ENCYCLOPEDIA MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC PART 29

SICILY

  The history of Muslim Sicily begins at the court of Ziyadatallah in 827, the autonomous Aghlabid ruler of Ifriqiyya. Faced with a restless and rebellion-prone army, opposition from Kharijite Berber tribes, a disenfranchised urban poor, and a hostile and critical ulema, Ziyadatallah found a solution to his problems, in the form of an external enemy. Using information from a renegade Sicilian Byzantine general (Euphemius) concerning Muslim soldiers being illegally held captive in Sicily, and galvanized by his chief judge, Asad Ibnn al-Furat, eminent jurist and politically astute advisor, Ziyadatallah invaded Sicily with all the legal justification and military pageantry of jihad he could muster.

  The Muslim era of Sicilian history, until the Norman Conquest was completed in 1091, was dominated by jihad. The first hundred years witnessed offensive jihad against the Byzantine forces supported by the emperors in Constantinople and the local Christian population. The latter years were marked by a defensive jihad as the Sicilian Muslims resisted the armies of the North. Jihad also had a major impact on the economy. The massive flow of booty, gold, silver, slaves, horses, and land made Muslim Sicily a powerful and wealthy state where trade and local industries, shipbuilding, arms manufacturing, textiles, and agriculture flourished. Politically, jihad was the dominant issue in acquiring, maintaining, or losing the power and legitimacy to rule.

  The dynastic history of Muslim Sicily may be divided into the Aghlabid, Fatimid, and Kalbid periods. The Aghlabid period (827–909) is characterized by the long and difficult process of offensive jihad and close ties and dependence on the rulers of Ifriqiyya for manpower, arms, and logistic support. The invading army, under the command of Asad Ibn al-Furat, arrived in Mazara in 827 and captured Palermo in 831. The following decades were spent consolidating control over the central and southeast of the island where the Byzantines relocated their headquarters in Enna and Syracuse. The Northeast would not fall into Muslim control until after the fall of the Aghlabids. The Fatimid period of Sicily (909–944) saw no discernible change in the thrust, direction, and policies of the jihad movement. The new Shi‘i rulers of Ifriqiyya expended vast resources on Sicily as a base to expand their naval and mercantile powers in the Mediterranean. They appointed trusted servants to rule the island, especially among the Kutama Berbers, and made efforts to spread the doctrines of their mission (al-da’wa) to a predominantly Maliki Sunni Sicilian populace. A violent fouryear insurrection (937–941) launched by the Sicilian Muslims against their Fatimid governor, Salim Ibn Rashid, and his Ifriqiyyan-appointed backup, Khalil Ibn Ishaq, coincided with Fatimid efforts to conquer Egypt in their quest for the grand prize of Baghdad. Gradually, the island was granted greater autonomyin the appointment of al-Hasan ibn ‘Alı al-Kalbı, whose father died during the uprisings in Agrigento in 938. When al-Hasan was recalled to al-Mahdiyya in 953, he left the duties of ruling Sicily to his son Ahmad, creating a dynastic process that would remain intact throughout the rest of the century.

  The Kalbid period of Sicily (944–1044) enjoyed a period of political stability, economic expansion, cultural florescence (architecture, poetry, and scholarship), and military security. The Byzantines were held in check and the last Christian strongholds in the northeast of the island, not to mention fortress towns in Calabria and Apulia in southern Italy, fell under Muslim control. Kalbid success reached a high point in the rule of Abu al-Futuh Yusuf (989–998). But a stroke left him partially paralyzed in 998, and the rule of his son and successor, Ja’far, was challenged by Yusuf ’s second son, ‘Ali, with the support of Kutama Berber factions and the slave corps. Ja’far crushed the revolt, executed ‘Ali and the slaves, and expelled the Berbers from the island. As a precaution against further disturbances, Ja’far rebuilt his military forces conscripting only Sicilian troops. Ja’far’s harsh policies, his illegal taxation on Muslim land and produce, and his mistreatment of members of his own family princes themselves who were supported by entourages of wealthy and influential clients eroded his base of support in Palermo. The Sicilians deposed him and would have executed him had it not been for the intercession of Yusuf.

  A third son, Ahmad al-Akhal, pitted the Sicilians against each other, reopening festering wounds between the Arabs of Palermo and the Berbers of Agrigento on the one hand, and the old-guard ‘‘Sicilian’’ landed gentry against the more recent generations of ‘‘North African’’ immigrants on the other. This wrought devastating results, drawing energy and resources away from the jihad and tearing the threads of unity that held the Muslim Sicilians together. The political fragmentation of the island paved the way for the Norman invasion. Despite attempts by the Zirid Court in Ifriqiyya to rescue Muslim Sicily from the clutches of the Christian Reconquest, the enmity among the island’s petty warlords was too strong. Abu al-Futuh Yusuf ’s fourth son, Hasan al-Samsan, was deposed in 1044, and in 1055, Ibn al-Thumna, warlord of Syracuse and Noto, offered the Normans a deal to deliver the island to them in exchange for their assistance in avenging his enemies. This final act of treason, reminiscent of the Byzantine renegade Euphemius two centuries earlier, who opened the way for the Muslim entry into Sicily, paved the way for the Normans to take their turn as Sicily’s new rulers.

  The intellectual and cultural history of Islamic Sicily developed along the lines of those in Ifriqiyya and al-Qayrawan. Sicilian religious life was predominantly of the Sunni-Maliki sect, and its secular culture imitated the Arabo-Islamic mainstream, sharing features with both North African and Andalusian cultures. An ‘‘indigenous’’ Sicilian Islamic specificity came into its own and flourished at the Kalbid court in the middle of the tenth century. The academic journey (al-rihla) played a pivotal role in Sicilian Muslim scholarship and, along with commerce, war, and pilgrimage to Mecca, was instrumental in the import and export of knowledge and cultural influences to and from the island. The later Norman synthesis, the historical appellation for the great cultural eclecticism of the courts from Roger II to Frederick II in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, sprouted in good part from the seeds of Arabo-Islamic institutions that were sown in this period.

  The education of Sicilian Muslims was based upon a tripartite of Arabic language, religion and ethics, and Islamic law. Sicily resembled Ifriqiyya in the composition and diversity of its religious and scholarly life. As military society evolved into a more civilian society, Sicily’s institutions developed in new directions. It expanded beyond the fortress or fortified monastery to include private homes with extended mosque complexes for worship and education, pleasure palaces, and government complexes with adjoining shops and factories. Islamic legal studies, as elsewhere, evolved into a complex of subjects including methodological literature and speculative theology that assumed a degree of rationalist thinking. The study and practice of piety and asceticism gave way to a more sophisticated Sufism as a field of inquiry.

  Language studies branched out into its many subsets, and poetry as entertainment became the subject of linguistic, historical, and aesthetic investigation. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Arabic language and linguistic studies (Ibn al-Birr, Ibn Makki, Ibn al-Qattafi), as well as poetry andbelles-lettres,competed with the traditional Qur’anic disciplines. This cultural florescence owes a great deal to the Fatimids who, through political acumen, tolerance, farsightedness, and patronage of learning, allowed the natural processes of Sicilian Islam to follow natural courses.

Further Reading

‘Abbas, Ihsan. al-‘Arab fı Siqillıya. Cairo: Dar al-M’arif, 1959.

Ahmad, Aziz. A History of Islamic Sicily. Edinburgh: University Press, 1975

Amari, Michele.Biblioteca arabo-sicula. Lipsia: Brockhaus, 1857.

———.Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia. 2d ed. Ed. C. A. Nallino. Catania: Romeo Prampolini, 1933.

Granara, William. ‘‘Islamic Education and the Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Sicily.’’ InLaw and Education in Medieval Islam: Studies in Honor of George Makdisi. London: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2004, 150–173.

Rizzitano, Umberto.Storia e Cultura nella Sicilia Saracena. Palermo: S. F. Flaccovio, 1975.

