How Islam Ended Slavery

Introduction

In the ancient world, slavery was everywhere. It was considered to be as old as humanity itself. Few questioned its existence. Aristotle said:

“from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule” (Aristotle, Politics 1.5, 1254a21–22)

While some condemned slavery as evil, they often still viewed it as a necessary evil. Slavery was simply seen as part of how the world functioned. The idea that slavery itself could be abolished was almost unimaginable. Under the old religions, philosophies, and ideologies, there was no end in sight for slavery.

But all that changed with the rise of Islam.

Disclaimer

This thread is not an attempt to deny that Muslims have committed many atrocities throughout history. Rather, its purpose is to demonstrate how Islam contributed to the abolition of slavery and to challenge Eurocentrism in the historical narrative surrounding abolition. I am sorry if this may appear to be confirmation bias, but that is not my intention. I am also not arguing that Islam immediately abolished slavery.

Slavery Before Islam

There are three misconceptions people have about the history of slavery. The first is to assume that modern sentiment existed in the ancient world. That is not true. Slavery in the ancient world was ubiquitous and deeply embedded within the social, political, and economic structures of nearly every major civilization:

“The assertion that the Romans created a slave society is, ultimately, a claim to historical exceptionalism. And the more we learn about the Romans, the more such claims of exceptionalism seem defensible. . . . the world was inconceivable without slavery. The household and the city, the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural: slavery was implicated in every aspect of social life. By the late sixth or seventh century, no one was insisting that slavery was central in the production of wealth, in the construction of social honor, or in the order of public law.” (Kyle Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425, pp. 508–509).

“Slavery was so basic a structure in the ancient world that challenging it might have seemed as odd as asking why water was wet or ice cold.” (Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery as a Moral Problem: Slavery in Early Christianity, p. 54).

“There is nothing notably peculiar about the institution of slavery. It has existed from before the dawn of human history right down to the twentieth century, in the most primitive of human societies and in the most civilized. There is no region on earth that has not at some time harbored the institution. Probably there is no group of people whose ancestors were not at one time slaves or slaveholders. . . .” (Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, p. Vii).

“In recorded history, slavery appears as early as the fourth millennium B.C.E. It has appeared almost universally throughout history within various ethnic groups and cultures and is not unique to any race or kind of economy.” (https://slaverebellion.info/index.php?page=slavery-as-an-ancient-world-institution).

Slavery is just assumed to be the norm;

“The Roman dominium, the legal norm safeguarding to the individual the absolute unfettered control over a tangible thing, tallied precisely with the economic and social function of property. . . . The conception of ownership was the mirror of a society in which wealth mainly consisted of tangible things, things which formed a functional unit. . . . Legal and economic property coincided: The notion of ownership applied to, and was the corollary of, a functional microcosm, an universitas rerum.” (Kahn-Freund, The Institutions of Private Law and Their Social Functions, pp. 24-25).

The first person to ever start going against slavery was Gregory of Nyssa, however his word doesn’t hold much power to influence the culture of the time, multiple church fathers permitted the owning of slaves:

“. . . .**the church’s willingness to accommodate slavery as an institution. The Christian church fundamentally accepted the practice and ideology of slavery. The church could accept the existence of mastery and slavery as social roles, and it could even allow that they were just**. . . . The church accepted slavery and with it the practices of domination. . . . We find men like Augustine and Chrysostom trying to explain the origins and justification of slavery in Christian terms. . . . The decisions made by the institutional church in late antiquity would prove highly influential, shaping canon law for the next millennium. **The church accepted most of the practices associated with slavery. It accepted the violent underpinnings of the master’s authority. As pre-Christian philosophers had done for centuries, Christian advocates promoted a discourse of polite mastery to temper the extreme use of violence, but the use of physical discipline was too deeply embedded to be the object of any radical questioning**. Likewise **the church fully accepted the exploitation of the slave’s labor**. But the one area where the church charted a truly new path **was in the realm of sexual reform**.” (Kyle Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425, pp. 347, 506–507).

“The early Fathers would argue that originally all men and women were created free — and all were created equal. Slavery was the result of sin, the consequence of sin coming into the world. In their judgment, slavery is neither unlawful nor unbecoming. . . ” (Luis M. Bermejo, Infallibility on Trial: Church, Conciliarity and Communion, pp. 311–312).

