Source: A Former Slave Deceives Ibn Khalīl
‘Abd al-Bāsiṭ ibn Khalīl was born in 1440 in Malatya, a border town of the Mamluk kingdom of Egypt and Syria, now located in eastern Turkey. His father was a mamluk, a former slave, who became a commander in the Mamluk army. As a young man, Ibn Khalīl studied law, literature, and medicine, and he also became involved in trade. In the 1460s he traveled to North Africa and al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) to trade and to continue his study of medicine. The following anecdote dates from 1463, when he was living in Tripoli, a major port in what is now Libya. It is taken from his chronicle The Smiling Gardens concerning the Events and Biographies of the Age (Al-rawḍ al-bāsim fī ḥawādith al-ʿumr wa-al-tarājim).
This anecdote reveals a number of interesting facets of slavery in the medieval Mediterranean. It starts with Ibn Khalīl’s decision to entrust one former slave, a Sardinian captive whom Ibn Khalīl had manumitted and authorized to conduct business transactions on his behalf, with a cargo of ten enslaved women from East Africa. But instead of selling the women in Beirut as planned, the man disembarked at the island of Rhodes, which at that time was governed by the Hospitallers, a Christian order dedicated to crusading. There he sold the women, converted back to Christianity, and returned to his home in Sardinia.
This was a problem for Ibn Khalīl. Not only had he lost his investment in the enslaved women (not to mention his patronage rights over the freed man), but the man had also committed a crime in Ibn Khalīl’s name. It was illegal for a Muslim (the Sardinian man) to sell Muslim slaves (the African women) to non-Muslims (the Hospitallers). The ruler of Tripoli therefore summoned Ibn Khalīl to explain why his authorized business agent had sold Muslim women to Christians. Ibn Khalīl swore that he had not ordered his agent to do any such thing, but the ruler summoned him again after a pair of Muslim captives who had escaped from the Hospitallers arrived in Tripoli and revived the issue. In the end Ibn Khalīl escaped punishment, but he was clearly angry at the way he had been deceived and made vulnerable by his former slave. He also believed that the ruler of Tripoli had used the returning captives from Rhodes to set him up, perhaps to extract money from him for the treasury. This text illustrates the global scope of the slave trade in the premodern period, but it also raises questions about the interactions among slaves and captives of different backgrounds who mixed in the ports, markets, and households of cosmopolitan centers like Tripoli. In addition, the strong emotions and complex power dynamics at work in this story require us to assess carefully Ibn Khalīl’s reliability as a narrator.
Translated from the Arabic by Hannah Barker. ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ ibn Khalīl ibn Shāhīn, Kitāb al-rawḍ al-bāsim fī ḥawādith al-ʿumr wa-al-tarājim, ed. ʿUmar Tadmuri (Beirut: Al-Maktabah al-ʿaṣriyah, 2014), 2:229-231.
Trickery of a Slave Against the Author
On this day I bought ten Zanjī[1] slave women [al-jawārī al-zunūj] and handed them over to a male slave [mamlūk] of mine whom I had bought in Tunis. His origin was from the infidels of Sardinia. He was taken captive and converted to Islam and became a slave [mamlūk], and the years moved him around among several countries until I bought him. I was good to him and became accustomed to him and freed him, and I began to rely on him in many of my affairs and connections. He showed increasing friendship, and love for me, and duplicitous and deceptive service, and I had no awareness of his goal.
Then he tricked me by saying to me: “[Your] slave [raqīq] is at the limit of authorization[2] in these countries and has the goal of raising the price on the shore of Beirut.” So I acquired for myself several of that [merchandise][3] with which he turned towards Beirut, accompanied by the galleys of the Venetians[4] with the merchants. He sold that [merchandise] in Beirut, then returned with the galleys with a lot of money. His writing that to me surprised me, despite my reliance on him and my lack of awareness of anything about his deception, but I did not suspect anything from him because of that. Rather I became confident in him and made that [merchandise][5] ready for him, and I spent a good sum on the price of the slave women and on their provision and making it pour forth, and I sent him down accompanied by the merchants. Then, after a period [of time], the news arrived in Tripoli with someone who had gone with the slave [raqīq] that he had disembarked with [the slave women] on the island of Rhodes and sold them there! This news reached the leader [qā’id] of Tripoli, and [also] that he had taken from the Franks of Rhodes the prices of [the slave women] whom he had disembarked, and he apostatized from Islam and went to Sardinia.
When the leader of Tripoli had verified this news of the sale of the slave women in Rhodes and that I did not know that I had [played] any part in it, he sent me someone to bring me to him and asked me about the slave women. He said to me, “Did you send them to any [particular] place?” I said, “To Beirut.” He said, “Did you send them to Rhodes and order that they be sold there?” I said, “If I did that, then upon me [be] a thousand dinars for the treasury of the Muslims.” He did not answer me until I departed…[6]
It was not long before he sent to me a second time and brought two of the captives (asārī) who had fled from Rhodes. They told him about my participation in what we have mentioned. So I said, “You two were sold in Rhodes to the Franks?” They said, “Yes,” and they mentioned the seller and his description. I was surprised by that, and I thought that it was an invention of the captives at the instruction of this tyrant and his agreement with them to take revenge on me for his hatred of me.
So I said: “I pledge to relinquish a thousand dinars to the treasury of the Muslims if it is true that I sent them to Rhodes to sell them there.” He brought two Jews of his dīwān who were waiting on me for what I had pledged, and I was heedless of their [role in the matter]. Then he said to me, “If we carry out the following [measure], I will investigate the journey of the captives, since perhaps what you had pledged had been enjoined on you.” Then the matter was concluded.
[1] From the Swahili Coast of East Africa.
[2] Slaves in the Islamic world could be given permission (idhn) to conduct specific business dealings on behalf of their masters. However, Ibn Khalīl had already manumitted the Sardinian man. The word used for permission or authorization in this passage is rukhṣa, not idhn.
[3] Ibn Khalīl does not tell us what merchandise the Sardinian man was supposed to sell in Beirut, only that he was successful in making a profit.
[4] Although this detail may seem surprising, it was not uncommon in the fifteenth century for Muslim merchants to undertake long-distance journeys in the Mediterranean on Christian ships. See Misdeeds of Catalan Corsairs.
[5] Again, Ibn Khalīl prepared more merchandise but does not give the reader full details.
[6] A word is missing here.
Discussion Questions
- Make a map of the movements of all of the people mentioned in this story. Do you notice any interesting or surprising patterns?
- How many slaves or captives appear in this story? (Hint: there are three groups.) In what ways did each group experience slavery/captivity differently? What common experiences of slavery/captivity did they share? Consider how gender, race, place of origin, process of enslavement, and other factors might have affected their experiences.
- Why did Ibn Khalīl believe that he could trust his Sardinian slave? According to him, why did that turn out to be a bad decision? What were the consequences for him and for the slave? Are you convinced by his explanation?
- What do you think happened to the slave women sold in Rhodes?
- Based on this story, what role did slavery/captivity play in the movement of information around the Mediterranean?
Related Primary Sources
Related Secondary Sources
- Robert Brunschvig, Deux récits de voyage inédits en Afrique du Nord au XVe siècle: Abdalbasit b. Halil et Adorne (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1936).
- Anthony Luttrell, “Slavery at Rhodes: 1306-1440,” in Latin Greece, the Hospitallers and the Crusades, 1291-1400 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1982), 81-100.