Talbi, Mohamed. L’Emirat Aghlabide. Paris: Librairie d’Amerique et d’’orient Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1966.

SILK ROADS

  Silk Roads was a popular name for the premodern system of trade routes by which goods, ideas, and people were exchanged between major regions of Eurasia, mainly between China, Central Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The name can denote both land and sea routes, but this survey concentrates on the land routes (for sea routes, see Trade, Indian Ocean).

  More specifically, the termSilk Roadsdenotes the roads leading from North China via the Gansu corridor westward. In the Gansu corridor the road is divided in two the northern route, passing north of the Tianshan to Semirechye, and the southern route, leading from south of the Tianshan via the Tarim basin, again splitting into two routes passing north or south of the Taklamakan Desert. The northern most route went either west to Khwarazm and Eastern Europe, or southwest via Transoxiana to Khurasan and Iran. Of the southern routes, one led via Farghana to Transoxiana and Iran, and the other through Balkh to India or Iran. From Iran the Silk Roads continued either to Iraq and the Middle East or to the Black Sea, Anatolia, and Western Europe.

  Silk was a major good carried along these roads, due to its high value and small weight, but many other goods also traveled along the way. These included other kinds of cloth and clothing; precious metals and stones; furs, hides, and animals; porcelain; glass vessels; foods of various kinds; spices; exotica; and slaves. While the lucrative items often traveled the whole route, an important segment of the trade was in necessities, usually carried for shorter distances, often along north south routes between nomads and sedentaries. This was made possible as the commerce was normally one of multiple resales, and up to the Mongol period individuals rarely traversed the whole route. A major part in the trade was therefore taken by people living not in its ends (China, Europe, the Middle East) but along the way, mainly in Central Asia. With the gradual political and religious expansion of Islam into Central Asia, Muslim merchants became major actors in the Silk Roads trade, supplanting the Soghdians, Jews, and Uighurs who were active in the early centuries of Islam. The profit was lucrative enough to bring prosperity to the medieval cities of Central Asia and to cause numerous wars for control of the region.

  Despite the importance of the Silk Roads exchange to the history of the civilizations bordering it and to world history in general, we know little about the actual commerce, as both literary and archaeological sources are scanty. Yet camels were the main vehicles of the merchant caravans, who traveled at a pace of 12–30 kilometers per day, staying the night in the caravanserais, which supplied lodging, food, and a place for negotiations. The building and maintenance of the routes and the caravanserais was often the work of individuals, but sympathetic governments who helped to secure the roads did much to enhance the trade. While barter was not unknown, most of the trade was monitarized, and credit letters and cheques were highly developed, at least from the tenth century. Most traders worked as individuals but enjoyed connections with their coreligions or coethnics along the roads. Some used different kinds of partnership to secure capital and minimize the risk to their investments.

Chronological Survey

  The Silk Roads had been active long before Islam appeared in the Middle East. The rise of Islam coincided with one of the flourishing periods of the Silk Roads, initiated by the rise of the Turkic empire (sixth to eighth centuries), and accelerated with the consolidation in China of the Tang dynasty (618–906), known for its cosmopolitanism. Tang China, whose elite was enthusiastic for Iranian and Central Asian foodstuff, clothing, furniture, and entertainment, maintained close connections with the Sasanid empire. Indeed, the last Sasanid rulers tried to find refuge there when the Arabs conquered Iran in the mid-seventh century. In the seventh to mid-eighth centuries, Tang China also controlled important segments of the Silk Road, mainly the Tarim basin and Semirechye, and extended certain sovereignty even to Transoxiana, mainly on the expense of the Western Turks. Yet most of the commercial relations by the rise of Islam were conducted by the Soghdians, an Iranian people originating in Soghd (Transoxiana), who at least from the fourth century AD built trade diasporas along the roads: in Semirechye, the different oasis of the Tarim basin, in China proper, and even in North India.

  Islamic expansion into the Silk Roads began with the campaigns of Qutayba b. Muslim, the Umayyad  governor of Khurasan (705–715), who conquered Transoxiana and Farghana with their commercial centers. It is uncertain whether Qutayba tried (but failed) to reach Kashgar, one of Tang’s westernmost strongholds and a major station on the Silk Roads, but apparently he initiated the sending of embassies to China, which continued throughout the Umayyad period. Though probably not initiated by the caliphs themselves, these embassies had both commercial and diplomatic functions. The mid-eighth century saw the one military clash between China and Islam. The battle of Talas (near modern-day Awlia-Ata, in Kazakhstan) in 751, a skirmish initiated by local interests of the governors of the newly established ‘Abbasid empire and of Tang China, became in retrospect a turning point that determined the future orientation of Central Asia as part of the Muslim and not of the Chinese world. Whether paper arrived to Central Asia earlier with Buddhist missionaries, or only with the paper makers the Muslims took captives in Talas, certainly the battle was influential in initiating a paper industry in Samarqand. The diffusion of this Chinese technology contributed significantly to the expansion of culture and knowledge in the Muslim world and, since it rendered bookkeeping much easier, it also promoted all branches of trade and banking.

  The establishment of the ‘Abbasid dynasty (750– 1258), whose center was in Iraq (as opposed to Umayyad Syria), combined with a growing demand for luxuries in Baghdad and Samarra, enhanced the importance of the eastern trade in the Muslim empire, though much of it was conducted by sea. The eighth and ninth centuries were also the time of the mysterious Rahdaniya, Jewish merchants who allegedly traveled along the whole Silk Routes from Europe to China but specialized in connecting Europe and the Near East. Another profitable channel of this age was the commerce via Khwarazm with the Rus and Khazars in Eastern Europe, where Muslim silverdirhamswere traded for northern furs, foods, and slaves. The demand for (mostly Turkic) slaves, who from the ninth century onward played an ever-growing role in Muslim armies, enhanced the land route traffic again. Its height was under the Samanids (888–999), who, from their capital in Bukhara, conducted trade networks that reached both China and Scandinavia. The Samanids closely controlled the extremely profitable slave markets, licensed slave traders, and levied dues on all sales. Muslim geographical works describe the fruitful commerce with Baghdad, the Turks north of the Jaxartes, and Eastern Europe via Khwarazm. Trade further East seemed to have been still conducted mainly by Soghdians or Uighurs (Turks who after 840 migrated from Mongolia to Gansu and the Tarim basin), though there is evidence of several embassies from the fringes of China that reached the Samanid court. Samanid military, economic, and cultural prestige, combined with their missionary efforts, also resulted in the expansion of Islam eastward into the Silk Roads, and in the mass conversion of whole Turkic tribes, later known as the Qarakhanids and the Seljuks.

  The fall of the Samanids, and the division of their territory between the Qarakhanids and Ghaznavids, is usually considered the beginning of a decline in the Silk Roads trade, which continued until the rise of the Mongols. Yet cross-cultural contacts continued during this period, and with quite a significant scope, though the political fragmentation and the nature of the sources make it harder to follow them closely. The Qarakhanids (ca. 992–1213), who now ruled over significant parts of the trade routes (from Transoxiana to the Tarim Basin), maintained commercial and diplomatic relations with the contemporary Sinitic states, which rose after the fall of the Tang, especially with the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), to which they sent a first commercial mission already in 1008, and with the Khitan Liao dynasty (907–1125), with whom in the early eleventh century they even concluded matrimonial relations (unlike the Ghaznavids, who refused a similar offer of the Liao). Khotan, a city on the southern Silk Road in the Qarakhanid realm, also took an important part in the trade with the Tangut Xi Xia dynasty (1038–1227), who took over the Gansu corridor. It was in this period that Muslim merchants replaced the Soghdians as the dominant Silk Road traders. Under the rule of the non-Muslim Qara Khitai (1124–1218), fugitives from the Liao dynasty who took over Central Asia and became the Qarakhanids’ and Uighurs’ overlords, the commercial relations with the Xi Xia improved, and certain connections existed also with the more eastern states in China, among which at least the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279) also had maritime connection with the Middle East. Central Asian Muslim traders also had contacts with Genghis Khan’s forefathers in Mongolia, and many gained considerable wealth from the long-range trade.

