Subject to Change
I talk to the world's best historians and let them tell the stories. And the stories are wonderful! (And occasionally I change the subject and talk about films, philosophy or whatever!).
Subject to Change
From Eunuchs to Corsairs: The World of Islamic Slavery
Fourteen centuries of enslavement, from the Prophet Muhammad's day to modern Mauritania. Justin Marozzi's fascinating book "Captives and Companions" has as its subject the complex history of slavery across the Islamic world, challenging simplistic narratives and revealing uncomfortable truths about power, race, and religion.
Our conversation touches on how Islam didn't invent slavery but incorporated existing practices while encouraging manumission. We talk about the huge diversity of slavery - from the devastating Zanj Rebellion when East African slaves revolted in Iraq, to the paradoxical power of Mamluk slave-soldiers who became sultans. I particularly liked how Justin managed to balance the brilliance and the cruelty of the concubines at the court in Baghdad at the height of its power.
We also spent a lot of time discussing eunuchs. What purpose they served, the way Islam got round the prohibition on the practice and how and why the use of eunuchs lasted so long.
The racial side of things was a surprise to me. Primary sources from Islam's greatest medieval intellectuals expose deeply racist attitudes toward black Africans, while white Circassian slaves commanded premium prices. And the Barbary Corsairs provided another surprise, with a surprising number of Europeans who "turned Turk" to join Muslim pirates enslaving fellow Christians across the Mediterranean.
When we reach abolition, Marozzi talked about how external Western pressure, not internal Islamic reform, primarily drove formal emancipation. And his interviews with people in Mali and Mauritania document hereditary slavery continuing today, with miserable stories of those fighting for freedom in the 21st century.
Hello and welcome to Subject to Change with me, russell Hogg. My guest today is Justin Marozzi. Justin is a journalist, historian and one of the most evocative chroniclers of the Islamic world writing today. I think he's best known for Baghdad, city of Peace, city of Blood. But today we're going to talk about his latest book, captives and Companions, and that has the subtitle A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World. So anyway, welcome Justin to the podcast.
Justin:Thank you very much, Russell. Very good to join you today.
Russell:And I just wanted to start off saying I just found this an absolutely fascinating book and a really terrific read and I learned an absolute ton from it. But both slavery and attitudes to Islam, these are quite sensitive subjects and I just wondered if you, or indeed your publishers, had had any hesitations in tackling it.
Justin:I't think, um, my publishers or I had that hesitation, but I've. I just recall, for the last five years working on this project, the numbers of friends who've just said something like oh, that's brave or that's a bit reckless, isn't it? And I don't think it's brave or reckless, I just thought. From a historian's point of view, this is a is a incredibly fascinating story. It's a very long, sweeping history. It certainly is controversial and some people might find it sensitive as well, but I've tried to look at it as a, you know, a dispassionate historian, putting, I think, emotion to one side, trying to put 21st century attitudes and and prejudices to one side as well and trying to tell the story as it was and then maybe only using the more modern, contemporary lens when you get into the 21st century and the stories about modern slavery and Daesh, islamic State in Iraq and Syria and so on.
Russell:I did think it was a very cleverly constructed book because you both pick on topics on the subject of slavery, but somehow it still seems to flow in a chronological way and I wasn't quite sure how you did that. But I thought it was terribly clever.
Justin:Well, thank you very much. I remember that was very early conversation with my publisher who said at the time, about four or five years ago, your biggest challenge will be to manage that balance between thematic and chronological treatment, uh, which which I've tried to do, but it's been. It's difficult because we're essentially talking of 14 centuries of slavery, um, and the slave trade across a so a huge time range, huge geographical range and very big thematic differences. You know concubines, eunuchs, slave soldiers, corsairs, etc. Etc. So it's a massive field really. It's a huge world.
Russell:Okay, well, maybe we should start right at the start, then. And so, to what extent is slavery already established in the Arab world by the time of the Prophet Muhammad?
Justin:Yeah, that's a good point to start on because it sounds obvious. But I think I'd stress obviously Islam did not invent slavery on the Arabian Peninsula when that religion was first revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the years from 610. The Arabs had practiced slavery since time immemorial, as had the neighbouring Byzantines, as had the neighbouring Persians. So the Arabs, the Muslim Arabs, rather, from the time of Muhammad in the early 7th century, essentially are inheriting the traditions of their pagan Arab ancestors. And it just continues.
Justin:Islam starts changing it when you have both the revelations from Muhammad in the verses of the Quran specifically well, a number of things specifically legitimating slavery, saying that there's no sense that the Quran is calling for an abolition of slavery. That would have been really a non-starter. When you're trying to promulgate a new religion, you want new believers, you want new converts, you don't want to put them off. So a lot of it was business as usual, and slavery forms part of that as well. But is one difference, I think, in the quran is that it's very explicitly enjoins manumission and and there are sort of incentives you will be rewarded in the afterlife if you a treat your slaves well, but, more importantly, if you manumit them, emancipate them, and that is something I think that muslims have always been aware of, following the prophet's example from the very earliest days.
Russell:And there's a phrase which you quote in your book. The Quran uses the phrase those whom your right hand possesses. And I just wondered is that poetic language, you know, because the Arabic language is extremely poetic, or is there some sort of a euphemism here?
Justin:I think it's a bit of both really. I mean, yes, as you say, arabic can be a very elusive, oblique, florid language. You know 10 words when you might get two or three in English. But I think the right hand is interesting as well because there's that sense the right hand confers a sense of responsibility, trustworthiness and honour. And so there's this sense that you know you are responsible as a sense of responsibility, trustworthiness and honour, and so there's this sense that you know you are responsible as a slave owner to treat your slaves well.
Justin:You have responsibilities towards them, and the conventional word for slave, abd, in Arabic, is really restricted in the Quran to like a slave of God. So all those names in Arabic Abdullah, literally slave of Allah, slave of God, abdullah, rahim, and all the different names of God, so all those names in Arabic Abdullah, literally slave of Allah, slave of God, abdullah, rahim, and all the different names of God have that sort of slave prefix. So otherwise, the most common term, as you say, is those whom your right hands possess, and that is the most popular expression used in the Quran to denote slave. There may also have been a very sort of not that it's shameful, but it's a more sort of subtle form of words than the word slave. I mean, that will come later, obviously outside the holy book, and Muhammad himself.
