AHC/WI: Islam without slavery

As early as possible, have an Islamic country either legally ban slavery or de facto abandon the practice of it.

Is this realistic in the pre-modern age? What effects would it have? (although I suspect the conditions required for an Islamic economy to eliminate slavery would be more butterfly-inducing than elimination itself)

Well, if Muhhamad puts a straight no-slavery rule in Islam, it could achieve it, but I expect thats not what your looking for. Perhaps a scholar could argue that you could never act with justice while owning a person (Islam requires that slaves are to be treated with justice), and that viewpoint could become wide enough to make it safe for a sultan to abolish the practice in whole. There would be no real big impediment to this religiously, as Islam looks favorably on freeing slaves, but economic considerations must be taken into account. Therefore, I think that a Sultanate based in Syria, Northern Mesopotamia or other places where slaves only served a domestic role would be the best place for this to happen.

I guess de facto abandonment is easier, since we have early examples of this happening in other parts of the world. A ban would have to contend with examples from the early days of Islam, so to get there you would need to posit major changes to Islamic jurisprudence. An idea would be for a state that is not directly engaged in warfare with non-Muslim powers and whose economy does not depend on slavery. Its inhabitants associate slavery with backward and warlike societies and focus on the tradition that views the slave as a fellow man. Their judges take the prohibition on enslaving Muslims seriously and free all convert slaves. Domestic labour is done by free, but dependent workers, as is productive labour (some form of family-based debt labour would offer itself). At some point, people in this society may own slaves the way some people in today's Europe own fighting cocks or dog carts. Most folk would view it as odd and somewhat distasteful, something out of the distant past that, while technically legal, if circumscribed, really has no place in today's world.

I'm not too good with the eastern half of the Islamic world, but in the west it would have to be before the Ottoman empire, and it could not happen in the Mediterranean.

according to Origin of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama, institution of Military Slavery is important on allowing Muslim Societies to become a state.

abolition of Military Slavery could mean no Abbassid. Islam on Arabia could collapse into various tribe once again. Persia and Byzantine might revive.

surviving Muslim Kingdom might become like Anatolia pre Ottoman, with various tribal emirate going to war against each other.

or they become more dependent on religious order to give them loyal army, Qizilbash, Ikhwan like military-religious order.

Eh, you know, Fukuyama have a certain ideology and perhaps bias... I'd take his stuff with a grain of salt when he speak of non occidental stuff, SPECIALLY the 'lands of Islam'.

^ Its possible.


But Islamic lands without Mameluke and Janissaries would certainly very different .

PhilippeO said:

^ Its possible.


But Islamic lands without Mameluke and Janissaries would certainly very different .

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I don't think it is easily possible throughout the Islamic world. Slavery is strongly ingrained in the societies that the Muslim conquerors took over and became part of, and slaves are an intrinsic part of the rewards of successful war. Even in societies ideologically opposed to slavery, this kind of thing did not change instantly (look at the "military wives" french Colonial troops "acquired" or the Boer "apprentices" taken from neighbouring African states). In a world where slavery is not only normal, but sanctioned by religious tradition, I can't see it disappearing entirely. But it would be plausible for it to wither away in parts of the Islamic world simply through lack of use. That is what happened e.g. in Germany. As late as the eighteenth century, Germans in Germany owned slaves. In some cases, they were even Muslim captives from the Turkish frontier (we have the late seventeenth century account of an Ottoman soldier who spent several decades in European slavery as the gardener of an Austrian nobleman). However, the institution was so uncommon, the structures so unfamiliar, that almost everyone went by the assumption that the black serving boys and musicians, Turkish menservants and occasional Indian or Javanese butlers you saw in the company of the powerful were servants just like everyone else's. Everybody treated them as such, they were paid as such, they got married and started families as such, and at some point the legal fact that they were slaves became an irrelevance. In the end, in some cases courts of law found against very surprised masters trying to enforce their rights, but more often, the fact of the matter simply stood by common consent. You could something similars happening elsewhere.

Incidentally, I suspect Fukuyama got it wrong - military slavery is a development OF the development islamic body politic, not a requirement for its emergence. Of course I'm not an expert on this, but military slavery ion the anmcient world was limited to a very few instances (possibly the Germani Corporis Custodes and a few Hellenistic bodyguards), and I have never seen references to military slaves in any early Muslim army (so-called "client" tribes, but that is something completely different). The concept only seems to emerged sometime in the established caliphate, which makes perfect sense when you consider that the caliphs controlled large amounts of cash, but often not a lot of armed loyal subjects. They deliberately did not reward soldiers with land, but paid them, and often specifically recruited people from outside the "civilised" world. Add to that the fact that slaves of powerful men in the Islamic middle ages often held positions of great trust and honour, and you can see how it made sense to buy instead of rent, so to speak.

