunuchs and four thousand white ones in his palace.
While the North Atlantic slave trade arose primarily to provide agricultural workers, that role was filled in the Medieval Islamic world largely by local peasants rather than slaves. In theory, the Koran's injunctions should have guaranteed much kinder treatment of slaves in the land of Islam than was the case in the Americas. To some extent that was true: slaves were more often freed, integration into the broader social fabric was quite common and there were pathways to very high rank for both white and black slaves (though these were more common for the former); but practices forbidden by Koran, such as castration, were in fact commonplace.
The number of Africans enslaved is obviously difficult to estimate and Segal does a good job reviewing various sources drawing on tax records, business documents in such repositories as the Cairo geniza, and Islamic and European writers. Spread over thirteen and a half centuries a number of 14 million for the total Islamic black slave trade (an average of about 10,000 per year) seems, if anything, a bit conservative. The number of Africans enslaved was thus roughly equal to the numbers enslaved in the Atlantic trade, but spread out over a much longer period of time.
I found the overviews of the Caliphates and the Ottoman Empires and the spread of Islam concise and helpful. The chapters detailing the collision of European powers with the Afro-Islamic world were particularly thought-provoking. Colonization of Africa by European powers, some of which had committed to eliminating the Atlantic slave trade, had a curiously mixed effect on the actual practice of slavery in Islamic African provinces. European administrators, unwilling to disrupt the effective pursuit of profits or antagonize local Arab strong men and landowners, were inconsistent about the issue, often doing more harm than good.
Detailed and thoughtful examinations of colonial policies in Nigeria (Britain), Somalia (Italy), Mauritania (France) and Zanzibar and the Kenya Coast (Britain) illustrate how uneven, careless policy-making created populations of squatters, impoverished day-laborers and vagrants who were often conscripted for government projects or even as labor gangs or fighting units in Europe's world wars.
Slavery still persists in Mauritania, the Sudan and elsewhere in the Arab and African world; against a background of fourteen centuries of Islamic colonization and slave-owning, the practice becomes more comprehensible, if no less painful and dehumanizing to those enslaved.
The final chapter leaps rather incongruously to a puzzled essay on African-America's fascination with Islam as an alternative to Christianity. I don't get it either, but it doesn't really fit the overall narrative. I would have much preferred to see the book summarize the state of the African diaspora in the Arab world and/or discuss how the dysfunctional mix of Arab and European colonialism helped create a series of failed and violent states. But that's nit-picking: overall, this is a very valuable book on a woefully understudied topic.
Content Rating: PG Warning for dark thematic material. Some short sentences about the violence done to slaves, particularly as regards castration and concubinage. He doesn't overdo it with the gore or sexual elements, but without these few spare, shocking sentences the reality of the slaves' terrible experience would be lost.
January 10, 2014
SLAVERY AND ISLAM
Ronald Segals short (240 pages) book on the subject of Slavery and Islam is one of the few books that cover this issue in a form that is accessible to the average reader. What is welcome about the book is that it stands apart from much of the fevered anti-Islamic writing that has been a growing phenomena over the last few decades and attempts to deal with the issue of Slavery in Islam in an impartial manner.
Africa has suffered at the hands of the slave trade for well over a thousand years, the European component of that trade was at it height between the 1500's into the 1800's. Slavery already existed in the lands that were to come under Islam, and the trade was carried over from then (7th century) and though the Ottoman empire banned it in the 1850's it has continued in some parts of the Islamic world until well into the twentieth century, in two countries Mauritania and Sudan it is believed to be still continuing.
A section of the book makes the comparison between the two trades and makes the point that in the few centuries that the Europeans traded in slaves they enslaved almost as many Africans as Islamic countries did over 13 centuries. Further to this he points out that "in European Slavery the Africans were depersonalised, a unit of labour in an America where the original populations had been hideously depleted by European arms and diseases." This is in comparison to Islam where "the overall treatment of slaves was overall more benign, in part because of the values and attitudes promoted by religion inhibited the very development of Western style Capitalism, with its effective subjugation of people to the priority of profit." In short Slaves in Islam became part of the service sector, soldiers and household servants, cooks and concubines where in the Americas slaves were a unit of production in the highly capitalised production of commodities for world trade.
In both instances the Slave Trade itself was equally bloody. No one wishes to be enslaved, and this is as true whether the masters are Christian and capitalist or of the Muslim religion. The journeys that Slaves made across the Saharan Desert or on dhows to Arabia were fully as brutal as those experienced by the slaves who made their passage across the Atlantic. The castration of slaves to feed the market for Eunuchs is one particular aspect of Islamic slavery that is absent from the Western experience. The figures for death rates following the "operation" are horrendous though the author is unable to give a precise figure.
Segal also reflects on the situation for Slaves once they reach their destination, and it is here - in general - that the differences between the two systems become more noticeable. The authors conclusion is that "the freeing of individual slaves by their owners was much more frequent and widespread in Islam." It also covers the question of why there is no noticeable Diaspora of Blacks in the Islamic world. A recent comment posted on one of my reviews states quite categorically that it was a result of the widespread castration of male slaves. While there certainly was a trade in Eunuchs it was not a majority of those African males enslaved, who were only reckoned to be a third of those traded, females making up two thirds (this is the reverse of the proportions for the Atlantic trade). The conclusion that Segal comes to is that "the comparative smallness of a black Diaspora in Islam is evidence not of the small numbers carried by the trade, but of the degree to which large numbers were absorbed in the wider population." He also notes examples of Slaves and former Slaves who rose to high and respectable positions within Islamic societies.