  The rise of the Mongol empire in the early thirteenth century begins the most flourishing and bestdocumented period in the history of the Silk Roads. The Mongols united the whole Silk Roads under their rule and protected them, but their contribution to its prosperity went much further. As shown by Thomas Allsen, the process of state formation among the nomads in itself stimulates trade through an increased demand for luxuries, especially fine cloth, needed to assert the new empire’s authority. Genghis Khan was certainly aware of the benefits of commerce (which initiated his invasion into the Muslim world), and Muslim merchants were among his earliest supporters. Moreover, after the early conquests, Mongol elites, the main benefactors of the conquests’ booty, became extremely wealthy. They provided both enthusiastic consumers for the best products of the sedentary world and major investors, who recycled their wealth by entrusting it as capital in the hands of their mostly Muslim commercial agents (ortogh).The establishment of a Mongol capital, Qara Qorum, also promoted trade as the resources of Mongolia could hardly support such a big city (in Mongolian terms). It also led to the growing importance of the northern route of the Silk Roads, now shifted to include Qara Qorum. Even after the dissolution of the empire into four khanates in 1260, Mongol governments continued to promote both local and international trade, which provided taxes, markets, profits, and prestige. The khanates competed for commerce specialists, provided infrastructure for transcontinental travel, sometimes even by building new cities, and were actively involved in the manipulation of bullion flow. Yet traders were only part of the lively traffic along the Silk Roads in Mongol times. The formation of the empire, its continued expansion, and the establishment of its administration required a huge mobilization of soldiers and specialists throughout the empire. Mongol policy of ruling through strangers (for example, bringing Muslims to China and Chinese to Iran), originating in Mongol numerical inferiority and in their fear of potential local resistance, also promoted mobilization and cross-cultural exchanges. To secure the loyalty of these foreign strata, the Mongols aspired to give them ‘‘a taste of home,’’ and therefore brought foreign food, medicine, and entertainment into different parts of their empire. Moreover, the Genghisids regarded human talent as a form of booty, and the different khanates competed for specialists and exchanged them to enhance their kingly reputations. The wide-range mobilization and the expanding trade led to frequent and continuous movement of people, goods, ideas, plants, and viruses throughout Eurasia. This in turn not only encouraged integration but also created means that facilitated further contacts, such as maps, multilingual dictionaries, and travel literature, and helped the diffusion of information and technologies, such as gunpowder and alcohol distilling. In the Muslim world the fruitful exchange of commodities, scientific knowledge, and artistic techniques, mainly between Iran and China, was widely felt. Mongol policies led to a considerable infiltration of Muslims into China, creating a firm basis for the modern Chinese Muslim community. Moreover, the Islamization of the Mongols in Iran, South Russia, and Central Asia brought about a massive expansion of Islam and made it by far the dominant religion along the Silk Roads.

  With the collapse of the Mongol khanates from the mid-fourteenth century, the Silk Roads never regained their former importance. Indeed, they strived again under Tamerlane (r. 1370–1405), who from his base in Transoxiana tried to revive the Mongol empire and made concerted efforts to shift the trade routes into his realm (mainly on the expense of the more northern routes passing through the Golden Horde). Spanish, Ottoman, Mamluk, and Chinese ambassadors reached Timur’s Samarqand, and the gunpowder technology was brought back to the East from Europe and the Ottomans. Yet the new political boundaries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, combined with the opening of a direct sea route to India and China by Western Europeans, the rise of Europe in general, and the waning of the nomads’ power, initiated the decline of the Silk Roads. The land routes between China and the Middle East were marginalized, though new channels, mainly on the north-south axis connecting India, Central Asia, and Russia, as well as a fruitful regional trade, retained certain importance until the eighteenth century.

  The Silk Roads were a major channel through which the medieval Muslim world enriched itself by purchasing Eurasian but mostly East Asian goods, knowledge, and technologies, most important among which were paper and gunpowder. They were also a major path for the expansion of Islam, which became the dominant religion along the Silk Roads.

Primary Sources

Anonymous. ‘‘Hudu¯ d al-’‘a ¯lam.’’ Ed. M. Situ ¯ dah. Tehran, 1340/1961;The Regions of the World. Translated and annotated by V. Minorsky. 2d. ed. London, 1970.

Gardı¯zı¯, Abu ¯ Sa‘ı¯d, ‘Abd al-I´ ayy.Zayn al-akhba¯r. Ed. ‘A.I´abı¯bı¯. Tehran, 1347/1968. Ibn Khurda ¯dhbah.Kita¯b al-masa¯lik wa’l- mama ¯lik. Ed. M.

J. de Goege. BGA, 6. Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1889. Marwazı¯, Sharaf al-zama ¯n. O´ aba¯’iC al-Iˆayawa¯n. Edited and translated by V. Minorsky as Sharaf al-Zama¯n T, a¯hir Marvazı¯on China, Turks and India. London, 1942.

Al-Muqaddası¯, Muammad b. AIˆmad. Kita¯baIˆsan al-taqa¯sı¯mfı¯ mac rifat al-aqa ¯lı ¯m. Ed. M.J. de Goege. BGA, 3. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1877. Transl. Basil A. Collins as The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions. Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing Limited, 1994.

Rashı¯d al-Dı¯n, FaA˜lalla ¯h Abu¯ al-Khayr.Jami’u’t-tawarikh [sic] Compendium of Chronicles. Transl. W.M. Thackston. Cambridge, MA: 1998–1999. 3 vols.

Ya¯qu¯ t al-Ru ¯mı¯.Mu‘jam al-bulda¯n. 5 vols. Beirut, 1955–1958.

Yule, H. (Tr).The Book of Ser Marco Polo. 2 vols. London, 1903.

Yule, H. (Tr and comp).Cathay and the Way Thither. Rpt. Taibei, 1966. 2 vols.

Further Reading

Allsen, Thomas T. ‘‘Mongolian Princes and Their Merchant Partners, 1200–1260.’’Asia Major3d series, 2 (1989): 83–127.

———.Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

———. ‘‘Ever Closer Encounters: The Appropriation of Culture and the Apportionment of Peoples in the Mongol Empire.’’Journal of Early Modern History1 (1997): 2–23.

———.Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Ashtor, Eliyahu.A Social and Economic History of the Near East in the Middle Ages. London: Collins, 1976.

Bentley, Jarry H.Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Christian, David.A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia,. Vol. 1. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.

———.‘‘Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History.’’ Journal of World History11 (2000): 1–26.

De La Vaisserie, E´ ttiene. Histoire des marchands sogdiens. Paris: Colle`ge de France, 2002.

Gunder Frank, Andre. ‘‘Central Asia’s Continuing Role in the World Economy to 1800.’’Toronto Studies in Central and Inner Asia3 (1998): 14–38.

Noonan, Thomas F.The Islamic World, Russia and the Vikings 750–900: The Numismatic Evidence. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, Variorum, 1998.

Richards, Donald S. (Ed).Islam and the Trade of Asia. Oxford: Bruno Cassirer Ltd., 1970.

Rossabi, Morris. ‘‘The Decline of the Central Asian Caravan Trade.’’ InEcology and Empire, edited by G. Seaman, 81–102. Los Angeles, 1989.

The Silk Road Foundation website: www.silk-road.com.

SINAN (1490–1588)

  Sinan was the chief architect of the Ottoman court from 1538 until his death in 1588. He is known to have designed more than 450 buildings throughout the Ottoman empire, although the majority of buildings cluster around the imperial Ottoman capital of Constantinople (Istanbul).

  Although other Ottoman architects are known by name, the number and quality of buildings attributed to Sinan make him preeminent not only among Ottoman architects but also a major figure in the history of world architecture. Sinan’s significance as an architect was greatly enhanced by the fact that for most of his career he worked for the most famous Ottoman sultan, Sulayman the Magnificent (r. 1520– 1566), whose career saw the expansion of the Ottoman empire throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and saw the Eastern Mediterranean becoming effectively a Turkish lake.

