Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry (35 page)

27. David Hume, "Of parties in general," in Essays. My thanks are due to E.
Kedourie for drawing my attention to this passage.

28. Fumey, Archives marocaines, pp. 330-33.

29. W. G. Browne, Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria from the Year 1792 to 1798,
2d ed. (London, 1806), p. 54; Louis Frank, Memoire sur le commerce des negres au
Kaire et sur les maladies auxquelles its sort sujets en v arrivant (Paris, 1802). pp. 37-38.

30. On this curious episode, see Raverat and Dellard, "Historique du bataillon
negre egyptien au Mexique (1863-1867)," Revue d'Egypte 1 (1894-95), pp. 42-53,
104-23, 176-85, 230-45, 272-86; 'Umar Tusun, Butulat al-Urta al-Sudaniyya al-
Misriyya fi harh al-Maksik (Cairo, 1352/1933).

31. R. R. Madden, Travels in Turkey, Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine .... 2d ed.,
vol. 1 (London, 1833), pp. 145-46.

32. Bernard Lewis, "Slade on the Turkish Navy," Journal of Turkish Studies 2
(1987), p. 10. The report was written by Adolphus Slade, a British naval officer
attached at that time to the Turkish Navy and known as the author of a number of
important books about the Ottoman Empire.

33. The Turkish is kapt kulu, lit. "slave of the Gate." On the Gate, or entrance to a
building, as a metaphor of sovereignty, see B. Lewis, The Political Language of /slam
(Chicago, 1988), pp. 20-21. The term "Sublime Porte." which came into European
usage at a later date, refers to the office of the grand vizier, to which the effective
conduct of government had been transferred.

Chapter 10

1. W. G. Browne (Travels in Egypt, Syria, and Africa (in 1793), 2d ed. [London,
1806]) offers considerable information on the slave routes in Africa. For the nineteenthcentury slave trade, see J. L. Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 2d ed. (London, 1822), esp.
pp. 290ff.; T. F. Buxton, The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy (London, 1840), esp.
pp. 39ff., 90ff., 192ff.; Captain Colomb, R. N. Slave-Catching in the Indian Ocean
(London, 1873). For some modern studies, see J. B. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf
1795-1880 (Oxford, 1968), pp. 441-51; Reginald Coupland, The Exploitation of East
Africa 1856-1890: The Slave Trade and the Scramble (London, 1939); A. Adu Boahen,
Britain, the Sahara, and the Western Sudan 1788-1861 (Oxford, 1964); Esmond B.
Martin and T. C. I. Ryan, "A quantitative assessment of the Arab slave trade of East
Africa, 1770-1896," Kenya Historical Review 5 (1977), pp. 71-91; Glauco Ciam-
maichella, Libyens etfrancais au Tchad (1897-1914): La Confrerie senoussie et le commerce transsaharien (Paris, 1987); G. Baer, Studies in the Social History of Modern
Egypt (Chicago, 1969), pp. 161-89; Terence Walz, "Black slavery in Egypt during the
nineteenth century as reflected in the Mahkama archives of Cairo," in Slaves and Slavery
in Muslim Africa, ed. J. R. Willis, vol. 2 (London, 1985), pp. 137-60; Terence Walz,
Trade between Egypt and Bilad as-Sudan, 1700-1820 (Cairo, 1978), pp. 173-221 (chap.
6, "Trading in Slaves"); Allan G. B. Fisher and Humphrey J. Fisher, Slavery and Muslim
Society in Africa (London, 1970); on the Sudan, see, further, R. Hill, Egypt in the Sudan
1820-1881 (London, 1959), pp. 24ff., 62ff., and passim; R. Gray. A History of the
Southern Sudan 1839-1889 (London, 1961); P. M. Holt, A Modern History of the Sudan,
2d ed. (London, 1963), pp. 14, 35, 61-72, and passim; Gabriel Warburg, "Slavery and
labour in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan," Asian and African Studies 12 (1978), pp. 221-45.