PhilippeO said:

^ Its possible.


But Islamic lands without Mameluke and Janissaries would certainly very different .

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Janissaries could exist under different terms.

TurkishCapybara said:

Janissaries could exist under different terms.

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Would be difficult getting those terms. I doubt most families would willingly give up their strongest sons, especially as they were brought from far from Constanstinople so that their only loyalty and connection would be to the Caliph. Sultan. Whatever he was called. Maybe something like the Romans did with orphans?

TurkishCapybara said:

Janissaries could exist under different terms.

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True, they would. But the Mamelukes would need something. As the Egyptians were never a military people, at least not for a long time. So they needed a constant supply of mercs.

elkarlo said:

True, they would. But the Mamelukes would need something. As the Egyptians were never a military people, at least not for a long time. So they needed a constant supply of mercs.

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That and they didn't like to reproduce.

Once said:

As early as possible, have an Islamic country either legally ban slavery or de facto abandon the practice of it.

Is this realistic in the pre-modern age? What effects would it have? (although I suspect the conditions required for an Islamic economy to eliminate slavery would be more butterfly-inducing than elimination itself)

Click to expand...

It's important to note that slavery was accepted as standard practice across all human cultures and all times. Islam was not unique in this regard. Western civilization was unique in that it became the only civilization and culture to debate the ethics of slavery and eventually abolished it for reasons having to do with the development of the concept of human rights from its origins in Christianity.

Islamic theology did not have the same precepts that Christianity did that caused Europeans to question slavery. That the Prophet Mohammed gave rules concerning the treatment of slaves implies his acceptance of the institution of slavery (at least for non-Muslims). For a Muslim society to abolish slavery would imply it was asking a lot of questions about Islam that simply never came up in the real world. It implies a heritage of lots of theological inquiry and questioning.

That requires a POD going very far back. It might mean that the Falsafa movement (which attempted to reconcile Koranic revelation with Greek philosophy) decisively beat the Asharite movement by Al-Ghazali which goes back to early 12th century instead of losing to it. Since the early 10th century, Islam had become less and less open to new ideas. Especially in the Sunni world, the religious establishment sought to stop new interpretations of Islamic law (ijtihad) in favor of simply copying previous decisions made. This is a very anti-intellectual sentiment.

To a certain extent, Islam is handicapped this way that other religions are not because the Koran is thought to be the actual words of Allah, unlike other religious texts. Something specifically said by God is treated differently than something written down by a man, even if divinely inspired.

If we can imagine a world where the philosophers won out, they we could imagine a Muslim society that was open enough to come to its own conclusions about slavery. (But it would also probably be very different about a lot of other aspects of Islam and therefore a very different world.) Once that is made, a single emirate, country, or other state that is not heavily dependent on slavery itself could probably abolish slavery.

elkarlo said:

True, they would. But the Mamelukes would need something. As the Egyptians were never a military people, at least not for a long time. So they needed a constant supply of mercs.

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The Mameluks would not exist, like the original Janissaries would`nt.

Iirc, enslaving fellow muslims is illegal. If we can prevent christians being a good source for janissaries,* we might get slavery rare enough that slaves are treated as 'believers in training', and slavery ceases to be a permanent thing.

* maybe someone "discovers" a hadith that says no People of tbe Book can be slaves, not just muslims.

The problem here is that Late Medieval Muslim states created slave military castes, which had the same kinds of monopolies on power that Boyars, Junkers, and Samurai did but actual abolition abolishes the caste that controls power itself. These castes were part of a general pattern in civilizations of the time, and thus to be a slave in the Muslim world could mean power and loot, which is the exact opposite of what it usually meant in Euro-America.

Blackfox5 said:

It's important to note that slavery was accepted as standard practice across all human cultures and all times. Islam was not unique in this regard. Western civilization was unique in that it became the only civilization and culture to debate the ethics of slavery and eventually abolished it for reasons having to do with the development of the concept of human rights from its origins in Christianity.

Islamic theology did not have the same precepts that Christianity did that caused Europeans to question slavery. That the Prophet Mohammed gave rules concerning the treatment of slaves implies his acceptance of the institution of slavery (at least for non-Muslims). For a Muslim society to abolish slavery would imply it was asking a lot of questions about Islam that simply never came up in the real world. It implies a heritage of lots of theological inquiry and questioning.

That requires a POD going very far back. It might mean that the Falsafa movement (which attempted to reconcile Koranic revelation with Greek philosophy) decisively beat the Asharite movement by Al-Ghazali which goes back to early 12th century instead of losing to it. Since the early 10th century, Islam had become less and less open to new ideas. Especially in the Sunni world, the religious establishment sought to stop new interpretations of Islamic law (ijtihad) in favor of simply copying previous decisions made. This is a very anti-intellectual sentiment.

