There were a lot of black eunuchs in the arabian world over the past several centuries.

You, too, can become a eunuch, in the newly dhimmified regions of Europe, North America, and Australia. Resistance is futile.

I spent 20 months in Saudi from January 1998 through September 1999. During 8 months of that time I was working in the "Empty Quarter" along a new pipe line for Aramco. The Saudi's have large heards of Camels. The Saudi's bring African tribesmen in to act as Camel hearders. The pay is less than $2 per month. The only time the Saudi's are seen is when they bring water for the camels -- the heck with hearder.

One story. that I can not verify, told by other non-Western expats was about a hearder who's mother had become very ill. The Red Cresent (euivalent to the Red Cross) sent messages to the "contract agent" for the hearder. Nothing was done. The next message was that the mother had died. Several days later the hearder was notified but told that he could not return home because the moter was already buried.

This may not be techniclly slavery but I fail to see much difference. The Saudis I talked to saw nothing wrong with this.

Bill Funt has the right of it above. Males were castrated. Females used as sexual slaves. I heard somewhere that Crown Prince Abdullah has a half-brother whose mother was a Sudanese slave-woman. The brother is alleged to be prominent in the Saudi security apparatus.

This article discusses the extent of Islamic slavery from Christians to Europeans to Hindus and Africans as well as discussing the high death rates of eunuch slavery.

"Based on his study and observations of Muslim slave razzias gleaned while serving in the Sudan during the Mahdist jihad at the close of the 19th century, Winston Churchill wrote this description (in 1899): [9]

all [of the Arab Muslim tribes in The Sudan], without exception, were hunters of men. To the great slave markets of Jeddah a continual stream of negro captives has flowed for hundreds of years. The invention of gunpowder and the adoption by the Arabs of firearms facilitated the traffic…Thus the situation in the Sudan for several centuries may be summed up as follows: The dominant race of Arab invaders was increasingly spreading its blood, religion, customs, and language among the black aboriginal population, and at the same time it harried and enslaved them…The warlike Arab tribes fought and brawled among themselves in ceaseless feud and strife. The negroes trembled in apprehension of capture, or rose locally against their oppressors."

On eunuch slavery:

"…when the castration was carried out in sub-Saharan West and West-Central Africa…a figure of 90% [is] often mentioned. Even higher death rates were occasionally reported, unsurprising in tropical areas where the danger of infection of wounds was especially high. At least one contemporary price quotation supports a figure of over 90% mortality: Turkish merchants are said to have been willing to pay 250 to 300 (Maria Theresa) dollars each for eunuchs in Borno (northeast Nigeria) at a time when the local price of young male slaves does not seem to have exceeded about 20 dollars…Many sources indicate very high death rates from the operation in eastern Africa.. Richard Millant’s [1908] general figure for the Sudan and Ethiopia is 90%

I don't like to think or talk about it much but I'm beginning to feel that since its inception the Islamic world has been in a de facto state of war against basically everyone else no matter their religion or ethnicity.

Jihadists have stolen the black rights meme and have been playing themselves as the victims in a game of racism. Early attempts tried to radicalize black youth against the common white enemy to no avail. Malcolm X didn’t play to the Southern Baptists.

The Anglican Church in Africa has had about enough of the revisionist teachings of their Western brethren, and are in the midst of a clean break.

“Africa's Anglican Bishops began a five-day conference Tuesday with a declaration that the "African Church has come of age." The church must now become self-sufficient to withstand unbiblical Western spirituality and the advances of militant Islam, said Peter Akinola, the Chairman of the Conference of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA) and the head of the Anglican Church of Nigeria.”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/143/32.0.html

Western spirituality has left the African church.

Mariana,

You almost hit the nail on the head:
> I don't like to think or talk about it much but I'm beginning to feel that since its inception the Islamic world has been in a de facto state of war against basically everyone else no matter their religion or ethnicity.

(A) Except that it is both de facto and de jure.

(B) The "I don't like to think ... about it" part is the greatest weakness the West has, and it is very consciously exploited by the non-West. As the French military analyst Roger Trinquier put it in 1961, the distinguishing features of modern war are (a) direct action on the population, bypassing the state's army, and (b) only one side considers itself to be at war.

