rollback of the slave trade: the revision of the Christian antisklavistischen consensus by the Isla
Thursday, November 18, 2010
How Islam of slavery and the slave trade in Europe breathed new life
By John J. O'Neill , translated by Deep Roots.
The original How Islam Breathed New Life into Slavery and the Slave Trade in Europe 
was in fact the influence of Islam in Europe is much larger than is generally imagined, but this effect was entirely negative. Not only translated the Muslims of classical civilization to an end, but they dragged Europe on many levels to a level lower barbarian culture. It was the Muslims, for example, of which the Christian Europeans, the idea of "Holy War" had a concept that would have been unthinkable in previous centuries. And also from Islam was the institution of slavery, as well as the slave trade, a new and powerful impetus. In contrast to the belief of some modern anti-Christian writers Christianity an immediate and dramatic improvement of living conditions of slaves brought in the Roman Empire. It was also eventually help in the removal of the entire institution.
The improvement was an inevitable consequence of the Christian view that the mistreatment of any human being, was whether slave or free, extremely sinful. In the words of one author: "The impact of the Church in the empire is in the word" are combined. "Clearance (RF Stewart," Thoughts and Ideas of the Period ", in" The Cambridge Medieval History: The Christian Empire, " Vol 1, 2nd edition, 1936, p. 592). And: "Right after the victory of the church to follow laws that are favorable to the slaves than any that had been made before ..." (ibid.). While it is true that "Constantine tried not immediate or complete emancipation, which would have been unwise and impossible," he still tried immediately, "the plight of [the slaves] through actions to ease, which are unique in all its inequalities in the law book of Rome ... he forbade cruelty to slaves in words that were themselves an indictment of the existing practice. "(ibid., p. 593). The purpose relevant passages in the Gospels are too numerous to mention them, but we should note in particular the history of the Last Judgement, according to Mark 25:31-46, where the king (God) says to his servants: "What do the least my brothers have done that you did for me. "It should be noted at this point that the whole concept of human rights, by many Westerners the thinkers of the Enlightenment attributed, in this concept of the gospel roots - a fact which is admitted by the philosophers of the Enlightenment itself. Human rights are both a moral and legal concept. If God each of us for our conduct in relation to the lowest members of society lay responsibility, then the latter is the morally with the highest members of society equally. This improved the lives of slaves from the beginning. This was particularly the case with female and younger male slaves whose function was often in the past to prepare their owners sexual pleasure. This type of violation was Christians especially frowned upon. And so, during the ownership of slaves was not illegal from the beginning was illegal abuse very well. This view led inexorably to the task and the abolition of the entire slave system. We find, therefore, by the earliest times, many Christian leaders such as John Chrysostom and Gregory of Nyssa [John of Antioch], who condemned slavery itself, and calling for better treatment of slaves. In fact, describes the tradition of Pope Clement I (92 - 99), Pope Pius I (ca. 158 - 167) and Pope Callisto I (217 - 222) as former slaves.
After Christianity the official religion of the Empire had become, was the more harmful manifestations of slavery, such as gladiator fights, one by one abolished, and with the publication of the Justinian Corpus
of laws, we eventually find in the sixth century, a formal condemnation of the institution. The basic principle was the
Institutiones(Title III, Book 1, paragraph 2) above, where we read the following: In "Slavery is an institution of the law of nations, against nature that a man submits to the domination of another." Title II, Book 1, paragraph 2, it is again: "... the law of nations, the entire human race together, for nations regulated for certain things, as it required the opportunity and the necessities of human life. For example, were wars, and then followed captivity and slavery, which are against the law of nature, for the law of nature all men are born from the beginning to free "The Justinian Code was
(in 554), introduced in Italy. from where it is in the twelfth century in Western Europe and spread to the base of many European legal systems was. It also spread to Eastern Europe, where it appeared in Slavic editions and become the cornerstone of Russian law was. The end result of all this was that the church until the tenth or ninth century, even had effectively ended slavery in Europe. And this is a well known fact. In the words of Rodney Stark ... slavery in Europe ended just because the church sacraments also offered their all slaves and then managed to push through a ban on the enslavement of Christians (and Jews). In the context of medieval Europe, this ban effectively a rule for the universal abolition. "(Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason, Random House, 2005 New York, p. 28) was.
The above statement is conservative. In fact, slavery was to disappear until the seventh century on its way from Europe, but then, at that point was her new life breathed into, and the slave trade experienced a massive revival. The revival was a direct consequence of the arrival of Islam.
