The history of slavery in Morocco is long and complex, spanning from pre-Islamic times to the 20th century. Throughout this period, slaves served in various social and economic roles, facing diverse treatment ranging from positions of power to harsh manual labor.
Sale of a child-slave (1872), painting by Vasily Vereshchagin
Origins and Sources of Slavery
Slavery was widely practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia, with institutions inherited by the Muslim world. The slave population grew through various means:
- Child abandonment
- Kidnapping
- Sale of small children
Whether enslavement for debt or the sale of children by their families was common is disputed.
Slaves originated from diverse regions:
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- Africa: The "Land of the Blacks" (bilâd as-sûdân) provided a pool of manual labor for North and Saharan Africa.
- Europe and the Caucasus: These slaves were often brought in by caravaners or captured by Bedouins.
- Ethiopia: The Solomonic dynasty often exported Nilotic slaves from their western borderland provinces.
- Somalia: Native Muslim Somali sultanates exported slaves.
Up until the early 18th century, the Crimean Khanate maintained a massive slave trade with the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East. On the coast of the Indian Ocean too, slave-trading posts were set up by Muslim Arabs.
Since all non-Muslims not living under Islamic rule were considered a legitimate target of enslavement by Islamic law, slaves could be of many different races. However, this did not prevent a racist component of slavery.
Through the Middle Ages up until the early modern period, a major source of slaves sent to Muslim lands was Central and Eastern Europe.
Slaving raids by Barbary Pirates on the coasts of Western Europe as far as Iceland remained a source of slaves until suppressed in the early 19th century.
Roles and Conditions of Slaves
Slaves in Morocco held various roles, including:
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- Manual laborers in irrigation, mining, and animal husbandry
- Soldiers and guards
- Domestic workers
- Concubines
Outside of explicit sexual slavery, most female slaves had domestic occupations. Military slavery was also a common role for slaves.
Two classes of slaves existed: a purchased slave and one born in the master's home. Over the latter, the master had complete rights of ownership, though these slaves were unlikely to be sold or disposed of by the master.
Potential buyers made a careful examination of the "merchandise": they checked the state of health of a person who was often standing naked with wrists bound together. Prices varied according to the slave's quality.
Choosing slaves to undergo the grooming process was highly selective in the Moroccan empire. There are many attributes and skills slaves can possess to win the favour and trust of their masters.
Slaves with specialised skills were highly valued in Islamic slave societies. Christian slaves were often required to speak and write in Arabic. Having slaves fluent in English and Arabic was a highly valued tool for diplomatic affairs.
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A fair proportion of male slaves were also imported as eunuchs. The custom of using eunuchs as servants for women inside the Islamic harems had a preceding example in the life of Muhammad, who used the eunuch Mabur as a servant in the house of his own slave concubine Maria al-Qibtiyya; both of them slaves from Egypt.
Honourable Mention, 2016 L. ‘In Black Morocco Professor El Hamel argues persuasively that contrary to Islamic principles, Northwest Africans imposed a racial slavery upon the black peoples of the region.
Racism and Slavery
Though the Qur'an expresses no racial prejudice against black Africans, ethnocentric prejudice later developed among Arabs. By the 8th century, anti-black prejudice among Arabs resulted in discrimination. The hajin, half-Arab sons of Muslim Arab men and their slave concubines, were viewed differently depending on the ethnicity of their mothers.
Racism against Black Africans in the Arab world grew after Islam.
Muslim enslavers, under Islamic law, were permitted to breed slaves. While the child of a slave could become free if the master chose to acknowledge the child as his, the child of two slaves was born into slavery. Since slaves were considered to have different abilities because of their race, slave-breeding was practiced to produce offspring with desired traits.
The Black Guard
The perhaps most famous slave military force was the Black Guard, also known as ‘Abīd al-Dīwān "slaves of the diwan", Jaysh al-‘Abīd "the slave army", and ‘Abid al-Sultan "the sultan's slaves") were the corps of black-African slaves and Haratin slave-soldiers assembled by the 'Alawi sultan of Morocco, Isma‘il ibn Sharif (reigned 1672-1727).
