Captivity and the Slave Trade

Part I - Captivity and the Slave Trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2021

Edited by

Craig Perry ,

David Eltis ,

Stanley L. Engerman and

David Richardson

Show author details

Craig Perry: Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
David Eltis: Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Stanley L. Engerman: Affiliation:
University of Rochester, New York
David Richardson: Affiliation:
University of Hull

Book contents

Get access

Summary

A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge World History of Slavery , pp. 25 - 152

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139024723 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

A Guide to Further Reading

Bensch, Stephen P., “From Prizes of War to Domestic Merchandise: The Changing Face of Slavery in Catalonia and Aragon, 1000–1300,” Viator, 25 (1994): 63–93.Google Scholar

Brodman, James, Ransoming Captives in Crusader Spain: The Order of Merced on the Christian-Islamic Frontier (Philadelphia, PA, 1986).Google Scholar

Cipollone, P. Giulio, Cristianità-Islam: cattività e liberazione in nome di Dio: il tempo di Innocenzo III dopo il 1187 (Rome, 1992).Google Scholar

Constable, Olivia Remie, “Muslim Spain and Mediterranean Slavery: The Medieval Slave Trade as an Aspect of Muslim–Christian Relations,” in Waugh, Scott L. and Diehl, Peter (eds.), Christendom and Its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000–1500 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 260–284.Google Scholar

Fancy, Hussein, The Mercenary Mediterranean (Chicago, IL, 2016).Google Scholar

Mallol, Ferrer i, Teresa, Maria, “La redempció de captius a la corona Catalano-Aragonesa (segle XIV).” Anuario de Estudios Medievales, 15 (1985): 237–297.Google Scholar

Mallol, Ferrer i, Teresa, Maria, “Els redemptors de captius: mostolafs, eixees o alfaquecs (segles XII–XIII),” Medievalia, 9 (1990): 85–106.CrossRef Google Scholar

Fontenay, Michel, “Esclaves et/ou captifs. Préciser les concepts,” in Kaiser, Wolfgang (ed.), Le commerces des captifs. Les intermédiares dans l’éc (Rome, 2008).Google Scholar

Friedman, Yvonne, Encounter Between Enemies: Captivity and Ransom in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Leiden, 2002).Google Scholar

Gómez-Rivas, Camilo, “The Ransom Industry and the Expectation of Refuge on the Western Mediterranean Muslim–Christian Frontier, 1085–1350,” in Bennison, Amira K. (ed.), The Articulation of Power in Medieval Iberia and the Maghrib (Oxford, 2014), pp. 217–232.Google Scholar

Hopley, Russell, “The Ransoming of Prisoners in Medieval North Africa and Andalusia: An Analysis of the Legal Framework,” Medieval Encounters, 15 (2009): 337–354.CrossRef Google Scholar

Marín, Manuela, and El Hour, Rachid, “Captives, Children and Conversion: A Case from Late Nasrid Granada,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 41 (1998): 453–473.Google Scholar

Miller, Kathryn A. “Reflections on Reciprocity: A Late Medieval Islamic Perspective on Christian-Muslim Commitment to Captive Exchange,” in Trivellato, Francesca, Halevi, Leor, and Antunes, Cátia (eds.), Religion and Trade: Cross-Cultural Exchanges in World History, 1000–1900 (Oxford, 2014), pp. 131–149.Google Scholar

Rodriguez, Jarbel A., Captives and Their Saviors in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Washington, DC, 2007).Google Scholar

Salicrú i Lluch, Roser, “Cartes de captius cristians a les presons de Tunis del regnat de Ferran d’Antequera,” Miscel·lània de Textos Medievals, 7 (1994): 550–590.Google Scholar

Strickland, Matthew, “Rules of War or War Without Rules? – Some Reflections on Conduct and the Treatment of Non-Combatants in Medieval Transcultural Wars,” in Kortüm, Hans-Henning (ed.), Transcultural Wars: From the Middle Ages to the 21st Century (Munich, 2010), pp. 107–147.Google Scholar

