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Slavery in Asia

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Through Asia, Slavery and History of Asia

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Central Asia

Slavery has been integral to the social, economic, and political history of Central Asia. Polities of different sizes and structures such as nomadic confederations, agrarian city-states, and empires all engaged in and at various times promoted the enslavement and trade of people and the exploitation of their labor. While societies across Central Asia independently developed their localized practice of slavery, they also integrated their slave selling network to the development of the Silk Road, which linked dispersed markets throughout Eurasia. Alongside silk, spices, and other commodities of the Silk Road, merchants traded and transported people across Central Asia. As an area with diverse ethnic, linguistic, and religious demographic, the people who were enslaved and traded in Central Asia came from a variety of backgrounds and spoke many different languages. In eastern Eurasia, slave selling contracts demonstrate that slave sales were conducted in Chinese, Uyghur, Tibetan, Sogdian, Prakrit, Khotanese, and Tocharian. Political conquests, economic competition, and religious conversion all mattered in determining who had control over the slave trade, which demographic slave traders targeted, and whose demand slave traders catered to.

Mechanisms for enslavement

Warfare, slave raids, legal punishments, self-sales, or sales by relatives, and inheritance of slave status from birth were the common ways individuals become a slave in Central Asia. Linguistic analysis of the vocabulary used for slavery in early Central Asian societies suggests a strong connection between military actions and slavery. Third-century Sassanian inscriptions attest to the usage of the word wardag as meaning both "slave" and "captive". Similarly, the 8th-century Turkic Orkhon inscriptions indicate prisoners of war have often designated the status of slavery. Inscriptions found in the First Turkic Khaganate also imply that terms denoting slavery or other forms of subordinate status, such as qul (male slave) and küng (female slave or handmaiden), are frequently applied to a population of defeated political entities.

During the early modern era (16th–18th centuries), Khiva and Bukhara imported large numbers of Europeans slaves kidnapped by the Crimean Tatars. The Crimean slave trade was eradicated in the late 18th century. However Russian captives were still provided via the Kazakh Khanate slave trade. In 1717, 3,000 Russian slaves consisting of men, women, and children were sold in Khiva by Kazakh and Kyrgyz tribesmen.

Raids among nomadic tribes and against sedentary societies to loot people were also prevalent practices conducted by polities across Eurasia. After many Central Asian states converted to Islam, they frequently conducted slave raids into non-Muslim territories. Areas where polytheism were practiced were frequently targets of these slave raids. For example, Daylam, the northwestern regions of Iran, Gur in central Afghanistan, the Eurasian steppe, and India had long been targeted by Muslim polities for slave raids. The Samanids in Khorasan and Transoxania, and their successor, the Ghaznavids, and later the Saljuqs in Iran.

Violent encounters are not the only mechanism through which an individual was enslaved. Iranian and Chinese sources attest to the practice of self-enslavement or self-selling. In the Pahlavi Book of a Thousand Judgements, the word tan (body), designates a person who loans oneself or one's relative for a specific period of time to a debtor or creditor as security for a debt. In China, legal code historically prohibited individuals from selling children or other relatives into slavery. However, sale contracts indicate that poverty, famine, and other unfortunate circumstances often compelled individuals to sell or loan themselves, their children, and other relatives. This is not to say that slave sales were prohibited in China, however. Tang legal codes regulated the sale of people who were already designated slave status by requiring individuals to provide certificates that demonstrate the individuals were lawfully enslaved. In one recorded case, a man sold his daughter and son in order to raise funds to pay for his father's funeral.

A notorious slave market for captured Russian and Persian slaves was the Khivan slave trade, centered in the Khanate of Khiva from the 17th to the 19th century. During the first half of the 19th century alone, some one million Persians, as well as an unknown number of Russians, were enslaved and transported to Central Asian khanates. When the Russian troops took Khiva in 1898 there were 29,300 Persian slaves, captured by Turkoman raiders. According to Josef Wolff (Report of 1843–1845) the population of the Khanate of Bukhara was 1,200,000, of whom 200,000 were Persian slaves. There were Russian and Swedish slaves, including Brigitta Scherzenfeldt, in the Dzungar Khanate in Central Asia in the 18th century.

Function of slavery in Central Asian societies

The slave trade was also an essential aspect of the economy of Central Asian societies. Due to the high demand for slaves in neighboring sedentary empires, Central Asian Turkic nomads supplied the majority of slaves to the Islamic caliphate to the west and the Chinese dynasties to the east. In the Abbasid empire, the establishment of the Mamluk institution created the preference and demand for young, Turkic male slaves due to their supposedly superior military strength. As a result of these demands, the economy of Central Asian states flourished as they dominated the slave trade. The Khazar Qaghanate, the Samanids, and later the Ghaznavids, were some of the main suppliers of Turkic military slaves, Circassian slaves, and Russian slaves to Baghdad.

Modern slavery

Slavery gradually disappeared from the Caucasus owing to reduced demand for Circassian slaves from the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, Russian imperial policy that used the issue of slaves to infringe upon Ottoman sovereignty, and the actions of the slaves themselves. In Central Asia, informal slavery continued into the Soviet period and some forms of slavery continue to exist today.

The tradition of slavery exists today in Russia.

Uzbekistan

The history of slavery in Uzbekistan is reflected in the institution of slavery in the states that previously existed within the territory of what was later to become Uzbekistan.

Before the arrival of the Russians in the 1860s, present-day Uzbekistan was divided between the Emirate of Bukhara and the khanates of Khiva and Kokand.

The city of Bukhara was the center of the ancient Bukhara slave trade. In the 16th century, Bukhara exported slaves to Central Asia, the Middle East and India. The Bukhara slave market was a destination for slave merchants from India and other countries of the "East", who came to Bukhara to buy slaves. The slaves were exported from Bukhara to other Islamic khanates in Central Asia.

