Reviews for Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora

The average rating for Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-10-26 00:00:00 Freeman Rawdon Thoughtful, engrossing and meticulously documented, Islam's Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora provides an excellent history of slavery in Islamic Africa starting with the Middle Ages through to the present-day. For nearly 750 years, from the middle of the eighth century, Islam was the central civilization of the Old World serving as the carrier that transmitted innovations from one society to another. Islam itself spread through trade as much as through conquest and lucrative overland and maritime trade routes stretched from Morocco and Spain, to Persia, India and China. Luxury goods dominated trade and among the 'goods' were slaves--from the Balkans, the Caucasus and, also increasingly with time, from sub-Saharan Africa. Economic booms have a way of creating their own special distortions. Starting in the seventh century, when Islam conquered the Persian Sassanid Empire and much of the Byzantine one, it acquired immense quantities of looted gold. In addition, supplies of newly minted gold arrived along trade routes that the empire inherited or developed; one reaching from the mines of Nubia to Aswan, others from central Africa to the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. This vast expansion of wealth encouraged a culture of conspicuous consumption and slaves were among the possessions that set the rich apart, though even small-holders and nomadic traders generally had a slave or two. Female slaves were required in considerable numbers in the Medieval Islamic world. Female slave musicians, singers, dancers, reciters and even composers of poetry were highly prized and costly. There were schools in Baghdad, Cordoba and Medina that supplied tuition and training in musical and literary skills. Many more women were bought for domestic work or as concubines. Overall, the ratio of female to male slaves was about 2:1 in the Islamic world. Homes of those who could afford the space were divided into separate quarters for men and women and the men were served by male slaves who functioned as grooms, guards, messengers and porters. To guarantee the virtue of the women of the household harems were secured not just by locks, but by slave guards, who were invariably eunuchs. Slave eunuchs sold for up to seven times the price of uncastrated male slaves reflecting the high death rate from the operation, but also high demand. In addition to their role as harem guards eunuchs served as administrators, tutors and secretaries and as male concubines. The Caliph in Baghdad in the early 10th century had seven thousand black eunuchs and four thousand white ones in his palace. While the North Atlantic slave trade arose primarily to provide agricultural workers, that role was filled in the Medieval Islamic world largely by local peasants rather than slaves. In theory, the Koran's injunctions should have guaranteed much kinder treatment of slaves in the land of Islam than was the case in the Americas. To some extent that was true: slaves were more often freed, integration into the broader social fabric was quite common and there were pathways to very high rank for both white and black slaves (though these were more common for the former); but practices forbidden by Koran, such as castration, were in fact commonplace. The number of Africans enslaved is obviously difficult to estimate and Segal does a good job reviewing various sources drawing on tax records, business documents in such repositories as the Cairo geniza, and Islamic and European writers. Spread over thirteen and a half centuries a number of 14 million for the total Islamic black slave trade (an average of about 10,000 per year) seems, if anything, a bit conservative. The number of Africans enslaved was thus roughly equal to the numbers enslaved in the Atlantic trade, but spread out over a much longer period of time. I found the overviews of the Caliphates and the Ottoman Empires and the spread of Islam concise and helpful. The chapters detailing the collision of European powers with the Afro-Islamic world were particularly thought-provoking. Colonization of Africa by European powers, some of which had committed to eliminating the Atlantic slave trade, had a curiously mixed effect on the actual practice of slavery in Islamic African provinces. European administrators, unwilling to disrupt the effective pursuit of profits or antagonize local Arab strong men and landowners, were inconsistent about the issue, often doing more harm than good. Detailed and thoughtful examinations of colonial policies in Nigeria (Britain), Somalia (Italy), Mauritania (France) and Zanzibar and the Kenya Coast (Britain) illustrate how uneven, careless policy-making created populations of squatters, impoverished day-laborers and vagrants who were often conscripted for government projects or even as labor gangs or fighting units in Europe's world wars. Slavery still persists in Mauritania, the Sudan and elsewhere in the Arab and African world; against a background of fourteen centuries of Islamic colonization and slave-owning, the practice becomes more comprehensible, if no less painful and dehumanizing to those enslaved. The final chapter leaps rather incongruously to a puzzled essay on African-America's fascination with Islam as an alternative to Christianity. I don't get it either, but it doesn't really fit the overall narrative. I would have much preferred to see the book summarize the state of the African diaspora in the Arab world and/or discuss how the dysfunctional mix of Arab and European colonialism helped create a series of failed and violent states. But that's nit-picking: overall, this is a very valuable book on a woefully understudied topic. Content Rating: PG Warning for dark thematic material. Some short sentences about the violence done to slaves, particularly as regards castration and concubinage. He doesn't overdo it with the gore or sexual elements, but without these few spare, shocking sentences the reality of the slaves' terrible experience would be lost.