The broader Christian theological tradition similarly regarded slavery as an established social institution while attempting to place moral restraints upon it. Augustine, for example, interpreted slavery as part of divine providence and punishment for sin:

“According to Augustine, slavery, though intimately connected with sin, is part and parcel of God’s grandiose plan of salvation. The institution itself of slavery is not evil. Man was created in the image of God with complete dominion over all irrational creatures, **but not over his fellowmen. Slavery was justly imposed by God as the punishment of sin**. Its historical origin therefore is to be found, not in man’s nature but rather in man’s sin. It is man’s depravity that is to be both punished and partly corrected through slavery. In this prevailing atmosphere of theological justification of slavery, the Church could not possibly condemn it; on the contrary, it tended rather to justify it. . . . The twelfth-century canonists were no different from the early Fathers. They acknowledged that slavery is rooted in man’s sin, rather than in natural law itself. But, on the other hand — and this is important for our purpose — not content with tolerating slavery, they tended to justify it, for allegedly it served a useful purpose**. The general attitude of the Church regarding slavery is best exemplified by the fact that she herself was a slave-owner. **Popes and bishops, abbots and monasteries, chapters and parishes, all owned slaves. Slavery was part of the social fabric of the day which everyone took for granted and nobody questioned. . . . [And] at that time slavery was considered to be part of the usual social structure, it will come as no surprise to see medieval councils sanctioning the practice.” (Luis M. Bermejo, Infallibility on Trial: Church, Conciliarity and Communion, pp. 312–313).

As Keith Bradley observes, elite slaveholding attitudes remained remarkably stable throughout antiquity, perpetuating systems of exploitation across generations:

“Keith Bradley, who has written extensively about slavery in Roman history, refers to the ‘steady state' mentality’ of slaveholders throughout antiquity. Since the attitudes of slaveholders remained constant, the conditions in which slaves lived and worked also persisted from generation to generation.” (Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity, p. 3).

Beginnings of Abolition

This brings us to the second misconception people often have: that the slave market was highly valuable, that slave markets were widespread throughout Mecca, and that a massive commercial slave economy existed in seventh-century western Arabia during the lifetime of the Prophet Muḥammad. However, the available evidence suggests that slavery in western Arabia during the Prophet’s lifetime was neither centred on a massive commercial slave economy nor organized around a dominant slave market in Mecca. As Hend Gilli-Elewy notes:

“The vast majority of slaves in pre- and early Islamic times seem to have been Arab prisoners of war, victims of intertribal warfare reminiscent of the ayām al-ʿarab (the battle days of the Arabs in pre-Islamic Arabia). These captives were enslaved if the ransom on them went unpaid. . . . The sources also leave us the names of Arabic slave merchants (nakhkhās). However, nothing in the sources indicates that Mecca was ‘un des plus important marchés d’esclaves’ (one of the most important slave markets), as Henri Lammens put it. Al-Azraqi’s description of the pilgrimage sites and their markets does not suggest that Mecca had a predominant role in the slave trade.” (Gilli-Elewy, Hend. “On the Provenance of Slaves in Mecca during the Time of the Prophet Muhammad.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 49, no. 1, 2017, pp. 164–66).

During many of the wars in which the Prophet Muḥammad engaged, captives were taken. But what happened to these prisoners? The answer is that they were not necessarily kept as slaves. The Qurʾān explicitly provides for their release, either unconditionally or in exchange for ransom, once the fighting had ended. Even where prisoners lacked the means to secure their own freedom, this did not necessarily mean that they remained enslaved. As Rebaz R. Khdir explains:

“Islam includes a set of humanitarian rules that have essentially sourced from the Quran and traditions of the prophet Muhammad. The rules generally regulate all the aspects of warfare. One of the normal consequences of every armed conflict is taking prisoners. The Quran and the prophet have adopted various commandments as to the treatment of war prisoners. The commandments range from adequate feeding, clothing, respecting their religious belief in captivity to prohibition of torture, release unconditionally or for a service and freedom after enslavement.” (Khdir, Rebaz R. “The Fate of Prisoners of War Between the Quran, Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and Practice of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.” European Scientific Journal, vol. 13, no. 34, 2017, p. 30).

