Children in Slavery through the Ages

Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, Joseph C. Miller

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780821443392
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Slavery
• Index: Social Sciences

Significant numbers of the people enslaved throughout world history have been children. The vast literature on slavery has grown to include most of the history of this ubiquitous practice, but nearly all of it concentrates on the adult males whose strong bodies and laboring capacities preoccupied the masters of the modern Americas. Children in Slavery through the Ages examines the children among the enslaved across a significant range of earlier times and other places; its companion volume will examine the children enslaved in recent American contexts and in the contemporary/modern world.

This is the first collection to focus on children in slavery. These leading scholars bring our thinking about slaving and slavery to new levels of comprehensiveness and complexity. They further provide substantial historical depth to the abuse of children for sexual and labor purposes that has become a significant humanitarian concern of governments and private organizations around the world in recent decades.

The collected essays in Children in Slavery through the Ages fundamentally reconstruct our understanding of enslavement by exploring the often-ignored role of children in slavery and rejecting the tendency to narrowly equate slavery with the forced labor of adult males. The volume's historical angle highlights many implications of child slavery by examining the variety of children's roles—as manual laborers and domestic servants to court entertainers and eunuchs—and the worldwide regions in which the child slave trade existed.

SECTION II

THE TREATMENT AND USES OF SLAVE CHILDREN THROUGH THE AGES

Part A

Children Acquired for Social, Political, and Domestic Roles

6

SINGING SLAVE GIRLS (QIYAN) OF THE ‘ABBASID COURT IN THE NINTH AND TENTH CENTURIES

KRISTINA RICHARDSON

The category of slave in the Middle East encompassed a number of different duties and positions: eunuch, chattel, domestic servant, sexual subject, infantryman, concubine, entertainer, laborer, and sometimes a trusted and valued member of the household. As Shaun Marmon has noted, “there can be no single model for the study of slavery in Islamic societies,”¹ and to parse the statement further, especially not for intersections of slavery, gender, and childhood. Even so, there is some use in reading aspects of female slavery against Hegel’s model of the master-slave dialectic and Orlando Patterson’s elaboration of that theory. I have selected them because Patterson’s model does try to accommodate Islamicate slave systems, though it does not take gender and childhood into account as an important aspect of it.² Patterson argues in Slavery and Social Death that all slave systems—from dynastic Mesopotamia to early medieval Iceland to modern Sudan—dominate the subject’s body and mind. A slave’s physical movement is controlled, her labor forced, and in many instances she is made to submit sexually to the master. The psychological domination starts in the first days of ownership with the alienation of a slave from her native surroundings. Or if she remains with her family, she recognizes that her master has authoritative power over her. In Hegel’s formulation of master-slave relationships, the slave validates the master’s existence because she exists only to fulfill the master’s will. As a result, the slave’s identity is wholly tied to that of her master. The slave dies unto herself and is reborn, so to speak, as an extension of the master’s ego and will and a physical confirmation of his personal esteem. This alienation of the slave from a community (other than that of her master) negates her social existence, engendering “social death.”³

ELITE FEMALE SLAVERY IN ISLAMICATE LANDS

This theoretical model certainly has wide application but does not account for the many nuanced master-slave relationships in the medieval Islamicate world, where domination of master over slave was not fixed and absolute. Understanding this, Patterson devotes a later chapter of his book to slave systems that are not wholly explained by the “Hegelian-Pattersonian” model of degradation, slave dependency, and social death. He examines elite male slavery in the late-medieval Mamluk Empire (1250–1517 CE), where male slave soldiers (mamluks) were sultans, and he also analyzes the early-modern Ottoman Empire (1299–1922) where harem eunuchs, military officers, and guardians of the treasury formed part of the elite slave corps. He terms these men “ultimate slaves” because the definition of a slave as a powerless servant does not apply to them. There is even debate as to the appropriateness of calling these individuals slaves, seeing as “irony … the conception of slavery in Islamic contexts, for in practice the least respected individuals came to be entrusted with the most strategic posts of the empire.”⁴ These slaves’ servitude was not entirely self-denying, as they gained prestige, political prominence, and important allies. Patterson does not account for women in this scheme of elite slavery, though female slaves also had some opportunities to command comparable political power in Islamicate society. In the Ottoman royal harem, for example, Kösem Sultan, a concubine who bore two future sultans, collaborated with Süleyman Agha, the chief black eunuch, to insulate herself and her sons from palace intrigues and tensions. These two slaves—a concubine and a eunuch—worked together to protect themselves and promote their agendas. Ultimately, however, Kösem Sultan was double-crossed and murdered by Süleyman Agha himself.⁵ In this chapter I argue that, like the Ottoman concubines of the sultan’s royal harem, the female slave entertainers of caliphs and other wealthy patrons of the ‘Abbasid period (750–1258) exploited their sexuality and their proximity to the politically powerful for personal gain.

