Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (22 page)

The abolition of slavery itself would hardly have been possible. From a
Muslim point of view, to forbid what God permits is almost as great an offense
as to permit what God forbids'-and slavery was authorized and regulated by
the holy law. More specifically, it formed part of the law of personal status,
the central core of social usage, which remained intact and effective even
when other sections of the holy law, dealing with civil, criminal, and similar
matters, were tacitly or even openly modified and replaced by modern codes.
It was from conservative religious quarters and notably from the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina that the strongest resistance to the proposed reforms came. The emergence of the holy men and the holy places as the last-ditch
defenders of slavery against reform is only an apparent paradox. They were
upholding an institution sanctified by scripture, law, and tradition and one
which in their eyes was necessary to the maintenance of the social structure of
Muslim life.

The gradual reduction and eventual elimination of slavery were accomplished in most Muslim countries during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with some difference for whites and blacks. Chattel slavery was abolished
by law in most of the independent Muslim states of the Middle East at various
dates between the two World Wars; in 1962 it was abolished by the newly
established republican regime in Yemen, and a few weeks later by royal
decree in Saudi Arabia. In Iran, it had formally been outlawed by the constitution of 1906, though some subsequent legislation was needed to give this
effect. The last to enact legal abolition appears to have been Mauritania,
which took this step in 1980. There are persistent reports that despite these
legal measures, slavery, sometimes voluntary, continues in several countries.'

The initial impetus for abolition had come from Europe, and for some
time progress in this matter was due almost entirely to European urging and
action. In the British, French, Dutch, and Russian Empires-in that ordergeneral abolition had been imposed by the imperial authorities. Britain also
undertook, by diplomatic pressure supported by naval power, to suppress the
slave trade from East Africa to the Middle East and exacted decrees to this
end from the sultan of Turkey, the shah of Persia, and the khedive of Egypt, as
well as from a number of local rulers in Africa and Arabia.

The first Muslim ruler to order the emancipation of black slaves was the
bey of Tunis, who in January 1846 decreed that a deed of enfranchisement
should be given to every slave who desired it. Among the reasons for this
action, he notes the uncertainty among Muslim jurists concerning the legal
basis for "the state of slavery into which the black races have fallen" and,
significantly, the need to prevent the black slaves "from seeking the protection
of foreign authorities."3 The abolition of black slavery was completed after
the French occupation.

In Turkey, the most important surviving independent Muslim state, the
process of emancipation seems to have begun in 1830.' In that year a firman
was issued, ordering the emancipation of slaves of Christian origin, who had
kept to their religion. This was a kind of amnesty for Greek and other Christian subjects of the Porte who had been reduced to slavery as a punishment for
participating in the recent rebellions. Those who had become Muslims were
excluded from this emancipation and remained the property of their owners.'

The overwhelming majority of white slaves, both Christian and Muslim,
came from the Caucasian lands. Though the supply was much reduced after
the Russian conquest, slaves from these lands continued to arrive in the
Ottoman Empire either overland or by ship to the Turkish Black Sea ports.
Their movement and subsequent fate were beyond the range of influence or
of interference of the Western powers and were an exclusively Ottoman concern. It was thus almost entirely on Ottoman initiative, determined by inter nal circumstances and pressures, that the Ottoman state undertook, by due
process of law, a very substantial improvement in their condition, amounting
ultimately to the effective-even if not the legal-abolition of their servile
status. Orders against the traffic in white slaves from Georgia and Circassia
were issued in 1854 and 1855 and were in general put into effect.'

