Database: Slavery

Queen Giving Birth with Domestic Servants in Hariri's Maqamat / 13th century copy of a 10th century original, Iraq

Slavery was a key feature of the global economy of medieval societies and was central to the great cities of the caliphal age. Data indicates that the majority of enslaved people would have worked in domestic service, with each household maintaining 1-2 of them. Sometimes they were depicted in artworks, as here where female domestic servants are shown attending a noble woman in labor. The enslaved population was therefore considerable, and these men and women played a vital role in Abbasid Baghdad.

Theoretically, Quranic law forbade the enslavement of free-born Muslims. However, in practice this distinction was murky. The key to being legally enslaved lay in a perception of outsider status, which could be defined by religious practices, cultural customs, or belonging to rival political powers. Thus in the Abbasid Empire, enslaved peoples were brought from the lands of Rum (Byzantine Empire and Christian West), India, China, Central Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Enslaved people were most often casualties of war, and all medieval peoples lived under the danger of enslavement by neighboring rival states. People could be prisoners of war, part of a tribute levied on a submitted neighbor state, indebted people, children sold by their parents hoping for a better life for them, or victims of piracy.

In the medieval global economy, the sale of people into slavery was normalized and seen as property exchange. Once legally deemed "enslaved", individuals could not escape this status until manumission.