The ‘Abbasid slave singers were well known for their beauty and sex appeal, and, as will be shown, their reputation as entrancingly beautiful women was widely acknowledged in Arabic literature of the period. By currying favor with the master, one could reap distinct social benefits. For example, a slave could enter into his inner circle of companions, even becoming one of his favored sexual partners and bearing him children. The nature of a slave’s service allowed for informal relationships to develop between the slave and master, as shown in a story recorded by the ‘Abbasid literary historian Abu al-Faraj al-Isbahani (d. 967): “An old woman who had been one of (the caliph) Wāthiq’s slavegirls said: I was one of the girls that (the caliph) al-Muqtadir liked and took pleasure in. He was one of God’s most accomplished creatures when it came to playing the lute and he had a most moving voice, though did his best to keep it secret. He would only play and sing when he was alone with his slavegirls (jawarihi), his intimate companions, and with me.”⁶ This anecdote attests to the familiarity and informality that could flourish between a patron and his slave girl(s). The power that a slave girl could acquire was subtle, and her scope of influence was not wide, quite unlike the power of the elite male slaves. The unique position of the female slave entertainers allowed them to use their sexuality and proximity to the master to secure personal benefits. In this way, the slave girls could assume greater control of their private lives and escape the traditional domination of a master over every aspect of a slave’s life.

On the whole, gendered examinations of slavery are essential components of general slave studies, but are particularly needed in the field of Near Eastern history. Islamicate society is very gender conscious and maintains precise laws governing the conduct of men and women, and the intersection of two complex systems like gender and slavery provides a dynamic new framework within which to conceptualize one or both systems.⁷ In the Islamicate world the relationship between a slave girl and her master could take many forms. She could be his abject servant, his concubine, or the mother of his child (or all three). According to Islamic law, concubinage is licit and a slave owner can have sexual relations with his slave girl. While sexual relations commonly occurred between male masters and their male or female slaves, the possibility of pregnancy with slave women added a new dimension to the traditionally imagined male-male, master-slave power dynamic. A slave girl who bore the child of her Muslim master acquired the new legal status of umm walad (lit., mother of a child; pl., ummahat awlad). This new standing conferred three guaranteed legal benefits on the mother and opened the possibility of still more. It was certain that the woman could never be sold, that she would be freed upon the death of her master, and that her child would be born free. Other possible benefits stemmed from the personal intimacy that often developed between parents of a child. In many instances, bearing a master’s child strengthened the emotional bonds between slave and master to such a degree that the master emancipated his child’s mother.

The legal consequences of a slave bearing her master’s child favored the mother and child over the master. In theory a concubine or other female slave could use a sexual relationship with her master to secure her and her child’s future. Male slave owners, of course, were well aware of the possible economic, legal, and emotional consequences of impregnating slave girls. Not being able to sell a slave required the owner to care for her throughout her lifetime, even if she became incapacitated by illness or old age. Of course, if an umm walad became too great a financial burden, the master could always manumit her, but he would have lost the opportunity to sell her at a profit. Another adverse economic consequence of a pregnant slave girl was the added financial responsibility of a new child in the household. For these reasons men were cautious about impregnating their slaves. Hadith collections (collections of sayings of the Prophet) record several instances of Muslim men asking the Prophet Muhammad about avoiding the insemination of slave girls. One such hadith reads: “A man came to the Prophet and said, ‘I have a slave-girl, and we need her as a servant and around the palm groves. I have sex with her, but I am afraid of her becoming pregnant.’”⁸ The man is reluctant to sacrifice his slave’s labor for the time that she would carry, deliver, nurse, and raise the child. His objection to her pregnancy stems purely from economic concerns. In another hadith, a man asks about the permissibility of coitus interruptus. “There is another person who has a slave-girl and he has a sexual intercourse with her, but he does not like her to have conception so that she may not become Umm Walad.”⁹ The speaker does not explicitly state why a slave owner would not want his slave to become umm walad, but one can assume that because the arrangement had little benefit for the master and gave the slave mother more power over her and her child’s lives, this status was undesirable to him.

MANIPULATING THE BOUNDARIES OF SLAVERY

The possible strategic uses of motherhood to better a slave woman’s position, as well as the intersection of female slavery and sexual power, warrant further study. Here I examine the interplay of sexuality, child bearing, and power among a particular class of elite female singing slaves known as the qiyan (sing., qayna).¹⁰ In the ‘Abbasid period (750—1258 CE) these women performed in wealthy households and at the caliphal courts in Baghdad and Samarra. They formed part of Arab court retinues and worked as popular entertainers from pre-Islamic times until the abolition of slavery, in the twentieth century.¹¹ The qiyan were viewed as elite because they were not strictly consigned to labor or concubinage. Evidence of their elite status and desirability is found in the high prices of a qayna relative to that of an untrained slave girl. This price differential was due to the qayna’s revered musical and literary gifts, which were greatly appreciated in wealthy circles. Typically purchased as children, qiyan received rigorous, expensive training in poetry, music, and the Arabic language in preparation for careers in performance and lyrical composition. In Baghdad and its environs slave girls were educated at establishments set up to train them in the art of becoming qiyan.¹² Singing girls owned by nobles, as opposed to those owned by caliphs, were hired out as performers and sometimes as prostitutes. But a fine line was drawn between performers and prostitutes, and one group was often associated with the other. For example, the ninth-century litterateur Ahmad ibn al-Tayyib al-Sarahsi (d. 899) wrote of a bandore player named al-Zubaydi, who heard a woman named Sabah singing. “Az-Zubaydi heard her voice and recognized her talent. He taught her and put much effort into training her. … She made her debut as a songstress [and] began to associate freely with men. She was kind and the young men were crazy about her.” The story continues with Sabah taking a lover, marrying him, and bearing his child. Her husband soon div...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editors’ Introduction
• Section I: The Trades in Slave Children
• Section II: The Treatment and Uses of Slave Children through the Ages
• Contributors
• Index