>
>
>>
>>Islam's black slaves
>>
>>By Suzy Hansen, SALON.COM
>>April 5, 2001
>>
>>Although slavery seems like an institution from a barbaric and uncivilized
>>past, it survives today in
>>both Sudan and Mauritania. The horrific details of the Atlantic slave
>>trade -- the ruthless slave
>>traders who pillaged Africa, the millions of Africans who died on
>>treacherous sea journeys to
>>America, the resulting "peculiar institution" of cheap, brutalized labor
>>that spawned the Civil War
>>-- weigh heavily on the American conscience. Another slave trade, however,
>>the Islamic one,
>>remains a mysterious aspect in the history of the black diaspora. Fourteen
>>centuries old, this
>>version of slavery spread throughout Africa, the Middle East, Europe,
>>India and China. It is the
>>legacy of this trade that continues to ravage Sudan and Mauritania today.
>>
>>South African-born Ronald Segal is the author of 13 books including "The
>>Anguish of India,"
>>"The Americans" and "The Black Diaspora." In his latest book, "Islam's
>>Black Slaves: The Other
>>Black Diaspora," he offers one of the first historical accounts of the
>>Islamic slave trade. Salon
>>spoke with Segal by telephone from his home in London.
>>
>>How did the Atlantic and Islamic slave trades differ?
>>The Atlantic slave trade exclusively used black slaves or agricultural
>>labor on plantations. It
>>started in a very small way in 1450 and ended in the middle of the 19th
>>century. It was the basic
>>labor supply for the plantations in the Americas since the indigenous
>>people had been all but wiped
>>out by a combination of imported diseases and forced labor. The number of
>>slaves who landed
>>alive in the Americas -- it was an important aspect in the development of
>>capitalism, so the
>>numbers are fairly accurate and organized by merchant banks and investors
>>with stock market
>>quotations -- was something like 10,600,000. Slaves became so cheap that
>>it was more profitable
>>to work them to death and buy new ones than to try to keep your labor
>>supply alive. For example,
>>some of the mortality rates in San Domingue -- which became, after the
>>only successful slave
>>revolution in history, Haiti -- were quite staggering.
>>Slaves in the Atlantic trade came to be kept and regarded as units of
>>labor, not as people. This was
>>almost formalized by categorizing slaves as "pieces of the Indies." A male
>>slave, able-bodied and in
>>the prime of his life, was defined as a "piece of the Indies," and the
>>other slaves, the women and
>>children, were defined as "pieces of pieces of the Indies." That gives you
>>an idea of how the
>>exploitation of African slaves was rationalized in the West.
>>
>>But not in Islam?
>>The slave trade in Islam was seriously different. It began in the middle
>>of the seventh century and
>>survives today in Mauritania and Sudan. With the Islamic slave trade,
>>we're talking of 14 centuries
>>rather than four.
>>Whereas the gender ratio of slaves in the Atlantic trade was two males to
>>every female, in the
>>Islamic trade, it was two females to every male. Very large numbers of
>>slaves were used for
>>domestic purposes. Concubinage was for those who could afford it and there
>>was no disrepute
>>attached to having women as sexual objects. In fact, they married them.
>>Some harems could be
>>enormous. One ruler had 14,000 concubines. In one respect, women slaves
>>were a status symbol. I
>>hate to say it this way, but it's comparable to the way people in the West
>>collect motorcars.
>>The male slaves were used for the more exacting physical jobs in homes and
>>palaces: porters,
>>messengers, doorkeepers. In various places, from Islamic Spain to Egypt to
>>Libya, there were
>>black slaves used as soldiers. In Morocco, there was a whole generation of
>>black slaves who
>>became the army of Morocco, in which the young boys were bought at the age
>>of 10 or 11 and
>>trained in horse handling and military skills of various kinds. Young
>>female slaves were instructed
>>in household crafts and were then provided with resources to buy a home
>>and get married.
>>
>>What about eunuchs?
>>Strictly speaking, in Islam, castration was against the law. I don't think
>>it was in the Koran, I think
>>it was a hadith -- a saying attributed to the prophets -- which says he
>>who castrates a slave will
>>himself be castrated. But they got around this as people do. One
>>contrivance was to buy already
>>castrated slaves. Another was to employ those who were not Muslims to
>>perform the operation.
>>But then even these contrivances came to be abandoned and dealers would
>>perform the operation
>>themselves along the route. The mortality rates were absolutely huge.
>>To be technical, there was a crucial difference between white eunuchs and
>>black eunuchs. White
>>eunuchs were made by the removal of testicles. Black eunuchs were made by
>>what was called
>>"level with the abdomen." Eunuchs were guardians of the harem [because] if
>>they were castrated
>>"level with the abdomen," there was no risk of their damaging any of the
>>property in the harem.