  In view of Sinan’s undoubted significance for the Turkish and Muslim culture, it is ironic that he was born in Salonika and brought up as a Greek Christian until the age of twenty-one, when he was recruited into the Janissary core. Nevertheless, it is clear that he embraced Islam wholeheartedly once he had entered Ottoman service. During these early years of service Sinan worked as a military engineer building and repairing bridges, forts, aqueducts, and cisterns. During the winter and when he was not on military campaigns, Sinan was involved in the construction of mosques, madrasas, and other religious buildings in the Ottoman capital. From the early 1530s, it is clear that Sinan had become an architect, and from 1538, the main architect of the Ottoman court. The list of buildings attributed to Sinan comes principally from three sixteenth-century works; Tadhkirat al-bunyan and Tadhkirat al-abniya by Mustafa Sa‘i, and an anonymous work,Tuhfat al-mi‘marin,that may have been written by Sinan himself. It is likely that for some of the buildings in this list, Sinan supplied no more than drawings and written instructions and that he did not oversee the work himself. It is unlikely that he was directly involved in the construction of Sulayman’s pilgrimage complex (1554–1555) in Damascus and the Melek Ahmad Pasha in Diyarbakir.

  Sinan’s first major work was the construction of a mosque and turbe (mausoleum) commemorating Sulayman’s son Mehmed, who died in 1543. The most remarkable part of the complex was the mosque, which, though employing traditional Ottoman forms based on a square domed box and derived ultimately from Orthodox churches, was revolutionary in its construction. The most notable feature of the Shehzade mosque was that it was flanked by four semidomes instead of the usual two seen in mosques, such as the Bayazid II mosque (1501–1505), also in Constantinople. The Shehzade Cami was not the first mosque to use four semidomes, as this formula had been used previously by the Fatih Pasha Mosque (1516–1520) in Diyarbakir. However, the Shehzade was a different order of scale and sophistication. In the first place, Sinan pierced the supporting walls with successive tiers of arched windows, compensating for this with thick internal and external buttresses. This created a large, light, interior space that marked a departure from the mysterious dark interiors of many earlier Ottoman mosques. The change in architecture was also apparent on the exterior where the roof has a pyrimidical appearance with a high central dome flanked by semidomes, which in their turn are supported by smaller semidomes, each one tier lower. The massing of the domes is complemented by the four corner towers or minarets, which enhance the upward thrust of the building and detract from the heaviness of the roof system. Other early works by Sinan were the Mirimah Sultan Mosque at Uskudar (1540–48) and another mosque dedicated to Mirimah Sultan at Edirnekapi, also built during the 1540s. All three mosques share the same basic design principle of a central dome descending in curved surfaces (domes and semidomes) to near ground level, presenting a hierarchical order. Also, all three mosques have multiple fenestration set between tall relieving arches that admit plentiful light to the interior and on the exterior reduce the heavy appearance of the roofing system. These three early mosques (the Shehzade, Edirnekapi, and Uskudar Mirimah Sultan mosques) may be seen as a preparation for Sinan’s most famous building, the Suleymaniye, which was built between 1550 and 1567. The vast complex, built on a high hill overlooking the harbor, comprised more than fourteen different buildings arranged around the mosque, which still dominates the skyline of Istanbul. Sinan’s first problem was to produce a design that overcame the sloping nature of the site without compromising the unity and order required in a complex of this size. The fact that Sinan was able to accomplish this is a testament not only to his architectural abilities but also to his skills as a civil engineer acquired during his earlier military career. The mosque that forms the centerpiece of the complex was built to rival the former cathedral of Hagia Sophia, which had served as the architectural nucleus of Constantinople/Istanbul for more than a thousand years. Sinan’s mosque adopted the same principle of a large central dome flanked on two sides by a series of smaller (and lower domes), though semidomes are used on the north and south (qibla) axis. Although the span of the central dome is slightly less than on the Hagia Sophia (twenty-six meters instead of thirty-two meters), the internal area appears larger because of the size of the flanking domes, which produce a vast covered area only interrupted by the corner piers supporting the main dome.

  While the Suleymaniye is probably Sinan’s most famous building, his masterpiece is probably the Selimiye in Edirne, built between 1564 and 1575. Like the Shehzade and the Suleymaniye mosques, the design of the Selimiye was characterized by the desire to achieve the maximum interior space. With the Selimiye, Sinan adopted a novel approach to increasing the internal space by supporting the vast central dome (thirty-six meters) on an octagonal system of eight piers. Sinan had already experimented with hexagonal plans in buildings such as the Sinan Pasha mosque in Besiktash (1555), the Semiz Ali Pasha mosque at Basaeski (1561–1565), and the Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque (1570–1571) at Kadirga in Istanbul. The main  advantage of the octagonal plan was that it was possible to build a larger dome spreading the downward thrust on eight piers instead of four. The other advantage of this system was that the weight resting on the curtain walls could be reduced, allowing an even larger number of windows creating a vast area lit by natural light. One of the problems of this design was that it reduced the emphasis on the qibla axis. Sinan compensated for this by setting the mihrab within a deep recess. The exterior of the mosque is equally impressive, with its four slender minarets, which attain a height never surpassed in Ottoman architecture. Also notable is the polychrome stonework of the exterior (in particular, the projecting mihrab recess), which provides a change from the somber stonework of the Sulemaniye.

  The Selimiye was Sinan’s last major work, although he continued to build a number of mosques that are evidence of his continuing architectural creativity. Examples of Sinan’s later mosques include the Sokullu Mehmet Pasha Mosque at Azakapi (1578) and the Mesih Mehmet Pasha (ca. 1580), both of which use the octagonal base first used in the Selimiye.

  Although from the 1540s, Sinan’s name is mostly associated with mosques, he is also known to have designed secular and functional buildings such as the aqueduct at Maghlova that, with its two-tier design and diamond-shaped piers, displays unusual elegance.

  Sinan is buried in a small plot decorated with a small, domed monument near the Suleymaniye mosque in Istanbul.

Further Reading

Goodwin, G.A History of Ottoman Architecture. 1971.

———.Sinan. Ottoman Architecture and Its Values Today. 1993.

Kuran, A.Sinan, the Grand Old Master of Ottoman Architecture. 1987.

O’Kane, B. ‘‘Sinan.’’ InEncyclopaedia of Islam. New ed. 629–630.

SINDH

  The word Sindh comes from the Sanskrits indhu, with the meaning of ‘‘river, ocean.’’ In the Middle Ages, Sindh was the southern part of the valley of the Indus River, which included the present-day province of Sindh, as well as the southern part of Punjab. Sindh was the first Indian territory to be conquered by a Muslim army led by Muhammad bin Qasim in 710–711.

  When Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sindh, he defeated Raja Dahir, son of the Hindu usurper Chach. According to architectural remains and Chinese pilgrims, southern Sindh was dominated by the Buddhists, while the north was under the control of the Shivaite school of the Pashupatas. The history of medieval Sindh is usually divided according to the different dynasties who ruled it. Up to the eleventh century, Sindh was ruled by governors sent by the ‘Abbasids from Baghdad, and after 372/983, by Fatimid governors from Cairo who settled in the city of Multan.

  In 1010, a Somra leader, apparently from the Rajput stock, put an end to the Arab rule. The Somra dynasty, which may have converted to Isma’ilism, was succeeded in 1352 by the Sammas, another Rajput clan. The resistance of both the Somras and the Sammas opposed to the sultans of Dihli, for instance, ‘Ala’ al-Din Khalji in 697/1297, was to be the core of Sindhi literature. The sultan Muhammad Shah Tughluq, while in pursuit of a rebel governor, arrived in Sindh in 1351, where he died. He was buried in thedarbarof La‘l Shahbaz Qalandar. His cousin and successor Firuz Shah Tughluq (d. 1388) invaded Thatta twice, in 1365 and 1367. In the fifteenth century, after Tamerlane’s (see Tamerlane [Timur]) invasion of the Indian subcontinent, Sindh was ruled by Central Asian dynasties, the Arghuns and the Tarkhans. The sixteenth century saw many disturbances in Sindh. First is the sack of the wealthy city of Thatta by the Portuguese in 1555. Secondly, the Mughul emperor Akbar (1556–1605) sent his army to secure his control on Sindh, which was achieved in 1593. It is only in the seventeenth century that a new Sindhi dynasty seized power, the Kalhoras, replaced in 1783 by a Baluch dynasty, the Talpurs, which was to be defeated by the British in 1843.

