Talk:Slavery and religion/draft

The issue of religion and slavery is a relatively recent area of historical research into the morality and cultures of societies in which particular religious doctrines or religious authorities gave sanction to or else tolerated the practice of slavery.

The issue has been of particular relevance since the abolition of slavery in Western societies that had once practiced it, came about largely through an application of religious beliefs and principles. The advent of secular humanism began to express such principles in a non-religious (secular) form, and it is from this basis that the modern concept of human rights decends.

The scriptures of Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) all refer to the practice of slavery, which was relatively common and generally viewed as acceptable at their individual times of writing. As slavery is today generally viewed as a violation of human rights, controversy exists of the interpretation of scriptures appearing to promote or condone slavery.

Slavery in the Hebrew Bible
Slavery is first mentioned in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) in the book of Genesis in part of the account of Noah. The account says that Noah became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham–one of his sons–entered the tent and saw his father naked. When Noah woke up he cursed Canan, Ham's son, and said his descendants will be slaves of his brothers. Genesis 9:20-27

Another mention of slavery is in Leviticus 25: 44-46. It says: "44 Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly."

Whilst slavery was probably the norm in the ancient near east, the Israelites were specifically forbidden to take their fellow countrymen as permanent slaves. Exodus 21 makes some limited provision for the eventual liberation of slaves and certain minor protections against ill-treatment. The Torah also exhibits some concern for the well-being of foreign slaves living in Israel - e.g. the Sabbath rest is explicitly extended to slaves (Ex. 20:10).

God, in the Torah, is presented as the redeemer God, who delivers his people from slavery (e.g. Exodus 6.6). Slavery is thus seen as an undesirable and unnatural state of affairs. This was empahsized by the fact that the word normally translated as "slave" (`Abed or `Obed) is more correctly rendered as servant,though more closely akin to the indentured servant ,since the manumission during Jubilee years released all bond-servants from any further financial obligation,and thus effectively ended their servitude unless they chose to stay on with their master (Exodus 21:6).

Slavery in the New Testament and Christian societies
The apostle Paul never explicitly addresses the issue of slavery as an institution. Slaves, equally with the free, have their value in Christ. Galatians 3:28 famously affirms that 'there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus'. In his context however, this principle did not lead to any agitation for the abolishment of slavery per se. Some modern readers of Paul would argue that this omission is an evidence that he condoned the practice. If Paul really thought slavery to be intrinsically bad he should have said so. Others, as we can see further down in this article, believe that he had good reasons not to address the institution of slavery as such.

According to Paul, Christians who are slaves are called to accept their lot in life, and witness to their masters by their obedience. Christian masters are called to humane treatment of their slaves. This teaching is consistent with his general outlook with respect to other relationships that in Roman society were unequal.

Paul gives advice to both parties in passages such as Ephesians 6:5-9: "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as you obey Christ; not only while being watched, and in order to please them, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. Render service with enthusiasm, as to the Lord and not to men and women, knowing that whatever good we do, we will receive the same again from the Lord, whether we are slaves or free. And, masters, do the same to them. Stop threatening them, for you know that both of you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality."

Paul in Colossians 3:22 urged slaves to obey their masters and reaffirmed that by serving their masters, it is the Lord Christ that they are serving and that they will be compensated for their servitude. “22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

In the deutero-Pauline material, there is a perhaps clearer endorsement of slavery when it is written "All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God's name and our teaching may not be slandered. 2 Those who have believing masters are not to show less respect for them because they are brothers. Instead, they are to serve them even better, because those who benefit from their service are believers, and dear to them. These are the things you are to teach and urge on them" 1 Timothy 6:1

The Apostle Peter in his epistles goes one step further and encourages slaves to be forbearing even under injustice 1 Peter 2:18 "18 Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. 19 For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. 20 But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps."

Paul can appear adamant that slaves should remain slaves. His letters are full of exhortations to Christian slaves to be loyal and obedient to their masters, so they can win them to Christianity with good conduct. He does not seem to be directly concerned about the freedom of slaves.

It appears that Paul's reason for this, is not an approval of slavery, but rather a fear that the Christian movement will be presented as anti-social and disruptive to the imperial status-quo. This fear seems particularly strong in the Pastoral epistles.

“All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God's name and our teaching may not be slandered. 1 Timothy 6:1

“Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them. Titus 2:9

Sometimes, when Paul talks about freedom from slavery, he is talking allegorically about freedom from “sin” Galatians 5:1, Romans 6:6 or “fear” but not slavery per se.

Yet, there is ambiguity in Paul's stance. Although in 1 Corinthians he writes: "17 Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches ... 20 Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him. 21 Were you a slave when you were called? Don't let it trouble you." He goes on to state, "although if you can gain your freedom, do so."

When Paul addresses the concrete situation of the Christian slave Onesimus, in his letter to Philemon, he appears to point out the tension between Onesimus and Philemon's original relationship as slave and master and their new status as Christian brother. He writes that Philemon should receive Onesimus "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother", which many commentators view as an implicit urging for freedom.

Present-day Christians argue that Paul and Peter were not defending or condoning slavery, but simply they recognized it as a fact of life in the Roman Empire. Paul was not a social reformer, but an apostle who was more concerned with the spiritual condition of men and women than he was with their physical circumstances. For this reason Paul, as well as other New Testament writers, instructs his readers on how to be on good terms with God and man no matter what situation they may be in. Christianity itself was not established as a state religion or institution in the days of Roman empire, during the time of the Apostles, until the Emperor Constantine and the subsequent establishment of the central authority of the Vatican therefore it the Vatican's attitude towards slavery that is more telling.

Paul, while in prison himself (and also subject to the possibility of slavery), addressed the spiritual attitudes of believers, in order so that people would ultimately find slavery repugnant, by virtue of their relationship with Christ. His letter to Philemon attests to the fact that Paul considered the bondage of one to another to be another example of humanity's lack of spiritual integrity and unity. Paul appeals to Philemon's commitment to the body of Christ "If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him (Onesimus) as myself." 1:17 and "even though I do not say to you how you yourself owe me your own self besides." 1:19. Supporters point out that for Paul to directly communicate his personal intentions should be indicitive of his personal views on the subject. In addition, the nascent Christian community was compelled to write in nuanced and subtle ways as to avoid death. Paul, being in prison could very well guarantee death (and the retainment of his letter, never reaching his recipients) if he openly abolished slavery.