This military corps, which was loyal only to the sultan, was one of the pillars of Isma'il's power as he sought to establish a more stable and more absolute authority over Morocco.
Over the course of the later 18th century and the 19th century their role in the military was progressively reduced and their political status varied between privilege and marginalization. Their descendants eventually regained their freedom and resettled across the country.
Barbary Pirates and Slavery
From the 16th to the 18th centuries, Ottoman North Africa was a center of the Barbary slave trade where European ships and coastal villages along the Mediterranean was raided by Barbary pirates. Along with Algiers and other provinces of Ottoman North Africa, Morocco was also a center for the slave trade.
Barbary corsairs and crews from the quasi-independent North African Ottoman provinces of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and the independent Sultanate of Morocco under the Alaouite dynasty (the Barbary Coast) were the scourge of the Mediterranean.
Capturing merchant ships and enslaving or ransoming their crews provided the rulers of these nations with wealth and naval power.
Morocco was the first Barbary Coast State to sign a treaty with the United States, on 23 June 1786. This treaty formally ended all Moroccan piracy against American shipping interests. The Barbary slave trade from Morocco against the ships of other nations also diminished following the Barbary war of the early 19th century.
On 11 October 1784, Moroccan pirates seized the American brigantine Betsey. The Spanish government negotiated the freedom of the captured ship and crew; however, Spain advised the United States to offer tribute to prevent further attacks against merchant ships.
The United States Minister to France, Thomas Jefferson, decided to send envoys to Morocco and Algeria to try to purchase treaties and the freedom of the captured sailors held by Algeria.
When Europeans Were Slaves | History Of The Barbary Slave Trade
Abolition Efforts
In the 20th century, the authorities in Muslim states gradually outlawed and suppressed slavery. The slave population increased by the custom of child abandonment (see also infanticide) and by the kidnapping or sale of small children.
The open slave market in Morocco was closed in 1922. Slavery in Zanzibar was abolished in 1909, when slave concubines were freed. Slavery in the Ottoman Empire was abolished in 1924 when the new Turkish Constitution disbanded the Imperial Harem and made the last concubines and eunuchs free citizens of the newly proclaimed republic.
Between 1912 and 1956, Morocco was colonised by France, which effectively ended the open slave trade in Morocco. In 1923 the French colonial authorities officially banned the slave trade and closed the slave markets in Morocco.
While the slave trade was banned, slavery as such was never banned. In practice the slave trade continued illegally at least two decades after the abolition of the slave trade in 1923.
Slavery as such continued in private, mainly in the form of domestic servants. However, during the decades after 1923, slavery gradually diminished in Morocco since changing attitudes made it less common to acquire slaves, and more common to manumit already existing slaves.
When Morocco won its independence in 1956, slavery was said to be essentially confined to the Household slaves of the Royal Harem. The traditional Royal Harem still existed during the reign of king Hassan II of Morocco.
Mauritania became the last state to abolish slavery, in 1981.
The Haratin
The slave descentants, the Haratin have been, and still commonly are socially isolated in some Maghrebi countries, living in segregated, Haratin-only ghettos.
In late-seventeenth-century Morocco, Sultan Mawlay Isma‘il (reigned 1672-1727) commanded his officials to enslave all black Moroccans: that is, to buy coercively or freely those already slaves and to enslave those who were free, including the Haratin (meaning free blacks or freed ex-slaves). This command violated the most salient Islamic legal code regarding the institution of slavery which states that it is illegal to enslave fellow Muslims.
To prove the slave status of the black Moroccans, the officials and jurists in charge of the slavery project established a fictional scheme of categories of slaves.
Chouki El Hamel is a professor of history in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University, specializing in West and Northwest Africa.
His most recent book is Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2013). AFA copy has bookplate: Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Gift of Ruth O. "Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race and Islam chronicles the experiences, identity, and achievements of enslaved black people in Morocco from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century.
‘Black Morocco is an elegant, beautifully written, and thoroughly researched lesson for all scholars of the history of Africa, the Middle East, and slavery. El Hamel’s work teaches us to look within, and also beyond, Islam, for answers to the experience and the conditions of slavery in Morocco.
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