The book ranges through time and geography to give accounts of particular examples of Islamic societies and the forms of slavery they practiced. It is this part of the book that becomes a little confusing, the reader is bombarded with names and places from Spain (Al-Andalus) to India and all across North Africa as well as the Ottoman Empire. Also covered are those places that came colonies under European Imperialism, and the changes that occurred in relation to slavery which was gradually replaced by Capitalistic labour relations which secured similar ends (coercing labour) without the inhuman ownership of one person by another. A short section on Islam and the post slavery black population of America is interesting, but seems somewhat superfluous given that they were neither formally slaves and the hybrid beliefs they held were only in part related to Islam as it was known elsewhere.
As a good impartial history of Slavery and Islam I know of none that is better. It has its weaknesses, and is not as comprehensive as books on the Atlantic slave trade and American Slavery in part because of the diversity of experience and the fact that the history of Islamic slavery stretches back far further in time and the sources are not as readily available as those for the American experience. Overall an interesting book, that is worth reading.
Ronald Segals short (240 pages) book on the subject of Slavery and Islam is one of the few books that cover this issue in a form that is accessible to the average reader. What is welcome about the book is that it stands apart from much of the fevered anti-Islamic writing that has been a growing phenomena over the last few decades and attempts to deal with the issue of Slavery in Islam in an impartial manner.
Africa has suffered at the hands of the slave trade for well over a thousand years, the European component of that trade was at it height between the 1500's into the 1800's. Slavery already existed in the lands that were to come under Islam, and the trade was carried over from then (7th century) and though the Ottoman empire banned it in the 1850's it has continued in some parts of the Islamic world until well into the twentieth century, in two countries Mauritania and Sudan it is believed to be still continuing.
A section of the book makes the comparison between the two trades and makes the point that in the few centuries that the Europeans traded in slaves they enslaved almost as many Africans as Islamic countries did over 13 centuries. Further to this he points out that "in European Slavery the Africans were depersonalised, a unit of labour in an America where the original populations had been hideously depleted by European arms and diseases." This is in comparison to Islam where "the overall treatment of slaves was overall more benign, in part because of the values and attitudes promoted by religion inhibited the very development of Western style Capitalism, with its effective subjugation of people to the priority of profit." In short Slaves in Islam became part of the service sector, soldiers and household servants, cooks and concubines where in the Americas slaves were a unit of production in the highly capitalised production of commodities for world trade.
In both instances the Slave Trade itself was equally bloody. No one wishes to be enslaved, and this is as true whether the masters are Christian and capitalist or of the Muslim religion. The journeys that Slaves made across the Saharan Desert or on dhows to Arabia were fully as brutal as those experienced by the slaves who made their passage across the Atlantic. The castration of slaves to feed the market for Eunuchs is one particular aspect of Islamic slavery that is absent from the Western experience. The figures for death rates following the "operation" are horrendous though the author is unable to give a precise figure.
Segal also reflects on the situation for Slaves once they reach their destination, and it is here - in general - that the differences between the two systems become more noticeable. The authors conclusion is that "the freeing of individual slaves by their owners was much more frequent and widespread in Islam." It also covers the question of why there is no noticeable Diaspora of Blacks in the Islamic world. A recent comment posted on one of my reviews states quite categorically that it was a result of the widespread castration of male slaves. While there certainly was a trade in Eunuchs it was not a majority of those African males enslaved, who were only reckoned to be a third of those traded, females making up two thirds (this is the reverse of the proportions for the Atlantic trade). The conclusion that Segal comes to is that "the comparative smallness of a black Diaspora in Islam is evidence not of the small numbers carried by the trade, but of the degree to which large numbers were absorbed in the wider population." He also notes examples of Slaves and former Slaves who rose to high and respectable positions within Islamic societies.
The book ranges through time and geography to give accounts of particular examples of Islamic societies and the forms of slavery they practiced. It is this part of the book that becomes a little confusing, the reader is bombarded with names and places from Spain (Al-Andalus) to India and all across North Africa as well as the Ottoman Empire. Also covered are those places that came colonies under European Imperialism, and the changes that occurred in relation to slavery which was gradually replaced by Capitalistic labour relations which secured similar ends (coercing labour) without the inhuman ownership of one person by another. A short section on Islam and the post slavery black population of America is interesting, but seems somewhat superfluous given that they were neither formally slaves and the hybrid beliefs they held were only in part related to Islam as it was known elsewhere.
As a good impartial history of Slavery and Islam I know of none that is better. It has its weaknesses, and is not as comprehensive as books on the Atlantic slave trade and American Slavery in part because of the diversity of experience and the fact that the history of Islamic slavery stretches back far further in time and the sources are not as readily available as those for the American experience. Overall an interesting book, that is worth reading.
June 4, 2025
This was a fascinating book in that it helped explain the various forms of slavery used under the guise of Islam along with the differences between slavery in the West and slavery in the East. Structured first with a historical slant, then a region-by-region explanation, it is well set-up for the patient reader.
While slavery in the West was directed to the productive economy, in the Ottoman Empire it was a form of consumption.
In the Ottoman Empire, slaves had stipulated rights, which was in conformity with Islamic teachings. These enslaved servants could become high-ranking generals and viziers and then be freed to become fairly rich. Some free-born Muslims often bribed their way into becoming slaves, so they, too, could rise high in the organization.
The devil was in the tail.
One reason I appreciated the outline and structure of this book was that it explained the beginning, rise, and expansion of Islam. This provided a nice history lesson before the focus started on the various nations and nationalities. The intricacies of the many African tribes, the grasping of the European powers (such as the French 'liberty villages'), and the subversion of Islamic creed for golden greed makes for a very defined reading.