In 1847 the British were able to win some concessions from the Ottoman
government about black slaves; and in 1857 they obtained a major Ottoman
firman, prohibiting the traffic in black slaves throughout the empire, with the
exception of the Hijaz.7

The reasons for this exception are of some interest. By early 1855, reports
were reaching the Hijaz of current and impending Ottoman measures against
the slave trade. The alarm caused by the limitation of the supply of white
slaves from the Caucasus and the increasingly severe restriction of the importation of black slaves from Africa was heightened by news of an order from the
governor of Suez, acting on instruction from the capital, that slaves brought
from the Hijaz to Egypt should be sent back. On April 1, 1855, a group of
prominent merchants in Jedda addressed a letter to the leading members of
the ulema as well as to the sharif of Mecca expressing their concern. They
referred with disapproval to the steps which had already been taken and
quoted a report that a general ban on the slave trade would soon be imposed
throughout the empire, together with other pernicious and Christian-inspired
changes such as the emancipation of women and the toleration of religiously
mixed marriages. This ban, with the whole program of reform of which it was
alleged to be a part, was condemned by the writers of the letter as antiIslamic, the more so since all the black slaves imported from Africa embraced
the Muslim religion.

The letter caused some excitement in Mecca and may indeed have been
instigated by its ruler, the Sharif `Abd al-Muttalib. It provided an occasion for
him to consult with the chief of the ulema of Mecca, Shaykh Jamal. According
to an Ottoman source, the sharif told the shaykh that the Crimean War, then
in progress, would mean the doom of the Ottoman Empire whichever way it
ended. In any case, the Turks had become apostates from Islam, and this was
an opportunity to rid the holy cities of their domination. The suppression of
the slave trade, he is quoted as saying, would be a good pretext.

The crisis came a few months later when the governor of the Hijaz sent an
order to the district governor of Mecca prohibiting the trade in slaves. The
district governor was instructed to read the order aloud at the Shari a court of
Mecca in the presence of the ulema and the sharifs. This took place on
October 30, 1855, and the audience declared their readiness to obey.

This was the moment for which the sharif had been waiting. On his instructions, Shaykh Jamal issued a fatwa denouncing the ban on the slave trade as
contrary to the holy law of Islam. Because of this anti-Islamic act, he said,
together with such other anti-Islamic actions as allowing women to initiate
divorce proceedings and to move around unveiled, the Turks had become
apostates and heathens. It was lawful to kill them without incurring criminal
penalties or bloodwit, and to enslave their children.

The Turks have become renegades. It is obligatory to make war against them
and against those who follow them. Those who are with us are for heaven and
those who are with them are for hell. Their blood is lawful and their goods are
licit."

The fatwa produced the desired effect. The Ottoman authorities in the
holy cities were attacked by local leaders and populace, and the qadi-an
Ottoman appointee-was also compelled to sign a declaration condemning
the ban on the slave trade. Ottoman soldiers were set upon all over Mecca as
were also some foreign protected persons. A holy war was proclaimed against
the Ottomans, and the revolt began.

By June of the following year, the revolt had been completely crushed.
The sultan's government had, however, noted the warning, and took steps to
forestall a secession of the Ottoman south. In the ban on the trade in black
slaves promulgated in 1857, the province of the Hijaz was exempted. The
Sharif `Abd al-Muttalib was in due course reappointed, and his continued
presence in the Hijaz encouraged the slavetraders to ignore the anti-slaving
laws and to shift their trade to that area.

The actual enforcement of the ban of 1857 was no easy matter, and despite
the efforts of both the Ottoman authorities and the British navy, the traffic
continued. It now tended to concentrate in two main areas. One of these was
the Red Sea, where the exemption of the Hijaz from the Ottoman ban on the
slave trade gave the slavetraders a secure base which they lacked elsewhere;
the other was Libya, which, after the establishment of British rule in Egypt
and French rule in Tunisia and Algeria, was the only part of Ottoman Africa
not subject to foreign control. During the third quarter of the nineteenth
century, a substantial proportion of the export of slaves from black Africa to
the Ottoman lands passed through the ports of Tripoli and later Benghazi.
Here, too, great efforts were made to stop the trade in blacks, and when
slaves were detected they were promptly freed. This created another problem, since the freed slaves were in urgent need of food and shelter and also of
protection against their former owners, seeking to reenslave them. The care
of freed slaves was a continuing concern of the Ottoman authorities, who took
measures of various kinds to meet these needs. On several occasions, the
government of Istanbul sent orders to Benghazi instructing Turkish officials
there to transfer freed black slaves to Istanbul or Izmir, where the men were
to be drafted into the army or navy and the women placed as domestic
servants.