Ryan, Szpiech, “Prisons and Polemics: Captivity, Confinement, and Medieval Interreligious Encounter,” in Arenal, Mercedes García and Wiegers, Gerard, Polemical Encounters: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in Iberia and Beyond (University Park, PA, 2019), pp. 271–304.Google Scholar

Van Koningsveld, P. S. “Muslim Slaves and Captives in Western Europe during the Late Middle Ages,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 6 (1995): 5–23.Google Scholar

Vidal Castro, Francisco, “Poder religioso y cautivos creyentes en la edad media: la experiencia Islámica,” in Delgado, Isidro Hernandez (ed.), Fe, cautiverio y liberación. Actas del I congreso Trinitario de Granada, Granada, 6, 7 y 8 (Cordoba, 1996).Google Scholar

A Guide to Further Reading

Allsen, Thomas T., Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles (Cambridge, 1997).Google Scholar

Allsen, Thomas T., “Population Movements in Mongol Eurasia,” in Amitai, Reuven and Biran, Michal (eds.), Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change (Honolulu, 2015), pp. 119–151.Google Scholar

Amitai, Reuven and Cluse, Christoph (eds.), Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1000–1500 CE) (Turnhout, 2017).Google Scholar

Biran, Michal, “Encounters among Enemies: Preliminary Remarks on Captives in Mongol Eurasia,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 21 (2014–2015): 27–42.Google Scholar

Biran, Michal, “The Mongol Empire and Inter-Civilizational Exchange,” in Kedar, Benjamin Z. and Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. (eds.), The Cambridge World History, Vol. V, Expanding Webs of Exchange and Conflict, 500 CE–1500 CE (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 534–558.Google Scholar

Bossler, Beverly Jo, Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity: Gender and Social Change in China, 1000–1400 (Cambridge, MA, 2013).Google Scholar

Ebisawa, Tetsuo, “Bondservants in the Yüan,” Acta Asiatica, 45 (1983): 27–48.Google Scholar

Golden, Peter B., “The Terminology of Slavery and Servitude in Medieval Turkic,” in DeWeese (ed.), Devin, Studies on Central Asian History in Honor of Yuri Bregel (Bloomington, IN, 2001), pp. 27–56.Google Scholar

Hoffman, Birgit, “Rashiduddin Fazlullah as Perfect Organizer: The Case of the Endowment Slaves and Gardens of the Rab-i Rashidi,” in Fragner, Bert (ed.), Proceedings of the Second European Conference of Iranian Studies Held in Bamberg 30th September to 4th October 1991 (Rome, 1995), pp. 287–296.Google Scholar

Irinchin, Yekemingghadai, “Regarding the Mongol Bo’ol in the 11th and 12th Centuries,” in Xin, Luo (ed.), Chinese Scholars on Inner Asia (Bloomington, IN, 2012), pp. 315–330.Google Scholar

Skrynnikova, T. V., “Boghol, a Category of Submission at the Mongols,” Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 58 (2005): 313–319.Google Scholar

Tolmateva, Marina A., “Concubines on the Road: Ibn Battuta’s Slave Women,” in Gordon, Matthew S. and Hain, Kathryn A. (eds.), Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History (Oxford, 2017), pp. 163–189.Google Scholar

A Guide to Further Reading

Amitai, Reuven, and Cluse, Christoph (eds.), Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean (c.1000–1500 CE) (Turnhout, 2017).Google Scholar

Ayalon, David, “L’esclavage du mamelouk,” Oriental Notes and Studies, 1 (1951): 1–66.Google Scholar

Balard, Michel, La Romanie génoise (XIIe–début du XVe siècle) (Genoa, 1978).Google Scholar

Baraschi, Silvia, “Tatars and Turks in Genoese Deeds from Kilia (1360–1361),” Revue des études sud-est européennes, 25 (1987): 61–67.Google Scholar

Barker, Hannah, That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260–1500 (Philadelphia, PA, 2019).Google Scholar

Christiansen, Eric, The Northern Crusades (London, 1997).Google Scholar

Ehrenkreutz, Andrew, “Strategic Implications of the Slave Trade between Genoa and Mamluk Egypt in the Second Half of the Thirteenth Century,” in Udovitch, Abraham (ed.), The Islamic Middle East, 700–1900: Studies in Economic and Social History (Princeton, NJ, 1981), pp. 335–345.Google Scholar

Evans, Daniel, “The Slave Coast of Europe,” Slavery and Abolition, 6 (1985): 41–58.Google Scholar

Fontaine, Janel, “Early Medieval Slave-Trading in the Archaeological Record: Comparative Methodologies,” Early Medieval Europe, 25 (2017): 466–488.CrossRef Google Scholar

Gruszczynski, Jacek, Shepard, Jonathan, and Jankowiak, Marek (eds.), Viking-Age Trade: Silver, Slaves and Gotland (London, 2019).Google Scholar

Hellie, Richard, “Recent Soviet Historiography on Medieval and Early Modern Russian Slavery,” Russian Review, 35 (1976): 1–32.Google Scholar

Karpov, Sergei, “Rabotorgovlia v Iuzhnom Prichernomor’e v pervoi polovine XV v. (preimushchestvenno po dannym massarii Kaffy),” Vizantiiskii Vremennik, 46 (1986): 139–145.Google Scholar

Małowist, Marian, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and World Development, 13th–18th Centuries, trans. Jean Batou and Henryk Szlajfer (Leiden, 2010).Google Scholar

McCormick, Michael, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD 300–900 (Cambridge, 2001).Google Scholar

Mosher Stuard, Susan, “To Town to Serve: Urban Domestic Slavery in Medieval Ragusa,” in Hanawalt, Barbara (ed.), Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe (Bloomington, IN, 1986), pp. 39–55.Google Scholar

Nazmi, Ahmad, Commercial Relations between Arabs and Slavs (9th–11th Centuries) (Warsaw, 1998).Google Scholar

Paviot, Jacques, “La piraterie bourguignonne en mer Noire à la moitié du XVe siècle,” in Dubois, Henri, Hocquet, Jean-Claude, and Vauchez, André (eds.), Horizons marins, itinéraires spirituels (Ve–XVIIIe siècles), 2 vols. (Paris, 1987), Vol. 2, pp. 203–215.Google Scholar

Rotman, Youval, Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World (Cambridge, MA, 2009).Google Scholar

Tardy, Lajos, Sklavenhandel in der Tartarei: Die Frage der Mandscharen, trans. Mátyás Esterházy (Szeged, 1983).Google Scholar

Verlinden, Charles, L’esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale (Ghent, 1977).Google Scholar

Witzenrath, Christoph (ed.), Eurasian Slavery, Ransom and Abolition in World History, 1200–1860 (Farnham, 2015).Google Scholar

Zevakin, E. S. and Penčko, A., “Ricerche sulla storia delle colonie genovesi nel Caucaso occidentale nei secoli XIII-XV,” trans. Maria Teresa Dellacasa, in Miscellanea di Studi Storici (Genoa, 1969), pp. 7–98.Google Scholar

A Guide to Further Reading

A transhistorical overview of this topic can be found in Gwyn, Campbell, “Slavery and the Trans-Indian Ocean World Slave Trade,” in Prabha Ray, Himanshu and Alpers, Edward A. (eds.), Cross Currents and Community Networks: The History of the Indian Ocean World (Oxford, 2007), pp. 286–305. Campbell’s more recent article “East Africa in the Early Indian Ocean World Slave Trade: The Zanj Revolt Reconsidered,” in Campbell, Gwyn (ed.), Early Exchange between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World (Cham, 2016), pp. 275–303 is a study, as the title suggests, of East Africa and the history and historiography of the Indian Ocean Slave trade to Iraq and the greater Middle East. For Yemen and its IOW connections, we now have Magdalena Moorthy-Kloss, “Slaves at the Najahid and Rasulid Courts of Yemen (412–553 AH/1021–1158 CE and 626–858 AH/1229–1454 CE)” (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Vienna, 2019). Moorthy-Kloss brings a wealth of data and previously untranslated material to light. She builds on earlier scholarship that includes slavery within its frame, but focuses more broadly on society, economy, and culture. See also works by Roxani Margariti, R. B. Serjeant, Rex G. Smith, and Éric Vallet that are cited in Moorthy-Kloss’s bibliography and in this chapter’s notes.

