Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry

326 Pages·1990·6.28 MB·English

by  Bernard Lewis

BERNARD LEWIS

The research presented in this book was first undertaken as part of a group
project on tolerance and intolerance in human societies, for which I was asked to
prepare a paper on the Islamic world. I began by examining this topic in
conventional terms and collected data on the relations between different
religions-that is, in the sense in which the words "tolerance" and "intolerance"
have in the past normally been used. At a certain point it occurred to me that
such an enquiry need no longer be bound by the habits and concerns of a
previous generation, concerns which have lost their sharpness for many of us at
the present time, at least in the Western world. But if these concerns have
diminished or disappeared, they have been replaced by others no less acute. In
the present climate of opinion what matters most in this respect is not creed, or
even class, but race. This is seen as the ultimate basis of identity and of
difference; and it is in this area that, in much of the world, the crucial test of
tolerance or intolerance is now applied. I therefore turned to this problem and, in
the course of my work, began to examine certain assumptions hitherto
unquestioningly accepted by Western as well as Islamic scholars.
The group project on tolerance and intolerance was never completed. The
material on Islam, however, aroused some interest, and I was stimulated to
pursue it further by an invitation to lecture on the subject at a combined meeting
of the three institutes of Anthropology, International Affairs, and Race Relations
in London. The lecture was delivered in December 1969 and published in a
slightly expanded form in the London monthly Encounter in August 1970. This
was, in turn, further expanded and published as a small book in New York in
1971, entitled Race and Color in Islamn.
The publication of a French translation in Paris in 1982 gave me the
opportunity to make a number of substantial changes. In addition to correcting
some errors, I added new documentation and discussed some further topics not
touched upon in the earlier versions. I also appended a selection of relevant
original sources, most of them translated from Arabic.
The study of race led inevitably, in the Islamic world as elsewhere, to the
problem of slavery, by which both race relations and racial attitudes were
profoundly affected. In preparing my successive earlier treatments of this topic, I
was obliged to devote increasing attention to this aspect and to examine it in a
Middle Eastern rather than in an Islamic context. In embarking, after an interval
of years, on a new exploration of the theme, I decided to give the institution of
slavery a more central position.
This immediately raised serious difficulties. One of them is the remarkable
dearth of scholarly work on the subject. The bibliography of studies on slavery
in the Greek and Roman worlds, or in the Americas, runs to thousands of items.
Even for medieval Western Europe, where slavery was of relatively minor
importance, European scholars have produced a significant literature of research
and exposition. For the central Islamic lands, despite the subject's importance in
virtually every area and period, a list of serious scholarly monographs on
slavery-in law, in doctrine, or in practice-could be printed on a single page. The
documentation for a study on Islamic slavery is almost endless; its exploration
has barely begun.
Perhaps the main reason for the lack of scholarly research on Islamic slavery
is the extreme sensitivity of the subject. This makes it difficult, and sometimes
professionally hazardous, for a young scholar to turn his attention in this
direction. In time, we may hope, it will be possible for Muslim scholars to
examine and discuss Islamic slavery as freely and as openly as European and
American scholars have, with the cooperation of scholars from other countries,
been willing to discuss this unhappy chapter in their own past. But that time is
not yet; meanwhile, Islamic slavery remains both an obscure and a highly
sensitive topic, the mere mention of which is often seen as a sign of hostile
intentions. Sometimes indeed it is, but it need not and should not be so, and the
imposition of taboos on topics of historical research can only impede and delay a
better and more accurate understanding. In this little hook, I have tried to deal
fairly and objectively with a subject of great historical and comparative
importance and to do so without recourse to either polemics or apologetics.
The present volume incorporates most of what was said in my early
treatments. This has, however, been extensively revised, expanded, and recast,
and a considerable body of new material added, including several new chapters,
making it a new book dealing with a related but different topic. I have also added
a documentary appendix, translated, where necessary, from the original
languages. Some of the documents included in the French edition have been
omitted, as they are already available elsewhere in English in print. Others have
been added, including several translated for this purpose.
There remains the pleasant task of thanking those who have, in various ways,
contributed to the completion of this book. My thanks are due to the authorities
of the Public Record Office, the India Office Records, and the British Library in
London; the Topkapi Saray Museum in Istanbul; the Bibliotheque Nationale in
Paris; and Mr. Arthur A. Houghton, for permission to reproduce documents and
pictures in their possession. Crown copyright mate rial in the Public Record
Office and the India Office Records is reproduced by permission of the
Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
I am indebted to David Goldenberg, John B. Kelly, Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, and
Michel Le Gall for suggestions and help of various kinds. Above all, I would
like to record my profound gratitude and appreciation to my assistant Leigh
Faden, for her untiring and highly effective work in the preparation and
numerous revisions of my text, to my research assistant Jonathan Berkey, whose
scholarly knowledge and unstinting efforts in many ways lightened the labor of
both research and writing and improved the quality of the results, and to both of
them for preparing the index. Whatever faults and errors remain are entirely my
own.
August 1989
1. Slavery, 3
2. Race, 16
3. Islam in Arabia, 21
4. Prejudice and Piety, Literature and Law, 28
5. Conquest and Enslavement, 37
6. Ventures in Ethnology, 43
7. The Discovery of Africa, 50
8. In Black and White, 54
9. Slaves in Arms, 62
10. The Nineteenth Century and After, 72
11. Abolition, 78
12. Equality and Marriage, 85
13. Image and Stereotype, 92
14. Myth and Reality, 99
Notes, 103
Documents, 141
Sources of Illustrations, 170
Index, 173