At times, I lagged at the many details, then picked up again as the last part of the book looked at the Arab-versus-African conflicts and the ongoing slavery trade in Mauritania and the Sudan. While the author manages to keep personal views out of most of the book, his indignation comes through at the end. This is well-written with many notes, and as such, is a worthy read.
Book Season = Spring (season of hope)
While slavery in the West was directed to the productive economy, in the Ottoman Empire it was a form of consumption.
In the Ottoman Empire, slaves had stipulated rights, which was in conformity with Islamic teachings. These enslaved servants could become high-ranking generals and viziers and then be freed to become fairly rich. Some free-born Muslims often bribed their way into becoming slaves, so they, too, could rise high in the organization.
The devil was in the tail.
One reason I appreciated the outline and structure of this book was that it explained the beginning, rise, and expansion of Islam. This provided a nice history lesson before the focus started on the various nations and nationalities. The intricacies of the many African tribes, the grasping of the European powers (such as the French 'liberty villages'), and the subversion of Islamic creed for golden greed makes for a very defined reading.
At times, I lagged at the many details, then picked up again as the last part of the book looked at the Arab-versus-African conflicts and the ongoing slavery trade in Mauritania and the Sudan. While the author manages to keep personal views out of most of the book, his indignation comes through at the end. This is well-written with many notes, and as such, is a worthy read.
Book Season = Spring (season of hope)
April 25, 2012
This is a well researched book, but has one large drawback: it spends most of the time telling the reader the history of Islamic expansion rather than what happened to the slaves.
It's still an interesting book, but doesn't do what it says on the cover. There is very little information about the lives of the slaves and how they came to be slaves.
Koranic attitudes to slavery are highlighted on several occasions, as is the difference between European slavery and the Middle Eastern slavery (Europeans mainly used them in industry, Arabs mainly used them as servants and soldiers). But while there is a lot of history of Islam, there is very little about the slaves themselves.
A better book about Islamic slavery is White Gold by Giles Milton. Although that book is about Europeans taken slaves by Barabry Coast pirates, there are parts of the book that talk about the lives of black slaves used as soldiers.
One thing I did take from this book that I wasn't aware of before is in 1511, 50 black slaves were taken from Andalucia in Spain to the West Indies. Those slaves hadn't been captured by Europeans, but were left behind by the Arabs when they lost their last foothold in Iberia. It begs a question: would Europe have thought of slavery as an option if there were no slaves in Spain?
It's still an interesting book, but doesn't do what it says on the cover. There is very little information about the lives of the slaves and how they came to be slaves.
Koranic attitudes to slavery are highlighted on several occasions, as is the difference between European slavery and the Middle Eastern slavery (Europeans mainly used them in industry, Arabs mainly used them as servants and soldiers). But while there is a lot of history of Islam, there is very little about the slaves themselves.
A better book about Islamic slavery is White Gold by Giles Milton. Although that book is about Europeans taken slaves by Barabry Coast pirates, there are parts of the book that talk about the lives of black slaves used as soldiers.
One thing I did take from this book that I wasn't aware of before is in 1511, 50 black slaves were taken from Andalucia in Spain to the West Indies. Those slaves hadn't been captured by Europeans, but were left behind by the Arabs when they lost their last foothold in Iberia. It begs a question: would Europe have thought of slavery as an option if there were no slaves in Spain?
August 17, 2024
BLACK DEATH IN CAUCASIAN MIND
Let’s be clear from the very start. This book is essential on the subject of slavery and the slave trade, and it is worth all the time you may spend on it and around it because you will want to check a lot of information it contains. A preliminary remark would be that the author gathered a lot of information from many different sources and some of that information is not necessarily considered standard in the academic world, but Ronald Segal’s point is that the subject has systematically been sidetracked by some organized silence that makes the academic world not necessarily trustworthy on that count.
1- Before Islam
My first remark is that he does not spend time on what was before Islam in the world he is going to speak of, hence in Europe, Africa, and Asia. He starts very clearly with the official date of the founding of Islam 622 CE and considers hardly anything before, apart from some detail on Muhammad before he migrates to Medina. Slavery was a very common fact in the Roman Empire for one example, but also in most civilizations in the Middle East. Slavery is clearly codified in the Old Testament for one, and only one, example. Slavery is extremely limited for Israelis or Jews in Israel. Slavery massively concerns non-Jews, for example, Arabs as they are called. But let me quote a few passages:
2 If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and in the seventh, he shall go out free for nothing.
3 If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he was married, then his wife shall go out with him.
4 If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife, and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself.
5 And if the servant shall plainly say, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’
6 then his master shall bring him unto the judges. He shall also bring him to the door or unto the doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.
7 “And if a man sells his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do.
8 If she pleases not her master who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed. To sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.
9 And if he has betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.
10 If he takes for himself another wife, her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage shall he not diminish.
11 And if he does not do these three unto her, then shall she go out free, without money.
20 “And if a man smites his servant or his maid with a rod, and he dies under his hand, he shall be surely punished.
21 Notwithstanding, if he continues a day or two, he shall not be punished; for he is his money. (21st century King James Version, Exodus 21:2-11 & 21:20-21)
44 Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, whom thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen who are round about you. From them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.
45 Moreover of the children of the strangers who sojourn among you, from them shall ye buy and from their families who are with you, whom they begot in your land; and they shall be your possession.
