Primary Sources On This Website

Primary Sources Elsewhere

  • Balafrej, Lamia. “Domestic Slavery, Skin Colour, and Image Dialectic in Thirteenth-Century Arabic Manuscripts.” Art History 44, no. 5 (2021): 1012-1036.
  • Barker, Hannah. “Purchasing a Slave in Fourteenth-Century Cairo: Ibn Al-Akfānī’s Book of Observation and Inspection in the Examination of Slaves.” Mamlūk Studies Review 19 (2016): 1–23. (14th century)
  • Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. 6 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967-1993. See “A Dying Woman Frees Her Two Slaves Girls” and “Manumission of a Slave Girl,” vol. 5, p.147-150.
  • Goitein, S. D. Letters of Medieval Jewish Traders. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. See “The Abandoned Concubine,” p. 335-338.
  • Goitein, S. D. “Side Lights on Jewish Education from the Cairo Geniza.” In Gratz College Anniversary Volume, edited by Isidore David Passow and Samuel Tobias Lachs, 83–110. Philadelphia: Gratz College, 1971. See “Letter of a Woman, Who Was Seriously Ill… [and insists that her daughter and her slave-nurse not be separated after her death],” p. 85-87.
  • Haji, Hamid, ed. and trans. Inside the Immaculate Portal: A History from Early Fatimid Archives. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012.
  • Hunwick, John, and Eve Troutt Powell. The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002. Includes selections from the Quran (7th century), al-Bukhari’s hadith collection (9th century), and various legal treatises of the Maliki school.
  • Ibn al-Sāʿī, ʿAlī Anjab. Consorts of the Caliphs, ed. Shawkat M. Toorawa. New York: New York University Press, 2015. (13th century)
  • Ibn Battuta. The Travels of Ibn Battuta, AD 1325-1354: Volumes I-V. Translated by C.F. Beckingham and H.A.R. Gibb. The Hakluyt Society, Second Series. London: Routledge, 2016. 
  • Ibn Buṭlān. Epistle about the Purchase of Slaves and Their Examination. Excerpts translated on the Medieval Nubia website; Jarbel Rodriguez, Muslim and Christian Contact in the Middle Ages: A Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), doc. 86 (Ibn Butlan, How to Purchase a Slave, p.429); Bernard Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1974), 2:243-251. (11th century)
  • Lewis, Bernard, ed. Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. See especially 1:43-46 (Kafur the Eunuch), 1:97-99 (Ibn Khaldun on the Mamluks), 2:22-27 (Mahmud Ka’ti, The Pilgrimage of Mansa Musa), 2:165-168 (Al-Qalqashandi, An Invitation to Merchants), 2:236-237 (A Letter of Deferred Manumission for a Slave), 2:237 (Nizam al-Mulk, Slaves in the Palace), 2: 238-243 (Al-Quduri, Laws Regarding Slaves), 2:243-251 (Ibn Butlan, On Buying Slaves), 2:251-256 (Al-Abshihi, On Slaves, Slave-Girls, and Servants).
  • “Life of Philotheos of Athos.” In Holy Men of Mount Athos, edited by Alice-Mary Talbot and Richard Greenfield. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 40. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016.
  • Little, Donald. “Six Foureenth Century Purchase Deeds for Slaves from al-Ḥaram aš-Šarīf.” Zeitschrift der deutschen Morganländischen Gesellschaft 131 (1981): 297-337. (14th century)
  • Little, Donald. “Two Fourteenth-Century Court Records from Jerusalem concerning the Disposition of Slaves by Minors.” Arabica 29 (1982): 16-49. (14th century)
  • Lopez, Robert, and Irving Raymond, eds. Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. See especially docs. 4 (al-Jahiz, The Investigation of Commerce, p.28-29), 5-6 (Ibn Khurradadhbah, Book of Routes and Kingdoms, p.29-33), 17 (Ibn Hawqal, Book of Routes and Kingdoms, p.52-54)
  • MacGregor, Neil. A History of the World in 100 Objects. New York: Penguin Books, 2010. No. 52, “Harem Wall-painting Fragments,” p.333-338.
  • Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim and Jewish Sources, ed. Olivia Remie Constable. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. See especially docs. 18 (Ibn Hazm, “On Forgetting a Beloved,” p.103-106), 44 (“Hadith Bayad wa Riyad,” p.252-259), 65 (“Slavery in Castile: Siete Partidas,” p.393-398), and 83 (“Muslims and Christians in Valencia,” p.491-495).
  • Mihailović, Konstantin. Memoirs of a Janissary. Edited by Svat Soucek, translated by Benjamin Stolz. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 2011. (15th century)
  • Rodriguez, Jarbel. Muslim and Christian Contact in the Middle Ages: A Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. See especially docs. 86 (Ibn Butlan, How to Purchase a Slave, p.429), 87 (Ibn Munqidh, Captive Tales, p.429-431), 88 (Konstantin Mihailovic, On the Janissaries, p.431-433), 89 (Andres Bernaldez, The Taking and Freeing of Captives in Iberia, p.433-434).
  • Rosenwein, Barbara, ed. Reading the Middle Ages: Sources from Europe, Byzantium, and the Islamic World. 3rd edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. Document 4.1 (Al-Tabari, “The Defeat of the Zanj Revolt,” p.171-176).
  • Schiltberger, Johann. The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger, A Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1396-1427. Translated by J. Buchan Telfer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Reprint of the 1879 edition. (14th-15th century)
  • Yagur, M. (2019). Saʿāda the enslaved woman: immersion and oblivion, T-S 12.872. [Genizah Research Unit, Fragment of the Month, August 2019].

Selected Bibliography

  • Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.
  • Ali, Kecia. Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. 
  • Ali, Kecia. “The Truth about Islam and Sex Slavery History Is More Complicated Than You Think.” 2015. The Huffington Post.
  • Anderson, Glaire. “Concubines, Eunuchs and Patronage in Early Islamic Córdoba.” In Reassessing the Roles of Women as “Makers” of Medieval Art and Architecture, vol. 2, edited by Therese Martin, 633–670. Leiden: Brill, 2012.
  • Bacharach, Jere L. “African Military Slaves in the Medieval Middle East: The Cases of Iraq (869–955) and Egypt (868–1171).” International Journal of Middle East Studies 13 (1981): 471–495.
  • Balafrej, Lamia. “Automated Slaves, Ambivalent Images, and Noneffective Machines in al-Jazari’s Compendium of the Mechanical Arts, 1206.” 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual – Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und visuellen Kultur 3.4 (2022): 737-774.
  • Barker, Hannah. That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-1500. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
  • Barton, Simon. Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.
  • Booth, Marilyn, ed. Harem Histories: Envisioning Places and Living Spaces. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.
  • Bray, Julia. “Men, Women, and Slaves in Abbasid Society.” In Gender in the Early Medieval World, East and West, 300-900, edited by Leslie Brubaker and Julia M. H. Smith, 121-146. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
  • Brockopp, Jonathan E. “Concubines” and “Slaves and Slavery.” The Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an. General editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Leiden: Brill Publishing Online, 2015.
  • Brunschvig, Robert. “ʿAbd.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, 1:24-40. Leiden: Brill, 1960.
  • Burns, Robert I. “Interactive Slave Operations: Muslim-Christian-Jewish Contracts in Thirteenth-Century Barcelona.” Medieval Encounters 5, no. 2 (1999): 135-155.
  • Burns, Robert I. “Piracy: Islamic-Christian Interface in Conquered Valencia.” In Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Crusader Kingdom of Valencia, 109-125. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. 
  • Campbell, Gwyn. “East Africa in the Early Indian Ocean World Slave Trade: The Zanj Revolt Reconsidered.” In Early Exchange between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World, 275–303. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
  • Clarence-Smith, William, and David Eltis. “White Servitude.” n The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 3, AD 1420 – AD 1804, edited by David Eltis and Stanley Engerman, 47-80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  • Conermann, Stephan. “Slavery in the Mamluk Sultanate.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 383-405. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Constable, Olivia Remie. “Spain and Mediterranean Slavery: The Medieval Slave Trade as an Aspect of Muslim-Christian Relations.” In Christendom and its Discontents: Exclusion, Persecution, and Rebellion, 1000-1500, edited by Scott L. Waugh and Peter D. Diehl, 264-284. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 
  • El Hamel, Chouki. Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
  • Fancy, Hussein. “Captivity, Ransom, and Manumission, 500-1420.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 53-75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Forand, Paul G. “The Relation of the Slave and the Client to the Master or Patron in Medieval Islam.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 2 (1971): 59-66.
  • Franz, Kurt. “Slavery in Islam: Legal Norms and Social Practice.” In Mediterranean Slavery Revisited (500-1800)/Neue Perspektiven Auf Mediterrane Sklaverei (500-1800), edited by Stefan Hanß and Juliane Schiel, 51–141. Zürich: Chronos Verlag, 2014.
  • Fynn-Paul, Jeff. “The Greater Mediterranean Slave Trade.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 27-52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Ghosh, Amitav. In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler’s Tale. London: Penguin Books, 1992.
  • Gillingham, John. “Crusading Warfare, Chivalry, and the Enslavement of Women and Children.” In The Medieval Way of War: Studies in Medieval Military History in Honor of Bernard S. Bachrach, edited by Gregory Halfond, 133-151. Burlington: Ashgate, 2015.
  • Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. 6 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967-1993. See especially vol.1, p.130-147.
  • Gordon, Matthew S. The Breaking of a Thousand Swords: A History of the Turkish Military of Samarra (A.H. 200-275/815-889 C.E.). Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.
  • Gordon, Matthew S., and Kathryn A. Hain, eds. Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • Gordon, Matthew. “Slavery in the Islamic Middle East (c.600-1000 CE).” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 337-361. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Hathaway, Jane. The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Harem: From African Slave to Power-Broker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
  • Hershenzon, Daniel. “Towards a Connected History of Bondage in the Mediterranean: Recent Trends in the Field.” History Compass 15 (2017): 1-13.