The fact that scholarship on IOW slavery is embedded within more general studies of trade and communication reflects the nature of historical sources and the structure of this slave system itself. With some notable exceptions, historical sources generally treat slavery incidentally. Moreover, enslaved people were trafficked in the IOW as one commodity among many luxury goods. Thus, more research and further synthesis of the literature is needed to write general histories of the greater IOW slave trade. A recent work that integrates the slave trade into medieval global history is Valerie Hansen, The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began (New York, 2020).

Though it is mainly concerned with later periods, Reilly, Benjamin, Slavery, Agriculture, and Malaria in the Arabian Peninsula (Athens, 2015) analyzes the slave trade between Africa and Arabia over the longue durée. Another work that sheds light on the topic of slavery and the slave trade is Power, Timothy, The Red Sea from Byzantium to the Caliphate AD 500–1000 (Cairo, 2012). Kusimba, Chapurukha M., “Archaeology of Slavery in East Africa,” The African Archaeological Review, 21 (2004): 59–88 studies evidence from later centuries, but his methods and conclusions should be considered among other perspectives that differ over to what extent archaeology can illuminate the history of slavery. For instance, see the works of J. Alexander, Mark Horton, and John Middleton as cited in Campbell “East Africa.” Documentary sources also contribute greatly to our knowledge of IOW slavery, see the materials related to the topic in Prasad, Pushpa, Lekhapaddhati: Documents of State and Everyday Life from Ancient and Early Medieval Gujarat, 9th to 15th Centuries (New Delhi, 2007) and the sources cited in Perry, Craig, “Historicizing Slavery in the Medieval Islamic World,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 49 (2017): 133–138, esp. n. 9.

For slavery in South Asia, Chatterjee, Indrani and Eaton, Richard Maxwell (eds.), Slavery & South Asian History (Bloomington, IN, 2006) contains several chapters on slavery before 1500. For links between slavery here and the greater Indian Ocean region, one must consult the many different works of cultural and material history that are cited in this chapter’s notes and that are too numerous to reiterate here. In addition, see Ray, Himanshu Prabha, “Trading Partners across the Indian Ocean: The Making of Maritime Communities,” in Wiesner-Hanks, Merry E. (ed.), The Cambridge World History, 7 vols. (Cambridge, 2014–2015), Vol. 5, pp. 287–308.

For the transition from the medieval to the early modern period, see Vink, Markus, “‘The World’s Oldest Trade’: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of World History, 14 (2003): 131–177; Philippe Beaujard, The Worlds of the Indian Ocean: A Global History, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 2019); Vernet, Thomas “Slave Trade and Slavery on the Swahili Coast, 1500–1750,” in Mirzai, Behnaz A., Lovejoy, Paul E., and Montana, Ismael Musah (eds.), Slavery, Islam and Diaspora (Trenton, NJ, 2009), pp. 37–76; Allen, Richard B., “Ending the History of Silence: Reconstructing European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean,” Tempo 23 (May 2017): 294–313; Bouanga, Ayda, “Gold, Slaves, and Trading Routes in Southern Blue Nile (Abbay) Societies, Ethiopia, 13th–16th Centuries,” Northeast African Studies, 17 (2017): 31–60; and Tegegne, Habtamu Mengistie, “The Edict of King Gälawdéwos against the Illegal Slave Trade in Christians: Ethiopia, 1548,” in Lambourn, Elizabeth (ed.), Legal Encounters on the Medieval Globe (Kalamazoo, 2017), pp. 73–114.

Book contents

Part I - Captivity and the Slave Trade

Summary

Access options

References

A Guide to Further Reading

A Guide to Further Reading

A Guide to Further Reading

A Guide to Further Reading

Save book to Kindle

Save book to Dropbox

Save book to Google Drive