10. See, for example, E. W. Lane. An Arabic English Lexicon, vol. 1, pt. 5 (London, 1874), p. 1935a:.. Abd is now generally applied to a male black slave; and mamluk to a male white slave." J. B. Belot, Vocabulaire arahe-fran4ais (Beirut. 1893). p. 469. defines 'abd as "Homme. Esclave, serf. serviteur. Negre"; E. A. Elias, Elias' Modern Dictionary, Arabic-English, 2d ed. (Cairo, 1925), p. 369, as "Slave, bondman; bondsman. Man. Negro, black": Vocabulario Araho-Italiano, vol. 2 (Rome. 1969), p. 879, as "Schiavo, servo, servitode; negro (adibito a lavori servili)"; cf. Kh. K. Baranov, Arahsko-Russkiv slovar (Moscow, 1957), p. 629: " ahid: negri." See also Simone Delesalle and Lucette Valensi, "Le Mot 'Negre' dans les dictionnaires francais d'ancien regime: histoire et lexicographic," Langue francaise 15 (1972), pp. 79-104. From stories in Kitab al-Aghanf, Abu'l-Faraj al-Isfahani (20 vols. [Bulaq, 1285/186869]; ibid. [Cairo, 1927]-hereafter Aghanf [ 1868] and Aghanf [1927]) e.g., in the pages devoted to Nusayb, it is clear that black slaves, even after being manumitted, were still referred to as 'abd. On the use of 'abd in medieval Egypt, see S. D. Goitein, "Slaves and slavegirls in the Cairo Geniza records," Arabica 9 (1962), p. 2; idem, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, vol. 1, Economic Foundations (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), p. 131. For a striking modern example of this usage, see L. C. Brown, "Color in North Africa," p. 471. This ethnic connotation of 'abd does not seem to have been carried over from Arabic into Persian or Turkish. Ironically, in Ottoman Turkish and also in late Greek and in Russian, the word "Arab" acquires the meaning of black man or blackamoor and is applied to Negroes and Ethiopians. Some Turkish authors distinguish between kara Arab, "black Arab," and ak Arab, "white Arab," the former referring to the black peoples of Africa, the latter to the Arabs properly so called.
11. R. Dozy, Supplement aux dictionnaires arabes, 2d ed., vol. 1 (Paris, 1927), p. 355b, where other sources are cited. In classical Arabic usage, however, the word khadim does not, as has sometimes been stated, connote blackness. Its normal meaning is "eunuch," irrespective of race or color. See D. Ayalon, "On the eunuchs in Islam," Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 1 (1979), pp. 88-89. There are numerous other terms for "slave" in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and other languages. Common euphemisms include fata and ghulam, both meaning "youth" or "young man"; usta or ustadh (lit. "master") for a eunuch; jariya (lit. "runner") for a slave girl. Raqfq and wasif are common Arabic terms for "slave"; the abstract form of the first-named, riqq, is the commonest term for slavery. Persian and Turkish use the Arabic terms and add some others-Persian banda (lit. "bondman") and keniz ("slavewoman"). The Turkish terms are kul and kole, but the former came to be used, in a quasi-metaphorical sense, for the officers and other members of the sultan's household and establishment. By the nineteenth century, the common Turkish term was esir, from an Arabic word meaning "captive."
12. For examples, see A. Mez, Die Renaissance des ]slams (Heidelberg, 1922), pp. 153-54 (in English, The Renaissance of Islam [London, 1937], pp. 157-58); E. Ashtor, Histoire des prix et des salaries dans !'orient medieval (Paris, 1969), pp. 57ff., 88 ff., 1 11, 208ff., 258. 360ff., 437ff., 463, 498ff. There may be exceptions. According to the tenthcentury Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus (De administrando imperio, ed. Gy. Moravcsik, trans. R. J. H. Jenkins [Budapest, 1949], p. 94), the daily tribute paid to the Byzantine emperor by the Caliph `Abd al-Malik included, as well as money, "one purebred horse and one black slave" (the Greek Aethiops was not limited to Ethiopians stricto sensu.) The collocation of these two items would seem to imply that a black slave, like a purebred horse, was rare and precious. at least in Byzantine eyes, and that both were seen as valued products of the caliph's realm. According to the same source (p. 86), an earlier agreement between the emperor and Mu`awiya provided for the annual delivery of fifty purebred horses but makes no reference to black slaves.
