Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia. William D. Phillips, Jr.
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Pagan slaves from central Europe and from North Africa reached Spain as early as the mid-sixth century. There was a slave trade from Visigothic Spain to other parts of Europe and North Africa, but not much is known of it. Merchants sold slaves from Spain outside the kingdom, including some kidnapped children, even though there were some prohibitions on the export of slaves.2
The Islamic world experienced a golden age during its first centuries, and Muslim Spain shared fully in it. Once the bounds of the Islamic world were set, there were no more slaves to be obtained legally within the frontiers, except for rebels and the children of slaves. War produced relatively few slaves, and consequently the slave trade gained great importance. The Muslim elite acquired great riches and preserved that wealth through many generations. Thanks to the economic advantages that that they possessed over their neighbors, they could afford to import what they needed and wanted from outside. The necessities included timber for fuel and construction, metals (iron and gold above all), and slaves, who formed an important component of the vast new commercial system and who were considered necessities by large numbers of Muslims.3 Even though slaves seldom worked in agriculture,4 they still were imported in large numbers for artisan labor and domestic and military service. One indication of the volume of the slave trade comes from Córdoba. That single, albeit brilliant, city may have had nearly 14,000 slaves under the caliph ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III in the mid-tenth century, when the total population may have reached 250,000. 5
The early period of the slave trade into al-Andalus is not fully documented, though the outlines are fairly clear. Even at the beginning of the conquest, the Muslims brought slaves and free servants with them. These included Ethiopians and Armenians, Egyptians and Nubians. In the ninth century, merchants brought slaves into al-Andalus from Christian Iberia (at that time the northern fringe of the peninsula) and other parts of Europe. Many of the slaves were pagans captured in Central and Eastern Europe, and others were Christians, captured in Muslim raids in France and northern Spain. The merchants included Christian Franks, who dealt in the European pagans, and Muslims and Jews, who dealt in Christians. The enslaved people who found themselves traded into al-Andalus could spend their lives there as slaves, or they could face more distant journeys to other parts of the Islamic world, for there was a lively re-export trade.6
Before the tenth century, the Muslims of Spain generally bought Christian Europeans as slaves, adding them to the descendants of indigenous slaves conquered in the eighth century. By the tenth century, the mostly pagan Slavs became the most numerous imported group throughout Western Europe, where their ethnic name became the origin of the word for “slave” in most Western languages, as we have seen. The Muslims used the term ṣaqāliba in Arabic, still another example of a newly coined word for slave derived from “Slav.” But ṣaqāliba were brought to Spain by slave dealers from any of a number of European origins: Central Europe (brought in via Verdun), the shores of the Black Sea, Italy, southern France, and northern Spain. Byzantine Christians, captured by other Muslims in the eastern Mediterranean, were present as slaves of the Spanish Muslims by the eleventh century, along with North African Berbers enslaved following unsuccessful revolts.7 Some were brought into Spain as eunuchs. Muslim Spain was well known for the presence of eunuchs and for their export to the markets of the Muslim Mediterranean. Young boys among the captives were castrated and then fetched high prices as eunuchs. Some of the slaves were castrated in Verdun and then taken to Spain. Others were made eunuchs in Muslim Spain.8
The rulers of Muslim Spain began to recruit foreigners as soldiers in the eighth century. The history of slave soldiers in the Islamic world is complex, although the basic motivation for their use was simple: they were loyal, with no local ties to compromise their loyalty to their masters. They came from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe, with the “Slavs” (Europeans) the most important group among them. They were brought in as children, converted to Islam, and given an education in Arabic. The real rise in their military use came with al-Ḥakam I (ruled 797–822), who organized a permanent force of salaried and slave soldiers. Al-Ḥakam II (ruled 961–76) made use of Slavs and had a unit of black soldiers as his personal guard. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III, who declared himself caliph in 929, began to import and to employ Slavs on a larger scale. By the time of his death, their numbers in Córdoba are put at 3,750. The number of Slavs increased still more under the chamberlain al-Mansur (978–1002). The inhabitants of Córdoba, who dubbed them “the silent ones” because of their lack of proficiency in Arabic, regarded them with suspicion. Many of them attained freed status and formed families. Their presence disrupted the balance of ethnic forces in the caliphate and hastened its decline. Their role declined with the end of the caliphate in the early eleventh century, when many of them migrated to certain of the taifa kingdoms, the city-states that replaced the unified caliphate, where they eventually became rulers of Almería, Badajoz, Denia, Mallorca, Murcia, Tortosa, and Valencia. The trade in Slavic slaves virtually ceased, but slaves imported from sub-Saharan Africa rose in numbers and came to constitute a significant element in the slave trade to al-Andalus.9
The Muslims of Iberia obtained black African slaves through their connections with their coreligionists in North Africa. Muslims called the black Africans ‘abid (plural of ‘abd = slave) or sūdān. The latter term came from their place of origin south of the Sahara in the Bilād al-Sūdān, the land of the blacks, where the Sudanic belt of grasslands stretches eastward from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ethiopian highlands. Muslims had been familiar with the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa since they initially crossed the desert in the first Islamic century and brought back a few slaves. Their numbers grew as Muslim penetration into sub-Saharan Africa intensified. The North Africans from the eighth century maintained caravan routes across the Sahara to trade in the black states of the Sudan, many of whose leaders and merchants had converted to Islam. The North Africans provided the sub-Saharan markets with dates, figs, sugar, and cowries (shells for use as currency). Manufactured goods were quite important: copper utensils, ironwork, paper goods, Arabic books, tools, weapons, and cloths of cotton and silk. The Sudanese had cotton cloth of their own, but imported dyed fabrics had an appeal for them. Jewelry, mirrors, and glass, especially Venetian glass, went south with the caravans. North African horses were in great demand south of the Sahara, because the military strength of the Sudanese states depended on cavalry. The North Africans also provided salt that they purchased along some of the caravan routes.10 In exchange, sub-Saharan Africa provided the North Africans with ivory, ostrich feathers, skins and leather, kola nuts, ebony wood, and a type of pepper. Nevertheless, gold and slaves were the most important exports from the Sudan to the Mediterranean. By the end of the eighth century Muslims already knew of the gold from the region. From the tenth century through the fifteenth, the Muslims and Europeans obtained much of their gold from West African sources by way of the trans-Saharan trade routes. The merchants and rulers of the Sudanic states grew wealthy and powerful as a result of their ability to supply the metal and thus to pay for their imports from the Maghrib.11
The Muslim world had a constant demand for sub-Saharan slaves that continued through the Middle Ages and long after 1500, even maintaining maintained a sizeable volume during the period of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.12 The sufferings of those who were forced to make the trek were horrifying. In addition to the heat and cold, the threat of storms, and the lack of water that they shared with the other members of the caravans, the slaves often had to act as bearers of other goods. Even when they did not carry loads themselves, they had to load and unload the camels and help with the daily camp preparations.13 The slaves who survived the desert crossing spread through North Africa, where many remained. Others were sent on to other Muslim lands, including Islamic Spain, but until the fall of Granada in 1492, most slaves of the Spanish Muslims were Christians from the northern kingdoms of the peninsula.
The Slave Trade in Christian Spain
The trade in slaves went both ways, of course. Iberian Christians imported slaves throughout the period as well, just as their Muslim contemporaries did. The slave trade changed over the centuries as the political and military balance shifted. The Muslim ascendancy from the eighth into the eleventh century declined as the Christians gained greater and greater control from the eleventh century to the end of the fifteenth.14 Those who operated the slave trade changed as well. Among the slave traders supplying