Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c14.26

c14.26

Slavery was recognised by Prophet Muhammad. It was considered lawful in Islam. Regular trade in slaves began with the Ummayad Caliph Muawiya.⁵³ in the days of the Abbasid Caliphs it gained in impetus and extent. Slave trade spread so rapidly that no one was safe from being enslaved in the heyday of Muslim power, and black and white slaves were traded throughout the Muslim world. Brigandage was commonly resorted to in order to obtain slaves. The *Hudud al-Alam* (a tenth century Persian document) describes the Sudan (the land south of the desert separating it from the Maghreb) as follows: no region is more populated than this. The merchants steal children there and take them away. They castrate them and take them to Egypt, where they sell them. *Among them [the Sudanese] there are people who steal each others children to sell them to the merchants when they come*.⁵⁴ Turks, Negroes, Ethiopians, Abyssinians, Berbers, Slavs and many others were sold in thousands. White slaves were costlier than the black. Egypt and Syria supplied a large number of them and Italian ports formed transit points for export. In the tenth century the most valuable commodity that was carried from Volga to Central Asia was slaves. They were brought to the Oxus region, more particularly Samarkand. There the best were put in the market for sale,⁵⁵ and the trade was very profitable.