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

Islamic JihadISLAMIC SLAVE-TRADEThe advent of Islam raised the institution of slavery to an unprecedented scale: slaves became like a normalcommodity and slave-trade a normal business enterprise all over the Islamic world. As noted already, Sharialaws place slaves in the category of common property or commodity and specify prices of slaves based ontheir physical fitness, sexual attraction, and so on. Fatwa-i-Alamgiri specifies regulation of purchase of afemale slave on the basis of her having a too large breasts, too wide vagina or being a virgin or not. Traditionsof the Prophet and his honourable companions support these regulations.The origin of Islamic slave-trade: Slave-trade in Islam started with Prophet Muhammad’s selling some of theenslaved Banu Qurayza women to Najd for acquiring weapons and horses. The Prophet and his nascentMuslim community in Medina, dedicating themselves exclusively in the cause of Allah, engaged in raidingand plundering trade-caravans and infidel communities, which also became their means of making a living. Inthese campaigns, they frequently captured slaves, mostly the women and children. However, slave-trade wasthen not a flourishing trade vocation in Arabia. It was also not safe for the nascent Muslim community to sellthe enslaved in open markets. In this situation, the Prophet used to demand ransom from captives’ families toearn revenues as an alternative to selling them. Revenues were raised through ransoming the captives taken inthe attack of Nakhla, the battle of Badr and other campaigns. Muhammad’s ransoming the captured women ofthe Hawazin tribe, six camels apiece, has been cited already. Later on, Caliph Omar declared that non-Muslims could not buy slaves belonging to Muslims. This means that captives taken thereafter were notransomed anymore, not to return them to non-Muslim hands. They could be bought by Muslims only. Thisensured that they remained within the fold of Islam; it helped swell the Muslim populace faster.Capturing slaves for sale: From the 300,000 slaves captured in North Africa, Musa sold caliph’s share of60,000 into slavery. Having engaged 30,000 into military service, he distributed the rest amongst hissoldiers—who, in turn, might have sold a part of them. Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) notes of his eyewitness accountof the slave-trade in Egypt that ‘the slave merchants bring them to Egypt in batches… and government buyershave them displayed for the inspection and bid for them, raising the price above their value.’ 856 Of theapproximately 300,000 Indians enslaved by Qasim in his three-year campaign in Sindh, he forwarded onefifthportion to the caliph in Damascus. The caliph used to add the young and pretty female slaves of noble orroyal birth to his harem, give some of them to his nobles as gifts, engage many in various services of the royalcourt and sell the rest for generating revenues.Caliph al-Mutasim (d. 842), an enlightened progenitor of the Islamic "Golden Age", sold slaves inbatches of five and ten after the campaign of Amorium. Sultan Mahmud used to capture slaves in tens tohundreds of thousands in India and drive them to the markets in Ghazni. As mentioned already, he droveaway 500,000 slaves from Waihind (1002), 200,000 from Thanesar (1015) and 53,000 from his expedition in1019. Of the two million people, reduced as a result of his campaigns in India as estimated by Lal, a large partof them were carried away as captives and the rest slaughtered. It is also noted that Muhammad Ghauri hadconverted 300,000 to 400,000 Khokhars to Islam through enslavement. Both Sultan Mahmud and MuhammadGhauri drove the captives to Ghazni, where they were sold in markets. During Sultan Mahmud, Ghazni hadbecome a prominent slave-trading centre, where ‘merchants came from different cities to purchase them sothat the countries of Mawarau-n-nahr, Iraq and Khurasan were filled with them,’ wrote al-Utbi. 857 Therevenue from the first-round of sale of slaves went to the state treasury. The slave merchants continued thetrade in markets of the Islamic world.856. Lal (1994), p. 124857. Ibid, p. 121241