13. Jahiz, Rasa'il al-Jahiz, ed. `Abd al-Salam Muhammad Harun, vol. 2 (Cairo, 1385/1965), p. 177: edition and translation by A. F. L. Beeston. The Epistle on Singing Girls by Jahiz (Warminster, England, 1980). German translation in O. Rescher, Excerpte and Ubersetzungen aus der Schriften des Philologen Gahiz (Stuttgart, 1931), p. 98; cf. G. Rotter, Die Stellung der Negers (Bonn, 1967), pp. 58-59, and C. Pellat. The Life and Works of Jahiz (London, 1969), pp. 259ff.
14. Aghani (1868), vol. 5, p. 9; Aghant (1927), vol. 5, pp. 164f.
15. Ibn Butlan, Risdla, p. 352; Bernard Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, vol. 2, Religion and Society (New York, 1974), pp. 247ff.
16. Ya'qubi, Kitab al-Buldan, ed. M. J. de Goeje, 2d ed., Bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum, vol. 7 (Leiden, 1892), p. 334: French translation by G. Wiet, Les Pays (Cairo, 1937), p. 190; L. E. Kubbel and V. V. Matveev, eds., Arahskiye istoeniki VIII-X vekov po etnografii i istorii Afriki yuineye Sakhari (Moscow and Leningrad, 1960), p. 41.
17. Ibn Battuta, Voyages (Tuhfat al-nuzzar), ed. and trans. C. Defremery and B. R. Sanguinetti, vol. 4 (Paris, 1969), p. 441; English version in Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa, 1325-1354, trans. H. A. R. Gibb (London, 1929), p. 336, and in N. Levtzion and J. F. P. Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, trans. J. F. P. Hopkins (Cambridge, 1981), p. 302.
18. The slave revolt of the Zanj in Iraq was first studied by T. Noldeke in his Orientalische Skizzen (Berlin, 1892), pp. 153-84; in English, Sketches from Eastern History, trans. John Sutherland Black (London, 1892), pp. 146-75. Later literature includes an Arabic monograph (Faysal al-Samir, Thawrat al-Zanj [Baghdad, 1954]); a critical analysis of the Arabic sources (Heinz Halm, Die Traditionen des "Herrn des Zang": Eine Quellenkritische Untersuchung [Bonn, 1967]); and a comprehensive study (A. Popovic, La Revolte des esclaves en Iraq au iiie/ixe siecle [Paris, 1976]). For an analysis of the place of the Zanj rebellion in the larger context of opposition movements, see Faruq 'Umar, Al-Khilafa a!- Abhasiyya fi Asr al-Fawda a! Askariyya (Baghdad, 1974), pp. 106-18. Ghada Hashem Talhami ("The Zanj Rebellion reconsidered," International Journal of African Historical Studies 10, no. 3 [1977], pp. 443-61) attempts to prove, mainly on the basis of modern secondary literature in English and Arabic, that in classical Abbasid usage the term "Zanj" did not denote a specific place or people and that the Arab slave trade in East Africa is largely the invention of English and French writers concerned to defend their own colonial records. On the use of the term "Zanj," see above, pp. 50ff. On the East African slave trade, see UNESCO, African Slave Trade (Paris, 1979). The major Western studies on the revolt of the Zanj were written by two Germans and a Yugoslav.
19. Nasir-i Khusraw, Safar-nama, ed. and trans. (into French) C. Schefer (Paris, 1881), text p. 82, trans. p. 227.
20. Ahmad al-Wansharisi (d. 1508), Kitah al-Miyar al-mughrib, vol. 9 (Fes, 1313/ 1895-96), pp. 71-72; French translation by E. Amar, in Archives Marocaines 13 (1909), pp. 426-28. See below, p. 148.
21. El', s.v. "Abd" (by R. Brunschvig), p. 32a. Rotter. Die Stellung des Negers, pp. 44f., 49ff.
22. Mahmoud A. Zouber, Ahmad Baba de Tomhoktou (1556-1627): Sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris, 1977), pp. 129-46. For an edition and translation, with commentary, of this text see Bernard Barbour and Michelle Jacobs, "The Mi'raj: A legal treatise on slavery by Ahmad Baba," in Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, ed. J. R. Willis, vol. I (London. 1985). pp. 125-59. In this work, Ahmad Baba quotes from an earlier jurist, Makhluf al-Balbali (d. 1533 A.D.), who said: "The origin of slavery is non-belief, and the black kafirs are like the Christians, except that they are majus, pagans. The Muslims among them, like the people of Kano, Katsina. Bornu, Gobir, and all of Songhai, are Muslims, who are not to be owned. Yet some of them transgress on the others unjustly by invasion as do the Arabs, Bedouins, who transgress on free Muslims and sell them unjustly, and thus it is not lawful to own any of them.... If anybody is known to have come from these countries, he should be set free directly, and his freedom acknowledged" (pp. 130-31).
