Slavery in al-Andalus was a practice throughout Al-Andalus and the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Spain and Portugal) between the 8th century and the 15th century. This includes the periods of the Emirate of Córdoba (756–929), the Caliphate of Córdoba (929–1031), the Taifas (11th century), Almoravid rule (1085–1145), Almohad rule (1147–1238), and the Emirate of Granada (1232–1492).
Slavery in al-Andalus was regulated in accordance with Islamic law. Non-Muslim foreigners were viewed as legitimate targets of enslavement. Since al-Andalus was situated in the religious border zone, it had the conditions necessary to become a center of slave trade between Christian and pagan Europe and the Muslim Middle East.
Slaves were trafficked to al-Andalus via a number of different routes. The centuries long reconquista between Muslim and Christian Iberia resulted in numerous Christian slaves captured during the constant warfare and slave raids across Iberian borders. Christian Europe exported Pagan Europeans as slaves to al-Andalus via the Prague slave trade through Christian France. Pagan Vikings exported Christian slaves captured in Christian Europe to the Muslims in al-Andalus. Muslim Saracen pirates captured and sold Christian Europeans captured in slave raids along the shores of the Mediterranean to the slave markets of al-Andalus. African slaves were trafficked to al-Andalus from the South across the Sahara desert via the trans-Saharan slave trade.
Slaves in al-Andalus were used in a similar manner as in other Muslim states. Female slaves were used primarily as domestic servants, prostitutes and private harem concubines (sex slaves). Male slaves were used for a number of different tasks, but primarily divided into eunuchs, who could be given prestigious tasks; laborers; or as slave soldiers. al-Andalus functioned as both a destination as well as a place of transit of the slave trade of European slaves from the north to the rest of the Muslim world in the south and the east.
Background
Slavery existed in Muslim al-Andalus as well as in the Christian kingdoms, and both sides of the religious border followed the custom of not enslaving people of their own religion. Consequently, Muslims were enslaved in Christian lands, while Christians and other non-Muslims were enslaved in al-Andalus.
The Moors imported white Christian slaves from the 8th century until the end of the Reconquista in the late 15th century. European slaves were exported from the Christian section of Spain as well as Eastern Europe and referred to as Saqaliba.
Saqaliba slavery in al-Andalus was especially prominent in the Caliphate of Córdoba, where white female slaves constituted a big part of the slave concubines of the royal harem, and white male slaves constituted most of the administrative personnel in the courts and palaces.
Slave trade
Al-Andalus, the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula (711–1492) imported a large number of slaves to its own domestic market, as well as served as a staging point for Muslim and Jewish merchants to market slaves to the rest of the Islamic world.
An early economic pillar of the Islamic empire in Iberia (Al-Andalus) during the eighth century was the slave trade. Due to manumission being a form of piety under Islamic law, slavery in Muslim Spain couldn't maintain the same level of auto-reproduction as societies with older slave populations. Therefore, Al-Andalus relied on trade systems as an external means of replenishing the supply of enslaved people.
Islamic law prohibited Muslims from enslaving other Muslims, and there was thus a big market for non-Muslim slaves in Islamic territory. The Vikings sold both Christian and pagan European captives to the Muslims, who referred to them as saqaliba; these slaves were likely both pagan Slavic, Finnic and Baltic Eastern Europeans as well as Christian Western Europeans.
Forming relations between the Umayyads, Khārijites and 'Abbāsids, the flow of trafficked people from the main routes of the Sahara towards Al-Andalus served as a highly lucrative trade configuration.
The archaeological evidence of human trafficking and proliferation of early trade in this case follows numismatics and materiality of text.
This monetary structure of consistent gold influx proved to be a tenet in the development of Islamic commerce. In this regard, the slave trade outperformed and was the most commercially successful venture for maximizing capital. This major change in the form of numismatics serves as a paradigm shift from the previous Visigothic economic arrangement. Additionally, it demonstrates profound change from one regional entity to another, the direct transfer of people and pure coinage from one religiously similar semi-autonomous province to another.