One thing to remember about the abolition of slavery is that it was a Christian undertaking, advocated by dedicated Christians who believed that religious principle demanded that slavery be abolished.

It must hurt the modern multi-culti groupthink to confront this fact. Furthermore, what are now considered to be the universal principles of human rights were originally a 19th-century Christian concept.

14 centuries? This trade already existed in Roman times.
Also slavery isn't that bad (aren't we all wage slaves) but the creation of slaves is bad. They create a situation in which travel is very dangerous because your body is itself valuable. And it is very expensive to have trade when travel is dangerous. And without trade you don't have development. That is why you see a de-development taking place where slaves are captured.

I've no particularly useful information on the numbers of slaves imported into what is now the Middle East over the centuries. I'm sure it's huge.

I do want to point out, though, a difference between Islamic slavery and western slavery. The child of an Islamic slave was not a slave. Instead, they were to be raised along with other children in the family. They could not then be sold off down the line. That this rule was absolutely followed is something I don't care to argue. I'm sure it was violated, but was not general practice.

One sees many "black" Saudis today. Some are from immigrants over the centuries, but others are the results of marriages or concubinage with black slaves or their decendents. Even among the Al-Saud, there are blacks with slaves in their personal ancestry.

This is not meant to mitigate the evil of slavery, but only to note the difference in practices.

Some interesting info on Islamic slavery can be found on this site:

http://answering-islam.org.uk/Silas/slavery.htm

I haven't fact-checked this stuff, but it appears credible.

Another great post. There was an article in a Uganda newspaper several years ago asking this same question: "Where did all the black slaves taken North over the centuries go?" The fact is that we know where the ones went that were taken across the Atlantic (the ones that survived, that is). Their descendants are in Brazil, Cuba, the US and other countries. The ones taken North by Arabs didn't usually survive the tender mercies of Islam. It makes you wonder when you see a black Muslim - what are they thinking...

Islam has the distinction of being the only religion founded by a slaver - and not just a small time dealer in human flesh and misery, but a major figure in the sad story of man's cruelty to other men. Muhammed took hundred of captives, put many to death, bought slaves, sold men, women and children into bondage. He took female slaves to his bed after killing their families (a real ladies' man!) , and gave them away to his followers as spoil, to be used as they wished. he did free some, too! Yes, the female children were usually freed, and slaves converting to Islam could ugain freedom. And yes, some free slaves married and intermingled in Arab societies, but it was the exception, not the rule.

For about 450 years, after 1450, as Westerners explored Africa, the accounts of meeting "Arab Slavers" and "Slave traders" are constant. Often these were disputing the same "merchandise" as the Westerners. The difference is that the West long ago say "enough". Slavery was still legal in Saudi Arabia until the 1960s, and continues even until today in many parts of Islamic Africa. Shame!

Kactuz

are we comparing apples and apples here? For the muslim trade, youre counting everyone captured or killed in the original slave raids, and the transport from there. For the western slave trade, youre only counting the ones actually loded on the slave ships. Well guess what they didnt appear at Goree Island by magic. They were captured in raids by african kinds, often at the instigation of european slave traders, and had to be transported by them to the coast. Undoubtedly many were killed in the original capture, and the overland transport to the coast.

Of course, it is always nice to hear from an honest, knowledgeable man on this subject, who tells it like it is...

“Slavery is a part of Islam,” he says in the tape, adding: “Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam.”

Who is this enlightened person? I quote again:
"Leading government cleric Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan is the author of the religious books currently used to teach 5 million Saudi students, both within the and in Saudi schools aboard – including those in the Washington, D.C. metro area."

And where is this from? Here is the link:
http://www.arabianews.org/english/article.cfm?qid=132&sid=2

Kactuz

"One thing to remember about the abolition of slavery is that it was a Christian undertaking, advocated by dedicated Christians who believed that religious principle demanded that slavery be abolished."

wasnt the first Anti-slavery society in America founded, by, er, Ben Franklin?

liberalhawk -- "wasnt the first Anti-slavery society in America founded, by, er, Ben Franklin?"

