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institution brought about a juridical acknowledgement of the marriage of slaves
within the framework of the Church, and juridical restrictions on splitting up families
by selling or manumitting their members. An equivalent process is apparent in Muslim
law, which forbade the separation of mother and child through sale. It also gave a
unique alienable status to the slave mother of her master’s son. Questions of the
mixed statuses of married couples were discussed in Christian, Jewish and Muslim
jurisprudence alike. The basis for them all was the emphasis in religious literature on
the humanity of the slave, thanks to his or her identity as a believer.
This movement in the juridical status of the slave from a thing to a person in dis-
tinct medieval legal systems was paralleled by the gradual intervention of medieval
public authorities in the private powers of the owner. In a word, although owned by
their proprietors, slaves were also under the authority of the sovereign. Incarnating
the law the sovereign controlled all juridical definitions of social statuses. One exam-
ple of this is the juridical assertion in Byzantium, according to which a master could
not unite his slaves other than by Christian marriage, and the parallel in the Latin
west, where Christian slaves did not need their master’s approval to be married in
Church. Nevertheless, this development in the juridical position of slaves in no way
indicated a movement towards emancipation, let alone an abolitionist tendency. On
the contrary, medieval theologians developed their own justifications for the existence
of slavery and its use for the benefit of their respective societies, revealing thus the
resilient character of slavery, and its adaptability to changes in political and cultural
structures.
Whether slaves continued to be used in agriculture is a matter of debate, and
depends on the interpretation of the medieval evidence. The three revolts of the Zanj
(689–690, 694, 869–883), who were enslaved and imported Africans, broke out in
Iraq. The last revolt lasted 15 years and was led by Ali ben Muhammad, a political
rebel who acquired support from Zanj slave bands. These found an opportunity to
escape the miserable conditions in which they were put, preparing the marshy ground
of lower Mesopotamia for cultivation. Well-documented thanks to the historian al-
Tabari, it is a unique case of substantial evidence surviving on the role that African
slaves played in Abbasid agriculture. The evidence from Byzantium and the Latin West
for the early period, although scanty, points clearly to the rural use of slaves in these
regions, always alongside farmers of free status: dependent tenants, landowners, or
hired workers.
In urban manufacture the use of slaves as agents and guild members raised the
socio-economic position of the household. As in antiquity, slaves were also acquired
by rich medieval households as domestics, but unlike Greek and Roman societies,
both Byzantine and Arab societies used slaves in militia forces and as bodyguards. The
fact that Sunni law gave sons the status of their fathers made it particularly useful for
a male slave owner to enlarge his household through the sons of his female slaves.
Polygamy and multi-concubine female slaves, both customary in Muslim societies,
proved more advantageous for the expansion of the household in comparison to
Christian or Jewish societies. In contrast, in Byzantium the child of a slave mother,
male or female, was a slave and was named “born in the house.” But the term “my
men,” which was a mark of social status, comprised all male persons under the influ-
ence of a single master. Women, whether slaves, manumitted slaves, or concubines,
were merely the vector that enabled hierarchical male kin groups to form. Manumission