Within Christianity itself, slaves attained positions unavailable in the pagan society. Slaves were excluded from no sacrament because of their servile condition. Slave burials are never included any indication that the one buried had been a slave. Christianity recognized marriage among slaves, and honored as martyrs slave women murdered by masters with whom they had refused to have sexual relations. Freeing slaves was regarded as an act of charity, and some heroic Christian enslaved themselves so that the funds could be used to deliver other slaves.

The barbarian invasions and the advent of the early Middle Ages vastly increased the number of slaves, both through capture and through people throwing themselves into the service state in return for protection in the absence of laws. Christians endevoured to fight these enslavements and alleviate their lot; laws penalized the selling of men into slavery as if it were murder. As Europe emerged from the early Middle Ages, slavery was transforming into the institution of serfdom, giving the former slaves legal rights and position, but not abolishing the institution.

Despite the fact it has taken Western society over 1800 years to reach that point, it is important to note, the institution of slavery in the United States was challenged through war, ultimately on Biblical principles, and not on economic conveniences. The institution itself had been creating friction based on the hypocritical principles of the constitutional statement the "All men are created equal under God.", that inherent inequity present in slavery initiated the subsequent changes in it's perception that has reverberated in Western society to this day. Despite secular and economic ambivilance to social change of enslaved people, the Biblical underpinnings of the U.S. Civil War and the Enlightenment period in Europe created the foundation of the current Western perceptions of slavery to this day.

Slavery in Islamic society
Unlike slavery during the colonial era, slavery in Islam during the same period was never based on race, and so even kidnapped Arabs and Turks could also easily turn up in slave markets. The main source of slaves in Islam were prisoners of war. This was influenced by the Greek and Roman models which formed the foundations for the practice of slavery in pre-Islamic society. Islam revised the structure of society in the Arabian peninsula, and this included addressing the institution of slavery.

While the Qur'an (and Hadith) do not expressly disallow slavery, it strongly discourages it. The prophet Muhammad never himself kept freemen as slaves, but rather bought and accepted slaves whom he then set free and strongly encouraged other people to do the same. It is reported that he liberated (by the process of buying and selling) 63 slaves, his wife Aisha 67 slaves, his uncle Abbas 70 slaves, and the second caliph Umar liberated about 1000 slaves in their respective lifetimes. According to Islamic tradition he encouraged people to treat slaves as members of their household, "Your slaves are your brothers and Allah has put them under your command. So whoever has a brother under his command should feed him of what he eats and dress him of what he wears. Do not ask them (slaves) to do things beyond their capacity (power) and if you do so, then help them.' ". Bukhari 1.2.29, see also Muslim 15.4094

According to the Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, Muhammad sent Zaid bin Haritha, a slave he had adopted as his son, to raid certain coastal areas. Zaid brought back several captives of various social classes. When the Prophet came to visit the captives he found many of them crying. He asked the reason and when he was told they were upset because their families had been split in the process of selling them as individual slaves. Because of this, Muhammed declared ‘do not separate mothers from children but sell them together’ thereby forbidding the ill of separation of families due to the institution of slavery.

The Qur'an encourages freeing slaves. An example verse concerning this (2:177) says it is righteous to free slaves and Ayat (Verse) 4:92 says that if someone by mistake kills a believer then he should set free a believing slave as part of compensation. Ayats 5:89 and 58:3 also recommend freeing slaves in expiation of broken oaths. Further instructions to set slaves free is given in verse 24:33 “And if any of your slaves ask for a deed in writing (to enable them to earn their freedom for a certain sum), give them such a deed if ye know any good in them.”

Kindness to slaves is also enjoined. In Bukhari 7.65.286 the Muslim prophet, Muhammad, is reported saying: "Give food to the hungry, pay a visit to the sick and release (set free) the one in captivity (by paying his ransom)." Another hadith Muslim 15.4074 reports the Prophet giving a slave girl to Umar out of his own share of the spoils of war and later he set free the prisoners and Umar also set free that slave girl given to him by the Prophet. see also Bukhari 4.53.372

They argue that the concept of equality of all men is expressed in the Quran 49:13: "O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other. Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well-acquainted.”

Another hadith, Bukhari 4.56.708, reports that in one occasion Aisha manumitted forty slaves in expiation of her broken oath. See also Bukhari 8.73.98.

While Islam and the Prophet dissuaded and exhorted Muslims to free slaves, they also said that if they do not they should at least treat them well. 4:36, 4:03, 4:24, 4:25.

Slavery in the Islamic World
In light of the prophet's example today Muslims view the global abolishment of slavery as a positive development. This however was not always the case, nor is the history of slavery as sanitary in historical practice as it was in ideals.

In Islamic countries the institution of slavery took a different form from both that existed before or developed in Europe and colonial times. Being a slave did not necessarily relegate a person at the bottom rung of society, subject to the vagaries of the political clime of the times. Many a slave rose among the political ranks in various Islamic empires to position of eminence and rank such as the Jannisaries, the Sultans of the Delhi Sultanate and Alptigin the founder of the Ghazni empire and once Governor of Khorasan.

Governing Ideals

Slavery was also neither a hereditary institution nor necessarily a permanent situation in Islamic society. Children were born free and were technically the wards of the slave's owner until maturity. Sexual relations were officially sanctioned between male slave owners and single slave women defined as "possessions of the right hand". This relationship did not extend to female slave owners, nor to acts of prostitution. Owners were urged, though not compelled, to marry their slaves for establishing sexual relations, and slaves were permitted to marry.

The difference in slavery in the Arabian peninsula before and after Islam regarding slavery is not fully known and insight is gleaned from the prohibitions and allowances accepted in the hadiths and verses reflecting the regulation of slavery in Islamic society. There is evidence that even before Islam, slaves were allowed to marry other slaves, have children and buy their freedom if they could afford it. Islam allowed slavery, but regulated the system by formulating a set of rights of slaves and providing incentives for the emancipation of slaves. Many contemporary Muslims dispute that Islam accepts slavery, but rather the encouragement given to emancipate slaves was a step towards the abolition of slavery. As alcohol was forbidden gradually during the Prophet's lifetime (in three separate revelations over a number of years), slavery was meant to be eradicated from society by the Prophet's example of freeing slaves. See for example, Fazlur Rahman's book Islam.

