Slavery was a major part of society, culture and economy in the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) of the Islamic Golden Age, which during its history included most of the Middle East. While chattel slavery was an important part also of the preceding practice of slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), it was during the Abbasid Caliphate that the slave trade to the Muslim world reached a more permanent commercial industrial scale, establishing commercial slave trade routes that were to remain for centuries.
The Caliphate was a major slave trade destination, and slaves were imported from several destinations. Since Islamic law prohibited enslavement of Muslims, non-Muslim slaves (kafir) were imported from non-Muslim lands (Dar al-harb) around the Muslim world (Dar al-Islam). These included pagan Africa in the south; Christian and pagan Europe in the north; and pagan Central Asia and India in the east.
These slaves came from the north along the Balkan slave trade and the Volga trade route; from the east via the Bukhara slave trade; from the west via the Andalusian slave trade, the Trans-Saharan slave trade and the Red Sea slave trade; and from the south from the Indian Ocean slave trade. The slave trade and slavery in the area continued during subsequent states, such as the slavery in the Mamluk Sultanate (1258–1517) and the slavery in the Ottoman Empire (1517–1922), until slavery was ended in the 20th century, when the national states emerging after the split of the Ottoman Empire gradually ended slavery, culminating in the abolition of slavery in Saudi Arabia, slavery in Yemen and slavery in Oman in 1962–1970.
Slave trade
The slave trade was substantial during the Umayyad Caliphate, mainly fueled by war captives and people enslaved as tax levy; during the Abbasid Caliphate, the slave trade in war captives was largely supplanted by people bought through the commercial slave trade, and provided for the slave markets in Basra, Baghdad and Samarra. van Bavel, B. (2019). The Invisible Hand? How Market Economies Have Emerged and Declined Since AD 500. Storbritannien: OUP Oxford. pp. 69–70 In parallel with the slave trade in captives and the slaves provided as tax levy and tributes, the expansion of the commercial slave trade expanded slavery during the Abbasid period.
War captives
The established custom to enslave captured warriors as well as civilians during warfare continued during the Abbasid Caliphate, in accordance with the principle that the kafir of dar al-Harb was legitimate to enslave, though during the Abbasid era, ransoming prisoners (at least prisoners of rank) did become more common than it had been during the Rashidun and Umayyad eras, as illustrated by the Arab–Byzantine prisoner exchanges. Critical Readings on Global Slavery. (2017). Nederländerna: Brill. pp. 604–608
The historical legal principles governing the treatment of prisoners of war, in shar'iah, Islamic law, (in the traditional madhabs schools of Islamic jurisprudence), was then a significant improvement over the pre-existing norms of Arab society during Muhammad's time (see Early reforms under Islam). Men, women, and children may all be taken as prisoners of war under traditional interpretations of Islamic law. Generally, a prisoner of war could be, at the discretion of the military leader, freed, ransomed, exchanged for Muslim prisoners, or kept in bondage.Tafsir of the Qur'an by Ibn_Kathir
Byzantine Asia Minor The Abbasid Caliphate made many incursions to the interior of Asia Minor, besieging strategic Byzantine cities in order to weaken Byzantine geographical defense; when this warfare resulted in a city being captured by the Caliphate, it resulted in the city being sacked and its inhabitants being captured and then sold as slaves, a known case being that of the siege and capture of Heraclea Cybistra during the Abbasid invasion of Asia Minor (806). Critical Readings on Global Slavery. (2017). Nederländerna: Brill. pp. 607–608
The Abbasid caliph, Harun al-Rashid (), who sought to promote himself as a champion of jihad, decided to lead in person a retaliatory attack with the objective of punishing the Byzantines and impressing Abbasid influence upon their emperor. Harun, with the other half of his forces, went west and captured the strongly fortified city of Herakleia after a month-long siege in August or September. The city was plundered and razed, and its inhabitants enslaved and deported to slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate. The fall of Herakleia was considered by the Arab chroniclers the most significant achievement of Harun's expeditions against the Byzantines, and is the central event in the narratives of Harun's retaliatory campaign against Nikephoros.
During the Sack of Amorium in 838, the city was systematically destroyed, never to recover its former prosperity. Many of its inhabitants were slaughtered, and the remainder driven off as slaves. The city was thoroughly sacked and plundered; according to the Arab accounts, the sale of the spoils went on for five days. The Byzantine chronicler Theophanes Continuatus mentions 70,000 dead, while the Arab al-Mas'udi records 30,000. The surviving population were divided as slaves among the army leaders, except for the city's military and civic leaders, who were reserved for the caliph's disposal. After allowing Theophilos's envoys to return to him with the news of Amorium's fall, Mu'tasim burned the city to the ground, with only the city walls surviving relatively intact.; ; ; . Many of the survivors were released after a truce in 841, but prominent officials were taken to the caliph's capital of Samarra and executed years later after refusing to convert to Islam, becoming known as the 42 Martyrs of Amorium.