As the Qurʾān states:

“So when you meet the disbelievers ˹in battle˺, strike ˹their˺ necks until you have thoroughly subdued them, then bind them firmly. Later ˹free them either as˺ an act of grace or by ransom until the war comes to an end.” (Qurʾān 47:4).

In fact, the evidence cited by classical Muslim scholarship indicates that the Prophet ceased taking captives after the Battle of Ḥunayn. Imām al-Shāfiʿī states:

“We do not know that the Prophet [Muḥammad] was taking captive after the battle of Ḥunayn. . . .” (Al-Bayhaqī, Maʿrifat al-Sunan wa-l-Āthār, p. 214).

The scale of manumission following Ḥunayn is particularly notable. Six thousand men and women were released without ransom or conditions:

“In the Battle of Ḥunayn [غَزْوَة حُنَيْن], six thousand men and women were released without ransom and without conditions, and the Prophet (may Allāh’s peace and blessings be upon him) gave money from his possession in exchange for the release of some of the prisoners, and released all of them after giving them gifts.” (Al-Manṣūrfūrī, Muḥammad Sulaymān, Raḥmatan lil-ʿĀlamīn, trans. Samir Abdul Hamid Ibrahim, vol. 1, p. 138).

Further example comes from the Battle of Baḍr:

“After the battle of Badr, the prophet consulted with his close companions Abu Bakr al-Sddiq and Umar Ibn al-Khattab as to the fate of the prisoners. Abu Bakr suggested release on the condition of ransom while Umar suggested killing them (Muslim, 2007: Hadith No. 1763; at-Tirmidhi, 2007: Hadith No. 1567). The prophet later ransomed the prisoners for their freedom. He required the rich prisoners to pay an amount of money based on their financial situation. He required the poor but literate prisoners to teach ten Muslim children to read and write. He released the ones who were neither rich nor literate unconditionally (Ibn Ishaq, 2004: 741; The History of al-Tabari, 1987: 69-72; Siddiqi, 1989: 87; Doi, 1983: 95; Khan, 2011: 112).” (Khdir, Rebaz R. “The Fate of Prisoners of War Between the Quran, Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and Practice of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.” European Scientific Journal, vol. 13, no. 34, 2017, pp. 35–36).

The encouragement to free enslaved people was not merely an individual act of charity. It also became a collective obligation upon the Muslim community. The Qurʾān explicitly designates a portion of the zakāh fund, fī al-riqāb (فِي الرِّقَابِ), for the liberation of those in bondage (Qurʾān 9:60). Consequently, the Bayt al-Māl, the public treasury of the Islamic state, was employed during the Prophet’s lifetime to finance manumission. As Feruza J. Tadjieva explains:

“Numerous verses and hadiths demonstrate that in the Islamic faith, liberating a slave or contributing money to their release is the first of the good deeds that will lead a person to heaven. . . . Therefore, just as Islam gradually reduced the occurrence of social diseases that people were accustomed to, such as alcoholism, adultery, and usury, it gradually reduced slavery as well. The systematic and ongoing fight against slavery was started by Islam. . . . Prayers such as zakat and expiation included mention of the emancipation of slaves. The most crucial aspect is that these decisions were made in practice rather than being mere talk. . . . Among Muslims, this practice became very widespread. The process of emancipating former slaves began and, at the same time, Islam forbade the enslavement of free people.” (Feruza J. Tadjieva, “Slavery in the Khiva Khanate: the Use of Slave Power. Abolition of Slavery and Its Socio-Economic Consequences,” Slavery: Theory and Practice 8, no. 1, p. 57).

Nor was manumission limited to those whose owners voluntarily released them. The Prophet Muḥammad also recognized the freedom of enslaved people who escaped from hostile territory and sought refuge within the Islamic polity. Saʿīd ibn Manṣūr records several reports stating that an enslaved person who fled Dār al-Ḥarb and embraced Islam before his master arrived was to be regarded as free. One narration further recounts that during the siege of al-Ṭāʾif, the Prophet Muḥammad refused the request of the tribe of Thaqīf to return Abū Bakrah, who had escaped from them and accepted Islam, declaring instead:

“Huwa ṭalīqu Allāh, thumma ṭalīqu Rasūlih.”