I'm referring to the British movement in the early 19th century which actually caused the international slave trade to be abolished. William Wilberforce and his followers shamed the Crown and Parliament into making the Royal Navy interdict the trade along the coastlines of Africa and Asia.

That, of course, didn't stop the Arabs from continuing their overland trade in countries that weren't British colonies.

How many slaves, mainly Hindus and Buddhists, were taken from the Indian subcontinent to the Middle East? We know that the Gypsies/Roma of Europe are the descendants of slaves from Northwest India and Arab/Middle East conquerors. Were the men killed or castrated and women taken as sex slaves? What percentage survived?

Liberalhawk has a point... in most cases, the same raids that serviced one trade also serviced the other.

Westerners generally didn't undertake slave raids themselves, but simply bought from the Africans and Arabs who already ran the slave trade. So the West is also part of that 140 million figure, or whatever it is, in proportion to its (minority but significant) participation in the overall trade and the Arab/Islamic (majority but not exclusive) proportion of participation in the slave raids.

RE: the anti-slavery movement, follow the link to the South African article, which also documents the extent of Christian involvement in the Abilitionist movement. It was huge. It's still a majority component today.

John B. (#9), thanks for the additional insight. Wouldn't have known that.

a. (#8), you actually made a good point re: slavery and its effect on economics. But if you think there's no difference between working for a wage and being a slave - try experiencing the latter for a while and then come back to us and we'll talk.

Finally, pay special attention to Annoy Mouse's point in #5. The key point in the article he cites:

"The church must now become self-sufficient to withstand unbiblical Western spirituality and the advances of militant Islam aid Peter Akinola, the Chairman of the Conference of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA) and the head of the Anglican Church of Nigeria."

That's a pretty good encapsualtion of what I'm talking about here.

LH, can you flip me a back-channel email? joe, here at windsofchange dot net.

Joe:
"Westerners generally didn't undertake slave raids themselves, but simply bought from the Africans and Arabs who already ran the slave trade."
IIRC (can't give exact ref: memory failure; may have been Hugh Thomas The Slave Trade: Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870) the increasing involvement of Europeans Africa often tended to reverse earlier patterns of slaving, at least in west Africa.

Trans-Saharan trade had often entailed the Muslim states/tribes of the Sahel raiding southward into the Guinea/Soudan belt; European contacts with the Guinea Coast encouraged the coastal peoples to raid or trade northward, and gave them plentiful, cheap supplies of muskets for raiding and various goods for trading.

Does anyone know anything about different categories of slavery in Islamic societies?
For instance, were the slave-soldier mameluks, though slaves nonetheless the ruling military caste of late medieval Egypt of distinct legal status to other slaves?
And did their "recruitment" cease when their originating tribes were converted to Islam?

It seems to me likely that Christianity and Islam were likely to have been differentiated in their deeper attitudes to slavery by their early histories.

Christianity as the religion of a heterogeneous group including slaves, within a slavery-based Roman Empire, had to accept slavery as a legal possibility in the sphere of the civil power.
And only slowly moved away from this within Christendom with the historical interaction of Christianity, Roman law, and the Germanic tribal law influences on the medieval states.
Thus enslavement and exploitation of people outside the pale of Christendom remained acceptable in civil terms for a long time.
But was nonetheless vulnerable to the combined assault of enlightenment universalised humanism and the eventual rise of ethical Protestant questioning of the status quo.

Whereas Islam was a religion of conquerors, claiming both spiritual AND civil dominion from the outset.
Its adherents tended, in each new zone of expansion, to be initially a minority BUT one broadly homogenous in culture and dominant politically and militarily.
Such a system might well be more conducive to an acceptance of slavery explicitly embedded in its social and religio-legal system as acceptable treatment for non-Muslims.
And the self-interest of dominant conquerors would reinforce a justification of exploitation, and embed this in a tradition of ethnic and religous superiority.

IIRC, within Islam, Arabs are notorious for assumptions of a social/cultural superiority WRT South Asians, Black African, Berbers, Turks, Kurds, Cental Asians etc. (a disdain which the Turks and Iranians, at least, repay in kind).

