Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

HONOR AND DEGRADATION 169
eliminated slavery, even when the institution largely vanished in the
rest of the Medieval world. True, he argues, Mohammed did not forbid
the practice, but still, the early Caliphate was the first government we
know of that actually succeeded in eliminating all these practices (judicial
abuse, kidnappings, the sale of offspring) that had been recognized
as social problems for thousands of years, and to limit slavery strictly
to prisoners of war.
The book's most enduring contribution, though, lay simply in asking:
What do all these circumstances have in common AI-Wahid's
answer is striking in its simplicity: one becomes a slave in situations
where one would otherwise have died. This is obvious in the case of
war: in the ancient world, the victor was assumed to have total power
over the vanquished, including their women and children; all of them
could be simply massacred. Similarly, he argued, criminals were condemned
to slavery only for capital crimes, and those who sold themselves,
or their children, normally faced starvation.7
This is not just to say, though, that a slave was seen as owing his
master his life since he would otherwise be dead.8 Perhaps this was true
at the moment of his or her enslavement. But after that, a slave could
not owe debts, because in almost every important sense, a slave was
dead. In Roman law, this was quite explicit. If a Roman soldier was
captured and lost his liberty, his family was expected to read his will
and dispose of his possessions. Should he later regain his freedom, he
would have to start over, even to the point of remarrying the woman
who was now considered his widow.9
In West Africa, according to one French anthropologist, the same
principles applied:
Once he had been finally removed from his own milieu through
capture the slave was considered as socially dead, just as if he
had been vanquished and killed in combat. Among the Mande,
at one time, prisoners of war brought home by the conquerors
were offered dege (millet and milk porridge)-because it was
held that a man should not die on an empty stomach-and
then presented with their arms so that they could kill themselves.
Anyone who refused was slapped on the face by his
abductor and kept as a captive: he had accepted the contempt
which deprived him of personality .10
Tiv horror stories about men who are dead but do not know it
or who are brought back from the grave to serve their murderers, and