>>For reasons that are not altogether clear or explicit, they came to be
>>used increasingly by rulers as
>>counselors, advisors and tutors and, eventually, to actually run the holy
>>places of Mecca and
>>Medina, where they were treated with enormous respect. One can speculate
>>on the motivation -- if
>>they were not sexually active or preoccupied they were more likely to be
>>devoted and loyal or
>>given to spiritual preoccupations instead of bodily ones.
>>
>>Were there other types of white slaves in Islam?
>>Yes. The Atlantic trade didn't deal with white slaves, but the Islamic
>>trade dealt with large
>>numbers of white slaves.
>>
>>And in Islam black slaves were never used for the same purposes that they
>>were used in America?
>>In the early stages of Islam, they were used in the American way. In
>>southern Iraq and neighboring
>>Iran they were put to work in large quantities to clear the salt crust for
>>agriculture and plantation
>>labor. But in the ninth century, a prophet arrived who instigated a
>>rebellion among the black
>>slaves, the Zanj, in the area. This rebellion was enormous. It destroyed
>>much of the commercial
>>shipping in the region and came close to capturing the city of Baghdad,
>>then the greatest city of
>>Islam. It was eventually crushed after quite a protracted period. The
>>impact across Islam was
>>enormous. There developed a reluctance to allow very large concentrations
>>of slaves for plantation
>>agriculture. That is a parenthetical reason for the overwhelmingly
>>domestic nature of the Islamic
>>trade.
>>
>>Does the Koran specify how slaves should be treated?
>>The Koran is the key. The relationship between slave and master in Islam
>>is a very different
>>relationship from that between the American plantation laborer and owner.
>>It was a much more
>>personalized relationship and relatively benevolent. Everything here is
>>relative -- being a slave is
>>being a slave and it shouldn't be romanticized.
>>The institution of slavery is sanctioned in the Koran. To say that the
>>Koran is in any way opposed
>>to the institution of slavery would be wrong. It is never recommended, but
>>it is influentially and
>>explicitly benevolent in its attitude to the poor, the orphaned and
>>slaves. And there is a specific
>>injunction that to free a slave is an act of piety, which has its due
>>reward in the other life.
>>Incidentally, what was absolutely outlawed in the Koran was to separate an
>>infant or a young child
>>from his mother.
>>
>>Which was normal in America.
>>Right. There is a specific statement in the Koran that says that he who
>>separates the child from his
>>mother will himself be separated from his loved ones on the day of
>>judgment.
>>Since it was an act of piety with immeasurable reward, the incidence of
>>emancipation or
>>enfranchisement was enormously more widespread in Islam than it was in the
>>Western form of
>>slavery. There wasn't a complete separation of master from former slave.
>>Usually, a patron and
>>client relationship developed between slave and master. For example, in
>>Mauritania today there are
>>freed slaves called Haratin whose descendants still pay tribute to the
>>family of the owner.
>>Specifically in the Koran, the owner of a slave is enjoined to provide
>>that slave with an
>>opportunity to purchase his freedom.
>>There would be a binding contract in which the slave would be provided
>>with the opportunity to
>>earn money for himself and pay in installments to his owner, which by
>>practice, if not by law,
>>became a gratuity. There were then two motivations for freeing your slave
>>-- a reward in heaven
>>and money in this world.
>>
>>Was slave ownership only for the rich, as it was in America?
>>Slave ownership was so widespread. Even small shopkeepers owned slaves.
>>Paradoxically,
>>although slaves were at the bottom of the hierarchy because they weren't
>>free, they still stretched
>>right across the economic hierarchy. It was not rare for slaves to become
>>highly prized artists.
>>There were academies that existed to teach young slave girls to play
>>musical instruments. Any self-
>>respecting merchant house would have a chamber orchestra.
>>Slaves became generals and black slaves became rulers. In the 16th
>>century, a slave, Ambar,
>>became first a general and then the ruler of a large Indian state.
>>
>>I also thought it was fascinating that the child of a master by a slave
>>was free.
>>Definitely. A child born fathered by his master was freed, since a child
>>could not be the slave of his
>>parents.
>>
>>The great numbers of black female slaves must have ensured a great deal of
>>miscegenation.
>>There's no question about that. It is the major reason for the relatively
>>small size of the black
>>diaspora in Islam, though there were other reasons. A number of countries
>>noted a low fertility
>>rate among black women slaves. And not all women slaves used for domestic
>>purposes had the
>>opportunity to produce children.