  There is no evidence the population of Sindh converted to Islam before the thirteenth century, when the Sufi tariqas became well organized and efficient. More relevant is the question as to whether the people really converted to Islam when one knows that many Hindus were still affiliated to Muslim pir at the time of the British colonization. The main cleavage was more between Sharif (from external origin) and Desi (indigenous), than between Muslims and Hindus. The study of La‘l Shahbaz Qalandar’s pilgrimage, a thirteenth-century Sufi saint, in Sehwan Sharif, gives evidence that a consensus based on the qalandar’s charisma was reached among the different communities of Sindh, including the Hindus and the Muslims, as well as the Animists, and also the Sayyids and non-Sayyids. The Sufis, following the Ismailis, can be named as the great integrators who gave birth to Sindhi culture.

  Persian was the language used by the chroniclers in Sindh. Vernacular literature appeared through the devotional poetry of Qazi Qazan (d. 1551). Even if the Ismailis claimed their own pirhave composed their canticles (ginan) in the fourteenth century, Sindhi literature really began to flourish with Shah ‘Abd al Karim (d. 1624), and his great-grandson Shah ‘Abd al Latif (d. 1753). In his compiled workShah jo Risalo, ‘Abd al Latif uses Sindhi folk narratives for symbolizing the mystical quest. For him, there is no difference between the Hindu yogis and the Sufis, who are both seekers on the path of God. Makla, located in the neighborhood of Thatta, can be seen as a conservatory  of  the cross-cultural legacy of medieval Sindh. The mausoleums built by the different dynasties give a last evidence of the location of Sindh at a crossroads among Persia, Central Asia, and India.

Further Reading

Boivin, Michel. ‘‘Le pe`lerinage de Sehwa ˆn Sharıˆf: territoires, protagonistes, rituels.’’ InLes pe`lerinages dans le monde musulman, edited by S. Chiffoleau and A. Madoeuf. Damas: IFPO, 2004.

Chachnama (ca. third/ninth century). Translated from Arabic into Persian in the year 613/1216 by ‘Ali ibn Hamid al-Kufi. Ed. Umar ibn Muhammad Da’udpota. Delhi: Matba‘at Latif, 1939.

Chachnama (the), an Ancient History of Sind, Giving the Hindu Period Down to the Arab Conquest. Translated from the Persian by  Mirza Kalichbeg Fredunbeg, Karachi: Commissioner’s Press, 1900.

Cousens, Henry.The Antiquities of Sind with Historical Outline. Karachi: Department of Culture, Government of Sindh, 1998 [first ed., 1929].

Kervran, Monique. ‘‘Entre l’Inde et l’Asie Centrale: les mausole´es islamiques du Sind et du sud Penjab.’’Cahiers d’Asie Centrale1–2 (1996): 133–171.

Khan, Ansar Zahid.History and Culture of Sind. Study of Socio-Economic Organization and Institutions during the 16th and 17 th centuries. Karachi: Royal Book Company, 1980.

MacLean, Derryl.Religion and Society in Arab Sind. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989.

Shah ‘Abd al Latif. Shah jo Risalo. Kalam Shah ‘Abd al-Latif Bhita’i. Ed. ‘Allama Mustafa Qasmi. Shikarpur: Mehran Akademi, 1999 [first ed. 1951].

SIRHINDI, AHMAD (ca. 1564–1624)

  The eponymous founder of the Mujaddidi branch of the Naqshbandi Sufi order named after his title, known to posterity, ‘Mujaddid-i alf thani’ (the religious renewer of the second millennium), Shaykh Ahmad ibn ‘Abd al-Ahad Faruqi Sirhindi was born in the Punjab in around 1564. From an ashraffamily claiming descent from the second caliph ‘Umar, he was given a firm education in the literary and religious sciences in Sialkot and Agra, where he joined the court, disputing with Abu’l-Fadl and collaborating with Fayzi on literary projects.

  In 1600, Sirhindi met the Naqshbandi Khwaja Baqi billah and became committed to the discipline and didactic method of that order, which he now promoted at court and beyond. He became a leading master of the order, and his writings were influential in defining a new Naqshbandi path of critical engagement with the Mughal rulers and contemptuous

attack upon the heterodox (such as the Shi‘is) and nonMuslim Indians. Although there is a historiographical debate concerning the ‘‘Naqshbandi reaction’’ and his role in establishing Jahangir as the successor to Akbar, no doubt because Sirhindi (and the Naqshbandis) was hostile to Akbar’s religious innovations, it is clear that Jahangir failed to live up to Sirhindi’s expectations of an orthodox ruler. Following conspiracies at court, Jahangir had him imprisoned in 1619; the Naqshbandi hagiographies blamed his treatment on the Shi‘i notables at court. Released the following year, Sirhindi continued preaching until his death in 1624. After his death, his son Khwaja Ma’sum succeeded him as head of the Naqshbandiyya.

  The historiography pits the inflexible Naqshbandis associated with Sirhindi against the peaceable Chishtis in the ‘‘battle’’ for Sufism in India. But such a picture is misleading. Although Sirhindi did write polemics such asRadd-i rawafidagainst the Shi‘is, attack non-Muslims in his letters, and criticize the Sufi doctrine of the unity of being (wahdat al-wujud) attributed to Ibn ‘Arabi and his followers, a careful reading of his letters suggests a more nuanced picture. His own doctrine of wahdat al-shuhud, a critique of the ontological monism of  wahdat al-wujud that instead considers there to be a unity in mystical vision, is not far removed from Ibn ‘Arabi’s views. His opinions on the continuing need for the role of the heirs of the Prophet are not dissimilar to Shi‘i doctrines. As a thorough-going elitist, he considered all issues and texts to be read at two distinct hermeneutical levels: At the exoteric level, there could be no compromise on persecuting non-Muslims and attacking ‘‘deviant’’ monist Sufis; however, on the mystical level, Islam and infidelity were no longer pitted against each other but different levels on the path to God. These two levels became two trends opposed to each other in his legacy.

Further Reading

M. Abdul Haq Ansari.Sufism and Shari‘ah: A Study of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi’s Efforts to Reform Sufism. Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1986.

Damrel, D. ‘‘The Naqshbandi Reaction Reconsidered.’’ In Beyond Turk and Hindu, edited by D. Gilmartin and B. Lawrence, 176–198. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000.

Faruqi, B.A.The Mujaddid’s Concept of Tawhid. Lahore: Institute of Islamic Culture, 1989 [1940].

Friedman, Y.Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi: An Outline of His Thought and a Study of His Image in the Eyes of Posterity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000 [1971].

Rahman, F.Selected Letters of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi. Karachi: Institute of Islamic Studies, 1968.

Rizvi, S.A.A.Muslim Revivalist Movements in Northern India in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1993 [1965].

Ter Haar, J.G.T.Follower and Heir of the Prophet: Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi as Mystic, Leiden: het Oosters Instituut, 1992

SLAVERY, MILITARY

  Forms of military slavery have existed in the Islamic world since the early ninth century, and variations of this institution were found in many Muslim countries at different times up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Military slaves, known variously as ghulams (lit. ‘‘youths’’), mamluks(‘‘owned ones’’), and janissaries (from Turkishyeni cheri, ‘‘new army’’), had a tremendous impact on the military and political life, as well as economic and social aspects, of the societies in which they were found.

