Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c10.3

c10.3

At the advent of Islam, part of Arabia was under Abyssinian rule. When Arabia was Islamized, the tide turned and the Abyssinians came under the Arabs and they made slaves of Abyssinians and Ethiopians without much opposition. Muslims have been quite satisfied with their achievements in slave-making in Africa. Many Western scholars also have romanticised and even defended black slavery in the Islamic world. Bernard Lewis quotes many European historians to say that slavery is a divine boon to mankind, by means of which pagan and barbarous people are brought to Islam and civilization Slavery in the East has an elevating influence over thousands of human beings, and but for it hundreds of thousands of souls must pass their existence in this world as wild savages, little better than animals; it, at least, makes men of them, *useful men* too¹ T.W. Arnold also writes that devout minds have even recognised in enslavement Gods guidance to the true faith, as the Negroes from the Upper Nile countries In those Africans there is no resentment that they have been made slaves even though cruel men-stealers rent them from their parentage freedom is in many instances the reward of conversion The patrons who paid their price have adopted them in their households, the males are circumcised and God has visited them in their mishap; they can say *it was His grace*, since they are thereby entered into the saving religion.² Lewis, however admits that there are evils in Arab slavery and that even emancipated blacks are rarely able to rise above the lowest level.³ Slavery is a degrading condition, and many people do lose their dignity when they are kept in this condition for a long time. It has been universally acknowledged that the later Western managed slave trade in which Muslim Arabs were often the intermediaries, has had a devastating consequence for African countries. There is no reason to assume that the consequences of the earlier Islamic slavery in Africa had more benign results for the Africans.