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-29 00:00:00 MICHAEL SULLIVAN SLAVERY AND ISLAM Ronald Segals short (240 pages) book on the subject of Slavery and Islam is one of the few books that cover this issue in a form that is accessible to the average reader. What is welcome about the book is that it stands apart from much of the fevered anti-Islamic writing that has been a growing phenomena over the last few decades and attempts to deal with the issue of Slavery in Islam in an impartial manner. Africa has suffered at the hands of the slave trade for well over a thousand years, the European component of that trade was at it height between the 1500's into the 1800's. Slavery already existed in the lands that were to come under Islam, and the trade was carried over from then (7th century) and though the Ottoman empire banned it in the 1850's it has continued in some parts of the Islamic world until well into the twentieth century, in two countries Mauritania and Sudan it is believed to be still continuing. A section of the book makes the comparison between the two trades and makes the point that in the few centuries that the Europeans traded in slaves they enslaved almost as many Africans as Islamic countries did over 13 centuries. Further to this he points out that "in European Slavery the Africans were depersonalised, a unit of labour in an America where the original populations had been hideously depleted by European arms and diseases." This is in comparison to Islam where "the overall treatment of slaves was overall more benign, in part because of the values and attitudes promoted by religion inhibited the very development of Western style Capitalism, with its effective subjugation of people to the priority of profit." In short Slaves in Islam became part of the service sector, soldiers and household servants, cooks and concubines where in the Americas slaves were a unit of production in the highly capitalised production of commodities for world trade. In both instances the Slave Trade itself was equally bloody. No one wishes to be enslaved, and this is as true whether the masters are Christian and capitalist or of the Muslim religion. The journeys that Slaves made across the Saharan Desert or on dhows to Arabia were fully as brutal as those experienced by the slaves who made their passage across the Atlantic. The castration of slaves to feed the market for Eunuchs is one particular aspect of Islamic slavery that is absent from the Western experience. The figures for death rates following the "operation" are horrendous though the author is unable to give a precise figure. Segal also reflects on the situation for Slaves once they reach their destination, and it is here - in general - that the differences between the two systems become more noticeable. The authors conclusion is that "the freeing of individual slaves by their owners was much more frequent and widespread in Islam." It also covers the question of why there is no noticeable Diaspora of Blacks in the Islamic world. A recent comment posted on one of my reviews states quite categorically that it was a result of the widespread castration of male slaves. While there certainly was a trade in Eunuchs it was not a majority of those African males enslaved, who were only reckoned to be a third of those traded, females making up two thirds (this is the reverse of the proportions for the Atlantic trade). The conclusion that Segal comes to is that "the comparative smallness of a black Diaspora in Islam is evidence not of the small numbers carried by the trade, but of the degree to which large numbers were absorbed in the wider population." He also notes examples of Slaves and former Slaves who rose to high and respectable positions within Islamic societies. The book ranges through time and geography to give accounts of particular examples of Islamic societies and the forms of slavery they practiced. It is this part of the book that becomes a little confusing, the reader is bombarded with names and places from Spain (Al-Andalus) to India and all across North Africa as well as the Ottoman Empire. Also covered are those places that came colonies under European Imperialism, and the changes that occurred in relation to slavery which was gradually replaced by Capitalistic labour relations which secured similar ends (coercing labour) without the inhuman ownership of one person by another. A short section on Islam and the post slavery black population of America is interesting, but seems somewhat superfluous given that they were neither formally slaves and the hybrid beliefs they held were only in part related to Islam as it was known elsewhere. As a good impartial history of Slavery and Islam I know of none that is better. It has its weaknesses, and is not as comprehensive as books on the Atlantic slave trade and American Slavery in part because of the diversity of experience and the fact that the history of Islamic slavery stretches back far further in time and the sources are not as readily available as those for the American experience. Overall an interesting book, that is worth reading.