Slave trade Export Syria both exported and imported slaves. There was a centuries-old export of Syrian girls.
Ibn Battuta met a Syrian Arab Damascene girl who was a slave of a black African governor in Mali in the 14th century. Ibn Battuta engaged in a conversation with her in Arabic. The black man was a scholar of Islam and his name was Farba Sulayman. In the 20th-century, women and girls for the
harem market were kidnapped not only from Africa and Baluchistan, but also from the Trucial States, the
Nusayriyah Mountains in Syria, and the
Aden Protectorate. In 1936, Saudi Arabia formally banned the import of slaves who were not already slaves prior to entering the kingdom, a reform which was however on paper only. King
Ibn Saud officially expressed his willing cooperation with the anti -slavery policy of the British, but in 1940, the British were well aware that the king imported concubines from Syria, had received a gift of twenty slaves from Qatar and that British subjects from Baluchistan were trafficked to Saudi Arabia via Oman. Syrian girls were trafficked from Syria to
slavery in Saudi Arabia right before World War II and married to legally bring them across the border but then divorced and given to other men. A Syrian Dr. Midhat and Shaikh Yusuf were accused of engaging in this traffic of Syrian girls to supply them to Saudis.
Red Sea slave trade A major slave route to
Ottoman Syria was that of African slaves trafficked from the
Red Sea slave trade to
Jeddah, and by caravan via the
Hajj pilgrime passage from Mecca over the desert to the slave market i Damascus in Syria, which received about 200 slaves annually. The slave market in Damascus was held annually when the pilgrims returned home to Damascus from Hajj and the slave market of Mecca. After a number of regulations against the slave trade caravans from Mecca by the local governor, only sixteen slaves were officially reported to have arrived at the Damascus slave market in the year of 1880.
Indian Ocea slave trade One slave route to Ottoman Syria was the
Indian Ocean slave trade by way of
Ottoman Iraq. In 1847, the British consulate in Baghdad reported:The average import of slaves into Bussorah is 2000 head - in some years the numbers have reached 3000, but for the year 1836, owing, it is supposed, to the discouragement which the traffic has sustained from the Imam of Muscat, no more than 1000 slaves were imported. [...] Of the slaves imported, one half is usually sent to the Muntefik town on the Euphrates, named Sook-ess-Shookh, from whence they are spread all over Southern Mesopotamia, and Eastern Syria; a quarter are exported directly to Baghdad and the remainder are disposed of in the Bussorah market.Ottoman Syria was a province close enough to Constantinople to be more affected by the official abolitionist policies to curb the slave trade initiated by the Ottoman regime during the
Tanzimat Era than many other, and while the slave trade to Syria did not end, it slowed down during the late 19th-century, at least according to official reports.
Circassian slave trade In the late Ottoman period, almost all slaves where of African origin. However, there was a small import of white slaves from the Black Sea. When the
Crimean slave trade was discontinued, the Circassian slave trade continued to supply the area of Syria and Lebanon with white slaves. The
Anti-slavery Society reported from Beirut 25 January 1877: :"The sale of white Circassian female slaves is not carried on to any great extent in Syria, though not less than 100 of them are annually introduced into the country for the domestic use of the wealthy Moslems. It is the decided opinion of the writer that unless more efficacious measures be taken, the Turks will never consent to the abolition of slavery, it being an intrinsic part of their system".
Armenian slave trade During the
Armenian genocide in 1915–1923, many Armenians, primarily women, girls and boys under the age of twelve, were enslaved by Muslims in Ottoman Syria and Iraq. Throughout the genocide the men were given free licence to do as they pleased with Armenian women. Armenian women and children were displayed naked in auctions in
Damascus, where they were sold as
sex slaves. The trafficking of Armenian women as sex slaves was an important source of income for accompanying soldiers. In Arab areas, enslaved Armenian women were sold at low prices. The German consul at
Mosul reported that the maximum price for an Armenian woman was "5 piastres" (about 20 Pence Sterling at the time).
Function and conditions Female slaves were primarily used as either domestic servants, or as
concubines (sex slaves), while male slaves were used in a number of tasks. Slaves in Islam were mainly directed at the service sector concubines and cooks, porters and soldiers with slavery itself primarily a form of consumption rather than a factor of production. The most telling evidence for this is found in the gender ratio; among slaves traded in Islamic empire across the centuries, there were roughly two females to every male. According to Ottoman law, non-Muslims or
dhimmi were not allowed to own slaves, but this prohibition was normally not enforced, especially not in Syria and Lebanon, which had a big Christian and Jewish population. In May 1842 however, the Governor of Damascus,
Najib Pasha, encouraged the Muslims to attack Christians and Jews to liberate their slaves, since sharia allowed only for Muslims to own slaves. On request from the European consuls, the Christian and Jewish communities then liberated their slaves, to avoid a violent attack from the Muslims. ==Activism against slave trade==