Islamic views on slavery

rdf:langString Islamic views on slavery

rdf:langString Islamic views on slavery represent a complex and multifaceted body of Islamic thought, with various Islamic groups or thinkers espousing views on the matter which have been radically different throughout history. Slavery was a mainstay of life in pre-Islamic Arabia and surrounding lands. The Quran and the hadith (sayings of Muhammad) address slavery extensively, assuming its existence as part of society but viewing it as an exceptional condition and restricting its scope. Early Islamic dogma forbade enslavement of free members of Islamic society, including non-Muslims (dhimmis), and set out to regulate and improve the conditions of human bondage. Islamic law regarded as legal slaves only those non-Muslims who were imprisoned or bought beyond the borders of Islamic rule, or the sons and daughters of slaves already in captivity. In later classical Islamic law, the topic of slavery is covered at great length. Slaves, be they Muslim or those of any other religion, were equal to their fellow practitioners in religious issues. Slavery in Islamic law is not based on race or ethnicity. However, while there was no legal distinction between white European and black African slaves, in some Muslim societies they were employed in different roles: for example, in the Ottoman Empire white slaves served as soldiers and government officials, while black slaves served as eunuchs in the palace and the harems of elite families. Slaves played various social and economic roles, from domestic worker to highest-ranking positions in the government. They created some great empires in history including the Ghaznavid Empire, Khwarazmian Empire, Delhi Sultanate, Mamluk pashas of Iraq and Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Levant. Moreover, slaves were widely employed in irrigation, mining, pastoralism, and the army. Some rulers even relied on military and administrative slaves to such a degree that they were considered above from the general public and sometimes they seized power. In some cases, the treatment of slaves was so harsh that it led to uprisings, such as the Zanj Rebellion. However, this was an exception rather than the norm, as the vast majority of labor in the medieval Islamic world consisted of paid labour by free persons. For a variety of reasons, internal growth of the slave population was not enough to fulfill the demand in Muslim society. This resulted in massive importation, which involved enormous suffering and loss of life from the capture and transportation of slaves from non-Muslim lands. Bernard Lewis maintains that though slaves often suffered on the way before reaching their destination, they received good treatment and some degree of acceptance as members of their owners' households. The Muslim slave trade was most active in west Asia, eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. Muslim traders exported as many as 17 million slaves to the coast of the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, and North Africa. Abolitionist movements began to grow during the 19th century, prompted by both Muslim reformers and diplomatic pressure from Britain. The first Muslim country to prohibit slavery was Tunisia, in 1846. During the 19th and early 20th centuries all large Muslim countries, whether independent or under colonial rule, banned the slave trade and/or slavery. The Dutch East Indies abolished slavery in 1860, while British India abolished slavery in 1862. The Ottoman Empire banned the African slave trade in 1857 and the Circassian slave trade in 1908, while Egypt abolished slavery in 1895, Afghanistan in 1921 and Persia in 1929. In some Muslim countries in the Arabian peninsula and Africa, slavery was abolished in the second half of the 20th century: 1962 in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Oman in 1970, Mauritania in 1981. However, slavery has been documented in recent years, despite its illegality, in Muslim-majority countries in Africa including Chad, Mauritania, Niger, Mali, and Sudan. Many early converts to Islam were the poor and former slaves. One notable example is Bilal ibn Rabah al-Habashi.