After Roman times christianity was mostly a religion of the kings which was slowly taken up by the rest of the population by force. Also most people in medieval Europe where bound to the land and were akin to slaves.
Also slavery didn't end for West in the 1860's. For example the Chinese laborors in California were defacto slaves and the colonial powers often used the local population as slaves.

There is a lot of diverense between aworker now and a slave but is the same true for a 19 century factory worker?

Hey a (#20 and #8): Keep stretching that silly experiment in equivalence, you already passed the point where it no longer holds as a real analogy for any thinking person.

Here's the next place you can take your little thought experiment: I'm like a slave to my wife and her Honey-Do list.

#20 a,

Who freed the Chinese slaves?

#20 a:
Christianity a religion of kings in medieval times and imposed more widely by force?

There was great variation over the period and by area, but this is hardly the case for the romance and celtic lands.
Christianity there had become pretty well established as a popular religion there by the fall of Rome.

In germanic lands, especially England and Scandinavia, there was both "top-down" conversion of kings and courtiers, and general evangelisation.
Coercion, privileges for Christians, and supression of organised paganism played a part, but naked militaristic "convert or die" was more limited. IIRC the main cases were the Carolingian campaign against the Saxons and the Teutonic Knights against the Balts.

" most people in medieval Europe where bound to the land and were akin to slaves."
Rural populations were divided, percentages varying, between the two broad types: peasant and serf.
Peasants were legally free, albeit often subject to the jurisdiction of a lord, and tended to hold land on rental or even freehold.
Serfs (medieval western as opposed to recent Russian) were legally unfree, but distinct from slaves, and held land by custom, if at all.
Legal definitions and protections varied by time and place.
But generally a serf was bound to the manor, owed service to its lord. However, he was NOT the property of the lord, who was obligated, in theory if not in practice, to provide protection, patronage and justice to serfs. The serf had rights in law, and was theologically an equal member of the laity of the Church.

Medieval chattel slavery is another issue.
For instance as well as domestic slaves, there was the major trade in European slaves (largely Slavs) sold by Europeans into Islamic lands.
But chattel slavery proved uneconomic as for most forms of labour.

The Church had long ago reached an accomodation with Classical practice on this. It had had to; but it remained a legal and economic convenience, not an integral part of a theo-legal system.

So once the economic disadvantages of slavery eroded its prevalence, the doctrine that Christians and Europeans, and later all faiths and races, should not be enslaved, was able to gradually spread as a legal and theological principle.

Allow me to play devils advocate here for a sec.

I do not doubt the facts presented in the article and in the comments. It seems to me that no culture or religion can claim to be righteous on the subject. This is indeed a tonic of knowledge particularly for those currently attracted to islam by its line that it is less racist and in general the more moral and righteous society compared with the history of the West.

But, I have to wonder two things about the slant fo the article.

Its facts may be correct. Yes muslims participated in the slave trade as much as anyone else and yes, it was a Christian movement that led to the abolition of legal slavery and the slave trade throughout much of the world (lands under British control) So its true that islam did not originate the end of slavery but bowed to pressure from without and its true that the Christian movement derived its principles from Christian teaching.

But I think the interpretation of the article is very much slanted to favor Christianity. No mention is made of the islamic record of freeing slaves from the earliest times and I have seen solid historical citations of this from muslim sources which I don't have reason to doubt. I'm sure muslims can dig up plenty of evidence that there have always been muslims who opposed slavery.

Also, was it really much worse for slaves exported to the ME. Is there another possible explaination? I think there is though I dont mean to imply that I have proof. What else could explain the lack of a visible black minority in the ME like we have here in the US? I think there are two other possibilities besides saying that they all died. One possibility is intermarriage. Whereas European culture, particularly in the North, had little contact with other peoples for much of their history and so had a great deal more trouble crossing the racial gap in marraige, the peoples of the ME mixed from time in memorial. It simply never was any different by and large and so was never an issue. Therefore, black slaves would not have been so restricted in their mates as they were in the West. In the West, blacks until even recent times, only reproduced with other blacks engendering black children and a visible black population. Even the children of white slave owners born to black women, paired off with black mates at maturity.