2. Cheykh Muhammad ibn `Ali ibn Zayn al-'Abidin, Le Livre du Soudan, trans.
Marcel Grisard and Jean-Louis Bacque-Grammont (Paris, 1981), pp. 8-9. The Arabic
original of this work is lost; the translation was made from a Turkish version published
in Istanbul in 1846. On the slave trade, see, further, R. S. O'Fahey, "Slavery and the
slave trade in Dar Fur," Journal of African History 14 (1963), pp. 29-43.

3. See Alan Fisher, The Crimean Tatars (Stanford, 1978), pp. 15-16, 26-29, 42;
idem, The Russian Annexation of the Crimea, 1772-1783 (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 19-21.

4. Ettore Rossi, Storia di Tripoli e dalla Tripolitania della conquista araba a! 1911
(Rome, 1968), pp. 316-19 (based mainly on Italian consular reports). Sometimes
over-successful slave raiding produced a glut of slaves, and lowered prices. At the
market in Bagirmi, at the southern end of Lake Chad, in 1878, an old man could be
bought for two to three dollars; a woman, young or old, for five dollars. A child, age
six to eight, could be bartered for a locally made shirt, valued at seventy-five cents. See
Fisher and Fisher, Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa, p. 165. On African slaves in
Ottoman Europe, see Richard Pankhurst, "Ethiopian and other African slaves in
Greece during the Ottoman occupation," Slavery and Abolition 1 (1980), pp. 339-44.
A British visitor to Crete in 1834 noted that "in the principal towns there are slaves in
the families of every gentlemen. The price of labour is everywhere very high, the
difficulty of obtaining labourers in many cases amounting to an absolute impossibility,
and the markets of Khania and Megalo-Kastron are as regularly furnished with human
flesh as they are with bullocks, the supply of both being chiefly drawn from the same
place, Bengazi" (Pankhurst, "Ethiopian and other African slaves," p. 341, citing Robert Pashley, Travels in Crete, vol. 2 [Cambridge and London, 18371, p. 104). Pankhurst
cites numerous other sources on this topic.

5. See below, pp. 161ff.

6. Enver Pascha, Um Tripolis (Munich, 1918), p. 90. My thanks are due to Michel
Le Gall for this reference.

7. See documents in Lewis Hertslet, ed., A Complete Collection of the Treaties
and Conventions, and Reciprocal Regulations, at Present Subsisting between Great
Britain and Foreign Powers, etc., vol. 10 (London, 1859), pp. 1011-12, 1014-17, 10971100; vol. 11 (1861), pp. 551-53.

8. See C. Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka, vol. 2 (The Hague, 1888-89), pp. 12-23,
132-37; in English, C. Snouck-Hurgronje, Mekka in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth
Century (London, 1931), pp. 10-20, 106-10; R. F. Burton, Peronal Narrative of a
Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Mecca (London, 1924), vol. 1, pp. 47, 49, 59-61; vol. 2,
pp. 12-13, 233, 251-52.

9. Quoted in M. Kaya Bilgegil, Ziya Pasa uzerinde bir Arastirma, 2d ed., vol. 1
(Ankara, 1979), p. 399.

10. Rudolf C. Slatin, known as Slatin Pasha, who was a captive of the Mahdi for
two years, wrote a vivid account of the slave trade-the capture and transportation of
the slaves and the central slave market at the Mahdist capital, Omdurman (Fire and
Sword in the Sudan [London, 1897], pp. 557ff.).

11. Browne, Travels, p. 76. Bouza or buza is a kind of beer.

12. E. W. Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, 5th ed., vol. 1 (London, 1871), pp. 168-69, 233-34.

13. Arnold Kemball to Lt. Col. H. D. Robertson (officiating resident, Kharaq),
July 8, 1842 (enclosed in H. D. Robertson to Willoughby [chief secretary to the
government in Bombay], July 9, 1842 [No. 116 Secret Dept.]), enclosure to Secret
Letter 106 of Sept. 30, 1842, Enclosures to Bombay Secret Letters, vol. 50, India Office
Records, London. Cf. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, pp. 411ff. See below, Document 5, pp. 157-59. On the slave trade from Africa to the Persian Gulf, see, further,
Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic History of Iran 1800-1914 (Chicago, 1971), pp.
124-28.

14. I am indebted to Shaun Marmon's study, in preparation, on the eunuch custodians of the Prophet's tomb. For a contemporary comment on the quasi-sacerdotal status
of certain eunuchs, see Alfred von Kremer, Aegypten: Forschungen fiber Land and
Volk wahrend eines zehnjahrigen Aufenthalts, vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1863), p. 88.

15. On the Ottoman court eunuchs, see H. A. R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic
Society and the West, vol. 1, Islamic Society in the Eighteenth Century, pt. 1 (London,
1950), pp. 76f., 329ff.; N. M. Penzer, The Harem (London, 1936), pp. 125-51, 233:
Ismail Hakki Uzuncargili, Osmanli devletinin saray teskilkti (Ankara, 1945), pp. 172-83;
cagatay Ulucay, Harem 11 (Ankara, 1971), pp. 117-31 and passim. For an earlier
comment, see Paul Rycaut, A History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire, 4th ed.
(London. 1675), pp. 66-67. On the modern period, see chapter 1, n. 34.

16. A. Ubicini contrasts the brilliant careers open to white slaves, both male and
female. with the domestic drudgery that is the universal fate of the blacks: "Only one
path is open to them [black males] to reach high honor, that of the meheyn [palace
staff]; but one knows on what condition" (La Turquie actuelle [Paris, 1855]. p. 294).

17. Louis Frank, Memoire surle commerce des Negres au Kaire (Paris, 1802), pp. 1314; Gabriel Baer, Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago, 1969), p. 164.

18. J. L. Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia (London, 1819), pp. 294-96. See, further,
Prince von Puckler-Muskau, Aus Mehemed Ali's Reich, vol. 3 (Stuttgart, 1844), pp.
158-59 (in English, Prince von Puckler-Muskau, Egypt under Mehemet Ali, vol. 2 [London, 1845], p. 251); H. von Maltzan, Meine Wallfahrt nach Mekka, vol. I
(Leipzig, 1865), pp. 48-49. Maltzan notes that many of the castrated black boys died,
and that the survivors were sold at twenty times their previous price.

19. See above. p. 101.

20. Baer, Studies, p. 166 (citing a British consular report); cf. other sources quoted
pp. 165-68.

Chapter 11

1. "0 you who believe! Do not forbid the good things which God has permitted
to you" (Qur'an V:87). On this, the commentator Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (al-Tafstr al-
Kabir, vol. 12 [Cairo, 1938], p. 71) observes: "It is clear that just as one may not permit
what God forbids, so one may not forbid what God permits." The same point was
made by the sultan of Morocco in a letter of April 1842 written in reply to an enquiry
from the British consul general concerning the slave trade. See below, p. 156.

2. There is an extensive literature on the Western, largely British, anti-slavery
movement. For a detailed survey of abolitionism and abolition in the Muslim states,
see Murray Gordon, Slavery in the Arab World (New York, 1989), pp. 208-38, and
sources cited there.

3. M. Bompard, Legislation de Tunisie (Paris, 1888), p. 398. An important and
interesting statement of views on slavery is contained in a letter sent by Husayn Pasha,
head of the Tunis municipal council, to Amos Perry, the U.S. consul general in Tunis,
in the last decade of Jumada 1, 1281 = late October 1864, in answer to his enquiry
about Tunisian experience of slavery and abolition and their effects. Husayn Pasha,
while conceding that Islamic law allows slavery, nevertheless argues on both practical
and moral grounds in favor of abolition and commends this choice to the American
republic (Amos Perry to Husayn Pasha, November 12, 1863, Record Group No. 84,
pp. 178-80, U.S. National Archives; Husayn Pasha to Amos Perry, October 1864, in
Kanz al-Ragha'ib fi Muntakhabat al-Jawa'ib, vol. 6 [Istanbul, 1871-801, pp. 46-51, and
in Ra'if al-Khuri, ed., Al-Fikr al-'Arabi al-Hadith: Athar al-thawra al-Faransiyya ft
Tawjihihi al-Siyasi wa 1-/jtima'i [Beirut, 1943], pp. 223-28 [it was first published, in
Arabic, in the Istanbul Arabic newspaper Al-Jawa'ib]; English translation by Ihsan
`Abbas, Modern Arab Thought: Channels of the French Revolution to the Arab East
[Princeton, NJ, 1983], pp. 152-57).

4. On abolition in the Ottoman Empire, see Ehud R. Toledano, The Ottoman
Slave Trade and Its Suppression (Princeton, NJ, 1982); Ismail Parlatir, Tanzimat
Edebiyatinda Kolelik (Ankara, 1987). This book is concerned with slavery in
nineteenth-century Turkish literature. The introduction, based on documents in the
Turkish archives, deals with the practice and abolition of slavery in the Ottoman
Empire. On Egypt, see Gabriel Baer. "Slavery and its abolition," in his Studies in the
Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago, 1969), pp. 161-89.

5. G. Young, Corps de droit ottoman, vol. 2 (Oxford, 1903), pp. 171-72.

6. Ibid., pp. 172-74, 180-81.

7. Ibid., pp. 175ff. For some Turkish documents, see Hamdi Atamer. "Zenci
Ticaretinin Yasaklanmasi," Belgelerle Turk Tarihi Dergisi 3 (1967), pp. 23-29, partially translated in Documents 6 and 7, below, pp. 160-61.

8. A detailed account of these events in the Hijaz, including the texts of the
documents cited, is given in Cevdet Pasa, Tezakir 1-12 (Ankara 1953), pp. 101-52.
Other contemporary accounts may be found in the reports of the British and French consuls in Jedda. For modern studies, see Bernard Lewis. "The Tanzimat and social
equality," in Economie et societes clans !'Empire Ottoman, ed. Jean-Louis Bacquc-
Grammont and Paul Dumont (Paris, 1982), pp. 47-54; William Ochsenwald, Religion,
Society, and the State in Arabia: The Hijaz under Ottoman Control, 1840-1908 (Columbus, OH, 1984), pp. 117-27, 138-41; Toledano, Ottoman Slave Trade, pp. 129-35.

9. I owe this image to Lord Shackleton; see his speech of July 14, 1960, in the
debate cited in note 10.

10. For a discussion of the slave trade between Africa and Arabia in 1960,
see Hansard Parliamentary Debates (House of Lords), 5th ser., vol. 225 (1960), col.
335.

11. C. Snouck Hurgronje, "Ober seine Reise nach Mekka," Verhandlungen der
Gesellschaft fiir Erdkunde zu Berlin 14 (1887), pp. 150-51; for a more extensive
treatment, idem, Mekka, vol. 2 (The Hague, 1889), pp. 12ff.; in English, C. Snouck
Hurgronje, Mekka in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century, trans. J. H. Monahan
(Leiden and London, 1931), pp. 10ff.

12. T. F. Keane, Six Months in Mecca (London, 1881), pp. 94-100.

13. Ludwig Stross, "Sclaverei and Sclavenhandel in Ost-Afrika and im Rothen
Meere," Oesterreichische Monatsschrift fur den Orient 12 (December 15, 1886). pp.
211-15.

14. For estimates of the numbers of slaves sent from black Africa to North Africa
and the Middle East, see L. C. Brown, "Color in Northern Africa," Daedalus 96
(1967), pp. 467, 479; Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914
(Chicago, 1971), pp. 124-26; Raymond Mauny, Les Siecles obscurs de l'Afrique noire
(Paris, 1970), pp. 240ff.; UNESCO, African Slave Trade (Paris, 1979), contributions by
I. B. Kake and Bethwell A. Ogot. In about 1839, T. F. Buxton gave, as a "conservative
estimate," a figure of twenty thousand black slaves a year transported by the desert
routes to the Arab lands (The African Slave Trade [London, 18391, pp. 46ff., cited by
Brown). Estimates of slaves exported by sea routes from Zanzibar, in the same period,
vary between twenty and thirty thousand a year. Esmond B. Martin and T. C. I. Ryan
("A quantitative assessment of the Arab slave trade of East Africa, 1770-1896," Kenya
Historical Review 5 [1977], pp. 71-91) conclude that in the 125 years covered by their
study, fewer than one million slaves were exported to destinations outside East Africa
and about another one million were absorbed by local demand on the East African
coast. In an admittedly rough estimate, Mauny puts the total drain of African slaves to
the Muslim lands at fourteen million. See also above, p. 10, and below, pp. 157ff.