Almohad conquest
The Almohads broke Islamic law by taking Muslim women and children as slaves during the conquest of the Almoravid Emirate in the 12th century. Islamic law allowed Muslims to take non-Muslims as slaves, but not Muslims. However, the Almohads defined Muslims who were not followers of Almohadism as unbelievers (takfir) and therefore viewed them as legitimate to enslave.
While adult men were killed, women and children were taken captive and sold as slaves and even kept as concubines, something normally only allowed for non-Muslim women.
When Abd al-Mu'min took the fortress Dai, two women were taken as captives who became his concubines, one of whom became the mother of his son Abu Said Uthman.
When Tlemcen was taken by the Almohad army, Ibn al-Athir stated that "The children and womenfolk were taken as captives.... Those who were not slain were sold at minimal prices".
When the capital Marrakesh was conquered in 1147, al-Baydhaq described how "Everything that was in the city was taken to the treasury. The women were sold and everything [all the booty of the conquest] went back to the treasury", and Ibn Sahib al-Sala that "[Abd al-Mu'min] distributed the houses [of the Marrakeshis] to [the Almohads]. The families of Marrakesh were sold and their children were sold into slavery"
The enslavement of Muslim war captives however soon stopped since during the Almohad conquests, Muslims stated to rapidly adopt the Almohadist version of Islam to avoid enslavement.
Prague slave trade
The slave market of Prague was one route for saqaliba slaves to al-Andalus. Similarly to al-Andalus, the Duchy of Bohemia was a state in a religious border zone, in the case of Bohemia bordering to Pagan Slavic lands to the North, East and South East.
The Arabic Caliphate of Córdoba referred to the forests of Central and Eastern Europe, which came to function as a slave source supply, as the Bilad as-Saqaliba ("land of the slaves").
Bohemia was in an ideal position to become a supply source for pagan saqaliba slaves to al-Andalus. The slaves were acquired through slave raids toward the pagan Slavic lands north of Prague.
The Prague slave trade adjusted to the al-Andalus market, with females required for sexual slavery and males required for either military slavery or as eunuchs. Male slaves selected to be sold as eunuchs were subjected to castration in Verdun.
Traditionally, the slave traders acquiring the slaves in Prague and transporting them to the slave market of al-Andalus are said to have been dominated by the Jewish Radhanite merchants.
How dominating the Jewish merchants were is unknown, but Jewish slave traders did have an advantage toward their non-Jewish colleagues, because they were able to move across Christian and Muslim lands, which was not always to case for Christian and Muslim merchants, and act as mediators between Christian and Muslim commercial markets.
While Christians were not allowed to enslave Christians and Muslims not allowed to enslave Muslims, Jews were able to sell Christian slaves to Muslim buyers and Muslim slaves to Christian buyers, as well as pagan slaves to both.
In the same fashion, both Christians and Muslims were prohibited from performing castrations, but there was no such ban for Jews, which made it possible for them to meet the demand for eunuchs in the Muslim world.
The slaves were transported to Al-Andalus via France. While the church discouraged the sale of Christian slaves to Muslims, the sale of Pagans to Muslims was not met with such opposition.
White European slaves were viewed as luxury goods in Al-Andalus, where they could be sold for as much as 1,000 dinars, a substantial price.
The slaves were not always destined for the al-Andalus market; similar to Bohemia in Europe, al-Andalus was a religious border state for the Muslim world, and saqaliba slaves were exported from there further to the Muslim world in the Middle East.
The saqaliba slave trade from Prague to al-Andalus via France became defunct in the 11th century, when the pagan Slavs of the north started to gradually adopt Christianity from the late 10th-century, which prohibited Christian Bohemia from enslaving them to sell to Muslim al-Andalus.
Slave raids to Christian Iberia
Al-Andalus was described in the Muslim world as the "land of jihad", a religious border land in a state of constant war with the infidels, which by Islamic Law was a legitimate zone for enslavement, and slaves were termed as coming from three different zones in Christian Iberia: Galicians from the northwest, Basques or Vascones from the central north, and Franks from the northeast and France.
The medieval Iberian Peninsula was the scene of episodic warfare among Muslims and Christians. Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Al-Andalus to ravage the Christian Iberian kingdoms, bringing back booty and people. For example, in a raid on Lisbon in 1189 the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, and his governor of Córdoba took 3,000 Christian slaves in a subsequent attack upon Silves in 1191.
In the Almohad raid to Evora in Portugal in 1181–82, 400 women were taken captives and put for sale in the slave market of Seville.
These raiding expeditions also included the Sa’ifa (summer) incursions, a tradition produced during the Amir reign of Cordoba. In addition to acquiring wealth, some of these Sa’ifa raids sought to bring mostly male captives, often eunuchs, back to Al-Andalus.
They were generically referred to as Saqaliba, the Arab word for Slavs. Slavs’ status as the most common group in the slave trade by the tenth century led to the development of the word “slave.”
During the Sack of Barcelona (985) by the Córdoban general, Almanzor, the entire garrison was slain, and the inhabitants were either killed or enslaved.
Saracen piracy
Moorish Saracen pirates from al-Andalus attacked Marseille and Arles and established a base in Camargue, Fraxinetum or La Garde-Freinet-Les Mautes (888–972), from which they made slave raids in to France; the population fled in fear of the slave raids, which made it difficult for the Frankish to secure their Southern coast, and the Saracens of Fraxinetum exported the Frankisk prisoners they captured as slaves to the slave market of the Muslim Middle East.
The Saracens captured the Baleares in 903, and made slave raids also from this base toward the coasts of the Christian Mediterranean and Sicily.
While the Saracen bases in France were eliminated in 972, this did not prevent the Saracen piracy slave trade of the Mediterranean; both Almoravid dynasty (1040–1147) and the Almohad Caliphate (1121–1269) approved of the slave raiding of Saracen pirates toward non-Muslim ships in Gibraltar and the Mediterranean for the purpose of slave raiding.
Trans-Saharan slave trade
Along with Christians and Slavs, sub-Saharan Africans were also held as slaves, brought back from the caravan trade in the Sahara. The ancient trans-Saharan slave trade trafficked slaves to Al-Andalus from non-Muslim pagan sub-Saharan Africa.
Forming relations between the Umayyads, Khārijites and 'Abbāsids, the flow of trafficked people from the main routes of the Sahara towards Al-Andalus served as a highly lucrative trade configuration.
Viking slave trade
According to Roger Collins, although the role of the Vikings in the slave trade in Iberia remains largely hypothetical, their depredations are clearly recorded. Raids on Al-Andalus by Vikings are reported in the years 844, 859, 966 and 971, conforming to the general pattern of such activity concentrating in the mid ninth and late tenth centuries. Many Arab Muslim women were taken north to the Viking’s homelands as captives.
The Vikings performed slave raids toward the Christian parts of Iberia as well. It is known that the Vikings sold people they captured in their raids in Christian Europe to the Islamic world via Arab merchants in Russia along the Volga trade route, slaves who were trafficked to the Middle East via Central Asia and was an important slave supply source to the Bukhara slave trade. However, it is not confirmed if the Vikings sold the captives from their raids in Christian Iberia directly to Muslim Iberia.
The Vikings did provide slaves to al-Andalus via the Norse Kingdom of Dublin. Slaves captured primarily in the British islands and put on sale in Dublin, which was one of the biggest slave markets in Europe in the 9th- and 11th-centuries, are known to have been sold all over Europe; one of the most lucrative trades for Vikings as well as other traders operating from Irish ports such as Dublin was the slave trade to Islamic Iberia.
Slave market
The slave market in the Muslim world prioritized women for the use of domestic servants and concubines (sex slaves) and men as eunuchs, laborers and slave soldiers.
Children were the preferred category on the slave market because they could be trained and raised to fill the function selected for them from childhood.
Common slave names were adjusted to the tasks selected for the slave children, such as Mujahid ('warrior'), Muqatil ('fighter') for slave soldiers; or Anbar ('amber'), Zuhayr ('radiant'), Kharyan ('blessing'), wathiq ('trusthworthy') or jumn ('pearl') for bureaucrats.