Slaves in Islamic societies were gleaned from prisoners of war Bukhari.

Generally the view held by Muslims regarding the treatment of slaves in Islam is as put forth in an Arab textbook:

“The system of law in Islam…ordained in regard to dealing with slavery was the highest order of wisdom, combining the general good with mercy. It taught the slave, refined him and perfected him, and raised his status and made him equal with his master. It provided a livelihood for him and then freed him. In order to reach this goal Islam followed a threefold path: (1) reducing the avenues to enslavement and closing them off; (2) caring for the slave and perfecting him; (3) opening wide the gates to freedom for the slave”.

Slavery in Practice in the Islamic World

Although the Quran makes clear that one might possess ‘believing slaves’ it became the accepted and preferred practice to enslave only non-Muslims. Thus “according to Sharia, the reason why it is allowed to own (others) is (their) unbelief. Thus whoever purchases an unbeliever is allowed to own him, but not in the contrary sense.”  General E. Daumas explained “slaves come from raids made on the neighboring Negro states with which Hausa is at war, and into the mountains of the land where the Koholanes who have refused to recognize the Muslim religion are brought back.”    It is accepted that Africans had been practicing slavery for quite some time and it is even true that a light slave trade was already taking place north to the Red Sea with the coming of Islam in the 7th century. For the next 800 years, until the arrival of the Portuguese in 1450, Muslims would dominate that African slave trade, and Africa would provide a major reservoir for cheap human commodities. Because Africans were not quick to convert to Islam and because they were not ‘peoples of the book’ and since Africans already had an institution of slavery it was logical that the Arabs would look to Africa first for a supply of slaves. Later supplies of slaves would open up among the Georgians, and in the Balkans and even among captured British merchant shipping, but Africa remained the cheapest and least troublesome place to find slaves, and in the Sudan that remains true even today.

The enslavement of people captured in war had been envisioned in the Quran and the Hadiths but the practice that became the staple of African slavery was the slave raid. Although some Muslim states had treaties that guaranteed slaves as tribute these frequently were not enough and thus the leader of a Muslim state might order his army or some merchant to procure slaves for the army or the Sultan. A common description begins “Towards the end of 1838, the viceroy ordered the province of Cordofan to procure 5000 slaves.”  More often though the raiding was done by individual parties, merchants and traders.

The question should be asked whether the creation of an economy of slave raiders was in practice with the teaching of the Quran or whether it was a separate creation, like its western counterpart, a logical outgrowth of the demand of the Muslim empire for slaves. First, did the slave raids take place as part of a general ‘war’ between the ‘unbelievers’ and the Muslims? Around the island of Zanzibar, East Africa’s principle base of slaving, the African countryside in concentric circles began to be become depopulated. The best sources we have for this is the many accounts by the English, German and Belgians who, in the 19th century, were busy colonizing South Africa, the Congo and Tanzania respectively. These sources are not altogether unbiased for “the search for a way to open Africa to Christianity and civilization was made still more urgent by the discovery that slavery was still thriving ”, but they are the only western sources we have on the East African slave trade. Slavery was only abolished in the Middle East in the mid 20th century.

The sources confirm the presence of ‘war’ to acquire slaves but show that slave raiding and the existence of slave caravans was the predominant method of slave acquisition. Henry Morton Stanley, on penetrating Tanzania to find Dr. Livingston mentioned in his diary that he had encountered a “minor war between Arabs and Africans.”  It is pointed out in accounts that to some extent the villages became depopulated as the African men found shelter through joining roving bands of “brigands” and in some instances resorted to enslaving each other. Thus it is easy to see how an Arab slave expedition found many women destitute and willing to sell themselves into slavery. It is accurate to say that non-believing Africans were selling each other to Arab slavers but it is also true that by 1885, the year Africa was carved up at the congress of Berlin, Tipoo Tip “King of Arab slavers was firmly entrenched in the eastern Congo.”  Henry Morton Stanley himself mentioned that he had encountered Arab slavers around the area of Lake Tanganyika, on the border of the then Belgium Congo, a distance roughly equal to that from Rome to Paris. In 1858 Burton and Speke had likewise met Arab slave caravans far from the coast. The Arabs would not have been penetrating so far inland had they either exhausted the slave potential around the coast or were looking for easier raiding grounds. The Arabs “made themselves unwelcome through their slave trading and so they had to stick to the safest routes, in many cases counting on the Africans themselves to supply them with slaves” in a manner similar to colonial slave procurers on the Western Coast of Africa. A sizable number of slaves were in fact supplied by local agents and Arab slave traders.

The creation of a cohesive Islamic empire and economy increased the demand for slaves. The creation of a slave raiding economy was not something envisaged in the Quran. By the 19th century various European observers concluded that out of a population of 250,000 on the island of Zanzibar, two thirds were slaves.[citation needed] The end of slavery in Zanzibar came in 1873, under the abolitionist impulse of the British Empire. The British Empire was in fact responsible to ensuring the demise of the slave economies of East Africa and the Middle East. Freedom of slave children and slaves upon the death of the owner

Quranic Inunctions:

2:177 The righteous man is he who…though he loves it dearly gives away his wealth… for the redemption of captives/slaves.

4:92 Whoever kills a believer accidentally must set free a believing slave.

5:89 the expiation for (breaking an oath is) liberating a slave.

58:2 Those who divorce their wives by so saying (that their wife is their mother) and afterward retract their words, shall free a slave.

90:13 Would that you knew what the Height is. It is the freeing of a bondsmen(slave).

The most frequently cited example of Islamic law intervening in a specific way to curtail slavery is the idea that the children of slaves by a free man became free and that slaves received their freedom upon the deaths of their owner. In practice the owner could promise to free his slave upon the owners’ death, however the delaration must have been made while the owner was in ‘good health ’. Even after such a promise had been made the owner “may confiscate his slaves possessions, so long as the slave is not ill.”