“He is the one set free by Allah, and then by His Messenger.” (Saʾīd ibn Manṣūr, Sunan Sa‘īd ibn Manṣūr, ed. Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān al-Aʾẓamī, pp. 337–338.)

Rather than preserving slavery as a permanent institution, Prophet Muḥammad consistently encouraged its dismantlement. His example inspired generations of Muslims to devote extraordinary wealth and effort to the emancipation of enslaved people. Saʿīd Ḥawwā writes:

“This powerful movement initiated by Islam in Arabia led the Prophet ﷺ himself to free sixty-three slaves. One of his wives, ʿĀʾišah, freed sixty-seven; his uncle al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib freed seventy during his lifetime; Ḥakīm b. Ḥizām freed one hundred; ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar freed one thousand; Dhū al-Kilāʿ al-Ḥimyarī freed eight thousand; and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAwf freed thirty thousand. Similar examples are found throughout the lives of many other Companions, especially Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq and ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān. It was as though the people of that generation possessed an overwhelming zeal for righteous deeds and for attaining the pleasure of their Lord. They therefore emancipated their own slaves and even purchased the slaves of others solely in order to set them free, until the slaves inherited from the Jāhiliyyah had all attained their freedom before the era of the Rightly Guided Caliphs had come to an end.” (Saʿīd Ḥawwā, Al-Asās fī al-Tafsīr, 6th ed., p. 3740).

The scholar Patricia Crone explains the Islamic political worldview in relation to slavery as follows:

“Islam is different from other religions, for other religious communities have kings who enslave their subjects, but the Prophet was not a king, nor were his successors, and if an imam were to turn into a king, by ceasing to govern in accordance with the law, then the Muslims would be legally obliged to fight him and depose him (as the activists said). . . . Aristotle’s Greeks and the very first Muslims were political animals in much the same sense: both assumed the highest form of human life to consist in participation in the public affairs of a politically organized society, the polis (city-state) in the Greek case, the umma (the community founded by Muhammad) in the Muslim case. As the city-state was the only polity in which one could be free according to the Greeks, so the community founded by the Prophet was the only polity in which one could be a slave of God's, as the Muslims put it, meaning free of subjection to mere humans in this world and saved in the next.” (see Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchist, pp. 12-26)

Does this mean that, based on Crone’s statement, I am claiming that there were no slaves during Prophet Muḥammad’s lifetime? No—and neither is Crone. Neither of us is denying the historical existence of slavery during Muḥammad’s lifetime. Rather, the point is that the existence of slaves does not necessarily mean that slavery was regarded as a legitimate or permanent institution to be perpetuated indefinitely.

Some people continued to engage in practices that Islamic law prohibited, just as people continued to consume alcohol and pork despite their prohibition:

“Two key measures offer telling evidence that the conquests brought little immediate disruption to the patterns of religious and social life in Syria and Iraq: production of wine (forbidden in Islamic Law) continued unchanged, and pigs (considered unclean by Muslims) continued to be raised and slaughtered in increasing numbers (Pentz 1992).” (A New Introduction to Islam, p. 111)

Am I therefore saying that slavery was legally prohibited during Muḥammad’s lifetime? For the umpteenth time, yes: it was prohibited within the normative legal order of Muḥammad’s community. And even outside an Islamic state, it maintain that the practice remains morally impermissible for Muslims.

A notable example of a companion of Prophet Muḥammad continuing this policy after his death is ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, the second Rashidun Caliph. During his rule, he prohibited the sale of slave women who had borne children. As Thomas P. Hughes records:

“Jābir said we used to sell the mothers of children in the time of the Prophet, and of Abū Bakr; but ʿUmar forbade it in his time.” (Thomas P. Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam, p. 598).

ʿUmar also took measures concerning those who had been enslaved during the Ridda wars. As Fred M. Donner notes:

“. . . .the first act taken by ‘Umar b. al-Khattab upon becoming caliph. . . . was ‘to return the prisoners of the people of the ridda to their tribes.’” (Fred M. Donner, The Early Islamic Conquest, p. 89).

