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 chattel 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. The Caliphate was a major slave trade destination, and slaves were imported from several destinations. Since Islamic law prohibited enslavement of Muslims, non-Muslim slaves (kafir) were imported from non-Muslim lands (Dar al-harb) around the Muslim world (Dar al-Islam). These included pagan Africa in the south; Christian and pagan Europe in the north; and pagan Central Asia and India in the east. These slaves came from the north along the Balkan slave trade and the Volga trade route; from the east via the Bukhara slave trade; from the west via the Andalusian slave trade, the Trans-Saharan slave trade and the Red Sea slave trade; and from the south from the Indian Ocean slave trade. The slave trade and slavery in the area continued during subsequent states, such as the slavery in the Mamluk Sultanate (1258–1517) and the slavery in the Ottoman Empire (1517–1922), until slavery was ended in the 20th century, when the national states emerging after the split of the Ottoman Empire gradually ended slavery, culminating in the abolition of slavery in Saudi Arabia, slavery in Yemen and slavery in Oman in 1962–1970.
Slave trade
The slave trade was substantial during the Umayyad Caliphate, mainly fueled by war captives and people enslaved as tax levy; during the Abbasid Caliphate, the slave trade in war captives was largely supplanted by people bought through the commercial slave trade, and provided for the slave markets in Basra, Baghdad and Samarra. In parallel with the slave trade in captives and the slaves provided as tax levy and tributes, the expansion of the commercial slave trade expanded slavery during the Abbasid period.
War captives
The established custom to enslave captured warriors as well as civilians during warfare continued during the Abbasid Caliphate, in accordance with the principle that the kafir of dar al-Harb was legitimate to enslave, though during the Abbasid era, ransoming prisoners (at least prisoners of rank) did become more common than it had been during the Rashidun and Umayyad eras, as illustrated by the Arab–Byzantine prisoner exchanges. The historical legal principles governing the treatment of prisoners of war, in shar'iah, Islamic law, (in the traditional madhabs schools of Islamic jurisprudence), was then a significant improvement over the pre-existing norms of Arab society during Muhammad's time (see Early reforms under Islam). Men, women, and children may all be taken as prisoners of war under traditional interpretations of Islamic law. Generally, a prisoner of war could be, at the discretion of the military leader, freed, ransomed, exchanged for Muslim prisoners, or kept in bondage.
Byzantine Asia Minor The Abbasid Caliphate made many incursions to the interior of Asia Minor, besieging strategic Byzantine cities in order to weaken Byzantine geographical defense; when this warfare resulted in a city being captured by the Caliphate, it resulted in the city being sacked and its inhabitants being captured and then sold as slaves, a known case being that of the siege and capture of Heraclea Cybistra during the Abbasid invasion of Asia Minor (806). The Abbasid caliph, Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809), who sought to promote himself as a champion of jihad, decided to lead in person a retaliatory attack with the objective of punishing the Byzantines and impressing Abbasid influence upon their emperor. Harun, with the other half of his forces, went west and captured the strongly fortified city of Herakleia after a month-long siege in August or September. The city was plundered and razed, and its inhabitants enslaved and deported to slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate. The fall of Herakleia was considered by the Arab chroniclers the most significant achievement of Harun's expeditions against the Byzantines, and is the central event in the narratives of Harun's retaliatory campaign against Nikephoros. During the Sack of Amorium in 838, the city was systematically destroyed, never to recover its former prosperity. Many of its inhabitants were slaughtered, and the remainder driven off as slaves. The city was thoroughly sacked and plundered; according to the Arab accounts, the sale of the spoils went on for five days. The Byzantine chronicler Theophanes Continuatus mentions 70,000 dead, while the Arab al-Mas'udi records 30,000. The surviving population were divided as slaves among the army leaders, except for the city's military and civic leaders, who were reserved for the caliph's disposal. After allowing Theophilos's envoys to return to him with the news of Amorium's fall, Mu'tasim burned the city to the ground, with only the city walls surviving relatively intact. Many of the survivors were released after a truce in 841, but prominent officials were taken to the caliph's capital of Samarra and executed years later after refusing to convert to Islam, becoming known as the 42 Martyrs of Amorium.
Tributary slaves
Baqt The Christian kingdom of Makuria in Dongola Reach (in today's Sudan) was obliged to provide between 360 and 400 slaves every year to Islamic Egypt (then an Abbasid province) in accordance with the terms of the Baqt treaty.
African slave trade
In the Abbasid Empire, African slaves were referred to as Zanj. African slaves were favored for hard labor.
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