The other major center was Arabia. Thanks to the exemption from the
ban on the slave trade, the flow of slaves from Africa into Arabia and through
the Gulf into Iran continued for a long time. Apart from commercial channels, the supply was augmented through the practice by which a wealthy
pilgrim brought a retinue of slaves from his own country and sold them one by
one-as a kind of traveler's checks-to pay the expenses of the pilgrimage. In
time the Red Sea trade dwindled as a result of the wars in the Sudan and in
Ethiopia. The extension of British, French, and Italian control around the coasts of the Horn of Africa deprived the slavetriders of their main ports of
embarkation. The British occupation of Egypt in 1882 and later the AngloEgyptian control of the Sudan and the consequent suppression of the
slaveraiders further hampered the traffic by cutting off one of the main
sources of supply. In spite of the reconquest of the Sudan and all the efforts by
Turkish, Egyptian, British, French, and Italian authorities, the traffic continued into modern times. From the 1890s onward, however, the slave trade,
though it remained active, was of necessity clandestine.

By the end of the nineteenth century, white slavery had, apart from the
Arabian peninsula, virtually disappeared, and black slavery had been reduced
to a mere fraction of its former dimensions. The capture, sale, and transportation of blacks from Africa to Arabia and Iran continued, however, albeit on a
much reduced scale, at least until the mid-twentieth century.`

British efforts to end the slave trade in Arabia and elsewhere were by no
means universally approved. They were, of course, resented and resisted by
those immediately affected, the slaveraiders and slavedealers. They were also
criticized by other, less-interested parties. The famous Dutch orientalist
Snouck Hurgronje, who visited Mecca in 1885, complained of the "undeserved applause" given to British measures against the slave trade, and to the
"fantasies" which inspired them. In their place, he offered what he called a
"sober reality." According to Snouck,

public opinion in Europe has been misled concerning Muslim slavery by a
confusion between American and Oriental conditions.... As things are now,
for most of the slaves their abduction was a blessing.... They themselves are
convinced, that it was slavery that first made human beings of them. Concubines, specifically Abyssinians, are for various reasons more highly esteemed
by the Meccans than their free wives; the practice is, by both religion and
custom, recognized as fully legal.... Their bond with their owner is firmer
than the easily dissolvable Muslim marriage. All in all, since I know the situation, the anti-slavery campaign is, for me, in the highest degree repugnant. u

Snouck quotes with approval from some earlier travelers who defend the
enslavement of blacks in Arabia and condemn British efforts to free them,
sometimes on frankly racist grounds. One such was the Englishman J. F.
Keane, who visited Arabia in 1881. Using arguments familiar from other
places and times, he observes that

the Negro is to be found here [in Arabial in his proper place, an easily-managed,
useful worker. The Negroes are the porters. water-carriers, and performers of
most of the real labour in Meccah. Happy, healthy, well-fed, well-clothed (as
such things go in Meccah), they are slaves, proud of their masters, in a country
where a slave is "honoured only after his master." 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 too, sometimes even superior men. Could the Arab slave-trade be carried on with safety, it might
be executed more humanely; and it would, philanthropically speaking, do good
to many of the human race. . . . While every settled town under Turkish or
native rule in all wide Arabia has a slave market to be stocked, our greatest
efforts can but increase the demand and raise the markets. Witness: a strong
male adult might be bought for $40.00 four years ago in Meccah, and the same
will now fetch $60.00. Were our cruisers doubled, the weekly landing of slaves
among the creeks and reefs along the coast of the Hejaz could not be prevented. . . . That there are evils in Arab slavery I do not pretend to deny, though
not affecting the Negro, once a slave. The exacting slave-driver is a character
wholly unknown in the East, and the slave is protected from the caprice of any
cruel master in that he is transferable and of money value. The man who would
abuse or injure his slave would maim and willfully deteriorate the value of his
horse. Whatever the Arab may not know, he most assuredly knows what is to his
own immediate interest better than that. And the Negro himself . . . may
through this medium be raised from a savage, existing only for the moment .. .
to a profitable member of society, a strong tractable worker, the position Nature
seems to have made him to occupy.12