Indian Slavery and Islamic Slavery

That notorious Islamic presence in the Indian Ocean, and specially in the East African coast had an obvious importance in the development of the slavery as institution. However, as Cooper has pointed out, it is important take in account that there is not such “Islamic societies” as an homogeneous group of communities ruled by the Sacred Law. Instead, on each different place, the “Islamic slavery” was shaped by the local conditions and reshaped by the economic and social changes.1 The Islam was one of the “ideological frameworks” used in the African continent to justify the slavery of other human beings.2 The main characteristic shared by the slavery in the societies ruled by the Islamic law, was the understanding of slavery as a condition to become part of the kinship group, the assimilation within the “new” cultural context was inherent to the slave condition. The slave was an alien, by and large an infidel, thus the slavery was the mean to convert the alien into the Islamic religion, once converted he or she started a process of incorporation into the Islamic society.3 This particular feature allowed to the slaves reach important positions in the official bureaucracy and the military apparatus. The women became part of the Muslims families, mostly as concubines or domestic slaves, those concubines who had children from their master became free after the master dead, and their children inherited the father condition.4 The other commonly cited characteristic in this framework, is the possibility of social mobility for slaves, some of them reached important positions within the administrative and military apparatus, and became part of high strata in their societies.5 According to the 'religious framework” criticized by Lovejoy,.6 ... ... middle of paper ... ...conomic shifts in East Africa and the Middle East, but also to British campaign to abolish the slave trade after 1807. The decline of slave demand in the Atlantic had a direct impact in the increasing of slaves as labor force in Africa25 and the Indian Ocean.26 The economic change in the region was notorious in the Persian Gulf and in Zanzibar and Pemba Islands. Seemingly, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East suffered an important productive transformation in the nineteenth century, resulting in an increasing in the use of slave labor in occupations different than the 'traditional' roles in domestic and luxury positions.27 According to Clarence-Smith, in the nineteenth century 300.000 slaves were exported from East Africa to Middle Eastern, 500.000 to Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Ports located on the Persian Gulf were points to re export slave workers to other Muslim