>>The ultimate example of the distinction between the two trades is that in
>>the greatest Islamic
>>empire, the Ottoman Empire, after the sons of the first two sultans, no
>>sultan mounted the throne
>>who had not been born of a concubine. The Ottoman ruling family did not
>>marry because they
>>regarded the royal family as above any alliance. Occasionally, marriage
>>would be used to ensure
>>the loyalty of a Turkish tribe, but overwhelmingly the fertility of the
>>Ottomans was through
>>concubines.
>>
>>Why could Islamic slaves assimilate into the surrounding society so more
>>easily than American
>>blacks could?
>>Here we get to a further dimension of the difference between the two
>>trades. Slavery in the West,
>>because it was so cruel and had become so disreputable, required some kind
>>of excuse or
>>extenuation -- the idea of biological discrimination. Essentially, the
>>concept of race developed and
>>was popularized. The sort of pseudo-scientific view, in distinction from
>>the pseudo-religious view,
>>came about during the Victorian age, the 19th century, when you had
>>Darwin's theory of
>>evolution. You could irresponsibly and intellectually dishonestly
>>subscribe to the idea that certain
>>races were inferior.
>>
>>But the Koran, on the other hand, prohibits racism?
>>The Koran very explicitly attacks it. According to the Prophet, Islam
>>comes to do away with these
>>distinctions of tribe and nation and color. There is a strong argument
>>made by Patricia Crone that,
>>initially, Mohammed was most influential in a political rather than a
>>religious sense. He supplanted
>>this intertribal rivalry by uniting a large part of the Arabian people
>>into a political unit, and, of
>>course, it then became an imperial power.
>>
>>Was there no stigma attached to being black in Islam?
>>Nothing is ever quite so simple. There did develop an attitude toward
>>color. There were
>>distinctions in market value and general consumer appreciation between one
>>sort of black slave
>>and another. Some of this was aesthetic. One tends to think that anyone
>>who looks like one's own
>>people is more beautiful. For instance, the Ethiopians and the Nubians
>>were highly favored
>>because they had sharpish noses rather than flat noses and they were
>>lighter colored. Clichés
>>developed so that you had so-called Negro slaves for hard work and you had
>>Ethiopians and
>>Nubians for concubinage.
>>But this was never institutionalized. This is another key to the
>>difference between the two empires.
>>Of course, there were Islamic pseudo scientists in the Middle Ages who
>>said differences of
>>character and temperament were the consequences of climate -- those who
>>lived too far from the
>>sun in the North had frigid temperaments, and those who were immediately
>>beneath the sun were
>>given to too much merriment and too little thought.
>>But in the context of the development of Islam it would have been a real
>>break with tradition had
>>it been institutionalized in law. This is important for the assimilation
>>aspect too, because once you
>>were freed, there was no discrimination in law against you.
>>
>>They weren't confined to an underclass after they were freed?
>>Many of them might have been, although the client/patron relationship was
>>a sort of protection if
>>you were in need -- that is, if your previous owner was a true practicing
>>Muslim. And there isn't
>>this history of separation. The nature of the Atlantic trade and therefore
>>the survival of racism in
>>the West has been one of segregation. In America, separation was the
>>social clarion call and as bad
>>in the Northern states as in the Southern. Generally, the geographical
>>separation -- the kind of
>>separation in individual churches where blacks were seated in one part of
>>the congregation and
>>whites in another -- produced this enormously creative black diaspora in
>>America, as well as
>>infinite suffering.
>>There wasn't this separation in Islam. Whites didn't push blacks off the
>>pavement. They didn't
>>refuse to allow a black singer to sing in Constitution Hall. They didn't
>>forbid restaurants to serve
>>them. I don't think that there's any disputing that slavery was a more
>>benevolent institution in
>>Islam than it was in the West.
>>Also, it is irrational to make the exclusive connection between slavery
>>and color that existed in the
>>West because there were white slaves in Islam in significant numbers.
>>
>>In comparable numbers to black slaves?
>>With the enormous expansion of Islam and the conquests of huge
>>territories, there were certainly
>>large numbers of white slaves in the early periods. But, to be cautious,
>>white slaves became
>>increasingly more difficult and expensive to obtain. Black slaves became
>>far more numerous than
>>white ones. Certainly, when you get to the 19th century, which was the
>>cruelest century, there
>>were many more black slaves than white ones in Islam.
>>
>>Beyond the tenets of the Koran, why was this so?
>>Western capitalism and the development of the attitude of viewing people
>>as units of labor and not
>>as people.
>>
>>Was America so economically powerful because it exploited its cheap slave
>>labor more brutally
>>than any other leading empire -- such as the Ottoman?