To a certain extent, Islam is handicapped this way that other religions are not because the Koran is thought to be the actual words of Allah, unlike other religious texts. Something specifically said by God is treated differently than something written down by a man, even if divinely inspired.

If we can imagine a world where the philosophers won out, they we could imagine a Muslim society that was open enough to come to its own conclusions about slavery. (But it would also probably be very different about a lot of other aspects of Islam and therefore a very different world.) Once that is made, a single emirate, country, or other state that is not heavily dependent on slavery itself could probably abolish slavery.

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The Quran is this in theory but the existence of the Hadiths and abrogation means that it's rather less so in practice.

PhilippeO said:

according to Origin of Political Order by Francis Fukuyama, institution of Military Slavery is important on allowing Muslim Societies to become a state.

abolition of Military Slavery could mean no Abbassid. Islam on Arabia could collapse into various tribe once again. Persia and Byzantine might revive.

surviving Muslim Kingdom might become like Anatolia pre Ottoman, with various tribal emirate going to war against each other.

or they become more dependent on religious order to give them loyal army, Qizilbash, Ikhwan like military-religious order.

Click to expand...

In a specific phase of Muslim history there was some truth to this. The problem with that analysis is that the existence of mercenaries was essential to European states becoming states, meaning that Muslim monarchs could command armies that that were guaranteed to be loyal where Europeans remained in the trap of creating armies they could never fully control. So by this analysis even these slave castes are yet another example of how Islam is a superior pre-modern system to anything produced by Christianity and how the West could only rise if it abolished its traditional institutions because those institutions are inferior.

This of course is less a serious argument than giving a specific example of why Fukuyama's "reasoning" is not reasoning at all.

The eastern economy was considerably more sophisticated at this time- in "Dark Age" Europe, currency was not really used as a method of exchange of goods and what-not, and slavery was, from what I've read, somewhat present.

In the east, where there was much more infrastructure, agricultural development, etc, I at least think slaves would be hard to do without.

Maybe if Mohammed had been enslaved at some point, even if the Qu'ran said nothing about it, slavery would be condemned, at least in name?

What about slavery under another name, like the "apprenticeships for life," in early Postcolonial America that I've heard of.

BelisariusCaeser said:

The eastern economy was considerably more sophisticated at this time- in "Dark Age" Europe, currency was not really used as a method of exchange of goods and what-not, and slavery was, from what I've read, somewhat present.

In the east, where there was much more infrastructure, agricultural development, etc, I at least think slaves would be hard to do without.

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Was slavery a more efficient way to manage labor than whatever Europe was doing at the time? Why was that?

Once said:

Was slavery a more efficient way to manage labor than whatever Europe was doing at the time? Why was that?

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Slavery is more flexible that interpersonal obligation. You can buy or rent a slave when you need one and sell afterwards. Also, slaves are valuable tradable assets in themselves. A serf (to use the shorthand term) is customarily bound to the soil and in the event of taking up different duties than farming may end up acquiring different status (armsbearing serfs in Germany entered the nobility, and trained urban artisans of servile status often came to be regarded as free even before this became law). You have none of these problems with outright slavery. A slave can be your bodyguard, your business manager, or the most skilled goldsmith in Damascus and still be a slave.

Interestingly, this is also where European colonial chattel slavery was more like serfdom than classical slavery. Imagine the reaction if the governor of South Carolina had kept a retinue of armed slaves...

carlton_bach said:

Slavery is more flexible that interpersonal obligation. You can buy or rent a slave when you need one and sell afterwards. Also, slaves are valuable tradable assets in themselves. A serf (to use the shorthand term) is customarily bound to the soil and in the event of taking up different duties than farming may end up acquiring different status (armsbearing serfs in Germany entered the nobility, and trained urban artisans of servile status often came to be regarded as free even before this became law). You have none of these problems with outright slavery. A slave can be your bodyguard, your business manager, or the most skilled goldsmith in Damascus and still be a slave.

Interestingly, this is also where European colonial chattel slavery was more like serfdom than classical slavery. Imagine the reaction if the governor of South Carolina had kept a retinue of armed slaves...

Click to expand...

Hmm, so I guess that means the one (obvious) idea I had, ASBs giving the Muslims world some trade innovation leading to an early introduction of capitalism, wouldn't really work to eliminate slavery. (Is that even practical?) The institution of slavery in Muslim societies was flexible enough to support, hypothetically, the economic freedom a strong merchant class would need, right? Purely in the realm of hypothetical ASB, would it be flexible enough for industrialization? Heh, we'll brute force slavery out of Muslim economies by having ASBs give them more and more modern inventions.