  • Hershenzon, Daniel. The Captive Sea: Slavery, Communication and Commerce in Early Modern Spain and the Mediterranean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
  • Kallander, Amy Aisen. Women, Gender, and the Palace Households of Ottoman Tunisia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013.
  • Labovitz, Gail. “More Slave Women, More Lewdness: Freedom and Honor in Rabbinic Constructions of Female Sexuality.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 28:2 (2012): 69-87.
  • Lewis, Bernard. Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
  • Loiseau, Julien. “Frankish Captives in Mamluk Cairo.” Al-Masaq 23, no. 1 (2011): 37-52.
  • Marin, Manuela, and Randi Deguilhem, eds. Writing the Feminine: Women in Arab Sources. London: I.B. Tauris, 2002.
  • Marmon, Shaun. “Intersections of Gender, Sex, and Slavery: Female Sexual Slavery.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 185-213. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Marmon, Shaun. “Black Slaves in Mamlūk Narratives: Representations of Transgression.” Al-Qanṭara: Revista de Estudios Árabes 28, no. 2 (2007): 435–64.
  • Marmon, Shaun. “Domestic Slavery in the Mamluk Empire: A Preliminary Sketch.” In Slavery in the Islamic Middle East, edited by Shaun Marmon, 1–23. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 1999.
  • Marmon, Shaun. Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries in Islamic Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
  • Mattson, Ingrid. “A Believing Slave is Better Than an Unbeliever: Status and Community in Early Islamic Society and Law.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1999.
  • Moorthy Kloss, Magdalena. “Slavery in Medieval Arabia.” n The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History, ed. Damian Pargas and Juliane Schiel. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. This book is open-access.
  • Moukheiber, Karen. “Gendering Emotions: Ṭarab, Women and Musical Performance in Three Biographical Narratives from ‘The Book of Songs.’” Cultural History 8.2 (2019): 164-183.
  • Myrne, Pernilla. “Slaves for Pleasure in Arabic Sex Manuals from the Tenth to the Twelfth Centuries.” Journal of Global Slavery 4:2 (2019): 196-225.
  • Özkoray, Hayri Gökșin. “Slavery in the Ottoman Empire.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery Throughout History, ed. Damian Pargas and Juliane Schiel. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. This book is open-access.
  • Peirce, Leslie P. The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.
  • Peirce, Leslie P. Empress of the East: How a European Slave Girl Became Queen of the Ottoman Empire. New York: Basic Books, 2017.
  • Perry, Craig. “The Daily Life of Slaves and the Global Reach of Slavery.” Ph. D. diss., Emory University, 2014.
  • Perry, Craig. “Conversion as an Aspect of Master-Slave Relationships in the Medieval Jewish Community.” In Contesting Inter-Religious Conversion in the Medieval World, edited by Yaniv Fox and Yosi Yisraeli, 135–59. London: Routledge, 2016.
  • Perry, Craig. “Slavery and Agency in the Middle Ages.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 240-267. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Petry, Carl F. The Criminal Underworld in a Medieval Islamic Society. Chicago: Middle East Documentation Center, 2012. See especially “Murder by Domestic Slaves,” p. 224-237.
  • Popovic, Alexandre. The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd/9th Century. Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1999.
  • Rapoport, Yosef. “Women and Gender in Mamluk Society: An Overview.” Mamluk Studies Review 11 (2007): 1–45.
  • Richardson, Kristina. “Singing Slave Girls (Qiyan) of the Abbasid Court in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries.” In Children in Slavery through the Ages, edited by Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers, and Joseph C. Miller, 105-118. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009.
  • “Roundtable: Locating Slavery in in Middle Eastern and Islamic History.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 49.1 (2017): 133-172.
  • Schacht, J. “Umm al-walad.” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., edited by P. Bearman et al. Leiden: Brill Publishing Online, 2015.
  • Schneider, Irene. “Freedom and Slavery in Early Islamic Time (1st/7th and 2nd/8th Centuries).” Al-Qantara 28, no. 2 (2007): 353-382.
  • Simour, Lhoussain. “(De)Slaving History: Mostafa Al-Azemmouri, the Sixteenth-Century Morrocan Captive in the Tale of Conquest.” European Review of History 20.3 (2013): 345-365.
  • Sobers-Khan, Nur. “Slavery in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 406-427. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
  • Toledano, Ehud. “Enslavement in the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern Period.” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 3, AD 1420 – AD 1804, edited by David Eltis and Stanley Engerman, 25-46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  • Toru, Miura and John Edward Philips, eds. Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa: a Comparative Study. London and New York, 2000.
  • Zilfi, Madeline C. Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire: The Design of Difference. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010.  

Contributors

Hannah Barker, Patricia Blessing, Debra Blumenthal, Jelle Bruning, Matthew S. Gordon, Mackenzie King, Paul Lane, Shaun Marmon, Maria Olsen, Craig Perry, Henriette Rødland, Valentin Skald, Josephine van den Bent, Rebecca Winer