Russell:as I understand it, he himself owned slaves, but he also had, amongst his most important companions he had, some freed slaves. Yes, so I just wondered what is your take on that?
Justin:I suppose, again, like we were saying, having inherited the tradition of slavery and the slave trade, there was nothing unusual in that at all. So it's not known exactly how many slaves he had. It's something between, say, 16 and 20, mostly male, mostly manumitted, and some female as well, who were married in turn as well over the course of his lifetime. Things aren't completely clear, but we do certainly know that he had slaves. He was also gifted some slaves. He was gifted a concubine, he was gifted a eunuch, and those are two really important categories of enslavement which I'm sure we'll talk about in the coming hour, not least because they last the entire duration of the Islamic world until today. Both the concubines and eunuchs have gone into the 20th and even the 21st century. So, yes, he's continuing the tradition. I think the main difference, probably with the Prophet Muhammad is that there is this explicit message about benevolent treatment towards them, humane treatment towards your slaves, and not the imperative but the desirability of emancipating them.
Russell:Right and of course, after Muhammad dies, the Arab empire. It just explodes in the 7th and the 8th centuries. You know, geographically it's just one of the most astonishing things in history. So presumably at that time slaves are being taken in very large numbers and is there any legal restriction and who is being enslaved and who is not? How is it working, restriction and who is being enslaved?
Justin:and who is not. How is it working? Yeah, the Arab conquest is this really fascinating period, say 632 to 750, you know, give or take from the death of the Prophet Muhammad, even though the conquest obviously had started in his lifetime. But beyond the Arabian Peninsula, 632 to 750, the Umayyad dynasty and, as you say, slaves are taken in, just in astonishing numbers. And when, in the early 8th century, the Iberian peninsula, the conquest of that begins, you know, over over a number of years, huge numbers.
Justin:I think we have to take some of the figures possibly with a bit of pinch of salt. But tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of enslaved men, women and probably children are sent east from the Iberian Peninsula to the heart of the Islamic empire, which was that time was in Damascus, before the Abbasids come from 750, and their whole headquartered in Baghdad. A lot of them would have been simple slavery through conquest, although there is a tradition of 20% of the spoils going to the leader and back to the Islamic capital. That leaves 80% to be sort of divvied up among the soldiers, and that would include women. It would include camels, horses, men of a fighting age, I think generally the older people were considered less valuable, less worth enslaving. You wanted sort of young men of fighting age, children who could also serve you, and certainly women as well, potentially as concubines or even domestic servants and slaves.
Russell:And what legal rights did slaves have? I mean, and does it even make sense to talk about legal rights at this time in history?
Justin:I think I'd probably say maybe you know, change it slightly say quasi-legal rights. You know you cannot, as a Muslim slave owner, you cannot just simply abuse, maltreat, mistreat your slave. There are legal responsibilities on you to to provide humane treatment. A slave has a right to take you to court if, if he or she feels that you are abusing that, that you know your your ownership of them. And there was a great example of that in the 19th century in egypt when the concubine called shem sigul, very brave woman who was basically raped and made pregnant by her owner, who was a very shifty figure who lied repeatedly to the police when he was interrogated, but she tried to put her foot down and we only know about her story because of the statement she gave to the police in Cairo. And it's a very harrowing, disturbing story of a man's abuse of a vulnerable Circassian woman who had borne him a child and his wife beat her so badly, trying to induce a miscarriage.
Justin:And you have very granular detail from this woman's deposition and it must have been, in an all-male world, extremely difficult statement to make, but it's an example of someone know as, someone who is enslaved, taking their, their owner, to court for for mistreatment, and I, although we don't have the, the paperwork doesn't survive in terms of what definitively happened.
Russell:it's likely that she would have been emancipated and he would have been faced some punishment, because it went right up to the um, the mufti of egypt, the supreme religious authority, for his final pronouncement I suppose that's one of the things about, about writing about this is that so many of the stories, almost all the stories, have just have, you know, from the slaves point of view, they have just completely vanished yeah, that's right and the it's a.
Justin:I think it's a challenge for the historian, um, and certainly I'm not the first to face it.
Justin:It's very interesting looking at historian, and certainly I'm not the first to face it. It's very interesting looking at other historians and how they've talked about this, what they call the voices, the voices of the enslaved, and the efforts that are needed to almost excavate them from the historical record, which is difficult when the sources are so elusive. Really, I mean the great majority of these people's stories that the millions who were enslaved in the course of these 14 centuries say from the 7th to the 20th century, you know have not left a record. So when you do find a close record and there's some of the concubines in early 8th century and onwards, baghdad are fascinating because there are so many chronicles about them and that they're interesting. Badinage, the repartee they have at court, the poems they composed, the songs they wrote have been passed down to us and that is fascinating human insights. But I think it is a constant challenge to try to get to the voices of the enslaved rather than those around them who are in control.
Russell:And is there some sort of a racial hierarchy, in terms of desirability, of who you're trying to enslave? I mean, you mentioned the Circassians and actually, as you brought them up, I would really like to know who are the Circassians, because they appear again and again in books and the authors just seem to assume you'll know where the sarcassians come from and I have no idea that's quite difficult answer.
Justin:I think the the easiest way of putting it is to say that they're from the caucasus white um, both boys who would be taken to go and serve as slave soldiers for the ottomans from about the 14th century onwards and a bit later, and females as concubines, especially desirable for the Ottomans in the 500 or 600 years that they hold sway from Istanbul. So yes, that's Sarkassian, it's really a sort of a people, but it's spread across various borders that we now know within the Caucasus, you know countries like Georgia and beyond.
Russell:So the white Circassians are very valuable, but are whites generally more valuable.
Justin:I think whites are generally more valuable, but more specifically with the well, especially with both Circassian concubines and white eunuchs, as opposed to black eunuchs. I mean generally, uh, we're talking about the, both the arab and the ottoman worlds. The black african slaves were were generally, um less expensive than their white counterparts, and there are a number of sort of passages which I think are quite difficult to read now today, from arabs in the 9, 10th centuries and beyond, talking about the stereotype of an African man or woman, and there are basically astonishingly strong instances of racism from, not fringe voices but the absolute sort of, you know, the A-list intellectual powerhouses of their time, people like Jahiz, one of the greatest Arab writers of his time, masoudi, ibn Khaldun, the father of sociology, ibn Sina, the father of medicine, known as Avicenna in the West. These men had strikingly consistent negative views towards black Africans and I think that persisted.