  There is still a significant debate among scholars as to the origins of this institution, and the reader is referred to the studies later in this entry for opinions different from that presented here. Military slavery had its origin in the convergence of factors: the withdrawal of the Arab tribes from military service (a process encouraged by the government); the perceived lack of dependability of troops from Khurasan, hitherto the bulwark of the ‘Abbasid state; the precedent of hundreds, perhaps thousands of clients of slave provenance or freed prisoners of war, known asmawali,in the court and army, many from eastern Iran, Transoxiana, and even the Eurasian Steppe region; and contact with the Turks of the Eurasian Steppe, with their well-known military qualities, including hardiness, horsemanship, and archery. The first unit of military slaves, composed mainly of Turks, was founded by the future caliph al-Mu‘tasim (r. 833–842), during the reign of his brother al-Ma’mun. Soon after his ascension to the throne, al-Mu‘tasim decided to move his formation from Baghdad to Samarra, about two hundred kilometers to the north, to limit tension with other units and to keep his new formation isolated. This unit was originally envisioned as a guard corps but soon began participating in campaigns in the empire and on the frontier. It soon became the mainstay of the ‘Abbasid regime. Al-Mu‘tasim’s son and second successor, al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–861), eventually became disenchanted with these Turkish guardsmen, their commanders (also Turks), and the power that they wielded at court, and moved to weaken them. The Turkish commanders moved first and assassinated the caliph, setting a pattern for future officers, not only of slave origin. The Turkish slave soldiers and officers played a significant role in the political unrest that characterized Iraq in the next several generations, at least until the coming of the Buwayhids in 944, and sometimes afterwards. In spite of the problems inherent in importing new Turkish slaves from the Steppe, the expenses involved, and the problems of discipline, the institution of military slavery spread throughout the eastern Muslim world. The quality of the Turkish soldiers and the loyalty, at least accorded to their original patron, evidently had enough to commend them to various rulers and generals. The basic idea of the military slave, which we will henceforth call Mamluk for convenience, if somewhat anachronistically, was that they were more or less cut off from the local population and its political and religious concerns, and therefore loyal primarily to their patron who bought and educated them (and continued to support them), and to each other. We have here a classic client–patron relationship, institutionalized through the mechanism of slavery.

  Over the generations, we can see that this institution developed several principles, most of which were articulated in various forms by Muslim historians and other writers (see the famous statement by the fourteenth-century historian Ibn Khaldun in the translation by B. Lewis,Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad s.a.w  to the Capture of Constantinople [New York: Walker and Company, 1974], 1:97–99), as follows:

1. Young slaves (mainly Turks) were brought from pagan areas to the north of the Islamic world, mainly the Steppe region.

2. These slaves were converted to Islam and underwent several years of military training (and often religious education) in the barracks.

3. On completing training and reaching manhood, the slaves were enrolled in the army of their patron (often they were formally manumitted), mainly as mounted archers.

4. In theory, and usually in practice, this was a one-generation system, meaning that the sons of military slaves could not themselves be such slaves, but rather new military slaves had to be brought continually from the Steppe. The idea behind this principle was that the descendants of Mamluks would not have the same toughness and military qualities as their fathers, as well as the lack of connections to the surrounding society.

5. Military slaves were to be loyal to their patrons, who educated and supported them, as well as to their comrades, slaves of the same patron.

  It is interesting to note that the Turkish Seljuks, who came to power in the eleventh century with the assistance of the Turcoman tribesmen, soon set up a large formation of Turkish Mamluks. They realized that with all due respect to the emotional ties to the Turcomans, and their clear military skills as mounted archers, they could not always be depended upon, and therefore an alternative force that was both loyal and effective was needed. This use and dependence on Turkish Mamluks was passed on to the various successor states of the Seljuks, including that of the Ayyubid established by the Kurd Saladin. From the beginning of Saladin’s reign, Turkish Mamluk units played the major role in the war against the Crusaders. The role of the Mamluks was increased by his great-nephew al-Salih Ayyub (r. 1238–1249), who established the famous Bahriyya regiment, which first came to prominence at the victory at Mansura over the Crusaders under Louis IX of France. Subsequently, this unit and other Mamluks took over the rulership directly, establishing the Mamluk sultanate, which ruled in Egypt and then in Syria until the Ottoman conquest of 1516–1517. The Mamluks gained renown for their victories over the Mongols in a war lasting more than sixty years, from the battle of ‘Ayn Jalut (1260) onward, as well as eradicating the Crusader presence in Syria (1291). Even after their subjugation by the Ottomans, Mamluks continued to play an important role in Egyptian politics untilthey were eliminated by Muhammad ‘Ali at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It should be mentioned that the Ottomans also erected an institution based on military slavery, the aforementioned Janissaries, although this was somewhat different from the classical Mamluk institution.

Further Reading

Amitai, Reuven. ‘‘The Mamluk Institution: 1000 Years of Military Slavery in the Islamic World.’’ InArming Slaves, edited by Philip Morgan and Christopher Brown. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, forthcoming.

Ayalon, David. ‘‘Preliminary Remarks on the Mamluk Military Institution in Islam.’’ InWar, Technology and Society in the Middle East, edited by V.J. Perry and M. E. Yapp. London: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Reprint, D. Ayalon,The Mamluk Military Society: Collected Studies. London: Variorum Press, 1979, article no. IX.

———. ‘‘Mamlu¯ k.’’ InThe Encyclopaedia of Islam. New ed. 6:314–321.

Beckwith, Christopher I. ‘‘Aspects of the Early History of the Central Asian Guard Corps in Islam.’’ Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi. 4 (1984): 29–43.

Crone, Patricia.Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Gordon, Matthew S.The Breaking of a Thousand Swords: A History of the Turkish Military of Samarra (A.H. 200– z275/815–889 C.E.). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.

Kennedy, Hugh.The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century. London: Longman, 1986, 158–171.

———.The Armies of the Caliph. London: Routledge, 2000.

Lewis, Bernard.Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, esp. Chap. 9 (‘‘Slaves in Arms’’).

Pipes, Daniel.Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981.

Shaban, M.A.Islamic History: A New Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1976, 63–65.

Sourdel, Dominique et al. ‘‘Ghula¯m.’’ InThe Encyclopaedia of Islam. New ed. 2:1079–1091.

SLAVES AND SLAVE TRADE, EASTERN ISLAMIC WORLD

  As in the Roman Empire, the slave (’abd) was the cornerstone of the domestic workforce in medieval Islam and provided a lucrative source of revenue for Islamic infrastructure. The Prophet Muhammad  s.a.w  accepted slavery as a fact of life, but he mitigated it by insisting upon kindness to slaves. According to the Qu’ran, anyone who mistreated his slave would be damned, something that Muhammad’s early followers took seriously. The early caliph Abu Bakr, for example, ransomed slaves.

Methods of Enslavement

  Muslims practiced slavery freely during the Middle Ages. Slaves were an important element in the Islamic world, one that required constant replenishment through trade, war, raids, and the birth of new slaves to old ones. A large segment of the urban population, they could also be found working the fields in some places. However, they did not make up a large section of the agricultural workforce. Slaves in Islam, as in Christian lands, tended to be skilled labor.

  Legally, slaves were supposed to be war captives or the children of already existing slaves, though reality did not entirely reflect theory. Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam frowned upon enslaving coreligionists, but in practice, Muslims did occasionally enslave each other. Under Sunni law, a man could be enslaved for defaulting on his debts. Muslims enslaving Muslims, however, most frequently occurred during wars between hostile sects, or rebellions against civil authority, where women and children spared from death were sold into slavery instead, as an example to other potential rebels. In 1077 CE, for example, the women of a Berber tribe were sold in Cairo as punishment for the tribe’s revolt. Frontier raiders tended not to scruple over their captives’ religion either, enslaving whomever they caught in their Razzias (raids).

