The Origins of the Muslim (Islamic) Slave System

This tolerant treatment was not without conditions. A slave was the property of his master. His tenor of life was determined by the latter. For example, he could not marry without the master’s permission. Although he was free to move from place to place, he could not hold pleasure parties nor pay visits to friends. A slave could not bestow aims or grant a loan or make a pilgrimage. If he managed to accumulate any property, it was inherited not by his sons but by the master.12 In theory a slave could purchase his freedom, but a bond of freedom was granted to a slave in return for money paid, and until full money was paid there was no total redemption. A slave should not seek his emancipation by running away, “The slave who fled from his master committed an act of infidelity”, says Muhammad.

   The emancipation of slaves was not unknown in pre-Islamic Arabia. It was an old custom among the Arabs of more pious disposition to will that their slaves would be freed at their death. To Muhammad, the freeing of a slave was an act of charity on the part of the master, not a matter of justice, and only a believing slave deserved freedom.

In short, slavery in Islam is a permanent and perennial institution. As Margoliouth points out, “the abolition of slavery was not a notion that ever entered the Prophet’s mind.” “The fact remains,” writes Ram Swarup “that Muhammad, by introducing the concept of religious war and by denying human rights to non-Muslims, sanctioned slavery on an unprecedented scale… (and on) such massive proportions. Zubair, a close companion of the Prophet, owned one thousand slaves when he died. The Prophet himself possessed at least fifty-nine slaves at one stage or another, besides thirty-eight servants, both male and female. Mirkhond, the Prophet’s fifteenth-century biographer, names them all in his Rauzat-us-Safa. The fact is that slavery, tribute, and booty became the main props of the new Arab aristocracy…..” “The Slavery of Islam is interwoven with the Law of marriage, the Law of sale, and the Law of inheritance, of the system, and its abolition would strike at the very foundations of the code of Muhaminadanism.”

    Islamic slave system spread and developed wherever Muslim rule was established. Ghulam or quallar (‘slave’) was the creation of the Safavid state. Mamluks were found in Egypt. In the Ottoman Empire, they were called Kapi-kulus. “Kapi-Kulu were recruited originally from the Sultan's share of prisoners of war, and subsequently from a periodical levy (depshrime) of Christian boys. Most of the youths entered the Janissary corps.” Christian slaves were drawn from the ranks of the Georgian, Armenian and Circassian prisoners or their descendants.” Black slaves, natives of East Africa, were called Zanj. Majority of slaves who penetrated and 

flourished in India were Turks.

   The Abbasids had built up a very large empire with capital at Baghdad, and its provinces were administered by their Turkish slave officers and Turk mercenary troops. Caliph al-Mutasim (833-842 C.E.) introduced the Turkish element into the army, and he was the first Caliph to have Turkish slaves under his employment. For it was soon discovered that the young slaves acquired from Turkistan and Mawar-un-Nahr formed an excellent material for such a corps.

Turks is a generic term comprehending peoples of sundry denominations and tribes. The Turkistan of medieval historians was an extensive country. It was bounded on the east by China, on the west by Rum or Turkey, on the north by the walls of Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog), and on the south by the mountains of Hindustan. The Turks as a people were both civilized town-dwellers and the migratory tribes trekking across the desert or wilderness. With the extension of the Muslim frontier to the north and west of Persia one tribe after another, like Turks, Tartars, Turkomen, and even Mongols and Afghans came under subjection. They attracted the attention of their conquerors by their bravery and spirit of adventure. They were acquired in groups and droves as slaves. The Caliphs of Islam also purchased Turkish slaves to manage their far-flung empire. The Turkish slaves helped the cause of Islam through their fighting spirit. 

But as their numbers grew, they became unmanageable. For example, Caliph al-Mutasim’s own guard was of 4000 Turks; the number later rose to 70,000 slave mercenaries. With time the tyranny, lawlessness, and power of the Turks went on increasing. The unscrupulous policy of religious persecution followed by the Caliph Mutawakkil was responsible for the alienation of the subject races. His own son entered into a conspiracy with the Turks, which ended in the Caliph’s murder in 861. The Caliph Mutadid (892-902) was unable to suppress the power of the Turks. The final decline of the Caliphate set in just after the murder of Muqtadir in 932 C.E. “The Turkish soldiers made and murdered Caliphs at their pleasure.” As the Caliphal empire disintegrated, in the third century of Islam, its provincial governors became independent.

But technically these Turkish governors were only slaves and their tenure of power rested on military force and chance victory and not on any moral foundations. On the other hand,  the Caliphs were objects of respect. The first four Caliphs were directly related to Muhammad. Muawiyah, the founder of the Ummayad Caliphate, was a cousin of Abbas, an uncle of the Prophet. Abbas himself was a founder of the Abbasid Caliphate. The Turkish slaves, therefore, considered it politic to keep a sort of special relationship with the Caliph: they went on paying him tribute and seeking from his recognition of their ‘sovereignty’. That is how, in course of time, their political power was firmly established.