Justin:And I would say I encountered quite similar comments from modern Libyans during the revolution, especially when I remember there's an instance I talk about in the book, when, um, I was with a group of young revolutionaries and they shouted across to their one of their black friends and just said, abd, calling him slave. Uh, they thought it was a joke. They thought there was absolutely nothing wrong. There was nothing to see here. Justin, what do you? What are you saying? Is it's a joke? He understands it. There is no problem. I don't think that's how he saw it, by the way, at all.
Justin:He was on the receiving end of it, but there is a persistence of racism, I think, towards Africans within the Arab world. It does survive across the region.
Russell:And speaking of the black slaves, I found your chapter on the Zanj I don't know if I got the pronunciation right there, but your chapter on the Zanj Rebellion absolutely fascinating, because I think that's the biggest slave revolt in history and yet, in spite of that, I don't know how many people, I don't know how familiar people are with it. So can you give us just a bit of background into it?
Justin:It is a really fascinating story and I told it at some length in the book because and it's a rarity in that it is the sources from the time this is. This is uh jahiz, the writer I just mentioned. For who? For his uh? In the context of his racist attitude towards africans in the revolt of the zanj revolt. He is the main source and he devotes about what? Something like one and a half volumes of his 30, 39, 40 volume history of the Islamic world to the Zanj revolt. So it was a huge thing.
Justin:And the language in which he writes this, the story changes and you sort of sense him getting more and more worked up, more and more antagonistic towards the leader of the revolt, who was an Arab born southeast of Tehran, a bit of a rabble rouser, claimed he had a sort of hotline to God and God had told him to come and rise up or help the enslaved black Africans in and around Basra rise up from their kind of debilitating menial enslavement and take power themselves. And it wasn't about abolishing slavery. He wanted them and they wanted to be able to have slaves themselves. They were in no way seeking the abolition of slavery.
Russell:So the idea is that they will enslave their former masters, is it?
Justin:Yeah, it's that sort of thing. These are not sort of progressive abolitionists at all.
Russell:They want to be on the other side of the slave-slave divide, I suppose.
Justin:But it's a very extraordinary thing because it lasts 14 years.
Justin:It's an indication also of the fragmented caliphate.
Justin:At the time Headquarters had been moved from Baghdad to Samarra, north along the Tigris, and that itself was because of the necessity of keeping the Turkish slave soldiers who were increasingly propping up the caliph out of mischief and causing great resentment among the sort of aristocracy of Baghdad.
Justin:So they were seen as interlopers too big for their boots, lots of political influence and favours, and so the capital for about 80 years or a a little bit less, was moved from Baghdad to Samarra. Caliphs came and went, lots of them were assassinated, and this was the time when the Zanj burst into revolt in the southern marshes around Basra where they were working on huge plantations. And I think the fact that it lasted 14 years and they were able to take over Basra, which was the second city of Iraq as it remains to this day, is an indication that they really just they brought the caliphate almost to its knees. It was a profound shock, which is why Jahiz wrote at such length about it, and eventually it was snuffed out in 883, only when the caliphate would manage to stabilise after this rush of caliphs on and off the throne, very short reigns and lots of assassinations, and the caliph starts to get a grip and and snuffs, snuffs it out militarily.
Russell:But the violence of uh, when they take basra, and indeed when you know, you say it's snuffed out, I mean the level of killing. I mean I don't know how reliable you can, how reliable the sources are, of course, because with ancient history you're never quite sure, but it must have been almost apocalyptic.
Justin:I think it was very much apocalyptic, and, as you say, we can't really have too much confidence in the figures, but, you know, the Chronicles talk about anything between half a million and two and a half million. I mean, I think that they all sound enormous, but I think what it does show us, though, really is exactly that the extent of that wholesale slaughter, of bloodshed, and the Arabs, I think, found it almost galling and shameful that some of their finest sort of minds in Basra, poets and writers, were just hacked down and black African slaves had revolted and were enslaving and raping Arab women from very distinguished lineages. They would, they would manage to turn the social order on its head and for all Arabs, especially a writer like Jahiz, this was, you know, it really was the apocalypse, and, as you say, it goes on for over a decade. I mean, it's not a, it's not a short-lived thing, no, it's absolutely not a flash in the pan.
Russell:this really was the apocalypse and, as you say, it goes on for over a decade. I mean it's not a short-lived thing.
Justin:No, it's absolutely not a flash in the pan, and I think there was a sense I mean, I think, a generation or two ago when this was written about by another historian. I think he ended with this sort of slightly well a bald assertion that this put an end to plantation slavery in the Arab world. It wasn't that. That's just not not true and because we know as late as the 19th century, you have African workers on quite large plantations in and around the Arabian Peninsula in places like Oman, date plantations, clove plantations in Oman and Zanzibar, cotton in Egypt. So it wasn't an end to plantation slavery, but I think it really sent a strong warning to Arab Muslim leaders that having huge numbers, possibly hundreds of thousands of slaves working in close quarters on these big plantations was a dangerous undertaking and it probably needed to be reduced to a smaller scale.
Russell:One of my frequent guests is Jonathan Clements and he's often on the podcast talking particularly about Japan or China and the Far East, but he actually, many years ago, he wrote a book about the Vikings and he said that the Vikings found that the demand for them to go and find white slaves for the Arab world was increased, apparently because the Arabs found that white slaves were considerably less dangerous than black slaves following the. Zan's rebellion, and you know, the dates kind of do tie together.
Justin:That's a nice little historical coincidence as well, more connection. But I think that and the Vikings were, you know, also took no prisoners when it came to slavery that they were, they were slavers on a on a phenomenal scale.
Russell:Well, I guess they uh, I guess they definitely did take prisoners in very large numbers and then sold them, sold them down, literally sold them down the river yes, I mean, and that really is the high point of of slave revolt.
Justin:I mean, there there are sort of smaller, almost like coups from slave soldiers in places like Samarra and Baghdad, but it's nothing like what we saw with the Zanj, which was just this extraordinary long, very bloody and closely observed, because Jahiz was living at the time. He was almost reporting as a you know, like a foreign course or a newspaper correspondent.
Russell:you know day to day what happened, that is fantastic because you know we've got these direct sources and that's so rare.
Justin:Normally somebody's writing 250 years later it's incredibly rare and that I think that's why we've all anyone with an interest in that kind of period or in this subject and in Iraq. You fall on that volume and a half with a sense of relief and greed because it's blow by blow. What happened on this day and then this month, and then he took this side of the city and this number of people were killed on this day. It's fantastically blow by blow.
Russell:We mentioned. You mentioned the Turks as these slave soldiers and I guess they come into the Abbasid Caliphate and if I have my dates right on the Abbasids, they start around about 750 AD no-transcript from the earliest times in the Prophet Muhammad's armies, and certainly those of his immediate successors, in much smaller numbers, admittedly, you know.
Justin:They are on the battlefield, by the way, in addition to freed slaves, um of whom bilal um, one of my favorite early characters, who goes from being um an ethiopian slave to islam's first mwadin, the caller to prayer, fights alongside prophet muhammad and to this day enjoys an incredibly distinguished position in Islamic history the man who went from slavery to become a jihadist and a soldier, with Muhammad as the caller to prayer, and a black man to boot. And a black man to boot, exactly Transcending those more typical attitudes towards Africans among Arabs at the time. But go forward 100 years or so to 750. And I think the early 9th century particularly, it begins after that civil war between the two brothers, amin and Mamun Mamun prevails, kills his other brother, amin, and there's this sense that, hang on, I need a proper army that I can depend on. Here the old sort of aristocratic military class are unreliable. I'm going to pay for the best talent I can get. And I think there was no doubt at that time where where that talent lay, and it was to the east, in what is now uzbekistan, I think generally I'd say central asia, but there are some specifics of some slaves coming in from what is now uzbekistan. And there are these long passages again.
Justin:That writer, jahiz, who keeps coming up in our conversation, wrote a long passage essay really about the merits of the Turk as a fighting soldier and he goes into. You know how long they can stay in the saddle, how they can ride all day along with an army. And then, when everyone is absolutely exhausted in saddle store and striking camp and think, thinking about food, the turkish cavalryman soldier, whatever, will ride off on his horse and go and hunt and bring back whatever food is needed and just race his horse across the mountains as though he hasn't been riding for 12 hours. And how good they are in battle, how clever they are as archers, etc. Etc. So there's this very strong sense that a turkic soldier, as opposed to turks from turkey, these are turkic tribes and people from central asia. They're the people you want to bring in as paid muscle and and it really starts from there and it's a slippery slope as as as we've, we're kind of sort of intimating yeah, so so do they, do the turkish soldiers?
Russell:do they? Do they replace the caliphs, or do they sort of? Are they the powers behind the throne?
Justin:they're mostly the powers behind the throne, but they can be sort of um. It's around about a hundred years or so when that, when they're at their peak more in samara than in baghdad, but straddling both periods um of the bastid period, and and and and they, you know, there are a couple of times when they, when they just burst in on a caliph um and assassinate him while he's in his cups, on a big sort of drinking bout, they will install another caliph for as long as they see fit and then, if they think he's no good or we're not getting enough out of him or, you know, we're not extorting enough, uh, gold and treasure um, have him quietly put to death and then raise another one onto the throne. So this is the, the sort of the nadir of abbasid fortunes, in a way, when the great dignity of the caliph has been completely usurped by these interloping hardy, tough, uh quite brutal warrior class that have swept in from the east. And it's almost like the Frankenstein effect, you know. You sort of end up killing the master.
Russell:And then, I think, the other slave soldiers who are very famous and maybe better known for whatever reason, which is the Mamluks. And actually, what does the word Mamluk actually mean? I'm not quite sure.
Justin:Mamluk is, which is helpful to know, yeah, because it frames them really a person or a thing possessed A Mamluk soldier, you're possessed, you're owned by someone else, you're not a free agent. But it's a lovely example really of how, within the Islamic world certainly not at all times, but in certain instances, in certain places the concept of slavery is completely elastic and someone who is technically a slave can rise to the very top, can be a general and in in a handful of cases, can even take over power completely, while still, on paper at least, being considered a slave. So it really makes no sense.
Justin:But I think one of the reasons it doesn't really make sense to us these days is because we're so, I think, conditioned to see slavery as um, the american plantation model um the you know of the antebellum south black african workers in in in hideous conditions, laboring on plantations, as opposed to the much greater variety of enslaved forms of enslavement and categories of enslavement that we see in the islamic world and that the mamluks are great examples because they there are mamluk dynasties in egypt and syria and in iraq and the janissaries slightly different.
Justin:They don't rise to those levels of outright dynastic rule but are really the linchpin or the absolute elite fighting force of the Ottomans for a number of centuries from, say, the late 14th century until the last ones are gunned down in Baghdad, I think, in the Ottoman Empire in 1826 and in baghdad um something similar and that that's the last gasp of the of the slave soldiers, really the most famous possibly deployment of the janissaries came in 1453 when with um the fate of constantinople in the balance, a 21 year old sultan Mehmed II, who's desperate to make history and take over this city, which has been described by Muslim writers as a bone in the throat of Allah because it's like this sort of Christian island in a sea of Muslim territory but just still hanging out defiantly against um 800 years of Arab Muslim attacks, sultan Mehmed finally breaches it only by throwing in his janissaries.
Justin:At dawn on I think it was the 29th of May 1453, with his army virtually mutinous, his general saying you know who is this young hothead, 21-year-old? And he chucks his slave soldiers in. It's the last throw of the dice and they emerge victorious. So in the annals of the slave soldier Janissaries, I think 1453 is kind of on the badge of honor for military success.
Russell:But even in Constantinople the Janissaries are finally— so I think—are they wheeled out peacefully, because I think in Cairo it's a massacre. I might be getting confused, but I think in some cases they're removed with great bloodshed and in other times they're persuaded when the artillery is revealed.
Justin:I think that's right.
Justin:The massacres, I think because I often get the two muddled up the massacres, I think, is known as the auspicious incident.
Justin:I don't think it's remotely auspicious for the people on the receiving end of the sort of hails of musket shot that those are killed on the spot.
Justin:In Baghdad, the then ruler stationed his soldiers around them and then said look, you've been pretty tricky about these military reforms, but I think you'll find now it would be worth your while accepting them, as they're surrounded by armed men with rifles and they sort of lift up their hats and shout something you know, long live the Sultan, or that kind of thing. And for once in Baghdad, which is, as we've discussed, is a pretty violent place with a bloody history, the Janissaries are not massacred to a man as they had been um in the ottoman empire, sorry, in the ottoman headquarters in istanbul and and one of the great feathers in the caps of the mamluks is that, uh they, they beat off both the crusaders and, astonishingly, they managed to beat off the mongols yes, and there are those who say that the fate of Cairo hung in the balance as the Mongols were sweeping west from the Asian steppe, and the fate of Islam as well.
Justin:Some would argue military force, because the mongols were rightly seen as absolutely devastating fighting force, inflicting sort of great bloodshed, and just strings of victory after victories, until the battle of Ayn Jalut in, I think, is it 1260, and it's this, is this very striking turning point and great mamluk success. And then you, you have another slave soldier who takes power. His name is, well, it's not Babar. What's his name? That's not Barbar's, is it? That's it? That's it Babar's.
Justin:So, yes, after the Battle of Ain Jalut, the Mamluk military leader, babar's, feels that he hasn't been promoted to the very top. So he just launches a coup, plots his way up the top and and and seizes outright power. So another example of a sort of the meritocratic side of slavery, in a way that you, you could, depending on your qualities, go to the very top. It mustn't be seen as representative of slavery in the islamic world, but it does. There is that kind of it's almost, you know, like their version of the american dream. It's this tantalizing prospect you can if you go to the very top or you're. You know, you're intelligent, you can.
Russell:You can make it to the top and then you mentioned earlier on concubinage and so I guess I guess an enormous part of slavery at the time must have been slavery for sexual purposes. And you talk about life in the court of Harun al-Rashid if I've got that right again at the height of the Abbasids, where it just seems like a glittering life and I guess there's both the high life and the rather more depressing low life. But could you just say a little bit about the high life in the court of Baghdad at that time?
Justin:Yeah, it's difficult to ignore it and I think the danger of a historian is that you get a little bit too sucked into that, the sort of the glittering element of it, but the fact is it's absolutely compelling. The sources, for once, are pretty rich and detailed, down to individual concubines, and you know astonishingly detailed accounts of verbal contests between singing slave girls, concubines I think we've sometimes talked about courtesans and concubines and it's not always clear where that divide lies, not least because the chronicles themselves don't make it. But the sources are full of wonderful stories and I think I had three particular young women, Inan Arab and another one who just had that.
Justin:You have also little potted biographies of them, and one claimed to have slept with eight different caliphs, which is an astonishing sort of admission, both of her ability to attract the leader of the Islamic world, eight different caliphs, and she was asked what she looked for in sex and she said, quite you know, bluntly, a hard prick and sweet breath. And those stories come down to us from more than a thousand years ago. It is just amazingly exciting looking through these sources and you also have instances of cruelty and a concubine who had fallen in love with her master and caliph and when he's deposed she gets treated quite badly and you know and you hear stories of them being beaten and in some cases dying. But the record is pretty rich and there's also this kind of almost like a premiership football bidding frenzy for the most desirable women of their time. And if you're a noble you might find yourself bidding against the caliph for a particularly beautiful woman and you have to be quite careful because find yourself bidding against the caliph for a particularly beautiful woman and you have to be quite careful because play it wrong and the caliph will just cut your head off and also might cut off the woman's head.
Justin:There's another story when one of the caliphs is having a banquet with what are called his boon companions, his male companions A eunuch comes up to him, whispers in his ear. He gets up from the table, you know, looking at you know something urgent has come up, disappears for a few minutes, comes back completely out of breath, and then a server brings a platter with a sort of silver cover on it, lifts the cover and it's the severed head of a very beautiful concubine. And the caliph says I'd had my suspicion that she was having um illicit relations with another woman in the harem. So I checked out what was happening and she'd been found in bed with another girl. And he just has her head cut off there and then and comes back to the banquet and the dinner continues as though nothing untoward had happened.
Justin:So these are sort of capricious leaders who, can you know, make or break, you kill, make you incredibly rich at the drop of a hat, and the concubines fall into that category. Some will go on to become incredibly wealthy individuals in their own right. They become freed, they become patrons of the music scene in their own right and they can have their own slaves as well in turn, can they have sex with their own slaves.
Justin:No, there was one example of this. This came with either the caliph, um omar or abu bakr and a woman. An arab woman, took a slave, um, and was sleeping with him and then thought she should ask to make sure this was was okay. And it was scandalized. The leaders of the islamic world and said no, absolutely that. That is not okay. It was okay for a male slave owner to have sex with his female concubines, but a woman did not have the corresponding right at all. No, not a non-starter. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen either, because there's always this tension I think I came back to it again and again in the book. There's that tension or disparity between what is ordained or permitted by law and what actually happens, because throughout this story you find Muslims who are being enslaved by fellow Muslims. That is emphatically not allowed, but it happens.
Russell:I was going to ask about that, if it came up and you brought it up, because the Ottoman Turks, they're a great enemy when they're not bashing the Christians and heading off to Vienna, but when they're not doing that, they're usually heading off to Iran to try and bash the Iranians. And, as I understand it, it's okay to take the good citizens of Vienna as slaves. But the Persians, they're also Muslims, aren't they? So are they allowed to take them as slaves? I don't know. They're also Muslims, aren't they? So are they allowed to take them as slaves? I don't know.
Justin:I think there are two good examples of Muslims enslaving fellow Muslims, as you say the Ottomans, who launched numerous slave-taking raids on the Iranians, especially in about the 16th century.
Justin:And I think you'd often find this sort of quite mealy-mouthed justifications. It's that Tidal formula they're not Muslims, they're infidels. You can hear that from radical Islamists to this day, justifying certain behaviour towards what you and I might say their fellow Muslims. They will say well, they're not Muslims, they're infidels, they've lost their way, they've strayed from the true faith and they're going to get what's coming to them. And then the other time, I think, is the is not not one specific place, but in sub-saharan africa, across the centuries, in different periods, there are raids laid by, led especially by arab muslims south of the sahara and enslaving fellow muslims who find that you know that they're beseeching. Letters can be written to the leader of the islamic world saying we've been raided and enslaved, which is against the holy law. But you know, that's just, I suppose, a very obvious way of or sense that in which people routinely would take no notice of the law and be motivated by, you know, commercial gain.
Russell:I want to talk about the Trans-Saharan trade bit, but before we do that, I sort of felt it was a companion piece with the concubines and that's the eunuchs, and actually that's a subject I find absolutely fascinating and I feel it doesn't really get talked about very much in history books and maybe I don't know, people are just squeamish, I don't really know, but I was so happy to read your chapter on it because it was really, really interesting. And so where does the practice of eunuchs come from? Is it from Byzantium? Is it from Persia? Is it from China? Where is this coming from?
Justin:I think I mean I haven't done detailed sort of like comparisons of eunuchism around the world, but we know, for example, that we ancient china, ancient greece, ancient egypt and certainly ancient persia all had that category of enslavement, and quite often fulfilling similar roles. So in the, in the islamic world that we're talking about today, I think one of the primary purposes is to guard, supervise, police the harem of, of royal or imperial or, a slightly lower scale, noble women. But you know, harems are not for the middle classes, they're not for the masses, they are for the, this a very small elite, but the women, and in some case it'd be hundreds, possibly even thousands. Again I think I think you hear some. You know caliphs who might have had 4,000 concubines.
Justin:One wonders if that's strictly true. But again, the numbers must have been pretty vast and enormous. But they must be kept away from prying eyes, men on the prowl, and so the safest person to police your female entourage is a man with no testicles, because he is no or he's less of a risk to you. It's funny when you said you enjoyed that chapter, because I think some people would find it wince-making especially the detailed descriptions of some of the operations, which are horrible, I mean.
Russell:Well, do you want to? Just because you said that, a man without his testicles? But? But as I understand it, you know there were two potential ways of becoming a eunuch you could lose your testicles or you could lose your penis as well and the third, which is both.
Justin:You know, I remember a gill described his cancer, I think, as the full english, and so the full english or the full the full um, islamic, full ottoman maybe was was the removal of both, because there are instances, apparently tales, of eunuchs who'd had their testicles removed still having sex with illicit sex with the concubines. So that did happen. I think the casualty rates probably would have been much higher for both, but it's difficult to know exactly. I think you're getting 19th century European views who are appalled by the practice and possibly they're exaggerating, but they're figures of sort of at least one in three, possibly more, losing their lives because it's such a dangerous operation. And when you hear the sort of substances that were used to cauterize the wound, you know tar, honey, mule, dung and sand, the young boy not being allowed to urinate for a day or two, the agony that entailed and the high chances of infection on the urethra.
Russell:And I gather that, as part of the process, quite often the young boys will be buried in sand to prevent them from moving to prevent them from moving exactly.
Justin:It's also interesting because the holy law, sharia law, prohibits castration. It's considered a mutilation of God's creatures. But what happens is interesting, I think, the way that these great Muslim leaders, who aren't just sort of powerful people we're talking about, literally the leaders, sultans, ottoman sultans and Arab caliphs, the leaders of their respective Islamic empires, sort of conveniently look to one side. So the boys are not castrated by Muslims, they're often castrated by, for example, christian monks in Egypt and Sudan, for example.
Russell:Christian monks in.
Justin:Egypt and Sudan. And then they sort of wonderfully appear as imports, you know, fresh from the operation that hadn't been done by a fellow Muslim. But they're now sort of ready for service in the royal courts and the other quite common practice, which sounds counterintuitive but clearly wasn't was for military service as well. So there's a sense that they'll be very loyal to you. They don't have the sexual distraction, but their warrior skills, supposedly, you know just as good.
Russell:Well, I suppose one thing is they don't have a dynasty to split their loyalty to.
Justin:Exactly that. Yeah, you know, you're bound to your ruler, who can still make you fantastically rich. And then again, a nice story was this 18th century. The chief eunuch in the Ottoman court called Beshir Aga, I think. He was sold as a boy for 30 piastres and by the end of his life in the late 18th century he died leaving a fortune of 30 million piastres. And by the end of his life in the late 18th century he died leaving a fortune of 30 million piastres. He was one of the richest men in the Ottoman Empire, with his own slaves, his own property. And again, there's that sense that how can you consider someone like that a slave? Well, formerly he was a slave, he was enslaved, but that didn't mean that he couldn't be immensely rich and powerful.
Russell:When does the practice of and use of eunuchs, when does it die out? Is it?
Justin:well before the 20th century, or is it still going on quite late? Well, I was very fascinated by something that occurred in London, I think it was 2015. Leighton House Museum had a special exhibition called the Guardians exhibition called the guardians, and it was an exhibition given over to the enormous black and white portraits of the last eunuchs standing. These were men from, distinguished old men from were not from medina, but they were working in medina and their job was as guardians of the shrine of the prophet muhammad. So you know, you could hardly get anything more elite or illustrious than that. That sort of responsibility. But doing some pretty basic maths and guessing at their ages, that these are men who must have been castrated. As late as the sort of 1950s or so in ethiopia, there was a black africans and with the passing of the years they become venerable old men, highly respected and distinguished. But that that's 2015.
Justin:By that point, these were old men who were, who were really retired, but they were living in sort of honorable retirement and seclusion in saudi arabia in the 21st century. So that it goes on right till the end. And when, when you you see the ottoman empire collapsing in the years after world war one, you know there are. There are reports of the concubines being being freed, the the eunuch still being asked to testify against the last sultan, and so on. So those two categories really are from the time of the prophet muhammad until in in well into the 20th century, the last mor Moroccan king before this one, the father of the current Moroccan king had a court full of concubines Sorry, not a court, well a royal court in which he had an entourage of female concubines and there were domestic servants across the palace.
Russell:So that's well into the 20th century 20th century and I must admit, until I read your book and we don't probably have time to do it justice but I'd always assumed that most of the slaves came into the Arab world from. You know the Black Sea trade, you know through Kaffa and so on and Eastern Europe and so on. But actually probably a bigger source of slaves is the Trans-Saharan slave trade. I mean, I was really slightly horrified by the stories.
Justin:That's one of the nastier aspects. I mean, there are so many different aspects to this story, of course, but that really I think I would call it something like the death march, because again, facts and figures are hard to come by, but very high death toll. You start to see more information and stories from 19th century british explorers, english and scottish germans as well, who are sent by their government to essentially, in their word like, penetrate the african interior, explore commercial opportunities, and they come across the ancient Saharan slave trade and almost to a man horrified by it, and observe it quite closely, looking at figures, market prices and in particular what they would say was the deeply inhumane treatment. There's also quite a strong element of Christian missionary zeal about it as well. There's a man called James Richardson who wrote vituperative passages about the slave trade and how ghastly it was, how the Arabs were sort of leading these men, women and children across the desert with whips, often raping them as young girls. Those who are sick are left by the wayside. You know, a really brutal trade.
Justin:But I think that is also part of a wider story, that in which Africa really bore the brunt of this sustained, you could even say insatiable demand for enslaved labor in the Arab world and then the, the Ottoman world after that.
Justin:And I think what's interesting looking at figures, these figures I think again, again a little bit tentative, but but it shows that the, the two trades are, are similar numerically. The atlantic trade, um, between the 15th and 19th century that's something like uh, between 11 and 14 million africans enslaved. So in a short period of time, in the slave trade in the islamic world is something like 12 to 15, possibly even as much as 17 million, and that doesn't include indonesia, malaysia or india, so vast numbers of africans being enslaved over a much longer period. So it's sort of more diluted numbers rather than that intense period of the atlantic slave trade. But the are comparable and I think I'd also say that the literary or historical treatment has not. You know, we have much more focus on the Atlantic slave trade than this very different story of different types of enslavement, but over a much longer period.
Russell:And another, you know, very different but terrific part of your book is about the Barbary Corsairs, and these are these seaborne slavers from, I mean, it's the Ottoman Empire, I think, but they're sort of half independent kingdoms, yes, yes, you know, in Tunisia, morocco. And then, you know, you've got the famous Sally Raiders and, as I say, we don't really have too much time to talk about them. But one of the things that really struck me was how many of the corsairs, or how many of the leaders of the corsairs, were turncoat Christians.
Justin:And so what was going on there Exactly? I think this is interesting as well because I think the conventional European Western perspective on this is that Barbary corsairs are Muslims enslaving christians. It's a simple, it's almost sort of you know, brown or black on white picture, and the reality is that it's a much more mixed. I called it a free-for-all because you just see scots and english, other other nationalities rocking up to north africa, to tunis, tripoli and alg in particular, and in the parlance of the time, in, say, the sort of 17th century turning Turk, meaning converting to Islam, really almost out of just complete convenience because you've joined a pirate lair in those cities, as you say, they're semi-autonomous from the Ottoman headquarters in Istanbul, headquarters in Istanbul. And then it's just this great, well and very bloody actually, bouts of of piracy on across the Mediterranean and also much further beyond. Even there are cases of well repeated harrying of the uh western, you know, cornwall and even Ireland, and a more bloody um raid in the 17th century on Iceland. So so, from North Africa to Iceland, pretty adventurous, pretty enterprising, pretty bloody, nasty stories of babies being thrown into fire, women being raped.
Justin:But the faith element is much more mixed than I think we appreciated perhaps a generation ago, and a newer generation of Arab and Turkish researchers are making the point that this is a much more Christian on Muslim, muslim on Christian, jewish on Muslim, vice versa. The Mediterranean, you know, doesn't really set too much store by the faith. It's about capturing someone's ship, taking the women, taking the gold, the treasures and so on, in a very sort of anarchic way. But you're right, it's a very interesting narrative and strong stories, strong characters, people like barbarossa as well. Uh, red beard, who becomes, goes from really being a pirate to grand admiral of the ottoman fleet another instance of someone who kind of transcends, um, a sort of slave status to become well, in a way he remains a slave as grand admiral, but he's one of the most powerful men in the ottoman empire and um does he not fetch up in too long and you know, basically eating them out of house and home and with his, with his girlfriend.
Russell:I can't remember the story exactly, but I can't remember if that's barbarossa or or another one of the uh, of the of the Ottoman admirals and he has a brother as well.
Justin:So they're both up to sort of fairly spectacular exploits around the North African coast and just across the Mediterranean very larger than life stories from that period, of course, airing as well as quite difficult and unpleasant stories of American seamen being enslaved and shackled with irons and treated pretty badly and made to work on construction projects. And there's some examples in Morocco as well, where Sultan Muley Ismail had almost you almost call it a fetish for slaves, both European and black African. He had what the Abid al-Bukhari, which literally means the sort of the army of slaves, a black army and vast numbers of Europeans as well, laboring in pretty difficult conditions as well.
Russell:Yeah, because I don't know if it's true or not, but there was a story, I think, that Muli Ismail he has 500 concubines who, amongst their other duties, is pulling him around his city in a sort of a chariot. I don't know if that's true or not, he's a very extraordinary character.
Justin:There's this literary outburst almost from this period they're called captivity narratives now and there's a lovely one by someone called Thomas Pellowllo, from cornwall, and you have the details of his parents saying you know this could be dangerous, don't go. And 23 years he ends up being a slave. The the ship is captured, I think, somewhere around cadiz, taken to north africa and he's a slave for 23 years in the heart of the moroccan empire at the time, observing it closely, closely, with sort of European prejudices of his time against Muslims. And obviously he's got a story to sell as well. So you suspect it's a bit, you know, hyped up a little bit, but a fascinating read and really valuable historical material.
Russell:One of the bits that surprised me in the book was actually towards the end, which was about the Indian, the Indian Ocean slave trade. Because you talked about the pearl divers and I sort of had in my mind that these were free men leading a tough but fulfilling life and you know, sort of the scales fell from my eyes. So do you just want to tell people briefly what was going on with the pearl divers?
Justin:Yeah, the pearl diving, I think. In a way I always call it slavery, it's called indentured labor is that is that scene in which the master, the captain, is lending you money and you get more and more debt. You're paying for everything, you're paying for board and lodging, but you're, you're, you're, you're sort of overcharged and underpaid and and there's no way you can work your way out of it. You end up sort of belonging to an owner and that's probably someone who's who's less likely to emancipate you. And there were some interviews with, with former pearl divers. There's one I'm thinking of in dubai who described it as a living hell. You know, really lung-busting work and you're just sent down again and again and again um most pearls. Obviously, most of these oysters don't don't contain pearls.
Russell:It's pretty, it's very tough on your, your hands, your skin, your lungs, blistered um skin, pretty horrendous um existence and then you're left, sort of sort of in the bottom of the boat, uh, to recover, and then you're out the very next day. I mean it, it just never ends.
Justin:Yeah, it's never ending. I mean, I suppose, in terms of that sort of never ending thing, probably the worst example I think might have come across would be galley slavery which again, was not unique to Muslims or Christians either.
Justin:But often, seen, as you know, that's just a passport, it's a death sentence. You know you're not going to get out of it. You're going to be whipped and whipped um, shackled to those oars day and night where, you're, you know, sitting in your own filth, hardly fed. I think pearl diving wasn't, wasn't at that kind of level of of cruelty abuse, but but extremely tough as well yes, I mean.
Russell:Somebody said to me that the one of the things about the galley system was that it almost was feeding itself because you needed slaves to row the galleys. You know which, so, but you needed galleys to get the slaves. And you know, it's just.
Justin:We're all around and around a sort of nasty vicious circle exactly yeah, yeah, okay.
Russell:So so let's talk a bit about how it came to an end. Uh, sent, it did come to an end. So where does pressure come from? Is it internal pressure from within the Islamic world, or is it external, from other countries?
Justin:This is a really interesting question because I think to this day this is contested territory. If you ask let's just say your maybe average Arab Muslim scholar, they will say you know, islam, in its wisdom and its humanity, ordained the end of slavery. For example, a Western historian is more likely to say it was the Brits that won it. Certainly a number of voices, modernist reformers, within the Islamic world, in places like Tunisia, egypt, iraq, the Ottoman Empire, who favoured abolition, but I don't think we can talk about a movement in the same way that there was a movement in Europe to abolish slavery. While there may have been voices saying enough's enough, I think you'd have to say that the heaviest pressure came at a time of abolish slavery.
Justin:While there may have been voices saying you know enough's enough, I think you'd have to say that the heaviest pressure came at a time of from the West, from the UK and Britain and France, especially at a time when the Ottoman Empire was at a very weak ebb.
Justin:And I think it was also fair to say I think that it was used by the british especially as well, as a sort of wedge and a way of imposing dominance over the ottomans and and in some cases, literally taking territory. So, although there'd been very close relations with oman under the guise of stopping slavery, that the brits send in, you know warship and start bombing the hell out of the Trucial Coast and Oman under the guise that you know you need to abolish slavery, which for many Muslims was inconceivable, because it's allowed by the Quran, it's practiced by the Prophet Muhammad, it's a legitimate activity. There's quite one nice example of an Ottoman sultan in 1849, sultan Abdul Majid, and he says these are his words our holy law permits slavery. And then, two years later he's saying, describing the slave trade as a shameful and barbarous practice. So there's again this strange tension between slavery is legitimate, it's allowed, but trading in humans is beyond the pale and that's more of a 19th century view.
Justin:So a literalist Muslim interpretation is very difficult to reconcile with a modern abolition movement, if that makes sense. So I don't think there was so much of a movement within the Islamic world to abolish it. But there was increasing recognition that in the 19th century that this was a less and less acceptable way to continue and some of the trades themselves so pearl diving, although that wouldn't have employed many people anyway. There were crashes and then the arrival of cultured pearls plantations presumably becoming less important with industrialization. But I think in balance I would say that there's stronger Western drive for abolition than indigenous movement within the Islamic world.
Russell:And I mean we talk about it as if it's over and I think to a large extent I assume it must be, but does it still go on at any level in the Islamic world?
Justin:I bookended this book with two examples, both unpleasant, of modern slavery, and in both cases they're hereditary, racialized slavery, partly Arab world, partly African culture it's a blend. But the book begins in Mali, where I interviewed a man who'd escaped his enslavement but was at rock bottom because he was illiterate, unable to provide for his family, which consisted of two wives and 12 children, and he came from a line of hereditary slaves or enslaved men and women, and he just couldn't go on anymore. He escaped, but you had this feeling that, although he'd managed to escape, his life was over. That's how he talked about it. But what was going to be the positive thing was that his children would never be enslaved. So he got them out of it, almost sacrificing his own life for them.
Justin:And then the book ends in Mauritania where again I went out and spoke to a woman who, she again, had been liberated by her brother, an anti-slavery activist and a police officer slavery activist and a police officer. She was so sort of institutionalized by into her enslavement that when her brother came she was screaming at him and denying that she was um enslaved and she just said I'm part of the family here and he just had to sort of. He virtually kidnapped her and it was. It was recorded in 2008 on a, on a very grainy old video. But this extraordinary moment when a woman is being rescued from slavery in 2008 and and then now, when I interviewed her last year actually, she dedicated the rest of her life to fighting slavery and she stood for parliament so modern slavery still does exist.
Justin:I suppose I would also say that obviously it exists in the UK and in America and much of the world, but also in the Gulf, in the form of indentured labor as well, and the system in which foreign workers, especially from india, nepal, bangladesh and those sorts of countries where and passports that can be confiscated on arrival, so you're you're effectively controlled by the um, the person who's brought you into the country, right? So yeah, modern, modern slavery absolutely still exists okay.
Russell:Well, maybe it's. I mean, it's a very depressing end to the podcast, but maybe that's fitting, because it's too easy, I think, to get dazzled by the stories of the courtesans and the concubines and forget about sort of the very you know just. I mean, it's just an utterly grim story underlying it all.
Justin:I think it's a grim story. I decided to end on that woman in Mauritania there, because I think, unlike her sort of counterpart in Mali, she was such a sort of defiant and resilient woman and there was this strong sense that she's dedicated the rest of her life to try to do something about this in a country where, depending on who you believe, there's either sort of up to a million people enslaved or 20% of the country whatever may be the case enslaved or 20% of the country, whatever may be the case, but I felt it was a positive ending that, although the modern slavery still existed there, in that particular example, here was a woman who was absolutely dedicated to fighting against it.
Russell:Okay, well, that's a slightly more uplifting ending then. So, Justin Morozzi, thank you very much indeed.
Justin:Thank you very much, Russell. Thank you.