23. Al-Nasiri, Kitdb al-Istigsa', vol. 5 (Casablanca, 195
5), pp. 131 ff. This passage is translated in J. O. Hunwick, "Black Africans in the Islamic world." Tarikh 5, no. 4 (1978), pp. 38-40.
24. Tabari, Ta'rikh, ed. M. J. de Goeje, vol. 3 (Leiden. 1881), pp. 950-51; Hilal al-$abi`, Ruston Dar al-Khilafa, ed. Mikha'il `Awad (Baghdad, 1964), p. 8, cf. p. 12. For medieval Arabic accounts of castration, see Jahiz, Kitab al-Havawan, vol. 1 (Cairo, 1356/1958), pp. 106ff.; Spanish translation by Miguel Asin Palacios, Isis 14 (1930), pp. 42ff.; Al-Mugaddasi. Ahsan al-tagasim, ed. M. J. de Goeje. 2d ed.. Bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum, vol. 3 (Leiden, 1906), p. 242; French translation by C. Pellat, Description de !'occident musulman an IV"-X' siecle (Algiers, 1950). pp. 5758. Other sources in Rotter, Die Stellung des Negers, pp. 33-35. Descriptions of the procedures used in Egypt for castrating black boys are given by European observers at the beginning of the nineteenth century; see above, pp. 76-77. On eunuchs, see Mez, Die Renaissance, pp. 332ff. (The Renaissance, pp. 353ff.); M. F. Koprulu, in Turk Hukuk ve Iktisat Tarihi Mecmuasi 1 (1931), pp. 208-11; Italian translation, idem, Alcune osservazioni intorno all'influenza delle istituzioni bizantine sidle istituzioni ottomane (Rome, 1953).
25. Jeremy Bentham, The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 3 (January 1781 to October 1788), ed. Ian R. Christie (London, 1971), p. 387.
26. See El 2, S.V. "Habshis" (by J. Burton-Page).
27. The first poem is cited in the translation of A. J. Arberry, Poems of alMutanabbi (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 112-14. The second is translated from the original in al-Mutanabbi, Diwan, ed. `Abd al-Wahhab `Azzam (Cairo, 1363/1944), p. 460. On al-Mutanabbi's "racism," see J. Lecerf, "La Signification historique du racisme chez Mutanabbi," in Al-Mutanabbi: Recueil publie a !'occasion de son millenaire (Memoires de l'Institut francais de Damas) (Beirut, 1936), pp. 33-43.
28. The most famous was the Egyptian-horn mystic Dhu'l-Nun al-Misri (ca. 796861), the son of a freed Nubian slave. See Eh, s.v. (by M. Smith); above, p. 114, n. 16.
Chapter 9
1. C. A. Plassart, "Les Archers d'Athenes," Revue des etudes grecques 26 (1913), pp. 151-213; O. Jacob, Les Esclaves publiques a Athenes (Liege, 1928), chap. 2; M. I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (New York, 1980). p. 85.
2. William L. Westermann, The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity (Philadelphia, 1955), pp. 15-16, 37, 61; on the use of armed slaves as bodyguards, ibid., p. 67.
3. Wagidi, Kitab al-Maghazi, ed. Marsden Jones (London, 1966), p. 91; Balad- huri, Ansab al-Ashraf, ed. Muhammad Hamidullah. vol. I (Cairo, 1959), p. 367.
