Not to be confused with Slavic name.
Name given to an enslaved person
A slave name is the personal name given by others to an enslaved person, or a name inherited from enslaved ancestors.
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A slave name is the personal name given by others to an enslaved person, or a name inherited from enslaved ancestors.
In Rome, slaves were given a single name by their owner. A slave who was freed might keep his or her slave name and adopt the former owner's name as a praenomen and nomen. As an example, one historian says that "a man named Publius Larcius freed a male slave named Nicia, who was then called Publius Larcius Nicia." [1]
Historian Harold Whetstone Johnston writes of instances in which a slave's former owner chose to ignore custom and simply chose a name for the freedman. [2]
By Islamic law, non-Muslim foreigners (kafir) were by definition legitimate targets for enslavement, since the Muslim world of dar al-Islam was by definition at war with the non-Muslim world of dar al-harb ("House of War"), and non-Muslim war captives were legitimate to enslave. [3] After capture, non-Muslim slaves were normally converted to Islam and given a new name.
In the Ottoman Imperial Harem during the era of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, for example, the new cariye slave girls and concubines (sex slaves) were upon arrival customarily converted to Islam and given a new name, typically a Persian or Turkish name signifying the name of a flower or a bird, such as for example Nilüfer ('water lily'). [4] Since a person in Ottoman society was normally referred to by the name of their father after their personal name, female slaves, whose fathers where unknown and not Muslims, were given a paternal name associated with God, normally Abdallah: according to perserved records, 97 percent of female palace slaves at the Ottoman Imperial Harem were named bint ('daughter of') Abdallah. [5]
After they became free, African-American former slaves were free to choose their own names. [6] Many chose names like "Freeman" to denote their new status, while others picked names of famous people or people they admired, such as US Presidents like George Washington. [7] Other commonly chosen names were "Johnson", "Brown" and "Williams", which had been popular before emancipation.
There is a common misconception in the United States that African Americans derive their last names from the owners of their enslaved ancestors. For example, in his 1965 book, Message to the Blackman in America , Elijah Muhammad wrote, "You must remember that slave-names will keep you a slave in the eyes of the civilized world today. You have seen, and recently, that Africa and Asia will not honor you or give you any respect as long as you are called by the white man's name." [8]
Echoing this, Malcolm X said:
"The slave master who owned us put his last name on us to denote that we were his property. So when you see a negro today who's named Johnson, if you go back in his history you will find that his grandfather, or one of his forefathers, was owned by a white man who was named Johnson. My father didn't know his last name. My father got his last name from his grandfather, and his grandfather got it from his grandfather, who got it from the slave master. The real names of our people were destroyed during slavery." [9]
As a result, some organizations, including Muhammad's Nation of Islam and the black nationalist US Organization encourage African Americans to abandon their slave names. [10] In reality some ex-slaves did choose to take the name of their former owner, but generally that was not the case. [6]
Some African-Americans would later change their name after a religious conversion (Muhammad Ali changed his name from Cassius Clay, el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz (Malcolm X) from Malcolm Little, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar from Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr, and Louis Farrakhan changed his from Louis Eugene Walcott, for example) [11] [12] or involvement with the black nationalist movement, in this latter case usually adopting names of African origin (e.g., Amiri Baraka and Assata Shakur). [13]
Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor stated in 2017 that she had changed her legal name to Magda Davitt, saying in an interview that she wished to be "free of the patriarchal slave names." [14] On her conversion to Islam in 2018, she adopted the Muslim name Shuhada' Sadaqat. [15]
Harem refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family. A harem may house a man's wife or wives, their pre-pubescent male children, unmarried daughters, female domestic servants, and other unmarried female relatives. In the past, during the era of slavery in the Muslim world, harems also housed enslaved concubines. In former times, some harems were guarded by eunuchs who were allowed inside. The structure of the harem and the extent of monogamy or polygyny have varied depending on the family's personalities, socio-economic status, and local customs. Similar institutions have been common in other Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations, especially among royal and upper-class families, and the term is sometimes used in other contexts. In traditional Persian residential architecture, the women's quarters were known as andaruni, and in the Indian subcontinent as zenana.
Islamic views on slavery represent a complex and multifaceted body of Islamic thought, with various Islamic groups or thinkers espousing views on the matter which have been radically different throughout history. Slavery was a mainstay of life in pre-Islamic Arabia and surrounding lands. The Quran and the hadith address slavery extensively, assuming its existence as part of society but viewing it as an exceptional condition and restricting its scope. Early Islam forbade enslavement of dhimmis, the free members of Islamic society, including non-Muslims and set out to regulate and improve the conditions of human bondage. Islamic law regarded as legal slaves only those non-Muslims who were imprisoned or bought beyond the borders of Islamic rule, or the sons and daughters of slaves already in captivity. In later classical Islamic law, the topic of slavery is covered at great length.
