Slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate

Slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate refers to the chattel slavery taking place in the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), a period when the Islamic Caliphate was established and the Islamic conquest expanded outside of the Arabian Peninsula.

Silver dirham of Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr 690-91

Rashidun expansion 632-661

The slave trade in the Rashidun Caliphate expanded in parallel with the Imperial Early Muslim conquests, when non-Muslim war captives as well as civilians were enslaved, and humans were demanded by tribute and taxation from subjugated people. During the Rashidun Caliphate, the regulations regarding slavery in Islamic law were enacted on a large scale and lay the foundation for the institution in the Umayyad Caliphate.

Slave trade

The slave trade in the Rashidun Caliphate was built upon a combination of the enslavement of war captives during the Early Muslim conquests of the Caliphate; tributary and taxation slaves; as well as commercial slave trade by slave merchants.

War captives

See also: Muslim conquest of the Levant, Muslim conquest of Egypt, Muslim conquest of Persia, and Military campaigns under Caliph Uthman

During the Rashidun Caliphate the Caliphate first wave of the Early Muslim conquests expanded outside of the Arabian Peninsula and founded an Empire. The new Empire of the Caliphate expanded to Byzantine Palestine and Syria in the North, Egypt in the West and Persia in the East. The military expansion of the Empire took place in parallel with a slave trade with war captives, which expanded in parallel with the conquests, when captives of subjugated non-Muslim peoples were killed or enslaved.

When news of the Muslims' victory at Heliopolis reached Fayoum during the Arab conquest of Egypt, its governor, Domentianus, and his troops fled without informing the people of Fayoum and Abuit that they were abandoning their cities to the enemy. When news reached 'Amr, he sent troops across the Nile to invade Fayoum and Abuit, capturing the entire province of Fayoum with practically no resistance. Fayoum's population was enslaved, and the city was looted (the traditional fate of cities that had resisted).

Not only male warriors were enslaved as war captives. Thousands of civilian women and children were enslaved during the Islamic conquests. After the fall of Caesarea in 640, 4,000 "heads" (captives) were sent to Caliph Umar in Medina, were they were gathered and inspected on the Jurd Plain - a plain commonly used to assemble the troops of Medina before battle, with room for thousands of people, before they were distributed as war booty to the orphans of the Ansar. Caliph Abu Bakr had previously given two girls taken during the early conquests as slave maids to two daughters of one of the Companions of Muhammad, but since these two slave girls had died, Caliph Umar replaced them with two girls from the slave shipment after the fall of Caesarea. Caliph Umar kept a number of literary boys from the Caesarea slaves for use as secretaries within the newly established state bureaucratic apparatus, since there was a great lack of people able to write and read in Arabia.

In 651, Abd-Allah ibn Amir sent an army under Rabi ibn Ziyad Harithi to Sakastan during the Muslim conquest of Persia. After some time, Rabi reached Zaliq, a Sakastani border town, where he forced the dehqan of the town to acknowledge Rashidun authority. He then did the same at the fortress of Karkuya, which had a famous fire temple mentioned in the Tarikh-i Sistan. He then seized more land in the province. Next, he besieged the provincial capital, Zrang, and, after a heavy battle outside the city, its governor, Aparviz, surrendered. When Aparviz went to Rabi ibn Ziyad to negotiate a treaty, he saw that Rabi was using the bodies of two dead soldiers as a chair. This horrified Aparviz, who, in order to spare the inhabitants of Sakastan from the Arabs, made peace with them in return for a heavy tribute of 1 million dirhams, including 1,000 slave boys (or girls) bearing 1,000 golden vessels. Rabi ibn Ziyad was then appointed governor of the province.

Zoroastrians were made to pay an extra tax called jizya, or be killed, enslaved or imprisoned. Those paying jizya were subjected to insults and humiliation by the tax collectors. Zoroastrians who were captured as slaves in wars were given their freedom if they converted to Islam.

Tributary slaves

Slaves were also provided via human tribute and taxation.

When Amr ibn al-As conquered Tripoli in 643, he forced the Jewish and Christian Berbers to give their wives and children as slaves to the Arab army as part of their jizya. Uqba ibn Nafi would often enslave for himself (and to sell to others) countless Berber girls, "the likes of which no one in the world had ever seen."

A permanent supply source of African slaves was provided to the Caliphate via the baqt treaty, which was between the Rashidun Caliphate and the Sudanese Christian Kingdom of Dongola in 650, and by which the Christian Kingdom was obliged to provide up 400 slaves annually to the Caliphate via Egypt.