46 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession. They shall be your bondmen for ever. But over your brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigor. (Leviticus 25:44-46)
This strict position will slightly change in the New Testament which will denounce slave traders in general and not only those who sell Jewish slaves (1 Timothy 1:9-10). We have to keep in mind in Islam that Moslems cannot be put in slavery or sold as slaves by other Moslems (and non-Moslem slave traders who sell Moslems as slaves are by principle, enemies of Islam). We can see a perfect continuation of the Old Testament more than something in any way new.
2- The origin of slavery, a hypothesis
The hypothesis here should be that slavery, or rather some type of dependent social organization or division of labor, was invented with the emergence of agriculture, starting after the Ice Age, when the water started to rise around 12,000 BCE within an important weather change. This slavery gave the community that benefited from it the mobility it needed to cope with that new form of social work and social organization: agriculture, cattle husbandry, and subsequent commerce and administration due to non-autarkic economic activities, not to speak of the building or “urban” concentration as proved by the site of Gobekli Tepe dating back to 9,500 BCE.
In fact, Segal should have discussed the real status of these early slaves knowing that anyway the social organization of the rather limited communities of hunters-gatherers was not freedom really because there must have been a strict division of labor to take care of the children for three if not more years, and then hunting required some strict planning and coordination of all the hunters. The gathering was more relaxed, as an activity, but there were a lot of predators, so the gathering must have been organized collectively too, and any lack of work intensity or work efficiency might mean less to eat for the community, thus creating pressure on the gatherers. The concept of personal freedom could not exist really and the shift to the agricultural division of labor implied some kind of hierarchical organization and authority that must have taken time to be devised so that slavery might have been very slow to appear per se.
The defensive or offensive war slavery was another thing. Military action was compulsory, and prisoners became slaves or were at least attached to the victors. But at the same time, we have to consider the practice among American Indians, for example, the Powhatans in what was going to become Virginia. The fighting male prisoners were used in two different ways: some became the ritualistic victims of some celebration, and some became the “slaves” of the families of the dead warriors. In fact, they were integrated into the families. Both fates were accepted as normal. We have to keep in mind that human sacrifice was a normal fact in these old times in many forms, for example, gladiators in Rome.
3- For a real historical perspective
That’s what is missing in the book, a real historical perspective that would explain at the beginning of Islam that the practice of slavery all over the known world was so wide that Muhammad could not even think of going against it, just like Abraham did not reject having a son from his Arab slave servant and obeying God’s order to sacrifice either Ishmael or Isaac.
The book though insists on the rejection of slavery by the principle that Muhammad expressed along with some recommendations about treating slaves properly, but we must keep in mind the harem was not invented by Muhammad, nor by Islam. Can we think Abraham was in love with his Arab slave servant? Of course not, at least not with the meaning we give to the word today, and anyway he had at least two women in his life, his wife and his Arab slave servant. The book is clear though about Muhammad recommending good treatment of slaves, manumission for slaves, miscegenation with slaves, and the exoneration of Muslims from slavery. But the book also shows that this seems to be without any direct consequences in reality, though he also gives several testimonies about the way slaves were treated, and it comes to the simple idea that on their way from the catchment zone to their destination, that is to say, the slave market, hence in the hands of the merchants, conditions were squalid and inhuman. The book does not seem to consider these merchants were anxious to bring as many slaves as possible to the slave market clearly saying that the profits were so high that they could have very high death tolls, though the book is not very clear about these. When arrived in their owners’ homes the slaves were then treated quite correctly, most of the time.
4- Women-oriented slavery
He insists on the fact that a majority of these slaves were women. A clear difference from the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in America since in Mexico parity between men and women was only reached at the end of the 17th century, more than two centuries after the first slaves were brought there. These slaves were used as home servants or concubines in the harem as for women; as house servants as for both women and men with the special case of eunuchs in the harem; and as outdoor servants as for men. He also insists on the fact that many men were used as business employees by their owners. Slavery was mostly an urban phenomenon, with only a small portion of slaves used in plantations or on agricultural estates.
There he is misguided about Spain and America, and it is important to insist on this point. Spain had slaves under Islam of course, but the practice was kept after the Reconquista and the noble families had many slaves in Spain long before Christopher Columbus who himself was in Africa in 1483 and took part in the nascent (European-controlled) slave trade from the west coast of Africa to Spain. We can even consider the Spaniards kept the in-coming routes of before the Reconquista from the Maghreb or along the western African coast. The book does not explore this problem. It is essential because in Mexico, Hispaniola, and Cuba the Spanish noble families moved with their black slaves and slavery was an urban phenomenon too and dominant as such in Mexico.
5- The Catholic Church
Even if slaves were imported later on to work on plantations, when the Native Americans on the various islands had been totally wiped out, Cortez himself in Mexico had a more positive view of this plantation industry and he was the first one to use water-power to work his first cane sugar mill, which sounds normal since in Europe water mills – and wind mills – had done all sorts of mechanical tasks since the 10th century on the advice and guidance of Benedictines. Segal reduces thus the vision of slavery in America exclusively to the English practice starting in 1619 and the arrival of the first African slaves in Virginia till the end of it in 1863-1865. That enables him not to study the role of the Spanish and French Catholic churches that more or less tolerated slavery without ever condoning it entirely, which the protestant and Anglican churches did not do at all. In fact, the position of the Catholic Church defined in the 15th century was insisting strongly on the religious right (and duty) for the male (and female) slaves to get married and have a normal Christian family life, and on the duty if not obligation for the slave owners to encourage this matrimonial perspective and provide the slaves with normal conditions for the spouses to fulfill it, including towards the children that could not be taken away from the mother, at least in their childhood (which would run up to 12 or 13 at least and puberty). This implied that the mostly male (more than 60-70%) black slave population married local Indian women, though statistics have not yet been calculated. A situation that will be marginal within the English slavery context.