4. Akhbar al-Dawla al-Abbasiyya, ed. `A. `A. Duri and A. J. al-Muttalibi (Beirut, 1971), p. 280; Tabari, Ta'rikh, ed. M. J. de Goeje, vol. 2 (Leiden. 1879-1901), pp. 1968-69: Julius Wellhausen, The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall (Calcutta, 1927), p. 534. When reproached by their masters, and even by some of his own supporters and companions, Abu Muslim replied: "If any slave comes willingly to join our cause, we shall accept him and he shall have the same privileges and the same duties as we." Speaking of a certain slave, belonging to one `Asim, Abu Muslim remarked: "It was God who liberated him, and God has a better claim than `Asim." A garbled version of these events seems to have reached as far as Byzantium, where the historian Theophanes, in recording the events of the year of Creation 624(1 (748 A.D.). reports that the slaves in Khurasan, incited by Abu Muslim, killed their masters in a single night and equipped themselves with their arms, horses, and money. See Theophanes, Chronographia (Bonn. 1839), pp. 654-55: German translation by Leopold Breyer, Bilderstreit and Arahersturnt in Byzanz (Graz, 1957), pp. 66-67, 70.
5. Baladhuri, Futult al-Buldan, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1866), p. 458; discussed in David Avalon. "Preliminary remarks on the mamluk military institution in Islam." in War, Technology, and Society in the Middle East, ed. V. J. Pang and M. E. Yapp (London, 1975), pp. 45-46.
6. The chronicle attributed to Dionysus of Tell-Mahre: J.-B. Chabot, ed., Chro- nique de Denys de Tell-Maitre (Paris, 1895). pp. 84f. of Syrian text (= p. 72, French trans. ).
7. See O. S. A. Ismail, "Mu`tasim and the Turks," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 29 (1966), pp. 12-24; David Avalon, "The Military Reforms of Caliph al-Mu'tasim" (paper presented to the International Congress of Orientalists, New Delhi, 1964). On the origins and development of Islamic military slavery, see Patricia Crone, Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (Cambridge, 1980), and the by-now classic articles of David Avalon, collected in three volumes published in the Variorum Series: Studies on the Mamltiks of Egypt (12501517) (London, 1977), The Mamluk Military Society (London, 1979), Outsiders in the Lands of Islam: Mamluks, Mongols, and Eunuchs (London. 1988). On Ottoman military slavery, see I. Metin Kunt, The Sultan's Servants: The Transformation of Ottoman Provincial Government, 1550-1650 (New York, 1983), esp. chaps. 3, 4; idem, "Kullann Kullari," Bogazici Universitesi Dergisi-Hhmaniter Bilintler 3 (1975), pp. 27-42: Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age (London, 1973), pp. 68ff., 77ff., 84ff.
8. Ibn Khaldun. Kitdb al-`Ibar wa-diwan al-mubtada wa'l-khabar, vol. 5 (Bulaq, 1284/1867), p. 371: English translation in Bernard Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople, vol. 1 (New York, 1974), pp. 97-99.
9. On these, see Daniel Pipes, "Black soldiers," International Journal of African Historical Studies 13, no. 1 (1980), pp. 88-90, where references to sources are given. Dr. Pipes's careful examination of these sources has yielded a meager haul.
10. G. Rotter, Die Stellung des Negers (Bonn, 1967), pp. 65ff. On the "Ahabish" of Mecca see Eh, s.v. (by W. Montgomery Watt). For a more recent discussion of early black, slave soldiers, see Jere L. Bacharach, "African military slaves and the medieval Middle East: The cases of Iraq (869-955) and Egypt (868-1171)," International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 13 (1981), pp. 471-94. In discussing the struggles between different ethnic and racial groups of soldiery, Bacharach is concerned to prove two propositions: that race was not the sole cause and that it was never of any great importance. He has no difficulty with the first, and as far as I am aware no one has ever claimed otherwise. He is rather less convincing on the second. The article does, however, offer a very useful collection of evidence and references.
11. The list of Ibn Tulun's treasures and possessions is given in al-Oadi al-Rashid ihn al-Zuhayr (attrib.). Kitcih al-Dhakha'ir na'l-tuhaf ed. Muhammad Hamid Allah and Salah al-Din al-Munajjid (Kuwait. 1959), p. 227. See, further, C. H. Becker. Beitrage zur Geschichte Agyptens unter der Islam, vol. 2 (Strassburg, 1903), pp. 19293. On the participation of Tulunid black troops in the sack of Thessalonica in 904 A.D.,
see B. Christides, "Once again Caminiates' 'Capture of Thessaloniki,' " B_vzantinische Zeitschrift 74 (1981), p. 8.
