ISLAM AND THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY

Writing about slavery in reference to Islam while covering the entire Muslim history all the way since its inception in the Hejaz is certainly a gigantic project which may, expectedly, require several volumes, graphs, tables and maps, but Clarence-Smith has abridged it into a single but no less challenging volume. Using ten maps, his own travelling and teaching experiences in Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, along with his extensive consultation of Western scholarship since the colonial times, the author has built up his narrative of the “peculiar institution”. Slaves were acquired through raids, in war booties and by sheer business exchanges all around the world to work in professions varying from domestic labour to soldiering, farms and guarding harems as eunuchs. Though most of the slaves came from Africa, yet a fair number of Asians and Europeans were inducted in the imperial armies, domestic servitude and farm labour looking after pastures, fields and orchards. The Prophetic teachings and Qur’anic injunctions while exhorting a more humane treatment of those in servitude, however, did not vocally abolish slavery once for all and here Islam, like other Abrahamic traditions and Indian faith systems, stopped short of a total abolition which allowed many ulema to justify enslavement under several conditions.