6- European slaves
He opposes white slaves from Europe, though the book lacks much detail on that side (he could of course not know the book by Robert C. Davis published in 2004, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800), to black slaves from Africa. At the same time when white Christian Europeans were no longer available the Moslem world did very well without. It would be interesting to remember John Smith, the founder of Jamestown and Virginia, who was a war slave when captured by the Ottomans in Central Europe before escaping and then becoming a contract-holder in the first expedition to Virginia in 1607. He never gave any real detail but the whole episode does not seem to have been that dramatic to him, but essentially how could he be a militant for individual freedom when slavery was the good side of being made a prisoner in a war, when we know that these wars against the Ottomans were the scene of atrocious facts like the systematic impaling of prisoners on the European side by the famous Count Dracula, and probably quite a few more. We too often look at the past with our eyes and not with the eyes of a historian. What about the famous drawings by Goya on the Disasters of War? Not to speak of the Inquisition, both the older one against the Cathars and the more recent one in Spain and then Mexico.
In such a context I do not see how a majority of people, or even no more than a few isolated voices could be heard speaking against such atrocities, and slavery among them, especially when it was “humanely” performed like when in the Mali Empire the Charter of Kurukan Fuga in 1235 was devised by Moslem Sundiata after his victory over the animist Sossos, saying among other things that the slave owner owned the slave but not his bag, meaning the slave had some private territory, his bag.
7- Historical evolution
In fact, the book becomes really fascinating when Segal starts studying how this practice changed little by little from a war custom according to which all prisoners are made slaves, or even some fake war raids with the only objective of making prisoners and turning them into slaves later on, to a systematic commerce and industry practiced by merchants who only saw a way for them to get rich fast, even if 50% of the captives died along the way. Then he studies the routes and the complicities they needed including in black Africa where some tribal chiefs protected their own tribes by selling away the members of other tribes. When we know the minority Tutsis were the dominant tribe over the majority Hutus in Rwanda in all those centuries when that slave trade developed in Eastern and Central Africa, we can understand that the potent recollection during these centuries of being the cattle of the dominant minority can still pervert the minds of the descendants of this exploited majority. This slave trade came to an end in Eastern Africa only late in the 19th century, if not in the first half of the 20th century.
The routes and types of trades are clearly stated. Trans-Saharan, from sub-Saharan Sudan, from Mali to Ethiopia, either to Morocco or Libya or Egypt; from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean across the whole sub-Saharan corridor; across the Red Sea to Arabia and beyond to the Middle East; up along the Eastern coast of Africa from Mombasa to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf and then Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and India, at times even farther. Plantation slaves are rare, but they are important in Zanzibar or on the coast where they cultivated cloves, among other exportable produces. The worst case in that trade was eunuchs. European eunuchs were only deprived of their testicles, but African eunuchs were deprived of both their testicles and their penis, “level with the abdomen castration” as they said. The death toll was extremely high though we do not have much data on the subject.
8- Human cost
We can only have a tentative evaluation of how many people were captured and ended up in slavery, with already a great difference between the two figures, an even greater difference would appear if we could assess the targeted population before and after the raid, due to the death rate of the mostly collateral casualties of the raids in the surrounding population, because immediate execution or delayed death from starvation and wounds; but also due to the heavy number of casualties in the transportation of the captives, or the extremely high death rate of the total castration boys and young teenagers were submitted to; and not to mention the death toll after arrival because of the weather change. This very mortiferous and death-inflicting situation explains why there are so few descendants: they died like flies in many ways and their position was not favorable to procreation. Marriage was not an obligation in any way and most women were used as concubines, which implied that the children who could be born from such unions were not exactly always wanted and welcome.
9- The end of slavery
The book probably becomes better when Segal speaks of the slow and long process to abolish this slave trade that has not yet been completely terminated. The English were those who made the greatest effort to end that practice through negotiations, treaties, and commercial pressure. They hesitated at first and managed to get the trade itself banned, a ban through which it was always easy for the slave traders to wiggle, before understanding they had to ban slavery itself. Internationally slavery was totally banned by the United Nations only in 1948. Yet it survives even in Sudan where the partition of the country was supposed to put a stop to the enslaving of Southern Christians by Northern Moslems. We all know what is happening right now in Nigeria where several hundred girls have been kidnapped by Boko Haram to prevent their education and to sell them into slavery. On that level of modern forms of slavery, I will personally regret he does not have a word for the several hundred million Dalits in India. Here is a recent article on the subject.
Dalit means "trampled upon" and refers to people who are treated as "untouchables" in caste-entrenched India. Dalits are a mixed population, living all over the country, speaking a variety of languages, and practicing numerous religions.
The Constitution of India bans discrimination based on caste, but prejudice and discrimination toward Dalits remain rampant. The majority of Dalits have menial jobs such as scavenging, and they live segregated from people in upper castes.
Such maltreatment became more prevalent after federal legislation enacted in 1950 enabled discrimination against Christian Dalits. The law made Hindu Dalits eligible for free education and set quotas for government jobs and seats in legislatures to improve their status. While the privileges were extended to Sikh Dalits in 1956 and to Buddhist Dalits in 1990, they are still denied to Muslim and Christian Dalits.
(Anto Akkara, “Dalit Christians Debut New Strategy in India Election,” World Watch Monitor, [posted 5/12/2014 07:47 pm], accessed June 20, 2014, http://www.christianitytoday.com/glea...)