This is not to deny that perhaps a great many of the slaves taken to the ME died in transit or from inhumane conditions. I'm sure the numbers were great. But of those who survived another factor then may have come into play. As someone here said, in general slaves who became muslims were freed and that the children of slaves (if they weren't killed to avoid the economic burden of raising them as ones own children) were not raised as slaves, then slavery was 1) easy to escape by conversion (though I am sure there are exceptions to that as well) 2) not perpetuated by the children of slaves. Then these freed slaves were free, due to ancient practice, to marry whomever they wanted. I imagine that if its true, and I believe that it is, that slave women and men were kept separate in the population due several factors, then there would have been more children of mixed race produced than children born to two black parents. This majority would then go on not to marry other blacks but to have children with other Arabs until black racial features were absorbed into the population.

I am not saying that this it true, only one possibility. Believe me I am not one to let muslims of the hook for anything, but I feel it is only fair in this case to put the idea forward. I by no means intend to let muslims off the hook for their terrible record of slavery and I do not mean to detract from the mighty Christian contribution to slavery's legal abolition. Lets just not get carried away by the suggestion that there are few blacks in the ME because they all died before they could leave descendants. I dont think we should jump to conclusions.

btw, I'm thinking that a is a muslim. Only a muslim would be party to the kind of propaganda that he relates that Christianity was never a religion of the people but was imposed from above. I'll just bet that he has also heard that islam was never like that but was always accepted freely by the people or some such clap trap. Also his moral relativism has a islamic flavor to it. He seems to be to be saying that islam is not to blame for slavery because someone else started it. He seems to have no conception that any religion that didn't/hasn't willingly stopped slavery is every bit as responsible as those who began the practice, in fact more so. Slavery is still a reality in this world and all faiths and cultures are guilty of it in some way. None are innocent. But Christians can say that we at least made it illegal and we have fought it tooth and nail ever since. Thats something at least that we can be glad of and thankful to God for people like William Wilberforce. All credit properly goes to God for this fact and we should be glad for his favor on us rather than claiming credit for it for men. To the extent that Christian teaching played a part, we should not be proud of that but thankful that God gave us the teachings that eventually won out albiet at a criminally reprehensibly late date.

The british naval blockades didn't really prevent slaverly. They stoppsed slaved ships on the ocean and are responsible to displacing them in the Island of Barbados and the Bahamas, to only become indentured servents of their white masters.

Christains are just as guilty for black slavery as Muslims.They very same people who owned slaves in the states and abused them on Friday went to Church on Sunday. They'll probably like you think the civil war was fought to free the slaves. Hogwosh! It was purely economic. Don't get it twisted.

In reply to the person who is so confident that gypsys are the descendants of Middle Eastern slaves. They are actually descendants of Indian musicians who decided not to go back to India after a gig in Persia some 7 or 800 years ago.

Who freed the Chinese slaves?

Mao had a lot to do with that. Reduce the number of people who can afford slaves, and a lot fewer people buy slaves.

Historically, slavery was the major alternative to genocide. When your own population expands past what you can feed, you need more land. If you succeed in taking somebody else's land what do you do with them? Let them head in the other direction and try to conquer somebody else's land, or kill them, or enslave them. Enslaving them was the kinder choice.

And when your population is on the edge of carrying capacity, who doesn't reproduce? Who gets the short end of everything? Of course, the slaves. And was the middle east on the edge of carrying capacity, barely able to feed themselves? Much of the time. While the USA was a big empty country after we cleared the indians out, with lots of room to expand, and our population is still expanding to this day.

Compare italy -- why are the italians mostly italian when the romans brought in lots and lots of slaves? Because their slaves didn't have a whole lot of surviving children. Why let a slave raise an expensive child when the army was still bringing in cheap slaves from the borders?

I don't have actual data handy, but that same logic applies in the USA too. Why let slaves raise children when imported slaves are cheaper? I know the price of slaves went way up when they could no longer be imported, and they were restricted to natural increase. But without the data it's possible the price increase came from a big increase in demand more than the restriction in supply and the expense of raising the children.

It helped too that most slavery in the USA didn't involve killing work. Cotton was reasonably safe apart from rattlesnake bites, and our mining was mostly done by wage-slaves. Woad was killing work but we didn't do a whole lot of it.