“Emancipation on the death of the owner(tabdir), which did not deprive him of his slaves services during his lifetime found much favor among the faithful…some foreign observers concluded that freedom lay automatically at the end of any slave’s career”, while some had dissenting opinions. One of these Europeans was a man named Morrell who wrote concerning Algeria in the 1850s that “scrupulous Musselmans think themselves bound to offer liberty after nine years’ good service.”  While a separate source writing on slaves in Mekka claims “Of a black female slave the highest ideal is to work in a good house so long as her strength allows it, for then in her old age she is affectionately cared for”. This may also allude to the implication that after years of service with a master, especially for females the social and economic status and conditions were not as favorable an alternative as continued service in the household. Little data exists on how many slaves were emancipated and at the end of how many years. One would imagine however that if a majority of slaves were emancipated after only 10 years service then a much larger population of freed slaves retaining their native cultures would exist in Muslim societies, as indeed they do in the Americas after being enslaved for generations. Another point of view states, in comparison to the Americas the Arab population was much smaller and the role of slaves was not industrial, rather domestic reflecting smaller and more mixed distribution of slaves in the social fabric. The smaller and more mixed traces of African lineage have been present in Arabia for centuries though limited to urban centers rather than the bedouin tribes.

An argument has been espoused that that when one thinks of the Harem, the wonderful erotic paintings of the French, English and American orientalists does one picture thousands of children? Yet the Harems of royalty did consist of many hundreds of women and assuming using modern statistics for birth rates among Muslim women that a hundred Harem women would have produced 700 or more children. The owners of these ‘concubines’ had sexual access to them at any time, and thus one would wonder where are all the children. This neglects to account for the fact that such large harems only belonged to the extremely wealthy and therefore would number few among the sparse populations of the Arab worlds, furthermore the harem of western imagination is not the harem of the Arab world. In Arab society the word harem referred to the entire corpus of the women and children of the household; this would include the mothers, sisters, daugters alongside attendant servants and slaves. Also, a slave mother upon conceiving became umm walad or ‘mother of a child’; she was entitled to certain rights (such as being freed upon the owners death and the master could no longer sell her) and therefore it became the practice for owners to either discourage or actively seek to not have their sexual slaves become pregnant. An argument has been made that had the harems produced hundreds of children, these children would have been entitled to equal portions of the owners' estates and thus become rivals to the children born to the free wives of the slave owner. While true to a degree this does not factor in that the owner would have in fact had tens of official children, the higher infant mortality of the age and the Arab social fabric wherein the children are not the exlusive heirs of his property, the heirs include his wives, his brothers and other close relations.

In Morocco “Contraception and abortion were in fact widespread among concubines”. When contraception failed it was reported in Morocco in 1890 that “shameless masters pretending not to recognize their own children by slave women, in order to sell them with impunity.”  How common these practices were is not clear from the available first hand accounts.

“A slave mother, supposedly automatically free, did not benefit easily from her rights; once her master died, his family generally denied his paternity of her children”. This was possible because for a woman to be recognized as umm walad much of the responsibility for claiming paternity lay with the father. He may claim “that she underwent a period of waiting to ascertain absence of pregnancy and that he did not thereafter have sexual intercourse with her. In such a case he is to be believed and the child is not to be considered his.”  If he denies that the child is his then two witnesses are necessary. Either way it is quite reasonable that in a situation where an owner of a slave is not interested in his ‘concubines’ having his children he could simply deny being the father without accusing them of adultery. Any resulting children would be the property of the owner of the female slave and he could sell them as he sees fit. Nevertheless it is mentioned by one writer that “As mother of one or more Mekkans she belongs to Mekkan society as a virtually free member, though nominally her slavery continues.”  Thus although the law provided that the prevailing incidence of the freeing of children of a slave with her owner would is not well documented.

The avenues to freedom were certainly many but by contrast the avenues back into slavery or to be deprived of these avenues were also many. Slaves who bore their masters children sometimes found that the master simply denied the existence of those children. Slaves who were promised freedom were deprived of it. Since the word abid meant both slave and African in Arabic it was also common that former slaves would even find themselves victims of kidnappings and re-sale. The subject of the kidnapping and sale of ‘believers’ is dealt with below as is the practice whereby men denied having children with their slaves.

The Illegality of Trading in Muslim Slaves and Dhimmi
One of the most enduring myths in Islamic slavery is the claim that only non-Muslims were enslaved. Since as the Muslim scholar Ahmed Baba pointed out it was their unbelief which created the reason for their enslavement and that slavery therefore provided a point of conversion for non-Muslims who emerged from their ordeal ‘believers’ and were subsequently assimilated into Muslim society. The Prophet Mohammed is alleged to have said ‘On the day of resurrection, I will oppose three people’ one being those who sold a free person into slavery. Therefore it was assumed that Muslims, being free, could not be enslaved.

In practice however Muslims were enslaved. The primary way a Muslim found himself enslaved was through a war between two Muslim states. The most obvious example of this was the war between various African states that had already converted to Islam, for instance between Songhai and Morocco that began when Morocco invaded her neighbor in 1591. Since Islamic law permitted the enslavement of people during battle this event proved ‘tragic’ since both sides where Muslim. Arab countries had solved this problem by using slaves as soldiers, thus negating the possibility that freed Muslims would end up enslaved, but the African nations, with their surplus in manpower, were employing native troops.

Since Africans had been slave-raiding each other prior to the arrival of Islam the idea that their fellow Africans suddenly became un-enslaveable due to conversion was not altogether accepted. In fact in East Africa, the Sudan and in West Africa, all along the fluid borders of Islamic Africa, tribes that may have converted would be said to be insufficiently Muslim, and therefore enslaveble.

No figures exist for the total number of actual Muslims enslaved in this matter but Ahmed Baba, living in Timbuktu wrote an impassioned book in 1556 condemning the practice. In 1391 the King of Borno, near lake Chad complained that his people, who had converted to Islam, were being enslaved by Arabs who were “selling them to the slave-dealers of Egypt, Syria and elsewhere.”  Likewise Ahmed b. Khalid al-Nasiri condemned the taking of Muslim slaves in the Sudan, explaining “how far the people of these lands had taken to Islam from ancient times.”   These slaves were frequently being taken under the auspices of a Jihad when in reality they were free Muslims not in any state of war with the raiders who had decided they were unbelievers. Such was the motivation of profits and the little attention to the laws of Islam that throughout the border states along Dar Al-Harb and Dar al-Islam Muslim slaves were taken and then sold.