[... Sorry for the shortening. A lot more on my page and blog at Medium.com]
Let’s be clear from the very start. This book is essential on the subject of slavery and the slave trade, and it is worth all the time you may spend on it and around it because you will want to check a lot of information it contains. A preliminary remark would be that the author gathered a lot of information from many different sources and some of that information is not necessarily considered standard in the academic world, but Ronald Segal’s point is that the subject has systematically been sidetracked by some organized silence that makes the academic world not necessarily trustworthy on that count.
1- Before Islam
My first remark is that he does not spend time on what was before Islam in the world he is going to speak of, hence in Europe, Africa, and Asia. He starts very clearly with the official date of the founding of Islam 622 CE and considers hardly anything before, apart from some detail on Muhammad before he migrates to Medina. Slavery was a very common fact in the Roman Empire for one example, but also in most civilizations in the Middle East. Slavery is clearly codified in the Old Testament for one, and only one, example. Slavery is extremely limited for Israelis or Jews in Israel. Slavery massively concerns non-Jews, for example, Arabs as they are called. But let me quote a few passages:
2 If thou buy a Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve; and in the seventh, he shall go out free for nothing.
3 If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he was married, then his wife shall go out with him.
4 If his master has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife, and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself.
5 And if the servant shall plainly say, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’
6 then his master shall bring him unto the judges. He shall also bring him to the door or unto the doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him forever.
7 “And if a man sells his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do.
8 If she pleases not her master who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed. To sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.
9 And if he has betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the manner of daughters.
10 If he takes for himself another wife, her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage shall he not diminish.
11 And if he does not do these three unto her, then shall she go out free, without money.
20 “And if a man smites his servant or his maid with a rod, and he dies under his hand, he shall be surely punished.
21 Notwithstanding, if he continues a day or two, he shall not be punished; for he is his money. (21st century King James Version, Exodus 21:2-11 & 21:20-21)
44 Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, whom thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen who are round about you. From them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.
45 Moreover of the children of the strangers who sojourn among you, from them shall ye buy and from their families who are with you, whom they begot in your land; and they shall be your possession.
46 And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession. They shall be your bondmen for ever. But over your brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigor. (Leviticus 25:44-46)
This strict position will slightly change in the New Testament which will denounce slave traders in general and not only those who sell Jewish slaves (1 Timothy 1:9-10). We have to keep in mind in Islam that Moslems cannot be put in slavery or sold as slaves by other Moslems (and non-Moslem slave traders who sell Moslems as slaves are by principle, enemies of Islam). We can see a perfect continuation of the Old Testament more than something in any way new.
2- The origin of slavery, a hypothesis
The hypothesis here should be that slavery, or rather some type of dependent social organization or division of labor, was invented with the emergence of agriculture, starting after the Ice Age, when the water started to rise around 12,000 BCE within an important weather change. This slavery gave the community that benefited from it the mobility it needed to cope with that new form of social work and social organization: agriculture, cattle husbandry, and subsequent commerce and administration due to non-autarkic economic activities, not to speak of the building or “urban” concentration as proved by the site of Gobekli Tepe dating back to 9,500 BCE.
In fact, Segal should have discussed the real status of these early slaves knowing that anyway the social organization of the rather limited communities of hunters-gatherers was not freedom really because there must have been a strict division of labor to take care of the children for three if not more years, and then hunting required some strict planning and coordination of all the hunters. The gathering was more relaxed, as an activity, but there were a lot of predators, so the gathering must have been organized collectively too, and any lack of work intensity or work efficiency might mean less to eat for the community, thus creating pressure on the gatherers. The concept of personal freedom could not exist really and the shift to the agricultural division of labor implied some kind of hierarchical organization and authority that must have taken time to be devised so that slavery might have been very slow to appear per se.
The defensive or offensive war slavery was another thing. Military action was compulsory, and prisoners became slaves or were at least attached to the victors. But at the same time, we have to consider the practice among American Indians, for example, the Powhatans in what was going to become Virginia. The fighting male prisoners were used in two different ways: some became the ritualistic victims of some celebration, and some became the “slaves” of the families of the dead warriors. In fact, they were integrated into the families. Both fates were accepted as normal. We have to keep in mind that human sacrifice was a normal fact in these old times in many forms, for example, gladiators in Rome.
3- For a real historical perspective
That’s what is missing in the book, a real historical perspective that would explain at the beginning of Islam that the practice of slavery all over the known world was so wide that Muhammad could not even think of going against it, just like Abraham did not reject having a son from his Arab slave servant and obeying God’s order to sacrifice either Ishmael or Isaac.
The book though insists on the rejection of slavery by the principle that Muhammad expressed along with some recommendations about treating slaves properly, but we must keep in mind the harem was not invented by Muhammad, nor by Islam. Can we think Abraham was in love with his Arab slave servant? Of course not, at least not with the meaning we give to the word today, and anyway he had at least two women in his life, his wife and his Arab slave servant. The book is clear though about Muhammad recommending good treatment of slaves, manumission for slaves, miscegenation with slaves, and the exoneration of Muslims from slavery. But the book also shows that this seems to be without any direct consequences in reality, though he also gives several testimonies about the way slaves were treated, and it comes to the simple idea that on their way from the catchment zone to their destination, that is to say, the slave market, hence in the hands of the merchants, conditions were squalid and inhuman. The book does not seem to consider these merchants were anxious to bring as many slaves as possible to the slave market clearly saying that the profits were so high that they could have very high death tolls, though the book is not very clear about these. When arrived in their owners’ homes the slaves were then treated quite correctly, most of the time.