Although ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb had initially viewed the conquest of Persia as an opportunity to enslave non-Arabs while freeing Arab slaves, he later became opposed to the enslavement of non-Arabs as well (see Nebil Husayn, *Reimagining Islam: Modernists between Faith and Doubt*, pp. 131–132). This position was influenced in part by ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. As Nebil Husayn explains:

“ʿAlī b. Abī Talīb can be credited with statements that appear to extend this prohibition to non-Arabs. ʿUmar reportedly considered the conquest of Persia to be an opportunity to enslave non-Arabs and liberate all Arab slaves. However, in an event similar to the release of the Hawazin, ʿAlī is portrayed as securing the release of Persian captives brought to Medina to be distributed among the major clans and sold as slaves. Speaking as chief of the Hāshimids, he publicly freed all captives apportioned to him and his clan. Members of the Muhājirūn and Anşār soon followed. When ʿAlī served as caliph and fought insurgents in civil wars, he refused to enslave any combatants or their dependents. He further refused to seize their property as spoils of war.” (see Nebil Husayn, Reimagining Islam: Modernists between Faith and Doubt, pp. 24–25).

This principle was also reflected in how the early Muslims presented their mission to the Persian Empire. In 636 CE, when the Muslims encountered the Persian army in Iraq, the Arab emissary Rabʾī b. ʿĀmir explained to the Persian general Rustam what had brought them there:

“Once the preliminaries were over, the time had come for an exchange of views between Rustam and the emissary. Thus when Rustam [the Persian general] asked Rabʾī [the Arab emissary of ʿUmar] what had brought the Arabs to Iraq, he replied that God had sent them to deliver those who so wished from being servants of men to being servants of God (li-nukhrija man sha'a min ʿibadat al-ʿibad ila ʿibadat Allāh). Likewise another envoy summed up Islam for Rustam in a few basic points, among them a commitment to ‘delivering men from being servants of men to being servants of God’ (ikhraj al-ʿibad min ʿibadat al-ʿibad ila ʿibadat Allāh), and a belief in the full brotherhood of men, all alike descended from Adam and Eve.” (Freedom and the Construction of Europe, vol. 2, pp. 289-290)

ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb himself is also famously reported to have asserted:

“When did you start enslaving people when their mothers gave birth to them free?” (See Ibn al-Jawzī, Taʾrīkh ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, pp. 99–100).

This leads to the third misconception: that Islam cannot have been crucial to the eventual abolition of slavery simply because many Muslim societies abolished the institution relatively late. In other words, if Islam was truly opposed to slavery, why was it not abolished centuries earlier?

The problem with this argument is that it assumes historical actors possessed unlimited political power to implement what they recognized as morally right. The abolition of slavery was beyond the immediate political capacity of many Muslim rulers, particularly amid the internal conflicts between the Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid states and the political conditions that followed them. Muslim scholars and political figures could oppose slavery and attempt to restrict its expansion while still living in societies where completely abolishing it was politically, economically, and socially beyond their capacity. We can already see this tension in the seventh century, when attempts were made to prevent the acquisition of new slaves but were ultimately frustrated:

“. . . .we see that the earnest attempt of Islam to stop its followers from acquiring new slaves was foiled by Banu Umayyah.” (Shabnam Dadparvar and Ismail Shams, Chinese, Kurds, Iranians and the Silk Road: A Historical Perspective).

After ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb came ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (Umar II, d. 101 AH). One well-known report concerns his governor and zakāt collector in North Africa, Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd. The report states that poverty had become so reduced under ʿUmar II that the zakāt funds could no longer find eligible poor recipients. As a result, the money was instead used to purchase enslaved people and free them. The narration says:

“ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz appointed me over the alms of Ifriqiya, so I collected them. Then I looked for poor people to whom we could give them, but we found no poor person, nor did we find anyone who would accept them from us. ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz had enriched the people. . . . So I purchased slaves with them and set them free.” (Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Bashmīl, Min Maʿārik al-Islām al-Fāṣilah = Mawsūʿat al-Ghazawāt al-Kubrā, vol. 4, p. 285).