The second major path to slavery for a Muslim was one in which former slaves, having converted to Islam or being the children of slaves and having been raised Muslim were sold back into slavery through their owners or through kidnapping after having been freed. Africans were the most vulnerable since they could easily pass for slaves, the word for Black itself being the same as slave in many Arabic speaking societies. In the early 18th century the Moroccan ruler Mulay Ismail is reputed to have simply enslaved freed but dark skinned and poverty stricken haratin having accused them of being ‘runaways’. In 1882 “Caids…kidnapped blacks(haratin) by the dozen…losing all semblance of legality.” In one case 40 free women were carried off in a raid. Ennaji in his text on Moroccan slavery in the 19th century concludes that the “phenomenon of kidnapping had widespread currency; up to the beginning of the twentieth century”. One can assume from these scant but powerful recollections that if Morocco couldn’t control its countryside in the 1800s then the phenomenon could have been even worse in past centuries.

The last major path was the less frequent practice of freed people selling themselves into slavery. The sources for this are few and far between, but this usually resulted from a time of famine when destitute people found themselves so poor that enslavement and survival seemed the best option. Speaking of Morocco Ennaji remarks that “The custom” of selling family members into slavery reared its head “every time a famine threatened.” It even happened that wives would allow their husbands to sell them into slavery so that the children and husband would not starve. Perhaps the best example of Muslims selling themselves into slavery is the case of the Circassians and although this work is devoted to the African slave trade this case is worth noting for it may well be emblematic of a deeper more disturbing phenomenon.

The Circassians were a Muslim Caucasian people who were forcibly deported by the Russians between 1855 and 1866, thus their mass movement, although unique, also resembles what one might find in a famine starved country. The Circassians crowding onto the boats destined for the Ottoman empire were often asked by the captain of the boat to give over one child as a slave for every thirty people. The practice of free people being sold as slaves among the Circassians and among the Turks became so widespread that the government worried it would “give Islam a bad name.” Nevertheless it was understood that “if parents sold their children out of their own free will, the sale…would be valid…but parents should be warned…they would incur the wrath of God.”   Even the palace was looking for the best looking Circassian girls, purchasing free born women from the governor of Konya (a province in Ottoman Turkey). This is but one very well documented example of the selling of free born Muslims, a practice that although it incurred the ‘Wrath of God’ apparently didn’t dissuade people throughout the centuries.

The Treatment of the Slave
Quranic Injunction:

4:36 Show kindness…to the slaves you own.

4:33 as for those of your slaves who you wish to buy their liberty, free them if you find in them any promise…

9:60 Alms shall be only for the poor…and the freeing of slaves.

16:71 In what he has provided God has favored some among you above others. Those who are so favored will not allow their slaves an equal share in what they have. Would they deny God’s goodness.

47:4 When you meet the unbelievers on the battlefield…when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly. Then grant them their freedom or take a ransom from them, until War shall lay down her burdens.

30:28 He makes you this comparison, drawn from your own lives. Do your slaves share with you on equal terms the riches which We have given you?

The treatment of slaves during transport is described again and again by many sources in much the same manner. The tale runs something like this “The dead ones thrown overboard to drift down the tide.”  The idea that slaves were thrown aside during the slaving expeditions was as common in the Zanzibar centered East African trade as it was in the Sudanese/Ethiopian trade as it was in the cross Saharan trade. Especially along the Saharan route where the Caravans crossed miles of open desert it was common for slaves to simply be left by the wayside. In the Saharan trade “mortality was high by any standards. Estimates vary greatly and range between 7 percent and 40 percent.”  Despite the fact that slaves did die en route to market it is also a fact that the Slavers would have done all in their power to not have this happen, as the more slaves surviving the journey the more profit for the operation.

Upon arriving at their destination of Zanzibar the treatment of the slave did not improve, thus the idea that the maltreatment was due to the equal suffering of all those on the slave caravan is not entirely accurate. Certainly the suffering endured by those slaves crossing the Sahara was equally visited to some extent upon those slavers leading the caravan. At the slave quarters in Zanzibar Niall Ferguson writes “You can still see the slave cells in stone town today: dark, dank and stiflingly hot, they convey as starkly as anything I know the misery inflicted by slavery. They were “less than two feet high.”  Certainly such treatment was neither envisaged in the Quran and the idea that Islamic law in any way explains it is ludicrous. Rather the treatment of the slaves was one of pure economics, as were the similar conditions experienced by slaves destined for the plantations of the Americas.

One of the famous injunctions regarding Islamic slavery was the law that called for the freeing of slaves one ‘injures’. Unfortunately injury was defined as “Mutilation” or “gross disfigurement.”  This included the cutting off of any part of the slaves’ body. Many have cited that “the slave had recourse to the judicial authorities (the muhtasib) if he or she was mistreated”   This regulation proves exceedingly problematic when squared against certain realities. Eunuchs were the most highly priced slaves and the creation of eunuchs was something practiced usually soon after capture in Africa. It has been estimated that as many as 9 out of 10 slaves operated on died of this procedure. Sources point to Egyptian Coptic priests or native Africans as the major supplier of African eunuchs. Since the Slave was in the possession of a Muslim then wouldn’t the slave have recourse to the very obvious law allowing him to be freed after the dreadful mutilation caused by becoming a eunuch? Either the slaver was entering some short term bargain with the non-Muslim operator or it was permissible for someone to damage a slave provided that person was not the owner, although it was permissible for the owner to pay for the mutilation of the aforementioned slave. One could thus conclude either Islamic law didn’t apply, or their existed a major loophole in the law, or perhaps the law was simply not followed.

The second instance of major transgression of the law was the death of slaves en route to the market. The freed African Yao slave ‘Swema’ tells of being sold into slavery to an Arab caravan in present day Tanzania. Her mother likewise sold herself into slavery to accompany the daughter. Along the Journey the Mother became weak. “The Arab leader ordered that Swema’s mother be chased out of camp…she was all but dead.” Later on seeing the girl was barely alive the owner ordered that she be buried saying “place this cadaver in a straw mat and carry it to the cemetery.”   Since this was a common occurrence, the death of a slave en route, one must wonder how the law of not ‘mistreating’ slaves squares with not having a law against simply killing them. It seems plain that the Islamic injunction, although on the surface seeming to ‘regulate’ and “alleviate the conditions of slaves in Muslim society” did little to prevent the death of slaves from the mistreatment inherent in slavery.

Sexual Relations and the Slave

Quranic Injunctions:

2:221 You shall not wed Pagan women, unless they embrace the faith. A Believing slave-girl is better then an idolatress.

