Slave Soldiers and Islam_ The Genesis of a Military System - Daniel Pipes

APPENDIX1:SLAVETERMINOLOGY

Arabichasan

extraordinarily

rich

vocabulary

forslaves:the

ma’dhfin
possesses

somelegal

rights

forcommercial

purposes,

theabiqis

a

runaway,

the

jalb

isan

imported

slave,andthe

buqfn

isone

brought

from

Ethiopia.

Yetthesecolorful

spe-

cializedterms

rarely

findtheir

way

intothehistoricalliterature

of

early

Islam. Instead,sevenother

general

terms mostfre-

quently

occur.Ofthese,

allbut

one,raqiq,

had

meanings

other

than"slave":

Cabd: human

being("servitor

ofGod")

ghulfim: personal

servant,

apprentice,

youth

kh&tim:

servant,

eunuch

mamlk:

anypossession(such

aslandor

cattle)

2

mawl:

seepp.

107-08

wo4.

"

servant

Historianshavenoted thattheseterms

acquired

some

spe-

cialized

meanings;

thebestknownandmost

important

distinc-

tionwastheonedrawnbetweentheCabdandthemamlk, the

blackandthewhite

slave,respectively?

Whilethisdistinction

undoubtedly

had

validity

inlatertimes,and

particularly

inthe

Mamluk

Kingdom

of

Egypt,

itdidnotexistinthe

earlyperiod

of

Islam.

During

thefirsttwocenturies(andperhapsthefirstfour),

all

general

termshadthesamemeaning.

Thesourcesusedthese

words

interchangeably,

somodern

attempts

to

distinguish

be-

tweenthemare

specious.

4

Anindividualslavecanbe

called

by

awide

variety

ofterms.

For

example, Wah.

shi is called aCabd,

ghulm,

mamlk, and

1.

Ayalon,

"Eunuchs,"

p.

267.

2.

T,1:1954.

3.D.

Ayalon,

Gunpowderand

Firearms

in

theMamluk

Kingdom(London,1956),

p.66;Rotter,p.

73;Lewis,

pp.

38 and 64 andn.69.

4.

J.

eArl,

al-Mufa..alJ-Ta’n-kh

al-Arab

qabl

al-lslm (Beirut, 1968-73),

7:454-61,

makesan

attempt

to

distinguish

betweenthesetermsfor

Jahili

times.

Ayalon,"Preliminary

Remarks,"

p.

51,

agrees

withmyconclusionsforsomeof

theseterms.

195