>>That's a valid point but there are many other reasons for the demise of
>>the Ottoman Empire.
>>Although opinions may differ over the extent of the relationship between
>>the Atlantic trade and the
>>development of industrial capitalism, it is unarguable that the Atlantic
>>slave trade was immensely
>>profitable. The Industrial Revolution was closely related to the Atlantic
>>trade in two major
>>respects. First, many of the products of early British industrialization
>>were directly related to the
>>slave trade. But also, the families who grew rich as a result of the slave
>>trade invested their profits
>>in industrialization. This was a dual fruitfulness that the slave trade
>>produced for the development
>>of industrial capitalism.
>>
>>The Islamic slave trade was not profitable?
>>It was profitable for the dealers. But it was nowhere near the kind of
>>sophisticated business that it
>>became in the Atlantic trade.
>>The Atlantic trade is a horrendous and fascinating story. Which is not to
>>say that in Islam there
>>weren't tremendous cruelties involved, particularly in the 19th century
>>when all inhibitions were
>>discarded. Of course, it must also be said that the West, for all the
>>horrors for which it was
>>responsible, did also engender (not always for benign reasons) the
>>movement against the
>>international slave trade.
>>
>>Was there an abolitionist movement in Islam?
>>Initially, it was a source of great hostility that the West dared to
>>intervene in Islamic affairs in
>>contradiction to what was allowed by the Koran. But as Western influence,
>>or modernism, became
>>more and more [widespread], it became less fashionable as well as
>>profitable in Islam to own
>>slaves. And it became illegal over much of the area. The pressures against
>>slavery were extremely
>>great from Western powers. It was the moral issue. It became more
>>scandalous because the
>>conditions of procurement and transport became more and more horrendous.
>>
>>Was it similar to the Atlantic trade in this respect?
>>Both slave trades wittingly and unwittingly encouraged warfare on a huge
>>scale to provide the
>>captives for the traders. In Islam, this was much less the case until the
>>19th century, when it
>>became quite ghastly. The worst of the slavers were not Arabs but
>>Afro-Arabs -- they were as
>>black as the people they were enslaving. The casualties involved in
>>enslavement wars were
>>absolutely unspeakable.
>>
>>Where were the Afro-Arabs from?
>>The great dealers of the 19th century? Some of them carved empires for
>>waging war and for
>>providing large numbers of slaves. The point must be made that the worst,
>>the most costly in their
>>ravages, were the Afro-Arabs. They were themselves Africans. There is
>>nothing peculiar to Africa
>>about this, though -- people are corrupted by circumstances and greed.
>>
>>Why has slavery survived in Sudan and Mauritania?
>>The resurgence of fundamentalist Islam has a lot to do with slavery in
>>both countries. Both
>>describe themselves as Islamic states and pursue policies of Arab-Islamic
>>religious law, but they
>>are essentially exercises in the maintenance of control. Sudan is an
>>imperial agglomeration of two
>>countries -- one part of black Africa, one part of North Africa. Involved
>>in the war is a question of
>>control and power. In Mauritania, the so-called white Moors represent a
>>third of the population,
>>another third are the Haratin -- who are the descendants of freed slaves
>>and largely black -- and
>>the last third are blacks still held in slavery.
>>Also, it is partly a reaction to the power differentials in the world at
>>large. Islam was a civilization
>>that for hundreds of years was arguably the central civilization of the
>>world and certainly dwarfed
>>the cultures and powers of a West that is now unquestionably supreme. So
>>there is a sense of
>>humiliation. In such a situation you get a backlash -- a "return to the
>>future through the past" sort
>>of thing -- a re-Islamization. There's nothing in the Koran that says
>>someone can come along and
>>free your slave.
>>
>>What interested you in the Nation of Islam?
>>I find it personally inexplicable that the adhesion to Islam within the
>>Black Muslim movement is
>>apparently indifferent to the survival of black slavery within Islam.
>>
>>Louis Farrakhan doesn't acknowledge what goes on in Sudan and Mauritania?
>>Does he want them to bring him the slaves as proof? I think it's based on
>>a crude self-defense
>>mechanism not unrelated to those who feel it necessary to defend the
>>conduct of the Israeli
>>government regardless of what it does. The attitude is: "These are yours,
>>you belong to them, they
>>are part of your past and part of your history, and therefore how can you
>>associate yourself with
>>outsiders who attack them?"
>>But this isn't about the survival of Islam -- that's not in question.
>>You're talking about two rogue
>>states, which are condemned by Islamic countries, governments, preachers,
>>writers. You become
>>so much more credible if you show that you are altogether sensitive to
>>suffering, that you are
>>hostile to injustice across the board. If you become so selective that you
>>can ignore outrages of
>>this kind, well, how can you blame other people for ignoring outrages to
>>you and your
>>community?