4:2 But if you fear that you cannot maintain equality among them(women), marry one only or any slave-girls you may own. (ma malakat aymanukum Those whom your right hand possesses)

4:25 If any one of you cannot afford to marry a free believing woman, let him marry a slave-girl.

4:36 …you may marry other women who seem good to you: two, three, or four of them. But if you fear that you cannot maintain equality among them, marry one only or any slave-girls you own.

24:32-33 Take in marriage those among you who are single and those of your male and female slaves who are honest.

23:1-6 Blessed are the believers…who restrain their carnal desires (except with their wives and slave girls, for these are lawful to them.

70:28-30 worshippers…who restrain their carnal desire(save with their wives and slave-girls, for these are lawful for them).

33: 52 It shall be unlawful for you to take more wives or to change your present wives for other women, though their beauty please you, unless they are slave-girls whom you own.

4:34 You shall not force slave-girls into prostitution in order that you may enrich yourselves, if they wish to preserve their chastity.

In terms of slavery one of the rules was regarding sexual access to female slaves by male owners. Among these was “the masters unrestricted right to cohabit with any or all of his unmarried female slaves.”  At the same time “A slave girl who has not been brought up by her master from her childhood in his house is never bought as a virgin…her owner or some relation of her mistress deflowers her as soon as she has reached the age (12 to 14 years).” The reason for the taking of liberties with slaves was that “legal doctrine, very protective of the considerations shown a wife due a wife permitted much more concerning the black bodies of slaves, seemingly designed for pleasure.”  The sexuality of the Ethiopian Africans was ingrained rather early in Arab fantasies and throughout the Muslim world Ethiopian women were highly valued for their sexual forte. Sex was common with the enslaved African women, and many of them were sought out for that purpose. It was common for young men to lose their virginity to the female slaves owned by their parents, just as it was common for Latin American men to lose theirs to the maids of their households. At the same time, as discussed in more detail below, the offspring of these unions were few due to the fact that they had not been purchased to produce children but rather to serve as sexual playthings in the bedrooms of the rich. Thus “The rich mans desire for black slave women was just as overwhelming as his disdain for similarly dark freedwomen.”

Numerous sources confirm the sexual license taken by the slave traders themselves. Since only the most attractive concubines destined for the best Harems were intended to be virgins it was common that sexual relations took place between those transporting the slaves and the female slaves themselves. Once in the Harem the female ‘concubine’ slaves took on a special significance, jockeying for position and struggling to gain the ‘favor’ of their new owner. The obsession with these African ladies at the same time seems to have given the free Arab women a bad name. One remarks “If the ordinary Mekkan followed his inclination, he would unite himself only with Abyssinians(Ethiopians); it is however, part of ‘conveniences’ that a man should at least once in his life marry a freeborn woman.”  The common conception was that Black women were more exciting in bed. Sexual rules with them were more lax since they were not wives and Arab ‘white’ women were seen as ‘pale sickly with poor constitutions,” with a “frigid unresponsive body.”

Some slaves did marry their owners, it was not the rule since and the treatment of the concubines did not in any way resemble the form of an Islamic marriage. But one might conclude that this area, in concubinage and sexuality, is the only place that Islamic law was certainly followed and exploited. Whereas laws enjoining owners to treat their slaves well or free the children they had with their slaves might have been gotten around, the laws regarding sexual advances on slaves was one that both in theory and in practice worked the way it was written. Slave women were envisaged in the Quran, it was seen that men would have sex with them and likewise men made use of those injunctions. The only mention of the breaking of the Islamic law in sources is that men may have had intercourse with their slaves before the required waiting period of several days had passed. Mulay Abd al-Rahman reports “the sale of female slaves of concubine quality without observing the waiting period” and Hurgronje Snouck reports similar “the Mekkans: it is to much for them to wait even two or three days (before sexual relations with new Concubines).” The Quran specifically forbade the using of Slave women as prostitutes and yet “Slave owners showed little consideration for the women they offered, in some rural regions, to overnight guests.” Other sources documented the same activity, explaining that “We have no clear indication how common it was for such women to be prostituted, the fact that writers on hisba warn the muhtasib to be on the watch for it, indicates that it cannot have been uncommon [also that] at the hands of a slave dealer prostitution was but a passing, though inevitably degrading experience.”  Similar reports from Sudan and Egypt in the 19th century as well as Libya in the 12th century indicate it was a regular practice.”   If an activity explicitly forbidden in the Quran was transgressed so much as to be reported as ‘common’ then one can conclude that many of the sexual injunctions regarding slaves were also not followed to the letter of the law.

The Demographics of the Arab world today:

Bernard Lewis as well as others have tried to tackle the perplexing question of what became of the African slaves. If one accepts their posits on the sheer volume of African slaves taken to the Islamic lands they will find the numbers roughly correspond to those taken to the New World. Yet in the new world one finds entire countries populated by the descendants of slaves, history books filled with the stories of the slave trade, popular myths and vibrant tales associated with the same episode in history. A cursory glance at the Arab world will find no indication of a similar phenomenon. If the Atlantic slave trade, usually acknowledged to be far more harsh and cruel then its Islamic counterpart, produced so many African communities, then wouldn’t one expect to find more Africans retaining something of their identity in the Arab world? Perhaps the answer here lies in deciphering the fate of the roughly 11 million Africans exported to Islamic lands between the 7th century and the present. Lewis provided two suggestions, first the existence of eunuchs among the male slaves, and the low birth rate among the female slaves. To these should be added a third hypothesis, that the structure of Arab society militated against the creation of vast numbers of slave offspring. Furthermore, the timeframe for incorporation of this slave population is double that for the Americas and a sizable portion of the slaves could have found themselves in African Islamic states further blurs the creation of distinct societies.

Deducing accurate numbers for Arab slavery can be difficult but if one begins with the most modern period 1600-1900 there are at least some similarities between European sources based at the various embarkation and destination points of the slave trade. For the three main routes, the Saharan, Red Sea and Indian Ocean the numbers are 2.2 million between1600-1800 and 2,134,000 between 1800-1900 for a total of 4,334,000 for the period. If one accepts the common perception that the slaves were purchased at a ratio of 1 male for every 2 females then one would actually assume that more offspring would have been produced than had the ratio been reversed. However the mechanics of Islamic slavery were vastly different than its New World cousin. The male slaves roughly fit into two categories, that of slave soldiers or eunuchs. Since eunuchs were so expensive and since there was a heavy attrition rate among those selected for the operation it is conceivable that a low percentage of the male slaves became eunuchs. The African slave soldiers saw service throughout the Islamic empire, but like the foreigners the Romans had recruited into the legion, these slave soldiers were also to some degree expendable, especially since Africans were not prized as professional soldiers. The Janissaries and the Mamluk Soldier armies, the best Islam produced were made up primarily of European, Caucasian or Central Asian slaves. With the male African slaves off on campaign or hemmed in at some barracks the major impetus for African reproduction became the female slaves. This is worth a closer look. There is also the possibility that the slaves were in fact re-exported to the more lucrative western slave markets.