  A great source of Christian slaves came from these razzias into the Dar al-Harb, the ‘‘Land of War.’’ In the East this area was usually the Byzantine empire or Eastern Europe. The Dar al-Harb provided the source of the most famous Muslim slaves of the Middle Ages the Mamluk slave soldiers of Egypt. These were Christian boys kidnapped mainly from Eastern Europe or the Steppes and raised to fight in private or state armies. Through them the slave trade had considerable influence upon local political dynasties, since slave–soldiers sometimes overthrew their masters and ruled in their place. The Mamluks, for example, overthrew the Ayyubid Egyptian sultanate in 1250 and ruled as sultans in Cairo until 1517. Another large group of male slaves (frequently Slavs from Russia) were castrated and made into eunuchs. These were usually employed as domestic servants and some wielded considerable power. Not all eunuchs lost sexual function completely. Some were able to marry and occasionally, depending on the nature and skill of the operation, could still father children.

  The Slave Trade

  Piracy and privateering also supplied slaves from as far west as the Iberian Peninsula. Muslims frequently found themselves enslaved by Christians, particularly in Spain, Latin Palestine, or in the Byzantine empire. In the tenth century, the Byzantine emperor had a ritual of inviting Muslim slaves to his banquet. However, increasing numbers of slaves came from Africa in the late Middle Ages. The trans-Saharan slave trade with West, Central and East Africa was the precursor to the later trans-Atlantic slave trade. This differed from that in the northern Mediterranean trade in significant ways. While some of the trans-Saharan trade resulted from raiding, much of it came from peaceful

trade in slaves and other goods with local, slaveraiding tribes. These tribes sold off criminals, war captives, and debtors the latter two categories being the same criteria for enslavement as in the Islamic world but the desire for profit fueled the trade on both sides. Similarly, the Venetians traded lucratively in Christian slaves to the Muslim world from the eighth century onward, despite papal censure about selling coreligionists to the infidel. Christians and Muslims were not the only groups engaging in the slave traffic. Some Jewish merchants were also instrumental in the trade of Slavs (who were favored for becoming eunuchs) via Eastern and Central Europe, though how involved they were particularly later on in the early Modern era is subject to academic controversy.

  Types and Functions of Slaves

  Not all slaves had the same value. White slaves were considered more valuable than black slaves, for example, though it is difficult to say how strong this prejudice was, particularly in how it influenced the origins of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Different slaves from different regions were favored for different functions. Women, particularly if they were young, beautiful, well educated, and skilled, were favored over men because they made good housekeepers, nursemaids, and concubines. Men could be slave–soldiers, eunuchs, bodyguards, field workers, officials, or domestic slaves. They might also transact the master’s or mistress’s business outside of the house, as merchants and representatives of the master’s affairs, sometimes with considerable freedom. Some male slaves served their masters or mistresses sexually, just as female slaves did. This practice could be extremely dangerous for male slaves, however, since a mistress was usually committing adultery when she took a slave as a lover and the penalty was death for both partners.

Manumission

  There were several roads to manumission. Muslims, Christians, and Jews all ransomed coreligionists from slavery in hostile territory. Ransoming was a lucrative by product of the slave trade for slave owners. A slave might buy his freedom, or win it through negotiation with his master or if his master mutilated him, or if he contracted blindness, leprosy, or paralysis. A slave’s master might also free and marry the mother of his child, but this was not automatic upon the birth of the child. However, if she and her child survived her master, she won her freedom at the price of her sale, taken out of her child’s inheritance.

  Conversion to Islam did not automatically win freedom either. The concubines of the Ottoman sultans, for example, were converted to Islam upon their sale to their royal master but remained slaves. Almost all of them were originally Christians from Central and Eastern Europe, or Russia. The frequency and acceptability of relations between masters and slaves introduced a not-inconsiderable ethnic mixing into all levels of slave holding society, even the highest. Because the child of a slave and a free person was born free, a slave’s son could therefore inherit the throne. Muslim slaves were more likely to find manumission than Christians or Jews, and conversion tended to precede freedom, particularly in the case of concubines who were freed for bearing heirs to their masters. As with so many other aspects of his or her life, the freedom of a slave depended on the whim of the master.

Further Reading

Ayalon, David.Islam and the Abode of War: Military Slaves and Islamic Adversaries. Aldershot and Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1994.

Crone, Patricia.Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Goldenberg, David M.The Curse of Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Pipes, Daniel.Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University, 1981.

Savage, E. ‘‘Berbers and Blacks: Ibadi Slave Traffic in Eighth-Century North Africa.’’The Journal of African History33, no. 3 (August 1992): 351–368.

Segal, Ronald.Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001.

Willis, John Ralph.Slaves and Slavery in Muslim Africa: Islam and the Ideology of Enslavement (Slaves & Slavery in Muslim Africa). Portland, OR: International Specialized Book Services, 1986.

SLAVES AND SLAVE TRADE, WESTERN ISLAMIC WORLD

  Legal texts are the greatest, most precise, and biggest sources of information about slavery. The predominant legal school in the Islamic West was the Maliki, providing a wealth of works of different genres: legal practice, compilations of legal opinions, legal rulings, record of notaries, and so on. These works have a great abundance of information in the chapters devoted specifically to slavery often called Law of Slavery whose main focus was the issue of manumission. But they also contain a number of references scattered in the other chapters that form the book.

  In addition to these sources, whose contents deal with the domestic slave, more news is dispersed in historical chronicles, biographical dictionaries, and literary works. Although they are not long stories, nor is the aim of the author to describe the slave, those passages help to enhance the information about what slavery was actually like. It must be emphasized that, despite all bibliographical sources, theoretical information about slavery in the Western Islamic world during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is far richer than the references to legal practice of this subject.

  practice, compilations of legal opinions, legal rulings, record of notaries, and so on. These works have a great abundance of information in the chapters devoted specifically to slavery often called Law of Slavery whose main focus was the issue of manumission. But they also contain a number of references scattered in the other chapters that form the book. In addition to these sources, whose contents deal with the domestic slave, more news is dispersed in historical chronicles, biographical dictionaries, and literary works. Although they are not long stories, nor is the aim of the author to describe the slave, those passages help to enhance the information about what slavery was actually like. It must be emphasized that, despite all bibliographical sources, theoretical information about slavery in the Western Islamic world during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is far richer than the references to legal practice of this subject.

  Slaves: Types and Circumstances

  According to all the legal schools, anybody born as a slave, being a son of a female slave, could be considered a slave no matter whether or not he was Muslim. A war prisoner could also be enslaved given that he was not a free Muslim, but professed another faith. However, it was forbidden to enslave a member of another religion who lived in Islamic territory and therefore enjoyed the protection of the dhimma status. This privilege was obtained by means of paying a tax. Only if this status was lost by any reason, such as cooperating with the unfaithful enemy in a battle, might the dhimmi become a slave. Nor was abandonment considered a valid origin of slavery: If anybody found a deserted child (manbudh)and took him in, that child was considered a free person. In fact, there were Muslim slaves, both born in such condition, as well as those who wished to convert to Islam after having acquired that status. Conversion was not a reason to obtain freedom.

  The Maliki school considered the same kinds of slaves as other legal schools: a common slave (‘abd, jariya, ama); concubines (milk al-yamin, jariya, ama) a concubine who gives a son to her master (umm walad); a slave having completed the conditions for a manumission contract (mukatab); and the slave to be released after his master’s death (mudabbar). Moreover, it included a new kind, the slave who was authorized to trade (ma’dhun bi-l-tijara), who needed to have free movement and certain economic means to conduct business. The possibility of being manumitte in the future provided some of these slaves with a number of rights and legal obligations that placed them close to the status of free persons, thus acquiring an intermediate status between slavery and freedom.

  In the Islamic world a slave could be married legally and create his own family structures with previous authorization of his master. Still, in order to perform the legal act of marriage he had some limitations that the free man lacked. According to Maliki law, a slave could have four legal wives, the same as a free man, whereas for the other legal schools, only two were allowed. On the other hand, the slaves’ capacity to form their own families was restricted to the servants of very rich people, or else to those slaves who paid their manumission in installments by means of a contract signed up with their master. Both kinds of slaves had a right to enjoy a certain degree of independence in order to have a job that enabled them to pay for their freedom.