12. Maqrizi, Kitah al-Mawa'iz n•0-i'tibur fi dhikr al-khitat wa7-athar (hereafter Maqrizi, Khitat), vol. I (Bulaq, 1271/1854), p. 315; Ahu'l-Mahasin Ihn Taghri Birdi, Al-Nujum al-zahira, vol. 3 (Cairo, 1351/1932), p. 15. Even among the Zanj rebels, we are told, whites and blacks were segregated. Whites had separate houses, blacks did not: whites were allowed to drink wine, blacks were not (Tahhri, Tarikh, vol. 3, pp. 1760, 1959; Rotter, Die .Stelluug des Negers, pp. 109-10).
13. Ihn Taghri Birdi, Nujum, vol. 3, p. 59.
14. Ibid., p. 137: Maqrizi, Khitat, vol. 1, p. 322.
15. `Arib ihn Sad al-Qurtubi, Silat Ta'rikh al-Tabari, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden, 1897), pp. 148-50. Other accounts in Muhammad ihn `Abd al-Malik al-Hamadani, Takmilat ta'rikh al-Tabari, ed. Albert Yusuf Kan'an, 2d ed. (Beirut, 1961), p. 63; Miskawayh, Kitab Tajarib al-Umam, ed. H. Amedroz, vol. 1 (Oxford and Cairo, 1332/ 1914), pp. 202-3 (English translation by D. S. Margoliouth, The Eclipse of the Abbasid Caliphate, vol. 4 [Oxford, 1920], pp. 227-28): Ibn al-Athir, Ktanil, anno 318, ed. Tornberg, vol. 8 (Leiden, 1862), pp. 159-60; ibid.. ed. 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Najjar, vol. 8 (Cairo, 1353), p. 208 (hereafter Ihn al-Athir, Kinnil [Tornherg] and Ihn al-Athir, Kamil [Cairo]). Cf. H. Bowen, The Lite and Times of Ali ibn'Isa "The Good Vizier" (Cambridge, 1928). p. 290.
16. The fullest account is that of Ihn al-Sabi
' (d. 1056), cited by Ihn Taghri Birch, Nujum, vol. 4, pp. 180-83. Cf. Muhammad `Abdallah `Inan, Al-Hakim bi 'antr illah . . . . 2d ed. (Cairo, 1379/1959), pp. 207-8; S. Lane-Poole, A History of Egypt in the Middle Ages, 2d ed. (London, 1914), p. 133. Another atrocity story is recorded under the year 428 of the Hijra, corresponding to 1036-37, the time of the great famine in Cairo: "The blacks used to wait in the alleys, catch women with hooks, strip off their flesh and eat them. One day a woman passed through the Street of the Lamps in old Cairo. She was fat, and the blacks caught her with hooks and cut a piece off her behind. Then they sat down to eat and forgot about her. She went out of the house and called for help, and the chief of police came and raided the house. He brought out thousands of bodies and killed the blacks" (Ihn Taghri Birdi, Nujtini, vol. 5, p. 17). There are other stories of cannibalism, especially in times of famine, without any racial implication. See Bacharach. "African military slaves," p. 494, n. 55, where examples are cited.
17. Ihn al-Athir, Kamil, anno. 564 (Tornberg), vol. 9, pp. 228-93; ibid. (Cairo), vol. 9, p. 103.
18. Abu Shama, Kitab al-Rawdatavn, ed. Muhammad Hilmi Muhammad Ahmad, vol. 1, pt. I (Cairo, 1962). p. 452; cf. Maqrizi, Khitat, vol. 2, p. 3.
19. The chief Arabic sources are Ibn al-Athir; Abut Shama, Kitab al-Rawdatayn, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 450-55; Maqrizi, Khitat, vol. 2, pp. 2-3. 19; lhn Wasil, Mufarrij al- kurub, ed. Jamal al-Din al-Shayyal. vol. 1 (Cairo, 1953). pp. 176-78. See, further, S. Lane-Poole. Saladin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (New York, 1898), pp. 101-3; H. A. R. Gihb, "The rise of Saladin," in A History of the Crusades, ed. K. M. Setton, vol. 1, The First Hundred Years, ed. M. W. Baldwin. 2d ed. (Madison, 1969), pp. 565; N. Elisseeff, Nur ad-Din, an grand prince musulman de Syrie au temps des Croisades, vol. 2 (Damascus, 1967), pp. 642-44; 'Abd al-Mun'im Majid. Zuhur khilafat al-Fatimivvin wa-suqutuha (Cairo. 1968), pp. 482-83.
Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry Page 20