Islamic custom and practice of slavery by focusing on those of Christianity opposed. For while Christianity, to the promotion of equality of all before God and to make the conditions for slaves working towards, were open to their bodies certainly not sexual exploitation, which was often the fate of slavery in classical antiquity, Islam had not as any sort problem with slavery. In fact, seems to capture graceful slaves from the very beginning as a legitimate bonus to have been seen, the state of the soldier, who for the dissemination of faith fought. Sun, for example, took Mohammed to the slaughter of the male members of the Jewish tribe of Banu Quraiza one of the most beautiful women prisoners as a concubine, while other successful acts of the Prophet were invariably connected with the fact that he purchased slaves. And this behavior is for future generations by the authority of the Koran sanctioned in full. Thus we read in Sura 23:5-6: "... intercourse included except those with which they are linked in marriage, or (with prisoners) that their right hands possess - for (in their case) they are free of guilt. "See also Sura 4:24.
In the words of Robert Spencer: "The Koran says that the followers of Muhammad, are rücksichtlsos against the unbelievers but merciful to one another '(48:29), and that the unbelievers are the worst of all creatures' (98 : 6). You can use the Golden Rule [tu another, as you will, that you will be done] to apply to another Muslim, but according to the laws of Islam is not the same courtesy be met with unbelievers. This is a major reason why have been the main source of slaves in the Islamic world, non-Muslims, whether they were Jews, Christians, Hindus, or pagans now. Most . Non-Muslim slaves who were captured during the war of Jihad were "(Robert Spencer," Religion of Peace: Why Christianity Is and Islam is not ", Regnery, 2008, p. 95).
The Muslim invasion of the Middle East and North Africa marked the revival of the slave trade on a massive scale, with a trade, the Christian ruler of the late Roman Empire, especially Justinian, had almost brought to an end. The historian Bat Ye'or says, "When Amr in 643 Tripoli (Libya) conquered, he forced the Jewish and Christian Berbers, the Arab army to give their wives and children as slaves, as part of their jizya
. From 652 until his capture in 1276 Nubia was forced to send an annual contingent of slaves to Cairo. Contracts that were concluded under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs with the cities of Transoxianien [in the Iranian Central Asia], Sijistan [eastern Iran], Armenia, and Fezzan [in the Maghreb] used to establish an annual dispatch of slaves of both sexes. The main sources for the slave supply remained the regular raids on villages within the Dar al-Harb [the non-Islamic regions] and the military expeditions, who were advancing deeper into the lands of the infidels and cities provinces and emptied of their inhabitants "(Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude", New Jersey 1996, p. 108)..
In "Holy Warriors" I describe in detail the devastating effects of Muslim raids at this time across the Mediterranean world. The latter was the sea came to a war zone, and normal trade to a standstill. Only one type of trade survived: the trade in human bodies. And the devastation was not confined to southern Europe. The north of the continent was rapidly incorporated into the general ruin: for this strange phenomenon, the expansion of the Vikings was to work closely and directly with the coming of Islam. Hugh Trevor-Roper puts it: "What did the Vikings? What drove this sudden power piratical Northern men to roam the seas and rivers of Europe and to cause chaos? Man has always assumed that there was a sudden, unexplained population growth only in Scandinavia, which was behind this unusual outbreak. No doubt that was true: not such a big expansion can be obtained from a static population upright. But the magnitude and direction of the attacks also indicate other motives. There were chances in the foreigners as well as printing at home, and this Opportunities to bring the raids of the Vikings and the conquests of the Muslims with one another. "(Hugh Trevor-Roper," The Rise of Christian Europe ", London 1966, p. 90).
Trevor-Roper also describes the enormous wealth that was of the Muslim caliphate in its expansion across Asia and Africa have been accumulated, and how it all with the richness of what it wanted, could buy from Europe. ". Eunuchs and slaves' What did Muslims in particular were, he continues:" It was one of the functions of the Vikings, to provide these supplies. Half dealers, half pirate, they roamed all over northern Europe, and on their excursions, or by the method of Piracy, gathered them furs and kidnapped human beings. Preferably, they acted with pagan Slavs, after Christian states had fewer inhibitions, a slave trade with pagan bodies to handle - they could always quote this useful text 
repeated the above quotation Trevor-Roper the mistaken view that until the last decades of the twentieth century, predominantly Was that Byzantium somehow had escaped the ravages of the Saracens and that on its territory intact and continues to be a wealthy branch of ancient Rome had prospered. Constantinople, he imagines how Damascus was a wealthy recipient of Russian slaves. But by the end of the seventh century, the once great power Ostrom, as I said in "Holy Warriors" show detailed, little more than an impoverished remnant, just as surely as the West and the wealth of scholarship in Asia cut off. If there has been a slave trade in Byzantium, then only as a link in the chain, the eunuchs and concubines from Russia brought to Damascus and Baghdad. The little gold, Byzantium in the tenth and eleventh centuries had came from the taxes that were levied by Muslim traders in human flesh, which supplied the markets of the old Vikings Hauptstaadt frequented. The specific of this infamous trade gold was called aurum
arabic, arabic gold, or, like-minded people call it human preferred aurum infelix , unhappy gold. To the tenth century large quantities of this Arab gold and silver had found their way to Scandinavia. Viking long ships were apparently not a rare visitor Islamic ports in Iberia, and occasional Arab travelers returned the compliment by Scandinavia visited.
While, as Trevor-Roper says, the majority of European slaves were sold to the Arabs, Slavs were, so were not the all. In fact, the Vikings plundered the whole of Western Europe, to supply the markets of the caliphate. Dublin, for example, which was founded by the Vikings in Ireland, was a major slave market, where most of the slaves who were bought and sold there came from Ireland and Britain.
Yet there is no doubt that the majority of slaves were sold to the Muslims pagan Slavs, and there is no doubt that some of the Christian rulers in Western Europe this trade were accomplices. Venice, for example, acted as a depot for the collection and sale of Slavic prisoners from Dalmatia. Marseille was, it seems, also active. In the words of Trevor-Roper: "For if the Vikings were the pioneers, so were the princes of Europe, or some of them, the middlemen in the new slave trade. It allowed and they benefited from it, although they left the direct trade to the Jews who were able to cross the borders between the two companies most easily. We have a lot of evidence for this trade and its routes ... Liutprand of Cremona, Ambassador of the West, in the tenth century of the request before the kaleidoscopic splendor of the Byzantine court was told us that it was the merchants of Verdun, which made them eunuchs because of the huge profit from this trade boys and they have the Moorish Spain to the rich Muslim world sold ... The trade has its traces in the both languages of Christianity as of Islam left. Sclavi , Slavs, "has formed in every European language the word for slave, and the same word, Sakaliba
, has supplied the Arabic word for eunuchs." (Ibid., p. 92). Until the late tenth and eleventh century Scandinavia converted to Christianity, and the slave trade ended in northern Europe. In the south, but it was a different story. For centuries, Muslim pirates in Spain, Sicily, Greece and everywhere along the coast of the Mediterranean countries had continuously committed assaults, captured whole communities and sold them to the slave markets of Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. Worse, the Christian populations of southern Europe, especially Spain and southern Italy, started many of the habits and customs to take over their Islamic enemies. This included the management and marketing of slaves. It is therefore hardly surprising that the great revival of the slave trade, the European Colonization of the Americas marked driven by privateers from the Iberian Peninsula. And we should never forget that the Atlantic slave trade in the Americas was first a completely English and Portuguese companies. The nations of northern Europe did not take part. 
Louis Bertrand exerts biting Criticism of the influence exerted by Islam in the Christian Spain. "The worst character trait, which acquired the Spaniard was the parasitism of the Arabs and the nomadic Africans: the tradition to live on the territory of its neighbors, the raid was made into an institution and were recognized plunder and predation as the only living for the warrior . In the same way as there was a tendency to win their bread in Moorish territory, the Spaniards made later from winning gold and territories in Mexico and Peru. "
" you are advised to introduce the barbaric summary practices of the Arabs : all the fire and sword to respond, to make fruit trees, destroy crops, to lay waste whole areas, to starve out the enemy in order to get him to back down, across to make slaves, ordered to the population of the occupied countries for forced labor. All of these detestable practices the conquistadors learned from the Arabs. " " For several centuries, is considered the slavery in Christian Spain in the Islamic countries. Almost certainly, it was the Arabs, which the Spaniards owed the intransigence of their fanaticism, the presumption, if not already God's chosen one, then at least the most Catholic nation in the Christian. As Abd al-Rahman and El Mansour, Philip II of the defenders of the faith. " " Finally, it was not without infection, that the Spaniards for centuries in contact with a race of people lived, the crucified her enemies and enjoyed it, thousands severed heads as trophies stack up. The cruelty of the Arabs and Berbers also founded on the [Iberian] peninsula a school. The viciousness of the emirs and caliphs who personally killed their brothers or sons, should be passed on from Trastamare to Pedro the Cruel and Henry shrikes those under canvas, which were no better than ordinary murderers. "(Louis Bertrand and Sir Charles Petrie, "The History of Spain", 2 Edition, London 1945, p. 160)
By John J. O'Neill have been published here:
Islam and the Dark Age of Byzantium
As the Muslim piracy, the world changed
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