4- Women-oriented slavery
He insists on the fact that a majority of these slaves were women. A clear difference from the transatlantic slave trade and slavery in America since in Mexico parity between men and women was only reached at the end of the 17th century, more than two centuries after the first slaves were brought there. These slaves were used as home servants or concubines in the harem as for women; as house servants as for both women and men with the special case of eunuchs in the harem; and as outdoor servants as for men. He also insists on the fact that many men were used as business employees by their owners. Slavery was mostly an urban phenomenon, with only a small portion of slaves used in plantations or on agricultural estates.
There he is misguided about Spain and America, and it is important to insist on this point. Spain had slaves under Islam of course, but the practice was kept after the Reconquista and the noble families had many slaves in Spain long before Christopher Columbus who himself was in Africa in 1483 and took part in the nascent (European-controlled) slave trade from the west coast of Africa to Spain. We can even consider the Spaniards kept the in-coming routes of before the Reconquista from the Maghreb or along the western African coast. The book does not explore this problem. It is essential because in Mexico, Hispaniola, and Cuba the Spanish noble families moved with their black slaves and slavery was an urban phenomenon too and dominant as such in Mexico.
5- The Catholic Church
Even if slaves were imported later on to work on plantations, when the Native Americans on the various islands had been totally wiped out, Cortez himself in Mexico had a more positive view of this plantation industry and he was the first one to use water-power to work his first cane sugar mill, which sounds normal since in Europe water mills – and wind mills – had done all sorts of mechanical tasks since the 10th century on the advice and guidance of Benedictines. Segal reduces thus the vision of slavery in America exclusively to the English practice starting in 1619 and the arrival of the first African slaves in Virginia till the end of it in 1863-1865. That enables him not to study the role of the Spanish and French Catholic churches that more or less tolerated slavery without ever condoning it entirely, which the protestant and Anglican churches did not do at all. In fact, the position of the Catholic Church defined in the 15th century was insisting strongly on the religious right (and duty) for the male (and female) slaves to get married and have a normal Christian family life, and on the duty if not obligation for the slave owners to encourage this matrimonial perspective and provide the slaves with normal conditions for the spouses to fulfill it, including towards the children that could not be taken away from the mother, at least in their childhood (which would run up to 12 or 13 at least and puberty). This implied that the mostly male (more than 60-70%) black slave population married local Indian women, though statistics have not yet been calculated. A situation that will be marginal within the English slavery context.
6- European slaves
He opposes white slaves from Europe, though the book lacks much detail on that side (he could of course not know the book by Robert C. Davis published in 2004, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800), to black slaves from Africa. At the same time when white Christian Europeans were no longer available the Moslem world did very well without. It would be interesting to remember John Smith, the founder of Jamestown and Virginia, who was a war slave when captured by the Ottomans in Central Europe before escaping and then becoming a contract-holder in the first expedition to Virginia in 1607. He never gave any real detail but the whole episode does not seem to have been that dramatic to him, but essentially how could he be a militant for individual freedom when slavery was the good side of being made a prisoner in a war, when we know that these wars against the Ottomans were the scene of atrocious facts like the systematic impaling of prisoners on the European side by the famous Count Dracula, and probably quite a few more. We too often look at the past with our eyes and not with the eyes of a historian. What about the famous drawings by Goya on the Disasters of War? Not to speak of the Inquisition, both the older one against the Cathars and the more recent one in Spain and then Mexico.
In such a context I do not see how a majority of people, or even no more than a few isolated voices could be heard speaking against such atrocities, and slavery among them, especially when it was “humanely” performed like when in the Mali Empire the Charter of Kurukan Fuga in 1235 was devised by Moslem Sundiata after his victory over the animist Sossos, saying among other things that the slave owner owned the slave but not his bag, meaning the slave had some private territory, his bag.
7- Historical evolution
In fact, the book becomes really fascinating when Segal starts studying how this practice changed little by little from a war custom according to which all prisoners are made slaves, or even some fake war raids with the only objective of making prisoners and turning them into slaves later on, to a systematic commerce and industry practiced by merchants who only saw a way for them to get rich fast, even if 50% of the captives died along the way. Then he studies the routes and the complicities they needed including in black Africa where some tribal chiefs protected their own tribes by selling away the members of other tribes. When we know the minority Tutsis were the dominant tribe over the majority Hutus in Rwanda in all those centuries when that slave trade developed in Eastern and Central Africa, we can understand that the potent recollection during these centuries of being the cattle of the dominant minority can still pervert the minds of the descendants of this exploited majority. This slave trade came to an end in Eastern Africa only late in the 19th century, if not in the first half of the 20th century.
The routes and types of trades are clearly stated. Trans-Saharan, from sub-Saharan Sudan, from Mali to Ethiopia, either to Morocco or Libya or Egypt; from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean across the whole sub-Saharan corridor; across the Red Sea to Arabia and beyond to the Middle East; up along the Eastern coast of Africa from Mombasa to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf and then Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and India, at times even farther. Plantation slaves are rare, but they are important in Zanzibar or on the coast where they cultivated cloves, among other exportable produces. The worst case in that trade was eunuchs. European eunuchs were only deprived of their testicles, but African eunuchs were deprived of both their testicles and their penis, “level with the abdomen castration” as they said. The death toll was extremely high though we do not have much data on the subject.