>>Farrakhan is a very paradoxical thinker because he's very, very
>>intelligent, yet he makes statements
>>that are so obviously stupid. It is incomprehensible that he doesn't know
>>that they are stupid. He
>>knows how to manipulate the media. He does it on the basis of short-term
>>gain, without realizing
>>that it is long-term loss. You don't build anything lasting on that basis.
>>
>>Do Black Muslims hold to the classic tenets of Islam?
>>They break from the Koran immediately -- if we're talking functionally
>>about their crude and open
>>anti-Semitism. That is in complete conflict with the special relationship
>>that Islam established,
>>while the Prophet was alive, with Judaism and Christianity. There has been
>>no long historical
>>conflict between Jew and Muslim, though there has been a conflict since
>>the crusades between
>>Christian and Muslim.
>>There are exceptions, but overall Islam proved most hospitable, and
>>certainly a great deal more so
>>than Christianity, to the Jews. When the Jewish population was expelled in
>>1492 from Spain, Islam
>>took in those Jews who couldn't find havens in Christian countries. This
>>isn't to say there haven't
>>been tensions from time to time, but overall there is no comparison
>>between the way Islam has
>>behaved to Jews and the way Christianity has behaved to Jews.
>>
>>On what basis does the Black Muslim movement usually attack Jews?
>>What I find most outrageous is that the leadership of the Black Muslim
>>movement has judged it
>>necessary and defensible to attack Jews on the basis -- for which there is
>>no historical foundation
>>whatsoever -- that they masterminded the slave trade, by which I think
>>they mean specifically the
>>Atlantic trade. And that is -- not to put to fine a point on it or to be
>>excessively elegant --
>>unmistakable crap. Anyone who knows anything about the Atlantic trade
>>knows that this is
>>nonsense.
>>
>>So why do you think they keep on about this?
>>I think that they are resentful -- and I understand the resentment but not
>>the form it has taken --
>>that a great deal of fuss, an enormous amount of moral attention, is now
>>paid to the Holocaust.
>>And in my view, rightly so. The slave trade was the only comparable
>>historical experience to the
>>Holocaust -- comparable but not identical. No one seems to pay remotely
>>the same attention to or
>>have the same sense of guilt about the slave trade as about the
>>combination of racism in the
>>Holocaust.
>>Now, that is a point that ought to be made. But you do not aggrandize one
>>by belittling the other.
>>On the contrary, you end up denying the importance of one by denying the
>>importance of the
>>other. Certainly you add nothing to your case by basing it on assertions
>>that are so easy to
>>confront and contradict.
>>
>>Do you think the Nation of Islam came out of pure despair with America or
>>from a loss of faith in
>>Christianity?
>>They were explicably attracted by a sense or knowledge that there was no
>>such history of
>>specifically anti-black racism in Islam, as so conspicuously had existed
>>for blacks in the West and,
>>in particular, in the United States. Those who wished to believe in God or
>>practiced some form of
>>religion and were, as Louis Farrakhan was, disenchanted with Christianity
>>were easily captivated
>>by a religious alternative not all that far apart but distinctly different
>>from Christianity.
>>
>>Do you think the Nation of Islam has helped American blacks?
>>I have traveled widely in the United States and have visited communities
>>in Michigan and Illinois.
>>Secular black academics testify that in Black Muslim schools the emphasis
>>placed on the history
>>and dignity of blacks in Africa has had a marked effect on the reading
>>ability of black children,
>>who no longer feel disparaged and demoralized.
>>There is a great deal of truth in a man like Farrakhan's indictment of
>>some of the black middle
>>class who flee the ghettos, for understandable reasons, but in the process
>>think that they can turn
>>their backs on those who are unable to buy new homes in these middle-class
>>suburbs. There is a
>>smugness there, and then there is the phenomenon of the black
>>conservative, such as Clarence
>>Thomas.
>>It is outrageous that American democracy doesn't function for the
>>objectives that it is almost
>>perpetually enunciating. If you start looking at statistics on the
>>disproportionate numbers of blacks
>>executed, of young blacks in prison -- all these undeniable abuses of the
>>system make people very
>>angry. The problem occurs when this anger becomes irrational. Because it
>>is such an obvious
>>series of abuses, the anger doesn't need to be irrational. In fact, the
>>only way it can be effectual is
>>to be rational.
>>
>>
>>
>

_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
You may also send subscription requests to [log in to unmask]
if you have problems accessing the web interface and remember to write your full name and e-mail address.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------