Bukhara also used slaves for their domestic market. The use of slaves in Bukhara followed the normal model of slavery in the Islamic world. Female slaves were used as domestic servants or as concubines (sex slaves). Baron Meyendorff reported in the 1820s that a skilled artisan could be sold for about 100 tilla, while an attractive slave girls could be sold for as much as 150 tilla. Male slaves were used as ghilman slave soldiers. Bukhara also used slave labor in their agriculture, normally Indian slaves.

The royal harem of the ruler of the Emirate of Bukhara (1785–1920) in Central Asia (Uzbekistan) was similar to that of the Khanate of Khiva. The last Emir of Bukhara was reported to have a harem with 100 women, but also a separate "harem" of "nectarine-complexioned dancing boys". The harem was abolished when the Soviets conquered the area and the khan Sayyid Mir Muhammad Alim Khan was forced to flee; he reportedly left the harem women behind, but did take some of his dancing boys with him.

In the 19th century, the slave markets of Khiva and Bukhara were still among the biggest slave markets in the world. The Turkmen were so known for their slave raids that it was said that Turkmen "would not hesitate to sell into slavery the Prophet himself, did he fall into their hands". The constant raids against travelers constituted a problem for traveling in the region. Between 20.000 and 40.000 slaves are estimated to have existed in Bukhara in 1821, and around 20.000 in the 1860s.

Slavery and slave trade was abolished in the khanate of Bukhara after the Russian conquest of Bukhara. The Russian-Bukharan Treaty of 1873 abolished the Bukhara slave trade. In contrast to neighboring Khiva, slavery as such was not banned in Bukhara after slave trade was banned. The Russian General Governor congratulated Emir Muzaffar bin Nasrullah for having abolished the slave trade in Bukhara, and expressed his hope that also slavery itself would be gradually phased out during a ten-year period. The Emir promised the Russians that he would abolish slavery in 1883 on condition that the former slaves remained with their slavers until then, after which they would be given the right to buy themselves free; after this promise, the Russians abstained from pressuring the emir more in the issue to avoid damaging their diplomatic contact with him. Emir Muzaffar bin Nasrullah did not abolish slavery in 1883 as he had promised the Russians. However his son Emir 'Abd al-Ahad Khan fulfilled his father's promise by officially abolishing slavery in the Emirate of Bukhara.

Afghanistan

Slavery was present in the post-Classical history of Afghanistan, continued during the Middle Ages, and persisted into the early 20th century. After the Islamic conquest of Persia, regions of both Persia and Afghanistan that had not converted to Islam were considered infidel regions, and as a result, they were considered legitimate targets of slave raids that were launched from regions whose populations had converted to Islam: for example Daylam in northwestern Iran and the mountainous region of Ḡūr in central Afghanistan were both exposed to slave raids which were launched from Muslim regions.

It was considered legitimate to enslave war captives; during the Afghan occupation of Persia (1722–1730), for example, thousands of people were enslaved, and the Baluch made regular incursions into Southeastern Iran to capture people and turn them into slaves. The slave traffic in Afghanistan was particularly active in the northwest, where 400 to 500 were sold annually. In Southern Iran, poor parents sold their children into slavery, and as late as c. 1900, slave raids were conducted by chieftains in south Iran. The markets for these captives were often in Arabia and Afghanistan; "most of the slave girls employed as domestics in the houses of the gentry at Kandahar were brought from the outlying districts of Ghayn".

The rulers of Afghanistan customarily had a harem of four official wives as well as a large number of unofficial wives for the sake of tribal marriage diplomacy, in addition to enslaved harem women known as kaniz ("slave girl") and surati or surriyat ("mistress" or concubine)), guarded by the ghulam bacha (eunuchs).

Most slaves were employed as agricultural laborers, domestic slaves and sexual slaves. In contrast, other slaves served in administrative positions. Slaves in Afghanistan possessed some social mobility, especially those slaves who were owned by the government. Slavery was more common in towns and cities because some Afghan tribal communities did not readily engage in the slave trade; according to some sources, the decentralized nature of Afghan tribes forced more urbanized areas to import slaves to fill labor shortages. Most slaves in Afghanistan had been imported from Persia and Central Asia.

According to a report of an expedition to Afghanistan published in London in 1871:

The country generally between Caubul (Kabul) and the Oxus appears to be in a very lawless state; slavery is as rife as ever, and extends through Hazara, Badakshan, Wakhan, Sirikul, Kunjūt (Hunza), &c. A slave, if a strong man likely to stand works well, is, in Upper Badakshan, considered to be of the same value as one of the large dogs of the country, or of a horse, being about the equivalent of Rs 80. A slave girl is valued at four horses or more, according to her looks &c.; men are, however, almost always exchanged for dogs. When I was in Little Tibet (Ladakh), a returned slave who had been in the Kashmir army took refuge in my camp; he said he was well enough treated as to food &c., but he could never get over having been exchanged for a dog, and constantly harped on the subject, the man who sold him evidently thinking the dog the better animal of the two. In Lower Badakshan, and more distant places, the price of slaves is much enhanced, and payment is made in coin.

— "Report of "The Mary's" Exploration from Caubul to Kashgar." T. G. Montgomerie. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol. 41 (1871), p. 146.

Amanullah Khan banned slavery in Afghanistan in the 1923 Constitution, but the practice carried on unofficially for many more years. The Swede Aurora Nilsson, who lived in Kabul from 1926 to 1927, described the occurrence of slavery in Kabul in her memoirs, as well as how a German woman, the widow of an Afridi man named Abdullah Khan, who had fled to the city with her children from her late husband's successor, was sold at public auction and obtained her freedom by being bought by the German embassy for 7,000 marks.

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