A successful campaign was undertaken against Nubia during the Caliphate of Umar in 642. The king Kalidurat of Nubia had to submit, and agreed to provide 442 slaves every year to Muslim authorities in Cairo.

Location of Dongola within Sudan

Ten years later in 652, Uthman's governor of Egypt, Abdullah ibn Saad, sent another army to Nubia. This army penetrated deeper into Nubia and laid siege to the Nubian capital of Dongola. The Muslims demolished the cathedral in the center of the city. The battle was once again inconclusive, because of the Nubian archers who let loose a shower of arrows aimed at the eyes of the Muslim warriors. As the Muslims were not able to overpower the Nubians, they accepted the offer of peace from the Nubian king. According to the treaty that was signed, each side agreed not to make any aggressive moves against the other. Each side agreed to afford free passage to the other party through its territories. Nubia agreed to provide 360 slaves to Egypt every year.

Commercial slave trade

The slave trade from Africa to Arabia via the Red Sea had ancient Pre-Islamic roots, and the commercial slave trade was not interrupted by Islam. 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 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 Red Sea slave 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.

Slave market

During the Rashidun Caliphate, the Arab elite still lived a partially nomadic lifestyle in the Arabian Peninsula, with base in Mecca and Medina.

The Rashidun Caliphs were known to buy, sell and distribute slaves. On one occasion, Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab (636-644) sold a substantial number of slaves to two elite Qurashis. Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib (656-661) were known to manumite slaves on condition that they remain to work on his estates for at least six years afterward.

Female slaves

See also: History of concubinage in the Muslim world, Islamic views on concubinage, and Ma malakat aymanukum

The harem polygyny were expanded during the Islamic conquests, when female prisoners were distributed to the male Muslim warriors in sexual slavery as concubines, particularly after the Islamic conquest of Persia.

Conquests had brought enormous wealth and large numbers of slaves to the Muslim elite. The majority of the slaves were women and children, many of whom had been dependents or harem-members of the defeated Sassanian upper classes. In the wake of the conquests an elite man could potentially own a thousand slaves, and ordinary soldiers could have ten people serving them.

Male Muslims were given the right to have sex with female captives (slaves), which was phrased: "those men who guard their genitals, except with their wives and those whom their right hands possess, for then there is no blame" (Quran 23:6), which granted men the right to have sex not only with their wives but also with female captive slaves.

Women captives were known to be subjected to sexual abuse, and the Jewish convert Abdallah ibn Salam were active in mediating between the Jewish Exilarch and the Muslims in ransoming Jewish captives taken during the Islamic conquests, and was obliged to remind the Exilarch that the Torah obligated him to ransom also women who had been raped by the Muslim warriors.

The Battle of Jalula in 637 ended in a complete Muslim victory, and women and children were enslaved as Spoils of war and Umar says « in fear of Children of these Slave-women who are going to be born, I seek refuge in Allah».

While men were given the right to sex with both wives as well as female slaves, Islamic law did not define a difference between his child with a slave (if he had acknowledged paternity) and his child with a legal wife; there was no difference in legitimacy defined between the child of a slave mistress or a wife and therefore both were defined as legitimate.

Male slaves

Eunuchs was a category of male slaves that existed already during the Rashidun Caliphate.

Male slaves sent to the Arabian Peninsula were put to slave labor as agricultural slaves, digging underground irrigation canals and other hard labor, and so many thousands of young men were sent as slaves to Arabia during the Islamic conquests that many Christian and Jewish communities were almost drained of young males.

Slave soldiers were a phenomenon that had occurred in the Mediterranean world already during antiquity, but it was not until Islamic times that this form of slavery came to play any significant role, with an expanding number of slave soldiers.

Slave soldiers are known to have served in the first battle of Muhammad, often called mawla-converts, and the African slave soldier Mihja has been referred to as the first Muslim who died in battle. In the Battle of Badr, at least 24 mawla slave soldiers are said to have participated.

During the first two centuries of Islam, the definition of military slavery was somewhat dubious, and the term mawla was used for both slaves as well as former slaves; some soldiers slaves subjected to military slavery; some were slaves who were allowed to enlist as soldiers as Muslims rather than slaves given this role by their master; some were slaves who were given their freedom after having served as soldiers; and some were former slaves. The use of slave soldiers expanded significantly during the following Umayyad Caliphate, but it was not until the Abbasid Caliphate that the institution of ghilman military slavery was truly institutionalized as a clearly defined permanent institution.

See also

• Afro-Arabs
• History of slavery in the Muslim world
• History of concubinage in the Muslim world
• Medieval Arab attitudes to Black people
• Xenophobia and racism in the Middle East
• Racism in the Arab world
• Racism in Muslim communities
• Slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate

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