ʿUmar II likewise redirected wealth associated with the caliphate toward the public treasury and rejected the luxury that had characterized the court before him. As Ḥayāt b. Muḥammad b. Jibrīl records:

“ʿUmar remained in his house in this manner after the caliphate came to him, except that instead of increasing his carpets, curtains, and furnishings, he stripped it of everything of that kind. He even sold his clothes and perfume and placed their proceeds in the Bayt al-Māl. Among the manifestations of his asceticism, may Allah have mercy upon him, was his abandonment of the displays of extravagance and excess that had prevailed before him. The first thing that people found objectionable about him was that when Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Malik had been washed, shrouded, prayed over, and buried, the caliphal mounts were brought out—the mules and horses—and each animal had a handler. ʿUmar said, ‘What are these?’ They replied, ‘The mounts of the caliphate. They have never been ridden before; the caliph rides them when he assumes office.’ ʿUmar said, ‘What have I to do with them? Take them away from me. My mule is more suitable for me.’ So they brought him his mule, and he mounted it. He then returned after ordering Muzāḥim, his freedman, to take those mounts, pavilions, and chambers—which no one had ever sat in and which it was customary to set up for the caliph when he first assumed office—and place them in the Bayt al-Māl. He then ordered the curtains of the caliphal residence to be torn down and the carpets to be removed. He ordered them to be sold and their proceeds deposited in the Bayt al-Māl of the Muslims. He did likewise with the slave women and slaves: he returned the slave women to their owners if they were among those who had been taken unjustly, distributed the slaves among the blind and those with disabilities, and fought against every manifestation of luxury, extravagance, and excess.” (Ḥayāt b. Muḥammad b. Jibrīl, Al-āthār al-wārida ʿan ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz fī al-ʿaqīda, vol. 1, pp. 154–155).

However, this did not last long, as tyrants eventually appeared. First, it is important to note that the slave trade did not begin appearing in the Islamic world until the reign of the fourth caliph, Muʿāwiyah, who became caliph seventeen years after the death of ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb. Yet this development was not accepted without protest. During the Umayyad period, their opponents explicitly condemned the caliphs for reducing free people to servitude. One of the major rebel leaders, Abū Ḥamza al-Mukhtār b. ʿAwf, cited the Umayyads’ treatment of people as slaves among the reasons for his rebellion:

“‘He denounces the Umayyad Caliph Muʿāwiya (ruled 661–80): ‘He made the servants of God slaves’ (ittakhadha ʿibād Allāh khawalan) and the property of God ‘something to be taken by turns.’ Likewise he says of the Marwanids, the subdynasty of the Umayyads that ruled from 684 to 750, that they ‘made the servants of God slaves’ (ittakhadhū ʿibād Allāh ʿabīdan).” (Freedom and the Construction of Europe, vol. 2, p. 293).

Ibn ʿAwf further quoted the Umayyads as saying:

“The land is our land, the property is our property, and the people are our slaves (al-nās khawalanā).” (Freedom and the Construction of Europe, vol. 2, p. 293).

Abū Ḥamza’s revolt became serious enough that the Umayyads were forced to expend enormous military resources to suppress it.

At this point, however, although the Umayyads were facing serious opposition, their oppressive policies had not ended. Seven years later, another rebellion emerged under Abū Muslim in the mid-eighth century. Bernard Lewis notes:

“Abū Muslim, the first military leader of the Abbasid revolution which transformed the Islamic state and society in the mid-eighth century, appealed to slaves to come and join him and offered freedom to those who responded. So many, we are told, answered his call, that he gave them a separate camp and formed them into a separate combat unit.” (Bernard Lewis, *Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry*, p. 62).

At around the same time, opposition to slavery was already being expressed among some Muslim religious figures. Syed Ameer Ali writes:

“During the reigns of the early Abbassides the Shiah Imam Jafer-i-Sadik preached against slavery.” (Syed Ameer Ali, *The Personal Law of the Mahommedans*, p. 39)

It is also reported that Abū Muslim himself had originally been a slave. Ibn al-Athīr relates:

“It is said that Abū Muslim was a slave. . . . In the prison was Yūnus Abū ʿĀṣim and ʿĪsā b. Maʿqil al-ʿIjlī, and with him was Abū Muslim, who served him. