Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry New ed Edition

by Bernard Lewis (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0195053265

ISBN-10: 0195053265

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From before the days of Moses up through the 1960s, slavery was a fact of life in the Middle East. Pagans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims bought and sold at the slave markets for millennia, trading the human plunder of wars and slave raids that reached from the Russian steppes to the African
jungles. But if the Middle East was one of the last regions to renounce slavery, how do we account for its--and especially Islam's--image of racial harmony? How did these long years of slavery affect racial relations? In Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Bernard Lewis explores these questions
and others, examining the history of slavery in law, social thought, and practice over the last two millennia.

With 24 rare and intriguing full-color illustrations, this fascinating study describes the Middle East's culture of slavery and the evolution of racial prejudice. Lewis demonstrates how nineteenth century Europeans mythologized the region as a racial utopia in debating American slavery. Islam, in
fact, clearly teaches non-discrimination, but Lewis shows that prejudice often won out over pious sentiments, as he examines how Africans were treated, depicted, and thought of from antiquity to the twentieth century.

"If my color were pink, women would love me/But the Lord has marred me with blackness," lamented a black slave poet in Arabia over a millennium ago--and Lewis deftly draws from these lines and others the nuances of racial relations over time. Islam, he finds, restricted enslavement and greatly
improved the lot of slaves--who included, until the early twentieth century, some whites--while blacks occasionally rose to power and renown. But abuses ring throughout the written and visual record, from the horrors of capture to the castration and high mortality which, along with other causes,
have left few blacks in many Middle Eastern lands, despite centuries of importing African slaves.

Race and Slavery in the Middle East illuminates the legacy of slavery in the region where it lasted longest, from the days of warrior slaves and palace eunuchs and concubines to the final drive for abolition. Illustrated with outstanding reproductions of striking artwork, it casts a new light on
this critical part of the world, and on the nature and interrelation of slavery and racial prejudice.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A realistic, well-documented study. Important illustrations and primary evidence now made accessible."--Irving R. Mix, Elmira College

"An important book which explains the issue of slavery in the Middle East."--Robert A. Hess, Messiah College

"An excellent and timely work on an important and rather neglected issue."--Ehsan Yarshater, Columbia University

"Splendid--should supplant all previous discussions."--Paul A. Rahe, University of Tulsa

"A splendid discussion of a difficult subject."--Paul A. Rahe, University of Tulsa

"Deceptively brief, delightfully easy to read, and beautifully illustrated."--Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"Bernard Lewis an exceptionally distinguished historian of the Middle Eastern world....[A]uthoritative addresses to reality like his will serve excellently instead, and they make him a matchless guide to the background of Middle East conflict today."--David Pryce-Jones, Commentary

"[A] pioneering work."--David Warren Bowen, Magill's Literary Annual

"Highly readable."--The New York Review of Books

"This book will foster Bernard Lewis's reputation as the doyen of Middle Eastern studies."--The New York Times Book Review

"Mr. Lewis's knowledge of Islamic history, literature, and jurisprudence is so detailed, expansive, and profoundly integrated that it is enough for him to merely refer to a period or an instance to be able to envision the entire context."--The Washington Times

"His scholarship must be respected...He skillfully sets up and explicates the primary paradoxes of the Islamic view of slavery and of race...[A book] that surely should be read."--Journal of Social History

From the Back Cover

Race and Slavery in the Middle East illuminates the legacy of slavery in the region where it lasted longest, from the days of warrior slaves and palace eunuchs and concubines to the final drive for abolition. Illustrated with outstanding reproductions of striking artwork, it casts a new light on this critical part of the world, and on the nature and interrelation of slavery and racial prejudice.

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Product details

Publisher : Oxford University Press; New ed edition (April 30, 1992)
Language : English
Paperback : 224 pages
ISBN-10 : 0195053265
ISBN-13 : 978-0195053265
Item Weight : 9.2 ounces
Dimensions : 9.2 x 0.9 x 6.1 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #157,692 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15 in Middle Eastern History (Books)
- #71 in Cardiology (Books)
- #94 in Slavery & Emancipation History

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J. Ducharme

Professor Lewis in top form as usual. Professor Lewis ...

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2018

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Professor Lewis in top form as usual. Professor Lewis identifies the reality of the Middle East vs Edward Said's delusions and victimology. Professor Lewis, RIP.

4 people found this helpful

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Bill

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2017

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An excellent tour of historical race relations and subjugation in medieval times.

One person found this helpful

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Matthew

Highly Informative Guide to the Ancient Society of the Middle East

Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2017

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Highly detailed, well-sourced and nuanced book on how the ancient peoples of the Middle East regarded issues considered highly sensitive today, such as race and how they helped shape and defined relations between various ethnic groups at the time, as well as how mutual perceptions of each other came to impact their world for generations to come.

In essence, Lewis shows us that while many religions and belief systems may in theory call for and advocate racial equality and justice, the reality can at times be far more complex and ultimately present a much more multi-faceted picture.

3 people found this helpful

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Harry Eagar

O, master, you are too kind

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2007

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I have been told several times by Muslims that Islam does not allow slavery, and similar assertions can be found on websites aimed at educating infidels about the religion.

It's not easy to understand the motive for such claims. The truth is that, unlike other salvationist, universalizing religions like Buddhism or Christianity, Islam depended on slavery to make conversions.

In "Race and Slavery in the Middle East," Bernard Lewis, as usual, provides many documents to illustrate his point. No honest person can deny that Islam countenanced slavery. Lewis is concerned to trace the evolution of racism along with slavery.

There is good evidence that the pre-Islamic Arabs did not make racial judgments. In this they were like classical, civilized people. The doctrine of Islam is clearly anti-racist. The dogma of equality (not extended, of course, to women) is unquestionable.

Nevertheless, almost as soon as they became Muslims, the Arabs turned racist. Lewis traces this to a general competition in the second and third generations, when the few Arabs who conquered so many were in danger of being swamped by non-Arab Muslims, and, even more, by half-Arabs -- their own children by slave mothers of the conquered groups.

The brief essay (over half the 184 pages are endnotes and translations of documents) accepts -- most of the time -- the claim of 19th century Jewish (!) scholars that slavery under Islam was less "oppressive" than in the Americas or than the official racism in South Africa (still under apartheid) when this book was published in 1990.

Lewis even accepts, absurdly, that being a Muslim slave was an improvement on being a slave of a Greek or Roman. This might be so (or it might not), but it is irrelevant. The early slaves had theretofore been free men, so the kindness of the Muslims in robbing and enslaving them probably did not seem as admirable to them as it does to Professor Lewis.

This is very strange.

The strangeness -- aside from the lapses in judgment by the usually reliable Lewis -- is that Muslim apologists despise Lewis for misrepresenting Islam to Dar-al-Harb. Yet in almost all his many books, Lewis gives the benefit of the close calls to Islam. Never more flagrantly than here.

The evidence that the humanity of Islamic slavery is a hoax is fully evidenced within this book (and elsewhere), even if Lewis ignores his own writing.

To begin with, Lewis admits (as did the Ottoman sultan, under British tutelage) that conditions from capture to sale to an Muslim buyer were horrible. Somehow, this part of the system "does not count," even though for many slaves it constituted a large part of their career as slaves -- for millions, all of it.

Secondly, Lewis marvels a bit that in the Middle East there are no large communities of blacks and mulattoes, as there are in the Americas. This despite the fact that the core lands of Islam imported black slaves for more than three times as long as happened in the Americas. (The Muslims took white slaves, too, until rising western military competence put a stop to it; a minor part of this book.)

Although there were times and places where African slaves in the Americas were worked to death, in general they reproduced at far above replacement rates. In Muslim hands, slaves hardly reproduced at all.

This could not have happened if, in fact, Muslims treated their slaves better than Europeans and Americans did.

It is probably significant of Lewis's concern to lessen the obvious imputations about Muslim behavior that he gives hardly two sentences to the revolt of black slaves in southern Iraq in the 10th century, and not a word about the death toll. No one knows what it was -- Muslim sources are silent or faked -- but historians believe it was probably the biggest slave revolt in history. Nine hundred thousand slaves may have been killed. Comparable to the population at the time, this was a slaughter worse than anything 20th century Germans achieved.

In his final words, Lewis says that his study assumed that the extreme claims on either side -- of the savagery of Islamic slavery or its mildness (he does not consider claims that it did not exist) -- could not be right. But even the evidence of his own book, not to mention widely available evidence elsewhere, shows that he has sugarcoated Islamic slavery.

47 people found this helpful

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Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2014

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good

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Nosidino

Short, Solid & To The Point

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2012

If Murray Gordon's book called Slavery In the Arab World is #1 on the list, that makes Race and Slavery In the Middle-East #1A. Unlike Gordon's work, this historical book is mostly a short overview on the subject, coming in at only 102 pages. Despite this, it is still light years ahead of the works compiled and edited by Shaun Marmon, titled: Slavery In the Islamic Middle-East. Unlike the multiple essays of that work, Lewis created a work that was consistent from beginning to end. For the most part his methodology was sound, despite a few lapses in providing sources and tables that could have helped bolster his discussions.

The first three chapters of this book: "Slavery", "Race" and "Islam In Arabia" are nothing short of stellar. They alone are worth the price of this book in my opinion. The basis of slavery going back to antiquity is discussed in quite some detail- including things that even I did not previously know about. For instance, on page 11 I read: "Small numbers of slaves were brought from India, China, Southeast Asia, and the Byzantine Empire, most of them specialists and technicians of one kind or another." That was quite an informative sentence that comprised part of an insightful chapter that made me erudite. In the chapter "Race" there is this paragraph that will astound any reader: "The advent of Islam created an entirely new situation in race relations. All the ancient civilizations of the Middle-East and of Asia had been local, or at the most regional. Even the Roman Empire, despite its relatively larger extent, was essentially a mediteranean society. Islam for the first time created a truly universal civilization, extending from Southern Europe to Central Africa, from the Atlantic Ocean to India and China. By conquest and by conversion, the Muslims brought within the bounds of a single imperial system and a common religious culture peoples as diverse as the Chinese, the Indians, the peoples of the Middle-East and North Africa, black Africans, and white Europeans." (P18 "Race").

I first read this book in November 2002. I just finished rereading it an hour ago because it is literally that important and imformative of a read. I recommend this book to all students and scholars of history. Once you pick this book up you will not be able to put it down.

A. Nathaniel Wallace, Jr.

11 people found this helpful

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Sawney Beane

Good read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 8, 2008

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This short book looks at the history and attitudes of Race & Slavery in the middle east. Although the Koran prohibits racial prejudice it never erradicated it,the Koran also permits slavery claiming it is the natural order and the prophet kept slaves.So the attitude was you cant prohibit what the Koran and holy law permits. Arabs,Persians & Turks kept Black and white slaves,but valued the white slaves more raising there status in society and having the same stereotypes of blacks that existed in the West.I was surprised that there wasn't much about Oriental peoples as the Arabs and Turks obviously had alot of contact with Tartars,Khazaks and Tajiks etc. The author ends this book by stating that the myth of Islamic Racial Innocence was a western invention and served a political purpose in certain Western issues of the day

6 people found this helpful

Excellent introduction to slavery in early Islamic history

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 1, 2012

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There is plenty of exagerated and distorted perceptions in the west about slavery in early Islam and middle east.

Although this may be a short introduction, it goes in depth of the rights and social status of slaves and concubines in early Islamic history and the development of the concept of slavery. Slavery in the middle eastern societies was defined differently in status, ranks and ethics in comparison to what it was like in the west. A book worth reading

2 people found this helpful

Patrick Patton

I should have liked more on the activities of Arab slavers on the ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 11, 2016

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Very interesting. I should have liked more on the activities of Arab slavers on the westward trade, towards the Americas

2 people found this helpful

Sorsha Jan

DIE Zusammenfassung für Rassen(vorurteile) und Sklaverei im Mittleren Osten von einem Kenner geschrieben

Reviewed in Germany on September 14, 2014

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Bernard Lewis ist ein Kenner des Mittleren Ostens, auch in diesem Buch ist dies deutlich spürbar.

Das brisante Thema der Sklaverei und der Rassen im Mittleren Osten wird aufgrund des profunden Wissens Lewis hervorragend in diesem Buch aufbereitet und dargestellt. Vorurteile und Mythen werden aufgedeckt und berichtigt. Dabei wird von den Grundlagen des Islams her das Wissen zur Sklaverei und Rassen herausgearbeitet. Zwar kennt der Islam nur Gläubige, die ohne Rassenvorurteile alle gleich sein sollen, Lewis kann jedoch zeigen, dass die Realität anders aussah. Trotzdem standen Sklaven erstaunliche Aufstiegschancen zur Verfügung.

Das Buch ist für historisches Verständnis, Religion und interkulturelle Studien hervorragend geeignet, aber auch für den interessierten Leser gut verständlich.

2 people found this helpful

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DAVID

Very interesting book

Reviewed in Italy on September 28, 2020

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It's a very interesting book. I suggest it. This book is written in a very simple way. It's full of important information.

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