8- Human cost
We can only have a tentative evaluation of how many people were captured and ended up in slavery, with already a great difference between the two figures, an even greater difference would appear if we could assess the targeted population before and after the raid, due to the death rate of the mostly collateral casualties of the raids in the surrounding population, because immediate execution or delayed death from starvation and wounds; but also due to the heavy number of casualties in the transportation of the captives, or the extremely high death rate of the total castration boys and young teenagers were submitted to; and not to mention the death toll after arrival because of the weather change. This very mortiferous and death-inflicting situation explains why there are so few descendants: they died like flies in many ways and their position was not favorable to procreation. Marriage was not an obligation in any way and most women were used as concubines, which implied that the children who could be born from such unions were not exactly always wanted and welcome.
9- The end of slavery
The book probably becomes better when Segal speaks of the slow and long process to abolish this slave trade that has not yet been completely terminated. The English were those who made the greatest effort to end that practice through negotiations, treaties, and commercial pressure. They hesitated at first and managed to get the trade itself banned, a ban through which it was always easy for the slave traders to wiggle, before understanding they had to ban slavery itself. Internationally slavery was totally banned by the United Nations only in 1948. Yet it survives even in Sudan where the partition of the country was supposed to put a stop to the enslaving of Southern Christians by Northern Moslems. We all know what is happening right now in Nigeria where several hundred girls have been kidnapped by Boko Haram to prevent their education and to sell them into slavery. On that level of modern forms of slavery, I will personally regret he does not have a word for the several hundred million Dalits in India. Here is a recent article on the subject.
Dalit means "trampled upon" and refers to people who are treated as "untouchables" in caste-entrenched India. Dalits are a mixed population, living all over the country, speaking a variety of languages, and practicing numerous religions.
The Constitution of India bans discrimination based on caste, but prejudice and discrimination toward Dalits remain rampant. The majority of Dalits have menial jobs such as scavenging, and they live segregated from people in upper castes.
Such maltreatment became more prevalent after federal legislation enacted in 1950 enabled discrimination against Christian Dalits. The law made Hindu Dalits eligible for free education and set quotas for government jobs and seats in legislatures to improve their status. While the privileges were extended to Sikh Dalits in 1956 and to Buddhist Dalits in 1990, they are still denied to Muslim and Christian Dalits.
(Anto Akkara, “Dalit Christians Debut New Strategy in India Election,” World Watch Monitor, [posted 5/12/2014 07:47 pm], accessed June 20, 2014, http://www.christianitytoday.com/glea...)
[... Sorry for the shortening. A lot more on my page and blog at Medium.com]
June 4, 2024
The author tackled a fascinating and tragic topic that is far too often neglected as scholars think about the slave trade. As has been noted by others, he attempts to be fair handed.
Several issues with this book are his framing Africa in an almost edenic manner (ie removing agency from African participants in the slave trade), his efforts to paint Islamic slavery as more benign (in so doing avoiding analyzing the brutality of all slaveries) and oddly attempts to suggest to people of different faiths what it means to be a good practitioner of their religion.
Segal covers a wide and fascinating topic, but lacks the analysis needed to tell the complicated and tragic story of any form of slavery.
Several issues with this book are his framing Africa in an almost edenic manner (ie removing agency from African participants in the slave trade), his efforts to paint Islamic slavery as more benign (in so doing avoiding analyzing the brutality of all slaveries) and oddly attempts to suggest to people of different faiths what it means to be a good practitioner of their religion.
Segal covers a wide and fascinating topic, but lacks the analysis needed to tell the complicated and tragic story of any form of slavery.
September 22, 2015
A grim account of the many atrocities of the slave industry from early Islamic empires until today. This book does a brilliant job highlighting the differences and similarities between the Trans-Saharan slave practice and the Atlantic one. For an injustice which lasted a little over 12 centuries, I can only say it is saddening how little awareness there is about its history among Middle Eastern nations.
November 15, 2009
Interesting. Ronald Segal combines Islamic history with the history of the African slave trade. He managed to uncover the names and positions of several former African slaves who rose to power. A few parts are lacking, or filled with controversial, disputed information. Overall, this book is an asset. I recommend this book.
February 18, 2010
Fascinating look at the little known history of slavery in the Moslem world. This book should be assigned reading in classes on slavery.
July 15, 2018
Must read for all those interested in the global African diaspora, we're more than just those who ended up in the Americas. This follows the Diaspora of those who were slaves of the Trans Saharan slave trade which expanded from North Africa to Western Asia/ Middle East to Spain to India and even China.
December 20, 2022
Ronald had clearly done his research. The book, however, covered such a vast swath of time AND space that it was difficult to really follow any characters. It did give a good broad survey of slavery in Muslim lands but was a firehose of facts. It could easily have been broken up into 3-4 separate books. Also, the paper back I got started falling apart from the first second I opened it.
December 25, 2018
I read this to understand more about slavery specifically how it played out in Africa and what a sad story it was. I was one of the naive people who thought that kind of slavery was over or at least not so prominent and this book was such an eye opener.
April 26, 2023
Recommended - more on Man's, and Woman's, inhumanity to Man, and Woman.
November 3, 2014
A wonderful examination of a theme I have never even considered. Well researched and thorough in its claims, I feel as though I have a basic understanding of the concepts and history after reading this book. The author seldom strays into personal arguments and sentiments despite the emotional topic. My only wish was that he had first given a short history on the existence of slavery in the covered areas before Islam - the book somewhat abruptly begins with the advent of Islam and does not cover the practices already in place before that time.
December 18, 2008
An eye opener. Opens a can of worms on slavery by Islamists.
Read
September 23, 2010Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora by Ronald Segal (2002)
August 3, 2018
A book like this needs to be read. People tend to forget that Muslims had millions of slaves and that slavery still exists in many Muslim countries. Read this book.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews