Slavery and Social Status in Islamic History

HIST 78110; MES 78000; WSCP 81000

Thursday 4:15-6:15; room 6493
Anna Akasoy, Professor of Islamic Intellectual History ([email protected])
Office Hours: Thursday 3-4 and by appointment

Course Description:
In this class, we will explore social, political, economic, legal, and cultural aspects of slavery in premodern
Islamic history. Starting in the late antique Mediterranean, we will consider the emergence of a variety
of forms of slavery in the Islamic Middle East, including military slavery and agricultural slavery, but
focus especially on the enslavement of women. We will end with the complex relationship between Islam
and transatlantic slavery and various ethical and political implications of the history of religiously
validated enslavement. We will consider a range of sources, including legal material and popular
literature. Prior knowledge of Middle Eastern or Islamic history is not required.

Course website (not public): https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/

Please register for an account and send me the details of your account. You will then receive an invitation
to join the group.

Assignments

Contributions to course website - not individually graded

1) Class minutes for two meetings. Write a summary of class discussions in 300-500 words each
and post it on the course website. The minutes should give an impression of different views (in
the publications discussed on that day, as well as voiced among the discussants), how they
relate to the general subject and which questions remain open for further discussion. 10% of
final grade (if the minutes fulfil these criteria) at 95%. The format can be bullet points. Dates for
meetings will be assigned.

2) Preparation of one required article. Each student will assemble notes on one required article
and post them at least two days before the respective meeting. The notes should include the
main points in the reading as well as one question for discussion in the class. 10% of final grade
(if the preparations fulfil these criteria) at 95%. Articles will be assigned in class.

3) Introductions. Each student will review previous posts on the day or two before the meeting
and present notes in class – what have we covered so far, which questions remain open for
discussion, what have others posted, how does that relate to other discussions in the class,
what might be relevant for today. An informal presentation of select notes is sufficient for this
purpose. Dates for presentation of notes will be assigned in class. 10% of final grade at 95%.

4) Contribution to a collective book review. On March 7, we will discuss an edited volume. Each
contribution to the volume will have at least one student who will be primarily responsible for

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 assembling notes on that chapter. The intended outcome of this meeting is a collective book
review. (Details to be discussed in class.) Post any notes you have compiled beforehand by
March 4. 10% of final grade at 95%.

Graded – please submit assignments 6, 7 and 8 as word documents attached to an email to me.
You are welcome to post these on the course website as well.
5) Attendance and participation. You are allowed two absences. You will lose 1% from your final
grade per additional absence. You are expected to prepare material ahead of time and
participate fully in class discussions. 15% of final grade

6) Response paper (500 words) in which you discuss a publication from the syllabus or a question
related to the topic of the class. (Overlap with notes submitted to course blog acceptable.) 10%
of final grade. Deadline: 26 September

7) Book review (700 words) in which you select one book (monograph, collected volume or special
issue of a journal) and examine its main features critically. 15% of final grade. Deadline: 14
November

8) Research essay (3000 words including references and bibliography) on a question related to the
topic of the class. 20% of final grade. Deadline: 14 December

SCHEDULE

* = required readings
@GC = available electronically through the GC library
@ac = available electronically through the course website

1) Introduction (January 31)

General readings
Joseph C. Miller, ‘Muslim Slavery and Slaving. A Bibliography’, Slavery & Abolition. A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave
Studies 13/1 (1992), 249-71. @GC
Craig Perry, ‘Historicizing Slavery in the Medieval Islamic World’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 49
(2017), 133-8. @GC
David Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans. A Study in Power Relationships (Jerusalem, 1999).
Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death. A Comparative Study (Cambridge, 1982).

2) Late Antiquity and the Qur’an (February 7)

The aim of this meeting is to gain a general impression of slavery in premodern Islamic history and some of the
theoretical and conceptual problems involved in the study of this phenomenon, especially any difficulties
involved in treating slavery as a universal category in historical research. We will also focus on slavery in the late
antique environment in which Islam emerged, especially the legacy of Roman slavery and slavery in Byzantium.

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*Jane Dammen McAuliffe (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an (Leiden, 2005), articles on ‘Concubines’ and ‘Slaves and
Slavery’. @GC
*William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery (Oxford, 2006), introduction (‘The Embarrassing
Institution’, 1-21). @ac
*Chase F. Robinson, ‘Slavery in the Conquest Period’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 49 (2017), 158-63.
@GC
*Hend Gilli-Elewy, ‘On the Provenance of Slaves in Mecca during the Time of the Prophet Muhammad’,
International Journal of Middle East Studies 49 (2017), 164-8. @GC
*Alice Rio, Slavery after Rome, 500-1100 (Oxford, 2017), introduction, chapters one (‘Slave Raiding and Slave
Trading’) and six (‘Rights and Duties’). @GC
*Yuval Rotman, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World (Cambridge, MA, 2009), introduction (1-4) and
chapter one (‘Theoretical Approaches’, 5-24). @ac

Khalil ʿAthamina, ‘How Did Islam Contribute to Change the Legal Status of Women. The Case of the Jawārī or the
Female Slaves’, Al-Qanṭara 28 (2007), 383-408. @open access
Hend Gilli-Elewy, ‘Soziale Aspekte frühislamischer Sklaverei’, Der Islam 77 (2000), 116-168.
Cam Grey, ‘Slavery in the Late Roman World’, in Keith Bradley and Paul Cartledge (eds), The Cambridge World
History of Slavery, volume one, The Ancient Mediterranean World (Cambridge, 2011), 482-509. @GC
Kyle Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425 (Cambridge, 2011). @GC
Noel Lenski, ‘Captivity and Slavery among the Saracens in Late Antiquity (ca. 250-630 CE)’, AnTard 19 (2011), 237-
66.
Noel Lenski, ‘Captivity, Slavery, and Cultural Exchange between Rome and the Germans from the First to the
Seventh Century CE’, in Catherine M. Cameron (ed.), Invisible Citizens. Captives and Their Consequences (Salt
Lake City, 2008), 80-109.
Alice Rio, ‘Freedom and Unfreedom in Early Medieval Francia: The Evidence of the Legal Formulae’, Past & Present
193/1 (2006), 7-40. @GC
Alice Rio, ‘Self-sale and Voluntary Entry into Unfreedom, 300-1100’, Journal of Social History 45/3 (2012), 661-
85. @GC

3) Islamic Law (February 14)

One of the main problems discussed in this class is the definition of slavery across different historical contexts as
well as alternatives to the term ‘slavery’, e.g. ‘unfreedom’. Definitions and debates in premodern Islamic law
constitute critical sources for a definition of slavery in contexts of Islamic history. The aim of this meeting is to
survey fundamental notions of slavery in premodern Islamic law and to gain an impression of the regulations for
enslaving people, for the treatment of enslaved people and for manumission. We will also explore comparisons
made in legal literature between enslaved people and other groups of people, especially married women. Time
permitting and depending on interest, we will also look into contemporary cases of the application of Islamic law
in order to validate the enslavement especially of women.

*Bernard K. Freamon, ‘Definitions and Conceptions of Slave Ownership in Islamic Law’, in Jean Allain (ed.), The
Legal Understanding of Slavery. From the Historical to the Contemporary (Oxford, 2012), 40-60. @ac
*Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, chapter two (‘A Fragile Sunni Consensus’, 22-48). @ac
*Kecia Ali, Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam (Cambridge, MA, 2010), introduction (1-28) and chapter five
(‘Marriage and Dominion’, 164-86). @ac
*Irene Schneider, ‘Freedom and Slavery in Early Islamic Times’, Al-Qanṭara 28 (2007), 353-82. @GC
*Jonathan E. Brockopp, Slavery in Islamic Law. An Examination of Early Mālikī Jurisprudence, PhD dissertation, Yale
University, 1995, chapter 3 (‘Slavery in Islamic Society and Islamic Law’, 134-82). @GC

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 NB: The dissertation was published as Early Mālikī Law. Ibn ʿAbd al-ḥakam and his Major Compendium of
Jurisprudence (Leiden, 2000). We will be reading the earlier version for reasons of availability and in order
to discuss strategies in composing a longer piece of research literature.
*Bernard K. Fraemon, ‘ISIS, Boko Haram, and the Human Right to Freedom from Slavery under Islamic Law’,
Fordham International Law Journal 39/2 (2015), 245-306. @ac
*Kecia Ali, ‘Redeeming Slavery. The ‘Islamic State’ and the Quest for Islamic Morality’, Mizan 1/1 (2016).
http://www.mizanproject.org/journal-post/redeeming-slavery/

Ulrike Mitter, ‘Unconditional Manumission of Slaves in Early Islamic Law. A Ḥadīth Analysis’, Der Islam 78 (2001),
35-73.
Sally Hadden, ‘Law and Slavery’ in Oxford Bibliographies. Atlantic History.
http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199730414/obo-9780199730414-
0153.xml
Donald P. Little, ‘Six Fourteenth-Century Purchase Deeds for Slaves from Al-Ḥaram Al-Sharīf’, Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 131 (1981), 297-337.
Donald P. Little, ‘Two Fourteenth-Century Court Records from Jerusalem Concerning the Disposition of Slaves by
Minors’, Arabica 29 (1982), 16-49. @GC
Knut S. Vikør, Between God and the Sultan. A History of Islamic Law (Oxford, 2005). (for a general introduction to
Islamic law)

4) Agricultural and military slavery in the ninth century (February 21)

Extensive evidence of slavery in the Islamic world is available from the ninth century and the early Abbasid
empire. The aim of this meeting is to explore two forms of slavery prominent at the time, their historical
repercussions and their implications for the Abbasid empire as a ‘slave society’. We will be discussing the
rebellion of the Zanj, East African slaves, as well as the rise of military slavery in Islamic history with a particular
focus on Central Asians. Time permitting and in case of interest, we can draw lines from ninth-century military
slavery to the Mamluks. The meeting will also offer an opportunity to survey where slaves in Abbasid Iraq came
from and what their enslavement may suggest concerning any connections between geography, race, ethnicity
and social status.

*Alexandre Popović, The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd/9th Century (Princeton, 1999), excerpts. @ac
*Al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Tabari, vol. 36, The Revolt of the Zanj A.D. 869-879/A.H. 255-265, trans. David Waines
(Albany, 1991), excerpts. @ac
*Abdul Sheriff, ‘The Zanj Rebellion and the Transition from Plantation to Military Slavery’, Comparative Studies of
South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 38 (2018), 246-60. @GC
*Matthew S. Gordon, ‘Preliminary Remarks on Slaves and Slave Labor in the Third/Ninth Century ‘Abbāsid
Empire’, in Laura Culbertson (ed.), Slaves and Households in the Near East (Chicago, 2011), 71-84. @ac
*Matthew S. Gordon, The Breaking of a Thousand Swords. A History of the Turkish Military of Samarra (A.H. 200-275/815-
889 C.E.) (Albany, 2001), introduction (1-14) and chapter four (‘The Exercise of Authority’, 105-40). @ac
*Reuven Amitai, ‘Military Slavery in the Islamic World. 1000 Years of a Social-Military Institution’. http://med-
slavery.uni-trier.de/minev/MedSlavery/publications/Amitai.pdf
*Jere L. Bacharach, ‘African Military Slaves in the Medieval Middle East. The Cases of Iraq (869-955) and Egypt
(868-1171)’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 13/4 (1981), 471-95. @GC
*Noel Lenski, ‘Framing the Question: What Is a Slave Society?’, in Noel Lenski and Catherine M. Cameron (eds),
What is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2018), 15-57. @ac

Peter B. Golden, ‘The Terminology of Slavery and Servitude in Medieval Turkic’, in D.A. DeWeese (ed.), Studies on
Central Asian History in Honor of Yuri Bregel (Bloomington, 2001), 27-56.

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Matthew S. Gordon, ‘The Turkish Officers of Samarra. Revenue and the Exercise of Authority’, in Journal of the
Economic and Social History of the Orient 42/2 (1999), 466-93. @GC
Linda S. Northrup, From Slave to Sultan. The Career of al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn and the Consolidation of Mamluk Rule in Egypt
and Syria (Stuttgart, 1998).

5) Enslaved women in Islamic history I (February 28)

This and the next meeting will focus on enslaved women, mostly in Abbasid elite institutions. Case studies will
mostly be concerned with concubinage. Depending on time and interest, parallels in contemporary practices can
be explored.

*Suad Joseph (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (Leiden, 2006), entries ‘Slavery: East Asia and
Southeast Asia’, ‘Slavery: North Africa’, ‘Slavery: North America’, ‘Slavery: Ottoman Empire’, ‘Slavery:
Sub-Saharan Africa’, ‘Slavery: The Gulf and Saudi Arabia’, ‘Slavery: West Africa’, ‘Sub-Saharan Africa: 15 th
to Early 18th Century’. [The articles are easiest to find if you use the search function.] @GC
*Julia Bray, ‘Men, Women and Slaves in Abbasid Society’, in Leslie Brubaker and Julia M.H. Smith (eds), Gender in
the Early Medieval World. East and West, 300-900 (Cambridge, 2004), 121-46. @ac
*Kecia Ali, ‘Concubinage and Consent’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 49 (2017), 148-52. @GC
*Fuad Matthew Caswell, The Slave Girls of Baghdad. The Qiyān in the Early Abbasid Era (London, 2011), chapters one
(‘The Social Scene’, 10-36) and chapter three, the section about ʿInān (56-81). @ac
*Matthew Gordon, ‘Unhappy Offspring? Concubines and Their Sons in Early Abbasid Society’, International Journal
of Middle East Studies 49 (2017), 153-7. @GC
*Cristina de la Puente, ‘What Does milk al-yamīn Mean at the Beginning of the 21st Century? Selected Online Fatwas
on Concubinage in Islam’, in Roswitha Badry et al (eds), Liebe, Sexualität, Ehe und Partnerschaft – Paradigmen
im Wandel (Freiburg, 2009), 127-52. @ac

David Ayalon, ‘On the Term Khādim in the Sense of ‘Eunuch’ in the Early Muslim Sources’, Arabica 32 (1985), 289-
308. @GC
Nadia Maria El Cheikh, ‘Gender and Politics in the Harem of al-Muqtadir’, in Leslie Brubaker and Julia M.H. Smith
(eds), Gender in the Early Medieval World. East and West, 300-900 (Cambridge, 2004), 147-61.
Nadia Maria El Cheikh, ‘Revisiting the Abbasid Harems’, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 1 (2005), 1-19. @ac
Nadia Maria El Cheikh, ‘Servants at the Gate. Eunuchs at the Court of al-Muqtadir’, Journal of the Economic and Social
History of the Orient 48/2 (2005), 234-52. @GC
Amikam Elad, ‘An Epitaph of the Slave Girl of the Grandson of the ʿAbbasid Caliph Al-Maʾmun’, Le Muséon 111
(1998), 227-44.
Matthew S. Gordon, ‘Yearning and Disquiet. Al-Jāḥiẓ and the Risālat al-qiyān’, in Arnim Heinemann et al (eds), Al-
Jāḥiẓ. A Muslim Humanist for our Time (Beirut, 2009), 253-68. @ac
Matthew S. Gordon, ‘The Place of Competition. The Careers of ʿArīb al-Maʾmūnīya and ʿUlayya bint al-Mahdī,
Sisters in Song’, in James E. Montgomery (ed.), ʿAbbasid Studies. Occasional Papers of the School of ʿAbbasid
Studies, Cambridge 6-10 July 2002 (Leuven, 2004), 61-81. @ac
Ibn al-Sāʿī, Consorts of the Caliphs. Women and the Court of Baghdad, ed. Shawkat M. Toorawa, trans. The Editors of the
Library of Arabic Literature (New York, 2015).
Shaun E. Marmon, ‘Domestic Slavery in the Mamluk Empire. A Preliminary Sketch’, in S.E. Marmon (ed.), Slavery in
the Islamic Middle East (Princeton, 1999), 1-23.
Kristina Richardson, ‘Singing Slave Girls (qiyan) of the ‘Abbasid Court in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries’, in Gwyn
Campbell et al (eds), Children in Slavery through the Ages (Athens, 2009), 105-18. @GC

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6) Enslaved women in Islamic history II (March 7)
During this meeting, we will be continuing discussions from the previous meeting and focus on a collection of
articles. In addition to gaining further insights into enslaved women in elite institutions in Islamic history, the
aim of this meeting is to explore how academic debates unfold and how individual contributions relate to each
other. The product of this meeting is going to be a collective review of the edited volume.

Matthew S. Gordon and Kathryn A. Hain (eds), Concubines and Courtesans. Women and Slavery in Islamic History
(Oxford, 2017). @GC

7) Al-Andalus and the Mediterranean (March 14)

The aim of this meeting is to shift the geographical focus from the main lands of the Arabic-speaking world to the
Iberian Peninsula, to identify and account for any differences in notions and practices surrounding slavery in this
part of the Islamic world. Particular attention will be paid to the enslavement of European Christians. Depending
on interest, we will also discuss early modern cases of Muslim enslavement of Europeans in North Africa.

*Olivia Remie Constable, ‘Muslim Spain and Mediterranean Slavery: the Medieval Slave Trade as an Aspect of
Muslim-Christian Relations’, in Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl (eds), Christendom and its Discontents.
Exclusion, Persecution and Rebellion, 1000-1500 (Cambridge, 1996), 264-84. @ac
*Carol Graham, ‘The Meaning of Slavery and Identity in al-Andalus. The Epistle of Ibn Garcia’, The Arab Studies
Journal 3/1 (1995), 68-79. @GC
*Marek Jankowiak, ‘What Does the Slave Trade in the Saqaliba Tell Us about Early Islamic Slavery’, International
Journal of Middle East Studies 49 (2017), 169-72. @GC
*William D. Phillips, Jr., Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia (Philadelphia, 2014), introduction (1-9) and
chapter one (‘The History of Slavery in Iberia’, 10-27). @GC
*Cristina de la Puente, ‘Slaves in al-Andalus through Māliki wathāʾiq Works (4th-6th Centuries H./10th-12th Centuries
CE): Marriage and Slavery as Factors of Social Categorisation’, Annales Islamologiques 42 (2008), 187-
212. @ac
*Cristina de la Puente, ‘Free Fathers, Slave Mothers and Their Children. A Contribution to the Study of Family
Structures in al-Andalus’, Imago Temporis, Medium Aevum 7 (2013), 27-44. @GC
*Robert C. Davis, White Slaves, Muslim Masters. White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800
(Basingstoke, 2003), part one (‘White Slavery’, 3-65). @ac

Phillip Ackerman-Lieberman and Onur Yildirim, ‘Slavery, Slave Trade’, in Norman Stillman (ed.), Encyclopedia of
Jews in the Islamic World (Leiden, 2010). (available at the New York Public Library)
Cristina de la Puente, ‘Esclavitud y matrimonio en al-Mudawwana al-Kubrā de Saḥnūn’, Al-Qanṭara 16 (1995), 309-34.
@open access
Cristina de la Puente, ‘Entre la esclavitud y la libertad. Consecuencias legales de la manumisión según el derecho
mālikí’, Al-Qanṭara 21 (2000), 339-60. @open access
Cristina de la Puente, ‘Mano de obra esclava en Al-Andalus’, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, serie III, H.a Medieval 23
(2010), 135-47.
Cristina de la Puente, ‘The Ethnic Origins of Female Slaves in al-Andalus’, in Gordon and Hain (eds), Concubines and
Courtesans. @GC
Miriam Frenkel, ‘Slavery in Jewish Medieval Society under Islam. A Gendered Perspective’, in Matthias
Morgenstern et al (eds), männlich und weiblich schuf Er sie (Gottingen, 2011), 249-60.
Maria Antonia Garces, Cervantes in Algiers. A Captive’s Tale (Nashville, 2002).
Craig Perry, ‘Conversion as an Aspect of Master-Slave Relationships in the Medieval Egyptian Jewish Community’,
in Yaniv Fox and Yosi Yisraeli (eds), Contesting Inter-Religious Conversion in the Medieval World (London,
2017), 135-59. @ac

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Dwight F. Reynolds, ‘The Qiyan of al-Andalus’, in Gordon and Hain (eds), Concubines and Courtesans. @GC
Ariel Salzmann, ‘Migrants in Chains. On the Enslavement of Muslims in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe’,
Religions 4 (2013), 391-411. @GC
Lev Weitz, ‘Slavery and the Historiography of Non-Muslims in the Medieval Middle East’, in International Journal of
Middle East Studies 49 (2017), 139-42. @GC

8) Ottomans (March 21)

In this meeting, we will explore particularities of slavery in the Ottoman Empire. In addition to surveying general
developments we will again focus on domestic slavery and the harem. This meeting will serve as a preparation for
the meetings on abolition and on slavery in the Western imagination.

*Ehud R. Toledano, ‘Enslavement in the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern Period’, in David Eltis and Stanley L.
Engerman (eds), The Cambridge History of Slavery, volume three, AD 1420-AD 1804 (Cambridge, 2011), 25-46.
@GC
*Ehud R. Toledano, ‘Ottoman Concepts of Slavery in the Period of Reform (1830s-1880s)’, in Martin A. Klein (ed.),
Breaking the Chains. Slavery, Bondage and Emancipation in Modern Africa and Asia (Madison, 1993), 37-63. @ac
*Charles L. Wilkins, ‘Slavery and Household Formation in Ottoman Aleppo, 1640-1700’, Journal of the Economic and
Social History of the Orient 56 (2013), 345-91. @GC
*Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Black Slaves and Freedmen Celebrating (Aydin, 1576)’, Turcica 21-22 (1991), 205-15. @ac
*Suraiya Faroqhi, ‘Quis custodiet custodes? Controlling Slave Identities and Slave Traders in Seventeenth- and
Eighteenth-Century Istanbul’, in Eszter Andor and István György Tóth (eds), Frontiers of Faith. Religious
Exchange and the Constitution of Religious Identities, 1400-1750 (Budapest, 2001), 121-36. @ac
*Gulay Yilmaz, ‘Becoming a Devşirme. The Training of Conscripted Children in the Ottoman Empire’, in Gwyn
Campbell et al (eds), Children in Slavery through the Ages (Athens, 2009), 119-34. @GC

Géza Dávid and Pál Fodor (eds), Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Frontiers (Early Fifteenth-Early Eighteenth Centuries)
(Leiden, 2007). @GC
Madeline Zilfi, Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire. The Design of Difference (Cambridge, 2010).
Mary Ann Fay, Unveiling the Harem: Elite Women and the Paradox of Seclusion in Eighteenth Century Cairo (Syracuse,
2012). @GC
Eve Troutt Powell, Tell it in My Memory: Stories of Enslavement from Egypt, Sudan and the Ottoman Empire (Palo Alto,
2012). @GC
George Junne, The Black Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire. Networks of Power in the Court of the Sultan (London, 2016).
Leslie P. Pierce, The Imperial Harem. Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (New York, 1993).
Gwyn Campbell and Alessandro Stanziani (eds), Debt and Slavery in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds (London,
2016).
Y. Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise (London, 1996).
Suraiya Faroqhi, Slavery in the Ottoman World. A Literature Survey (Berlin, 2017).
Maria Pia Pedani, ‘Venetian Slaves in the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern Period’, in Stefan Hanß and Juliane
Schiel (eds), Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500-1800) (Zurich, 2014), 309-23. @ac
Ehud R. Toledano, ‘The Concept of Slavery in Ottoman and Other Muslim Societies. Dichotomy or Continuum’, in
Miura Toru and John Edward Philips (eds), Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa. A Comparative Study
(London, 2000), 159-75. @ac
Terence Walz and Kenneth M. Cuno (eds), Race and Slavery in the Middle East. Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in the
Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean (Cairo, 2010).
Charles L. Wilkins, ‘Masters, Servants and Slaves. Household Formation among the Urban Notables of Early
Ottoman Aleppo’, in Christine Woodhead (ed.), The Ottoman World (Milton Park, 2013), 291-306. @ac

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9) Islam and Slavery in West Africa I (March 28)
This is the first of a two-part meeting in which we will discuss the enslavement of people, both Muslim and non-
Muslim, mostly in West Africa, with the occasional focus on East Africa. One of the aims of these meetings is to
explore the significance of race and religion in these contexts. While the first meeting is meant to focus on
Muslim enslavers and representations of sub-Saharan Africa and Africans in premodern Arabic literature, the
second meeting will focus on transatlantic slavery and the dual role of Muslims as both enslavers and enslaved.

*Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery. A History of Slavery in Africa (New York, 2011), chapters one (‘Africa and
Slavery’, 1-23) and two (‘On the Frontiers of Islam, 1400-1600’, 24-44). @GC
*Rudolph T. Ware, ‘Slavery in Islamic Africa, 1400-1800’, in David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman (eds), The
Cambridge History of Slavery, volume three, AD 1420-AD 1804 (Cambridge, 2011), 47-80. @GC
*E. Ann Mcdougall, ‘Visions of the Sahara. Negotiating the History and Historiography of Premodern Saharan
Slavery’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 38 (2018), 211-29. @GC
*Timothy Cleaveland, ‘Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti and his Islamic Critique of Racial Slavery in the Maghrib’, The
Journal of North African Studies 20/1 (2015), 42-64. @GC
*Chris Gratien, ‘Race, Slavery, and Islamic law in the Early Modern Atlantic. Ahmad Baba al-Tinbukti’s Treatise on
Enslavement’, The Journal of North African Studies 18/3 (2013), 454-68. @GC
*John O. Hunwick, ‘Aḥmad Bābā on Slavery’, Sudanic Africa 11 (2000), 131-9. @GC
*Bruce S. Hall, ‘How Slaves Used Islam. The Letters of Enslaved Muslim Commercial Agents in the Nineteenth-
Century Niger Bend and Central Sahara’, Journal of African History 52 (2011), 279-97. @GC
*Ralph Austen, ‘The Mediterranean Islamic Slave Trade out of Africa. A Tentative Census’, Slavery and Abolition 13
(1992), 214-48.

David M. Goldenberg, The Curse of Ham. Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Princeton, 2003).
Michael A. Gomez, African Dominion. A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa (Princeton, 2018),
chapter four (‘Slavery and Race Imagined in Bilād As-Sūdān’ 43-57).
John Hunwick, ‘Black Africans in the Mediterranean World. Introduction to a Neglected Aspect of the African
Diaspora’, in Elizabeth Savage (ed.), The Human Commodity. Perspectives on the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade
(London, 1992), 5-38.
John Hunwick and Eve Troutt Powell, The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (Princeton, 2009).
Chapurukha M. Kusimba, ‘Archaeology of Slavery in East Africa’, The African Archaeological Review 21 (2004), 59-88.
@GC
NB: This article deals primarily with East Africa, but begins with a short broader survey.
Nehemia Levtzion and J.F.P. Hopkins, Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History (Princeton, 2000).
Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East. An Historical Enquiry (New York, 1990).
Paul E. Lovejoy, ‘Identifying Enslaved Africans in the African Diaspora’, in Paul E. Lovejoy (ed.), Identity in the
Shadows of Slavery (London, 2000), 1-29. @ac
Shaun Marmon, ‘Black Slaves in Mamlūk Narratives. Representations of Transgression’, Al-Qanṭara 28 (2007), 435-
64. @open access
G. Ugo Nwokeji, ‘Slavery in Non-Islamic West Africa, 1420-1820’, in David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman (eds), The
Cambridge History of Slavery, volume three, AD 1420-AD 1804 (Cambridge, 2011), 81-110. @GC
James Searing, ‘Islam, Slavery and Jihad in West Africa’, History Compass 4/5 (2006), 761-79. @GC
Ronald Segal, Islam’s Black Slaves. A History of Africa’s Other Black Diaspora (London, 2003).
John Ralph Willis (ed.), Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa, two volumes (London, 1985).

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10) Islam and Slavery in West Africa II: transatlantic slavery (April 4)
See above.

*Sylvaine A. Diouf, Servants of Allah. African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York, 1998), excerpts. @GC
*Richard Brent Turner, ‘African Muslim Slaves and Islam in Antebellum America’, in Juliane Hammer and Omid
Safi (eds), The Cambridge Companion to American Islam (Cambridge, 2013), 28-44. @GC

J. Alexander, ‘Islam, Archaeology and Slavery in Africa’, World Archaeology 33/1 (2001), 44-60. @GC
Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America. Transatlantic Stories and Spiritual Struggles (New York, 2011).
Edward E. Curtis, Muslims in America. A Short History (Oxford, 2009).
Jerald Dirks, Muslims in American History. A Forgotten Legacy (Beltsville, 2006).
Detlef Gronenborn, ‘Kanem-Borno. A Brief Summary of the History and Archaeology of an Empire of the Central
bilad al-Sudan’, in Christopher DeCorse (ed.), West Africa during the Atlantic Slave Trade. Archaeological
Perspectives (London, 2016), 101-30.
Paul E. Lovejoy, ‘Islam, Slavery, and Political Transformation in West Africa. Constraints on the Trans-Atlantic
Slave Trade’, Outre-Mers. Revue d’histoire 336-337 (2002), 247-82. @ac

11) Abolitionism (April 11)

In this meeting, we will discuss developments around the abolition of slavery in the Islamic world in more recent
history.

*William Gervase Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery (Oxford, 2006), part II (98-232). [Chapters will be
divided among students.] @ac
*Robert Harms, Bernard K. Freamon and David W. Blight (eds), Indian Ocean Slavery in the Age of Abolition (New
Haven, 2013), part II (‘Slavery, Abolition and Islamic Law’, 61-97). @GC
*Ismael Musah Montana, The Abolition of Slavery in Ottoman Tunisia (Gainesville, 2013). [Chapters will be divided
among students.] @GC
*Ehud R. Toledano, ‘Abolition and Anti-slavery in the Ottoman Empire. A Case to Answer?’, in William Mulligan
and Maurice J. Bric (eds), Global History of Anti-slavery Politics in the Nineteenth Century (Basingstoke, 2013),
117-36. @ac

Ehud R. Toledano, The Ottoman Slave Trade and its Suppression, 1840-1890 (Princeton, 1983). @GC
Michael Ferguson and Ehud R. Toledano, ‘Ottoman Slavery and Abolition in the Nineteenth Century’, in David
Eltis et al (eds), The Cambridge World History of Slavery, volume four, AD 1804-AD 2016 (Cambridge, 2017), 197-
225.

12) Orientalism and slavery (April 18)

Slavery features prominently in the Orientalist imagination. The enslavement of European women and the
presence of eunuchs in harems have long attracted the attention of Western authors and artists. Likewise, the
high profile of slaves as characters in the Arabian Nights may account for some of the popularity of this collection
of stories. The purpose of this meeting is to explore Orientalist representations of slavery in the Islamic world,
focusing on the examples of the harem and the Arabian Nights.

*The Arabian Nights. Tales of 1001 Nights, translated by Malcolm C. Lyons, Robert Irwin and Ursula Lyons, 3 vols
(London, 2010), excerpts. @ac

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*Marina Warner, Stranger Magic. Charmed States and the Arabian Nights (Cambridge, MA 2001), 357-370 (‘Why
Aladdin?’). @ac
*Shirley Foster, ‘Colonialism and Gender in the East. Representations of the Harem in the Writings of Women
Travellers’, The Yearbook of English Studies 34 (2004), 6-17. @GC
*Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Harems of the Mind. Passages of Western Art and Literature (New Haven, 2000), excerpts. @ac

13) Slavery in Islamic history: ethical challenges for historians (May 2)

The purpose of this meeting is to survey some of the ethical challenges for historians involved in the study of
slavery in Islamic history, including methods of recovering voices of slaves, including biography and historical
fiction, and the political implications for contemporary cases of religiously validated enslavement. In addition to
identifying problems addressed in the literature selected for this class we will discuss any issues of interest to
participants in the class.

*Julia Bray, ‘Toward an Abbasid History of Emotions. The Case of Slavery’, International Journal of Middle East Studies
49 (2017), 143-7. @GC
*Christopher C. Fennell, ‘Fighting Despair. Challenges of a Comparative, Global Framework for Slavery Studies’, in
Lydia Wilson Marshall (ed.), The Archaeology of Slavery. A Comparative Approach to Captivity and Coercion
(Carbondale, 2015), 385-92. @GC
*Nadia Murad, The Last Girl. My Story of Captivity, and My Fight against the Islamic State (New York, 2017), excerpts.
@ac
*Ehud R. Toledano, ‘Bringing the Slaves Back In’, in Behnaz A. Mirzai et al (eds), Slavery, Islam and Diaspora
(Trenton, 2009), 7-20. @ac
*Ehud R. Toledano, As If Silent and Absent. Bonds of Enslavement in the Islamic Middle East (New Haven, 2007).
[Chapters will be divided among students.] @GC

Laila Lalami, The Moor’s Account (New York, 2015).

Leslie P. Peirce, Empress of the East. How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire (New York, 2017).

14) Conclusions (May 9)

Mohammed Ennaji, Slavery, the State, and Islam (New York, 2013).
Chouki El Hamel, Black Morocco. A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam (Cambridge, 2014).
Ehud R. Toledano, ‘Ottoman and Islamic Societies. Were They “Slave Societies”?’, in Noel Lenski and Catherine M.
Cameron (eds), What is a Slave Society? The Practice of Slavery in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2018), 360-82.
@ac

This syllabus is subject to changes.

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