  A master was not allowed to marry one of his concubines legally. However, if one of them became pregnant, she acquired a new status that provided her with certain rights common to a free woman. These ummahat al-awlad, or mothers with child, might not be sold and acquired freedom after their master’s death. On the other hand, their children were free according to the principle on which nobody may be his father’s slave, despite slavery being a condition inherited from the mother.

  A slave was not considered an object of law by himself, like in Roman law, but a subject of legislation. Consequently, he had civil and criminal rights, as well as obligations. His master could not kill him nor impose any arbitrary penalty on him, although there are examples of this being made in practice. Likewise, a slave was subject to penalties that were half the amount of those imposed on a free person, because his responsibility was considered to be less.

  As for property rights, law provided that the goods belonging to a slave pertained to his master, so that the slave was the usufructuary only as long as the master permitted it. Nor had he rights to inherit, even from free relatives. Nevertheless, Maliki law emphasized that a slave’s manumission had to include enough possessions for the slave to survive with dignity; otherwise, to give him freedom would not be a generous deed but a concealed abandonment. When the slave was released, a client bond was established between him and his master. Although he acquired all the rights and duties of a free person, his former master and his agnates preserved the right to become heirs to the slave. Consequently, slaves were not only members of the medieval Islamic family and must be included in every study concerning it but after their manumission, they continued to be bound to the master’s family unit through a client bow (wala’). In such a way, they contributed to perpetuate its patrilineal structure, a fact that had important social and economic consequences.

  Maliki jurists established a number of legal principles concerning slave property, trade, and their liberation that were considered when dealing with the matters of law. First, the rights of a free person especially property rights were secured because, as texts repeated once and again, ‘‘slaves are goods, just as cattle is.’’ Respect for the property of a free person might have priority over the religious element. Likewise, it was important that a manumission or sale did not damage the interests of any free person. Secondly, there were the fundamental rights of the slave to be considered: respect for his legal condition as an individual and therefore for the rights applying to that particular type of slave. Other aspects were his manumission and kind treatment; the concession of an amount of money for his use after liberation; and some sexual rights of female slaves, as the forbiddance to be rendered, rented, and so on, to another person.

  Slave Trade

  The most common way of acquiring slaves must have been, on the one hand, by birth at home of the children of other slaves. On the other hand, captivity at war, particularly in places such as al-Andalus, where there was continuous struggle against Christian territories throughout many centuries, provided prisoners. Since the tenth century there was an institution created for the release of captives, the redeemer (al-fakkak).

  Captives, such as other slaves imported from diverse places, were sold in the market. Their transaction was subject to controls in which the fulfillment of the legally established criteria were secured, the same as with other goods (cattle, luxury items). Among the many questions Maliki jurists dealt with, two were worth special attention: the slave’s possible physical defects or blemishze where the possibility of selling a pregnant female slave was included, since it might give rise to claims and conflicts between the parties involved and possible frauds related to the legal status of the slave, which would result in the annulment of the sale once it had been carried out. The texts dealt extensively with the question of slaves owned by several masters, because the lack of whole property of a slave restricted the rights of the masters over that person. For example, during a sale or rent, there had to be a unanimous agreement among all the proprietors; or, in the case of female slaves, they could not have sexual intercourse with her.

  Up to the twelfth century there existed an intense slave trade between al-Andalus and the Christian kingdoms, in which Jews living in the Christian lands played an active role. During this period, different commercial products were exported from al-Andalus to other Islamic countries, either in the West or in the East. Among the products that were in great demand Christian slaves stood out. Since the ninth century, Radhanite merchants had traded with ‘‘Andalusian slave women,’’ who had become very popular in North Africa and the Orient. The Verdun merchants are also referred to in the sources as people trading slaves between both territories.

  The drastic territorial withdrawal of al-Andalus in 1212 brought about a radical change in the commercial relationships of all the products. Al-Andalus stopped being an importer, and most of the trade is addressed to the north of the peninsula from the thirteenth century onward. In the case of Muslim slaves, the Nasrid sultans were forced to prohibit their sale to the Christians.

  Up to the twelfth century there existed an intense slave trade between al-Andalus and the Christian kingdoms, in which Jews living in the Christian lands played an active role. During this period, different commercial products were exported from al-Andalus to other Islamic countries, either in the West or in the East. Among the products that were in great demand Christian slaves stood out. Since the ninth century, Radhanite merchants had traded with ‘‘Andalusian slave women,’’ who had become very popular in North Africa and the Orient. The Verdun merchants are also referred to in the sources as people trading slaves between both territories. The drastic territorial with drawal of al-Andalus in 1212 brought about a radical change in the commercial relationships of all the products. Al-Andalus stopped being an importer, and most of the trade is addressed to the north of the peninsula from the thirteenth century onward. In the case of Muslim slaves, the Nasrid sultans were forced to prohibit their sale to the Christians.

  Most of the slaves were destined for domestic use, although their numbers are unknown. The different genres of written sources refer to privileged social groups living in an urban environment, without any information about the rural world and other urban contexts, so it is difficult to determine the absolute social and economic weight of the slave population. The use of slaves was infrequent in the armies of Western Islam, both in al-Andalus and North Africa. As for some high-ranking officers of the army whose status as slaves has been assumed, it is difficult to say whether they were so, or else they had slave origins but had been enjoying freedom for several generations already, so they would rather be clients than slaves.

  Eunuchs should also be mentioned briefly. Their existence is known by means of historical chronicles. Their destination, according to these sources, was only the royal palace and some very wealthy families. They were mainly assigned to manage the harem, but some of them had high positions in the administration, and even in the army of the Umayyad court of al-Andalus.

  Nowadays, one of the most debated issues in the field is the ethnic origins of the slaves in Western Islam. The confused state of terminology at some point when, for instance, the termsaqaliba which was used to designate only slaves of Slavic origins started to be used to call any palace slave, makes a systematic revision of Arabic sources very necessary. It seems that the sources indicate that slaves came mainly from captivity, so in al-Andalus, Christians from the Northern Iberian Peninsula must have been abundant. On the other hand, a great number of black slaves of sub-Saharan Africa must have been acquired in North Africa, especially since the expansion of the Berber dynasties of Almoravids and Almohads, in the eleventh century. On their part, the treatises on market rules and the very few treatises of slave trade allude to ethnic origins in a merely theoretical way.

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Aguirre Sa´daba, Francisco Javier. ‘‘Notas acerca de la proyeccio´n de los ‘‘kutub al-wata’iq’’ en el estudio social y econo´mico de al-Andalus.’’Miscela´nea de Estudios A´ rabes y Hebreos49 (2000): 3–30.

Ayalon, D. ‘‘On the Eunuchs in Islam.’’Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 1 (1979): 67–124.

———. ‘‘On the TermKhadimin the Sense of ‘Eunuch’ in the Early Muslim Sources.’’ ArabicaXXXII (1985): 288–308.

Blanc, F.P., and A. Lourde. ‘‘Les conditions juridiques de l’acce `s au statut de concubine-me`re en droit male´kite.’’ Revue de l’Occident Musulman et de la Mediterrane´e36 (1983): 163–175.

Bonnassie, P. ‘‘Survie et extinction du re´gime esclavagiste dans l’Occident du haut Moyen A ˆge (IV

E –Xie sie`cles).’’

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Bresc, H.Politique et socie´te ´ en Sicilie, XIIe–XVe sie`cles. Aldershot, 1990.

———. (sous la direction de)Figures de l’esclave au MoyenAˆ ge et dans le monde moderne. Paris, 1996.

Brockopp, Jonathan E. Early Maliki Law. Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam and His Major Compendium of Jurisprudence. Leiden, Boston, Ko¨ln, 2000.

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Annali Istituto Universitario Orientale Suppl. 1990.

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Constable, Olivia Remie.Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain. The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula: 900–1500. Cambridge, 1994.

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