Tributary slaves
Baqt The Christian kingdom of Makuria in Dongola Reach (in today's Sudan) was obliged to provide between 360 and 400 slaves every year to Islamic Egypt (then an Abbasid province) in accordance with the terms of the Baqt treaty.Manning, P. (1990). Slavery and African life: occidental, oriental, and African slave trades. Storbritannien: Cambridge University Press. pp. 28–29
African slave trade
In the Abbasid Empire, African slaves were referred to as Zanj. African slaves were favored for hard labor.
Red Sea slave trade The slave trade from Africa to Arabia via the Red Sea had ancient roots. While in pre-Islamic Arabia, Arab war captives were common targets of slavery, importation of slaves from Ethiopia across the Red Sea also took place.The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History. (2023). Tyskland: Springer International Publishing. 144 The Red Sea slave trade appears to have been established at least from the 1st century onward, when enslaved Africans were trafficked across the Red Sea to Arabia and Yemen.The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History. (2023). Tyskland: Springer International Publishing. 143
East Africa came to act as a supply source for slaves to the Arabian Peninsula via the Indian Ocean slave trade since at least the Middle Ages. While the majority of these slaves appear to have been shipped to the Arabian Peninsula via Oman and Muscat rather than via the Red Sea, the Red Sea was also a route for the slave trade between East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. It also acted as a route for slaves to Egypt.
The Red Sea slave trade appear to have expanded significantly during the Islamic period, particularly during the Abbasid Caliphate. African slaves were transported in the 9th century via the Red Sea slave trade from Africa across the Red Sea to the slave markets of Jeddah, Mecca and Medina, and from there by caravan over the desert to the slave market of Baghdad.Black, J. (2015). The Atlantic Slave Trade in World History. USA: Taylor & Francis. p. 14 Hazell, A. (2011). The Last Slave Market: Dr John Kirk and the Struggle to End the East African Slave Trade. Storbritannien: Little, Brown Book Group. The Red Sea slave trade between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula continued for centuries until its final abolition in the 1960s, when slavery in Saudi Arabia was abolished in 1962.
Indian Ocean slave trade The Indian Ocean slave trade established, in which slaves were trafficked from East Africa across the Indian Ocean by dhow through the Persian Gulf to Ras al Khymah, Dubai, Bandrar Abbas, Bushine and Basra.
Asian slave trade
Indian people Warfare and tax revenue policies was the cause of enslavement of Indians for the Central Asian slave market already during the Umayyad conquest of Sindh in the 8th century, when the armies of the Umayyad commander Muhammad bin Qasim enslaved tens of thousands of Indian civilians and well as soldiers.Levi, Scott C. "Hindus beyond the Hindu Kush: Indians in the Central Asian Slave Trade." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 12, no. 3, 2002, pp. 277–88. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25188289. Accessed 15 Apr. 2024.
During the Ghaznavid campaigns in India in the 11th century, hundreds of thousands of Indians were captured and sold on the Central Asian slave markets; in 1014 "the army of Islam brought to Ghazna (in Afghanistan) about 200,000 captives ("qarib do sit hazar banda"), and much wealth, so that the capital appeared like an Indian city, no soldier of the camp being without wealth, or without many slaves", and during the expedition of the Ghaznavid ruler Sultan Ibrahim to the Multan area of northwestern India 100,000 captives were brought back to Central Asia, and the Ghaznavids were said to have captured "five hundred thousand slaves, beautiful men and women". During his twelfth expedition into India in 1018–1019, the armies of Mahmud of Ghazni captured so many Indian slaves that the prices fell and according to al-'Utbi, "merchants came from distant cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Ma Wara' An-nahr (Central Asia), 'Iraq and Khurasan were filled with them, and the fair and the dark, the rich and the poor, mingled in one common slavery".
Turkic people Turkic peoples belonged to the most common categories of slaves to the Abbasid Caliphate after Africans. They were foremost favored for military slavery.
Turkic people from the Central Asian Steppe (Turkestan), were a major supply source for slaves to the Abbasid Caliphate during the entire Middle Ages. They were Pagans, adherents of Tengrism, and thereby viewed as legitimate targets of slavery. In the Middle East, they were referred to as "white" and used for military slavery for centuries during the Middle Ages. Turkic slaves were trafficked to the Abbasid Caliphate via the Bukhara slave trade.
al-Baladhuri described how Caliph al-Mamun used to write to his governors in Khurasan to raid those peoples of Transoxiana who had not submitted to Islam: "when al-Mutasim became Caliph he did the same to the point that most of his military leaders came from Transoxiana: Soghdians, Farhanians, Ushrusanians, peoples of Shash, and others [even] their kings came to him. Islam spread among those who lived there, so they began raiding the Turks who lived there".Pipes, D. (1981). Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System. Storbritannien: Yale University Press. p. 213
Turkic slaves were the main slave supply of the Samanid slave trade, and regularly formed a part of the land tax sent to the Abbasid capital of Baghdad; the geographer Al-Maqdisi (ca. 375/985) noted that in his time the annual levy (ḵarāj) included 1,020 slaves.BARDA and BARDA-DĀRI iii. In the Islamic period up to the Mongol invasion in Encyclopedia Iranica
From the early 9th century, military slavery played a major military role in the Abbasid Caliphate, and Turkic male slaves were particularly favored for the role of slave soldiers.
European slave trade