The primary role of African female slaves has been shown as that of household domestic or sexual partner or some combination of the two. Since African women performed most of the chores in their native society it became natural that they would be prized both as workers and as sex objects. What sources do exist suggest that “female slaves had few children, and contrary to what we would expect if women were preferred to men for their reproductive potential, they didn’t even ensure simple reproduction.”. Why weren’t the female slaves reproducing? Of the female slaves selected to do ordinary household work, the ‘domestic slaves,’ these were usually selected because they were not the choice beauties of the African world. Although African women were prized for their sexual abilities, their bodies ‘seemingly designed for pleasure’, the female slaves chosen for household work were rarely taken as concubines. Since these same household slaves were only allowed the privilege of marriage if their owner approved it appears as if not many were producing children. Among the slaves chosen for the Harems or to be concubines a number of circumstances mitigated against them having many offspring. First it was not uncommon for some form of birth control to be practiced, whether some antiquated contraceptive device or Coitus Interuptus or even abortion to be used to prevent pregnancy and offspring. It is noted that “there is no evidence that slaves who had children were favored over those who did not” thus it can be assumed that based on at least some sources that concubines were not being encouraged to have children. Certainly the much smaller minority of slave women that were married to freed men were encouraged to have children. Whereas in the New World the plantation owners maximized birthrates to increase investment returns, the Muslim world had a setup that virtually guaranteed low returns from the very same numbers of slaves. Does the virtual non-existence of African post-slave societies prove that ‘assimilation’ was not emblematic of Islamic slavery? Not necessarily. One could conclude that the African slaves simply disappeared from Islamic societies because there were so few left to absorb. If one can slice away the third of the slaves that were men, and the third of the slaves that were female domestic then one is left with the concubines, and due to low birth rates and even deaths from disease one could say that their simply were not many African slaves left to reproduce. This doesn’t negate the assimilation argument but it definitely makes it less extensive. If we take the example of Morocco in the mid to late 19th century we can see this working in microcosm. In the south where slaves were being used to some extent as plantation labor we find that they were still producing barely one child for every two slaves. In the rest of Morocco we find that “cases of systematic coupling (marriage among the slaves) were rare, because of the large imbalance in the numbers of men and women, with women predominating. Demographics are a good way of coming to understanding of the nature of the treatment of slaves. The American version of slavery is generally acknowledged to have been brutal and nefarious, yet the slaves, although converting to Christianity, retained some parts of their culture and identity. If Muslim slaves, as is conjectured, had a higher status and more rights then one would think to find large African societies in Muslim societies. The major themes and often stressed points relating to Islamic slavery are first that slaves were assimilated, second that slaves were released after a certain term of service and third that the children of slaves were often freed. If one takes these three points to be accurate then one would likewise find large populations of freed Africans living in Arab and Muslim lands. After all the American form of slavery which lasted for hundreds of years produced such huge African remnants then therefore if slaves were kept for short periods and freed by the second generation they would have likewise produced large residual populations. Lewis comments “There is nothing in the Arab, Persian and Turkish lands that resembles the great black and mulatto populations of North and South America.”  Hunwicks comment on the same problem is “there is simply not enough data at our disposal to make any general statements about the existence or size of residual black communities in the Mediterranean world or to the extant to which freed slaves and their descendants have integrated into society.” Trying to reconcile these two viewpoints in light of the question as to how literally Islamic slavery mirrored its outlines in Islamic law produces one important reconsideration. Perhaps Muslim slavers and slave owners didn’t follow Islamic guidelines regarding their slaves. As has been shown these guidelines were frequently broken, therefore if such breaking was widespread what would have been the influence on the demographics of African former slave populations in the Arab world? As for the assimilation argument it is quite possible that due to the mechanics of the slave trade, as shown above, that few assimilated offspring were in fact produced. As for the argument that slaves were released early it can be shown that this was not the standard practice and that even if they were released their chances of being re-enslaved was a threat. If the children of African slaves were not always freed and their masters did not admit paternity there is further evidence that slaves were not being assimilated or even freed in the manner one usually supposes. The affect this had would have been to create slave populations that it is documented did not reproduce themselves and had to be constantly replenished with more slaves. As proof of the fact that slaves were not replenishing themselves one can assume that “quite probably, the conditions of existence of slave women and the social climate within which they lived did not encourage them to procreate or to keep their children. [therefore] It seems that the primary value of the female slave was not in her reproductive capacity, unless we assume that slavery functioned everywhere on the basis of a misunderstanding.” Lastly “those women who did not become concubines may not have been allowed to marry…Male slaves may have had little chance to marry”. It has been shown that “Slaves tended not to maintain their numbers naturally, and slave populations usually had to be replenished” despite the demographic imbalances in the populations. As an extreme example of this one might look to the Harem for the best evidence that the African women were not reproducing in sufficient numbers. Since they were prized so much for their sexual attributes, the youngest most attractive African women in the midst of their child bearing years were sent to the royal or upper class Harems. Since Muslim law allowed four wives but an unlimited number of female slaves it was common for men of higher standing to have female sex slaves as part of their status. It was noted that even the grinding of teeth was enough for the female slaves destined for the bedroom to be unacceptable to a choosy buyer. Yet in these Harems one does not find that large numbers of children are recorded in any of the many chronicles dating from the 19th century. In the Harems that included sometimes hundreds of women, few children were actually being produced. This harkens back to the previously documented use of contraceptives and abortion to prevent pregnancy, since offspring of the Harem girls would share in the inheritance of the owner then such offspring would have created havoc in royal households where the legal wives expected their children to inherit the wealth of their husband, not the son of a slave girl. Therefore in 1891 alone 15-20 girls were purchased for the imperial Harem in Istanbul, yet certainly these slave girls didn’t produce the 5 children each that a normal Muslim housewife at the time was likely producing. Lovejoy sums the problem up best by explaining that “These two opposites Castrated males and attractive females-demonstrate most clearly the aspect of slavery which involved the masters power of sexual and reproductive functions .” With that power came the ability to regulate within reason the number of offspring a slave produced. Perhaps the best evidence for the frequent breaking of Quranic injunctions regarding slavery is the prevalence of Arab and Berber populations in North Africa and the virtual non-existence of former slave populations in Arab countries. One might surmise that had the Quranic laws and Hadiths been followed properly African populations would not just be prevalent but in fact the dominant element in many Arab countries owing to the large numbers of Africans imported over the years of Islamic enslavement of Africans. The non-existence of such populations, the demographics of the Arab world, is partial proof that Quranic law was not followed by the majority of slave owning Muslims, at least not in regards to African slaves in the Arab world.

