13th Century

Primary Sources On This Website

• Cantigas de Santa María (Europe)
• Captives of the Mongols (Ghazni and the Hindu Kush) (South Asia, Russia and Central Asia)
• The Capture of Vardapet Vanakan by the Mongols (Russia and Central Asia)
• Christian Capture of Muslim Captives and Slaves in the Thirteenth-Century Crown or Realms of Aragon (Europe)
• Concerning Persons and Divisions of Persons (Europe)
• Concerning Sellers of Male and Female Slaves (Europe, Middle East and North Africa)
• The Early Life of Baybars (Middle East and North Africa, Russia and Central Asia)
• Ḥasan Afghān Investigates a Slave-Trading Imam (South Asia)
• Initial Q from the Vidal Mayor: Two Soldiers Leading Two Slaves before a King (Europe)
• Khubilai Khan Hunting (East Asia and Pacific)
• Laxdæla Saga (Europe, Russia and Central Asia)
• Manumission in Genoa (Europe)
• ‘No One Sees and Every Man Does as He Sees Fit’: Slavery and Masculinity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Middle East and North Africa)
• Slave Labor and Free Service in Genoa (Europe)

Primary Sources Elsewhere

• Allen, S.J. and Emilie Amt. The Crusades: A Reader. 2nd edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. See especially doc. 80 (Siete Partidas, p.306-312).
• Aquinas, Thomas. Summa of Theology, Q.96, “Dominion among Men in the State of Innocence” and Supplement, Q.52, “Is Slavery an Impediment to Marriage?” In St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics, edited by Paul Sigmund, 38-39 and 82-83. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988.
• Balafrej, Lamia. “Domestic Slavery, Skin Colour, and Image Dialectic in Thirteenth-Century Arabic Manuscripts.” Art History 44, no. 5 (2021): 1012-1036.
• Bill of Sale for Saracen Slave Girls, 1248 in Marseilles. From Roy C. Cave & Herbert H. Coulson, A Source Book for Medieval Economic History (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1936; reprint ed., New York: Biblo & Tannen, 1965), 302.
• Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. Edited by Nehemia Levtzion and J.F.P. Hopkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. 
• Hirth, Friedrich, and W. W. Rockhill, trans. Chau Ju-kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Entitled Chu-fan-chï. St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911. Repr., New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., Arno Press, 1966. An updated and searchable translation with accompanying maps and commentary is available here: Shao-yun Yang, “A Chinese Gazetteer of Foreign Lands: A New Translation of Part 1 of the Zhufan zhi 諸蕃志 (1225).”
• Ibn al-Sāʿī, ʿAlī Anjab. Consorts of the Caliphs, ed. Shawkat M. Toorawa. New York: New York University Press, 2015.
• Lewis, Bernard, ed. Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople. 3 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. See especially 2:165-168 (Al-Qalqashandi, An Invitation to Merchants).
• Lopez, Robert, and Irving Raymond, eds. Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. See especially doc. 44 (Slave Sale Contract, p.115-116), 56 (Brokerage Fees at Narbonne, p.130-135).
• Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim and Jewish Sources, ed. Olivia Remie Constable. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. See especially docs. 44 (“Hadith Bayad wa Riyad,” p.252-259), 55 (“Everyday Life in the Crown of Aragon,” p.310-321).
• Patton, Pamela. “What Did Medieval Slavery Look Like? Color, Race, and Unfreedom in Later Medieval Iberia.” Speculum 97, no. 3 (2022): 649-697.
• Rodriguez, Jarbel. Muslim and Christian Contact in the Middle Ages: A Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015. See especially doc. 42 (Las Siete Partidas, p.221-224).
• Tolan, John. “Ramon de Penyafort’s Responses to Questions Concerning Relations between Christians and Saracens: Critical Edition and Translation.” (2012)
• 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

• Amitai, Reuven, and Christoph Cluse, eds. Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1000-1500 CE). Turnhout: Brepols, 2017.
• Armstrong-Partida, Michelle. “Race, Skin Colour, Enslavement and Sexuality in the Late Medieval Mediterranean.” Journal of Medieval History 50 (2024): 477-499.
• 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.
• Bartusis, M.C. Land and Privilege in Byzantium: The Institution of the Pronoia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
• 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.
• Biran, Michal. “Encounters Among Enemies: Preliminary Remarks on Captives in Mongol Eurasia.” Archivum Eurasia Medii Aevi 21 (2015): 27-42.
• Biran, Michal. “Forced Migrations and Slavery in the Mongol Empire (1206-1368).” In The Cambridge World History of Slavery, vol. 2, AD 500 – AD 1420, ed. Craig Perry, David Eltis, Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, 76-99. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
• Bouanga, Ayda. “Gold, Slaves, and Trading Routes in Southern Blue Nile (Abbay) Societies, Ethiopia, 13th–16th Centuries.” Northeast African Studies 17.2 (2017): 31–60.
• Brown, Peter, Jaafar Jotheri, Louise Rayne, et al. “The Landscape of the Zanj Rebellion? Dating the Remains of a Large-Scale Agricultural System in Southern Iraq.” Antiquity 99 (2025): 1065-1081.
• Burns, Robert I. “Interactive Slave Operations: Muslim-Christian-Jewish Contracts in Thirteenth-Century Barcelona.” Medieval Encounters 5, no. 2 (1999): 135-55.
• Chatterjee, Indrani, and Richard Eaton, eds. Slavery and South Asian History. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006.
• De la Puente, Cristina, Karen Moukheiber, and Serena Tolino. Slavery and the Shaping of the Premodern Family. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2026. [open access]
• Gillingham, John. “Women, Children, and the Profits of War,” in Gender and Historiography: studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford, edited by Janet Nelson, Susan Reynolds, and Susan Johns, 61-74. London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012.
• Guérin, Sara M. “Ivory and the Ties that Bind.” In Whose Middle Ages? Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past, edited by Andrew Albin, Mary C. Erler, Thomas O’Donnell, Nicholas L. Paul, and Nina Rowe, 140-153. New York: Fordham University Press, 2019.
• Haour, Anne. “The Early Medieval Slave Trade of the Central Sahel: Archaeological and Historical Considerations.” In Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory, edited by Paul J. Lane and Kevin C. MacDonald, 61-78. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
• Helmholz, R.H. “The Law of Slavery and the European Ius Commune.” In The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary, edited by Jean Allain, 17-39. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Jehel, Georges. “Muslims and Jews in Medieval Genoa: From the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century.” Mediterranean Historical Review 10:1 (1995), 120-132. 
• Junker, Laura L. “The Impact of Captured Women on Cultural Transmission in Contact-Period Philippine Slave-Raiding Chiefdoms.” In Invisible Citizens: Captives and Their Consequences, edited by Catherine M. Cameron, 110-37. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008.
• Karras, Ruth M. Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988.
• Kohler, Timothy A. and Kathryn Kramer Turner. “Raiding for Women in the Pre-Hispanic Northern Pueblo Southwest? A Pilot Examination.” Current Anthropology, 47, no. 6 (2006): 1035-45.
• Korpela, Jukka Jari. Slaves from the North: Finns and Karelians in the East European Slave Trade, 900–1600. Studies in Global Slavery 5. Leiden: Brill, 2018.
• Koziol, Kathryn. “Performances of Imposed Status: Captivity at Cahokia.” In The Bioarchaeology of Violence, edited by Debra L. Martin, Ryan P. Harrod, and Ventura R. Pérez, 226-250. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012.
• Kumar, Sunil. The Emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, 1192-1286. New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007.
• Loiseau, Julien. “Frankish Captives in Mamluk Cairo.” Al-Masaq 23, no. 1 (2011): 37-52.
• 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.
• Martin, Debra. “Ripped Flesh and Torn Souls: Skeletal Evidence for Captivity and Slavery from the La Plata Valley, New Mexico, AD 1100-1300.” In Invisible Citizens: Captives and their Consequences, ed. Catherine Cameron, 159-180. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008.
• Martin, Debra L., Ryan Harrod and Misty Fields. “Beaten Down and Worked to the Bone: Bioarchaeological Investigations of Women and Violence in the Ancient Southwest.” Landscapes of Violence 1, no. 1 (2010): 1-19.
• Moorthy Kloss, Magdalena. Unfree Lives: Slaves at the Najahid and Rasulid Courts of Yemen. Leiden: Brill, 2024. This book is open-access.
• Nelson, Thomas. “Slavery in Medieval Japan.” Monumenta Nipponica 59 (2004): 463-492.
• Pankhurst, Richard. The Ethiopian Borderlands: Essays in Regional History from Ancient Times to the End of the 18th Century. Lawrence, KS: Red Sea Press, 1997.
• 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.
• Perry, Craig. Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2026.
• Rapoport, Yosef. “Women and Gender in Mamluk Society: An Overview.” Mamluk Studies Review 11 (2007): 1–45.
• Rodriguez, Jarbel. Captives and their Saviors in the Medieval Crown of Aragon. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007.
• Schiel, Juliane. “The Ragusan “Maids-of-all-Work”. Shifting Labor Relations in the Late Medieval Adriatic Sea Region.” Journal of Global Slavery 5.2 (2020): 139–169.
• Sommar, Mary. The Slaves of the Churches: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
• Stuard, Susan Mosher. “Ancillary Evidence for the Decline of Medieval Slavery.” Past and Present 149 (1995): 3-28.
• Sutt, Cameron. “Zalava, Slave in the Kingdom of Hungary.” In Portraits of Medieval Eastern Europe, 900-1400, ed. Donald Ostrowski and Christian Raffensperger, chapter 14. New York: Routledge, 2018.
• Winer, Rebecca Lynn. “Conscripting the Breast: Lactation, Slavery and Salvation in the Realms of Aragon and Kingdom of Majorca, c. 1250–1300.” Journal of Medieval History 34:2 (2008): 164-184.
• Winer, Rebecca Lynn. Women, Wealth and Community in Perpignan, c. 1250-1300: Christians, Jews, and Enslaved Muslims in a Medieval Mediterranean Town. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.  
• Winer, Rebecca. “Jews, Slave-Holding, and Gender in the Crown of Aragon circa 1250-1492.” In Cautivas y esclavas: el tráfico humano en el Mediterráneo, edited by Aurelia Martín Casares and María Cristina Delaigue Séris, 43-60. Granada: University of Granada, 2017. 
• Wink, André. al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, vol. 2: The Slave Kings and the Islamic Conquest, 11th -13th Centuries. Leiden, 1997.
• Witzenrath, Christoph. Eurasian Slavery, Ransom and Abolition in World History, 1200-1860. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.
• Wyatt, Don J. The Blacks of Premodern China. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010.

Contributors

Tanvir Ahmed, Hannah Barker, Catherine Cameron, Matthew Delvaux, Richard Eaton, Paul Lane, Rena Lauer, Noel Lenski, Maria Olsen, Pamela Patton, Craig Perry, Alexandra Montero Peters, Rebecca Winer, Don Wyatt