White slavery refers to the enslavement of any of the world's European ethnic groups throughout human history, whether perpetrated by non-Europeans or by other Europeans. Slavery in ancient Rome was frequently dependent on a person's socio-economic status and national affiliation, and thus included European slaves. It was also common for European people to be enslaved and traded in the Muslim world; European women, in particular, were highly sought-after to be concubines in the harems of many Muslim rulers. Examples of such slavery conducted in Islamic empires include the Arab slave trade, the Barbary slave trade, the Ottoman slave trade, and the Black Sea slave trade, among others.
Slavery was a major institution and a significant part of the Ottoman Empire's economy and traditional society.
The history of slavery in the Muslim world was throughout the history of Islam with slaves serving in various social and economic roles, from powerful emirs to harshly treated manual laborers. Slaves were widely employed in irrigation, mining, and animal husbandry, but most commonly as soldiers, guards, domestic workers, and concubines. The use of slaves for hard physical labor early on in Muslim history led to several destructive slave revolts, the most notable being the Zanj Rebellion of 869–883, and led to the end of the practice. Many rulers also used slaves in the military and administration to such an extent that slaves could seize power, as did the Mamluks.
Legal Chattel slavery existed in Saudi Arabia until the 1960s.
The Black Sea slave trade trafficked people across the Black Sea from Eastern Europe and the Caucasus to slavery in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The Black Sea slave trade was a center of the slave trade between Europe and the rest of the world from antiquity until the 19th century. One of the major and most significant slave trades of the Black Sea region was the trade of the Crimean Khanate, known as the Crimean slave trade.
In the Muslim world, the title of umm al-walad was given to a slave-concubine who had given birth to a child awknowledged by her master as his. These women were regarded as property and could be sold by their owners, a practice that was permitted at the time under some strict rules and regulations from Muhammad.
Concubinage in the Muslim world was the practice of Muslim men entering into intimate relationships without marriage, with enslaved women, though in rare, exceptional cases, sometimes with free women. If the concubine gave birth to a child, she attained a higher status known as umm al-walad.
Cariye was a title and term used for category of enslaved women concubines in the Islamic world of the Middle East. They are particularly known in history from the era of Ottoman Empire, where they existed until the early 20th century, when the Ottoman Imperial Harem was closed.
The harem of the caliphs of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) in Baghdad was composed of his mother, wives, slave concubines, female relatives and slave servants, occupying a secluded portion of the Abbasid household. This institution played an important social function within the Abbasid court and was that part were the women were confined and secluded. The senior woman in rank in the harem was the mother of the Caliph. The Abbasid harem acted as a role model for the harems of other Islamic dynasties, as it was during the Abbasid Caliphate that the harem system was fully enforced in the Muslim world.
Slavery existed in Morocco since antiquity until the 20th century. Morocco was a center of the Trans-Saharan slave trade route of enslaved Black Africans from sub-Saharan Africa until the 20th century, as well as a center of the Barbary slave trade of Europeans captured by the Barbary pirates until the 19th century. The open slave trade was finally suppressed in Morocco in the 1920s. The haratin and the gnawa have been referred to as descendants of former slaves.
Slavery existed in the Sultanate of Zanzibar until 1909. Slavery and slave trade existed in the Zanzibar Archipelago for at least a thousand years. When clove and coconut plantations became a big industry on the islands, domestic slavery expanded to a point where two thirds of the populations were slaves. Zanzibar was internationally known as a major player in the Indian Ocean slave trade, where slaves from the Swahili coast of Eastern Africa were trafficked across the Indian Ocean to Oman in the Arabian Peninsula during the Zanzibar slave trade.
Slavery in Egypt existed up until the early 20th century. It differed from the previous slavery in ancient Egypt, being managed in accordance with Islamic law from the conquest of the Caliphate in the 7th century until the practice stopped in the early 20th-century, having been gradually phased out when the slave trade was banned in the late 19th century.
Slavery in al-Andalus was a practice throughout Al-Andalus and the Iberian Peninsula 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, Almoravid rule (1085–1145), Almohad rule (1147–1238), and the Emirate of Granada (1232–1492).
Slavery existed in the territory of the modern state of Iraq until the 1920s.
Slavery existed in the territory of the modern state of Syria until the 1920s.
Chattel slavery was a major part of society, culture and economy in the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) of the Islamic Golden Age, which during its history included most of the Middle East. While slavery was an important part also of the preceding practice of slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), it was during the Abbasid Caliphate that the slave trade to the Muslim world reached a more permanent commercial industrial scale, establishing commercial slave trade routes that were to remain for centuries.
Slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate refers to the chattel slavery taking place in the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), which comprised the majority of the Middle East with a center in the capital of Damascus in Syria.
Slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate refers to the chattel slavery taking place in the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), a period when the Islamic Caliphate was established and the Islamic conquest expanded outside of the Arabian Peninsula.