Slavery

During the Jahiliyyah period, Arab society perpetuated the ancient Near Eastern understanding of slavery, treating slaves as property without social rights. However, Islam aimed to change this mentality in the long term by granting slaves their social rights and treating them as human beings. The merit-based approach that Islam applied to slaves even allowed them to hold office in the state. During the period of the Four Caliphs, Islam institutionalized slavery in an administrative sense, while the expansion of borders strengthened the slave-based economy. Under the Umayyads, slavery was viewed through the lens of Arab ethnocentrism, creating a distinction between the mawali and other slaves. The Umayyad economy relied heavily on agriculture and animal husbandry, and they preferred to use slave labor intensively to provide surplus value through cheap labor. It is important to note that this text is purely informative and does not contain any subjective evaluations. In contrast, the Abbasids abandoned the Umayyad policy and abolished the race-centered understanding among slaves. They established a model in which slaves were widely used in the military organization. The model expanded its borders through various conquest movements, captured many captives, and developed the slave-based Abbasid economy, enabling the intensive use of slave labor. The Ottomans inherited this social and economic understanding from the Seljuks, which was later transformed into a more institutionalized understanding of production through slaves called sharecroppers.