islamic-jihad-legacy-of-forced-conversion-imperialism-slavery

Islamic Slaveryten. In the assault of Thessalonia in 903, 22,000 Christians were divided among the Arab chieftains or soldinto slavery. In Sultan Alp Arsalan’s devastation of Georgia and Armenia in 1064, there was immenseslaughter and all the survivors were enslaved. Almohad Caliph Yaqub al-Mansur of Spain raided Lisbon in1189, enslaving some 3,000 women and children. His governor of Cordoba attacked Silves in 1191, making3,000 Christians captive. 747Having captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, Sultan Saladin enslaved the Christianpopulation and sold them. In the capture of Antioch in 1268, Mamluk Sultan al-Zahir Baybars (r. 1260–77)enslaved 100,000 people after putting 16,000 defenders of the garrison to the sword. ‘The salve marketbecame so gutted that a boy would fetch only twelve dirhams and a girl five,’ notes Hitti. 748It is already noted that, after Muslims assumed power in Southeast Asia, they had promoted slaveryto such an extent that the Portuguese—arriving after a century—found that almost all the people belonged toslave-masters and the Arabs were prominent among the masters. It is also noted that Muslim rulers inSoutheast Asia often enslaved the entire population after capturing a territory and carry them away. In Java,Muslim rulers reduced the entire hill people, a substantial part of the population, to slavery through raids andpurchase. Sultan Iskandar Muda (r. 1607–36) of Aceh brought thousands of slaves to his capital as a result ofthe conquests in Malaya. Java was the largest exporter of slaves in around 1500; these slaves were captured in‘decisive wars of Islamization’. 749 The Sulu Sultanate, despite being under constant threat of being overtakenby the Spanish, brought as many as 2.3 million Filipinos as slaves from the Spanish-controlled Philippinesthrough Moro Jihad raids between 1665 and 1870. Late in the 1860s to 1880s, slaves constituted 6 percent totwo-thirds of the population in the Muslim-ruled regions of the Malay Peninsula and Indonesian Archipelago.Late in the eighteenth century, Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail (r. 1672–1727) ‘had an army ofblack slaves, said to number 250,000.’ 750 In 1721, Moulay Ismail ordered an expedition against a rebelterritory in the Atlas Mountains, where the rebels had resolved against sending tributes to the sultan. Upondefeating the rebels, ‘All the men were put to the sword, while the women and children… were carried back’to the capital. Soon afterwards, he ordered another expedition of 40,000-strong force under the command ofhis son Moulay as-Sharif against the rebel town of Guzlan that had withdrawn tribute. Upon seeing no hope ofwinning the battle, the rebels surrendered and sued for mercy. But Moulay as-Sharif ‘ordered every man to bekilled and decapitated.’ 751 Their women and children were obviously carried away as slaves.Guinea (Africa, currently 85 percept Muslim) came under the Muslim rule in the eighteenth century.During the latter part of this century, the ‘Upper Guinea Coast had “slave town” with as many as 1,000inhabitants’ under a chief. Traveling in Islamic Sierra Leone in 1823, Major Laing witnessed “slave town” inFalaba, the capital of Salima Susu. 752 These slaves worked in agricultural projects of the chief. The EastAfrican Empire of famed Sultan Sayyid Sa’id with its capital in Zanzibar (1806–56) ‘was founded upon747. Brodman JW (1986) Ransoming Captives in Crusader Spain: The Order of Merced on the Christian-IslamicFrontier, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, p. 2-3748. Hitti (1961), p. 316749. Reid (1988), p. 133750. Lewis B (1994) Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Oxford University Press, Chapter 8,http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/lewis1.html751. Milton, p. 143,169–71752. Rodney W (1972) In MA Klein & GW Johnson eds., Perspectives on the African Past, Little Brown Company,Boston, p. 158218