The proper place of the Quran in the Islamic trade in African slaves

Has the use of the Quran in describing African slavery in Muslim societies led scholarship to not sufficiently explore the question of African demographics among Arab and non-Arab Muslim societies? The assumption among much scholarship, despite evidence to the contrary, is that the Quran and Islamic law functioned as the determinative framework regarding the lives of African slaves exported to Muslim societies. This bias in favor of official Islamic legal opinions or traditions has led scholars to conclude that slaves ‘assimilated’ into Muslim society and that the treatment of those slaves was of a more gentle nature then the western version. What is so convincing about referring to Quranic law that it seems to cloud the normally investigative judgment of scholarship? Is it perhaps the prejudice that leads many to assume either the best or worst regarding cultures other than ones own. Is it the same bias that directed scholars and researchers in the 1930s to believe that Stalin’s Russia was a socialist paradise? Most western scholars, although familiar with laws in America whereby racial discrimination was made illegal but the practice of racism still continued, seem to have been apt to disregard such obvious separation between what laws say and what people do when writing about Islamic societies and particularly Islamic law. Yet some scholarship has admitted that things are moving in a new direction.

“Islamic law is no longer the determinative framework, nor is the culture of the masters a transcending constant. Muslim masters like Romans or Brazilian planters turned to slavery where the opportunity presented itself…either side may have drawn where it could on Islamic ideals, but they did so in the midst of numerous other concerns... there were many kinds and experiences of slavery in Muslim lands, even as there were-and are-many versions of ‘Islam’. (Human commodity 251) ”

Perhaps the best way to understand the non-application of clear Islamic laws is in understanding Ennaji’s point that “away from urban centers, the law indeed did fail…Even worse Sharia law often went unobserved in rural areas’  Thus like the Bedouin’s ancient customs which predated Islam, it was common as it is in most of the world for laws to lose their sting the farther one gets from the source. Today’s Islamic world, with a real time connection to Mecca has become increasingly homogenized in the dissemination of norms of behavior, but Islam in the past, although inhabiting a huge empire may have suffered from a breakdown in the following of the Quranic law. It is certainly plausible that scholarship when writing about Islam could see fit to cast away the aura surrounding a different religion and assume that Islamic societies have many of the commonalities to Western ones, so whereas the message of peace taught by Jesus rarely penetrated the slave plantations of the south, likewise the Quranic law did not penetrate into the outer regions of Islam. Islamic law may simply not be the best lens through which to see the Islamic world and certainly is not a good gauge as to the actual practices of Islamic slavery. . At least part of the problem in dealing with Islamic slavery in Africa has been the absence of scholarship devoted to the subject. For example in a recent history of Slavery by Paul Lovejoy (Transformations in Slavery) four pages are devoted to the Islamic influence on African slavery before 1400. This radical bias in favor of the Atlantic slave trade cannot be attributed to the numbers of slaves actually taken, as is the popular reason given by most. As Lovejoy admits “Over 11 million slaves left the shores of the Atlantic coast of Africa; perhaps as many more found their way to Islamic countries of North Africa, Arabia and India.” Thus the bias can better be explained by a lack of western sources and a lack of interest in the subject. Certainly the only people originally interested in Islamic slavery were the abolitionists such as Dr. Livingston and the orientalist painters and writers interested in describing the ‘exotic’ scenes of the Harem and the eunuchs. In the 1960s and 1970s scholarship shifted to focus on a comparison between western slavery and Islamic slavery. The remnant of this comparative literature lives on in recent works such as Teledano when he writes “True most sources are in agreement that, as a rule, Ottoman-Islamic chattel slavery was milder then its Western counterpart.”  Likewise Lovejoy explains that “A brief postscript is necessary to consider the special case of slavery in the Americas, because the American system was particularly a heinous development”  turning to Islam he says “they were also more likely to be incorporated into Muslim society…In Islamic tradition slavery was perceived as a means of converting non-Muslims…assimilation into the society of the master as judged by religious observance was deemed a prerequisite for emancipation and was normally some guarantee of better treatment.” Lastly Hunwick also digresses to claim that “Plantation slavery, with its concomitant brutality and degradation, was comparatively rare.”   This most recent scholarship can be added to works by Bernard Lewis and Mohammad Ennaji, which are finally painting a more accurate and deeper picture of all facets of Slavery in Islamic society. Certainly slavery was sanctioned by the Quran and slavery clearly was destined to play a part in Islamic society but the idea that the treatment of slaves can in any way be determined by the lines written in the Quran is inaccurate, for once the slave trade became ingrained in Islamic life, the economics and the slave merchants became its driving force, neither war nor the certain ‘obligation’s’ of Islamic law served as a good determinant of the function of slaves in society. The proper role that the Quran should play in describing slavery in Islamic society is a cursory mention, certainly not the assumption that it was the bases for the treatment of slaves throughout the Islamic world. The various laws of the Islamic empire did include the basic assumptions that slaves should not be beaten, that the children of free men and slaves should be freed and the other important laws enumerated above. Yet, like the Catholic cannon law, it provides but a framework and not a true predictor of societal behavior. Since it is rare in western scholarship to include chapters on slavery in the Bible when discussing the New World slave trade it seems likewise appropriate that when dealing with the Islamic slave trade that the Quran not be given the focus that has been.

Since Biblical times
Evangelical Christians such as William Wilberforce and David Livingstone were at the forefront of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century abolitionism in the United Kingdom. Christian revivalism was also a contributing factor to abolitionism in the United States.