Chapter Seven
Slave Trade and Solidarities
Io, per la parte mia, stretamente me ne trovo hobli- gato in tanto che è stado insuficiente a remunerar la più minima parte. Da qui avanti volglio me reputa per schiavo.1 Nui possamo far a voia nostra, (. . .) per modo che porete dir aver aquistado schiavi.2 Andrea Benedetto
A. Slaves in the Mamluk Empire
Slaves were an integral part of Mamluk society. In rich households they served not only as domestic slaves but also as wet nurses, teachers, spe- cialised artisans and even musicians and poets.3 Slave girls were also often concubines.4 Outside of the domestic realm, the political system of the Mamluks ultimately depended on slaves. Slaves were recruited into the Mamluk army and graduated to knights only after a thorough military and religious education. Upon reaching this point, they could then move to higher ranks or even rule over the Mamluk empire as emirs or sultans.5 Islamic law imposed notable restrictions on the trade in Islamic slaves. Only prisoners of war and those Muslims born into slavery could be kept legitimately as slaves. Children of a freeman and a slave were free.6 To lib- erate slaves was not only a good deed, but also a moral duty. The common
1 Letter from Andrea Benedetto to Biagio Dolfin, 18 October 1418, ASVe, Procuratori di San Marco, Commissarie miste, b. 181, “Commissaria Biagio Dolfin”, fasc. 15, int. d, f. [20 r]. 2 Letter from Giacomo Zorzi and Andrea Benedetto to Biagio Dolfin, 15 November 1418, ibid. f. [19 r]. 3 Robert Brunschvig, “ʿAbd”, in Encyclopædia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. I, 32b–33b; Shaun E. Marmon, “Domestic Slavery in the Mamluk Empire: A Preliminary Sketch”, in Slavery in the Islamic Middle East, ed. Shaun E. Marmon (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1999), 8–10, 13. 4 Brunschvig, “ʿAbd”, 33a; Marmon, “Domestic Slavery”, 4. 5 Cf. Holt, “Mamlûks”. 6 Brunschvig, “ʿAbd”, 26a. 122 chapter seven view linked slaves with non-Muslims: “Slavery is disbelief ”,7 i.e. faith and slavery could not be yoked. Thus the importation of slaves was crucial for assuring a constant slave supply.8 Increasingly, with the spread of Islam into Sub-Saharan Africa, areas that had traditionally been slave hunting grounds, were embracing Islam.9 In Western North Africa, local lawyers desperately tried to legalise the lucrative trade in (Muslim) slaves from Sub-Saharan Africa. They argued that certain people were naturally unable to embrace Islamic faith, and therefore, could still be enslaved.10 An Egyptian fatwâ allowed the pos- session of Abyssinians, i.e. Nilohamits, as slaves, even though they were already Muslims at the time of their enslavement. The reason given was “their original disbelief and the insecurity concerning the time of conversion.”11 This thinking was widespread in fifteenth-century Egypt and dispelled any anxiety buyers might have had about the faith of slaves at the point of sale.12 However, mainstream orthodox jurists categorically rejected this argument.13 The Mamluks (in the narrower sense of the word: ‘military slaves’) were traditionally of non-Muslim Circassian, Caucasian or Tartar origin. Officially, Africans were not accepted as military slaves.14 It seems that it was mainly Italian merchant ships that brought slave-boys to Egypt and Syria.15 In order to hold one’s ground in the continual in-fighting within
7 Fatwâ of the fifteenth century from the Miʿyâr of Wansharîsî, vol. 9, (Fes, 1896), 171– 172, cited by Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East an Historical Enquiry (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1990), 148. Replacing the older id., Race and Color in Islam (New York: s.n., 1971); cf. below footnote 11. 8 Lewis, Race and Slavery, 10–11. 9 Ibid., 53. 10 John Hunwick, “Islamic Law and Polemics over Race and Slavery in North and West Africa (16th–19th century)”, in Slavery in the Islamic Middle East, ed. Shaun E. Marmon (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1999), 45–46; cf. Lewis, Race and Slavery, 57, 58; see also Lewis refutation of the view that racism does not exist in the Islamic world, ibid., 19, 20. 11 Fatwâ of the fifteenth century from the Miʿyâr of Wansharîsî, vol. 9, (Fes, 1896), 171– 172, cited by Lewis, Race and Slavery, 148; for a French partial translation see Lagardère, Analyse du miʿyâr d’al Wansharîsî, 405 (no. VI, 132). 12 Lewis, Race and Slavery, 53; based on al-Qalqashandî, S’ubh’ al-ʿashâ f î s’inâʿat al- inshâ’, vol. 8, 116–117. 13 See above footnote 10. 14 Except towards the end of Mamluk rule in some socially inferior units, which were equipped with firearms, Lewis, Race and Slavery, 68. 15 Caucasian slave traders used to bring slave-boys to the Mamluk Empire but in the years in question the Fondaco of the “Turcomani” seemed to have been abandoned. The sultan finally attributed it in 1422 to the Florentines, Brancacci, “Diario”, 175; cf. Heyd, Histoire du commerce, vol. 2, 177, 432, 448, 555–559.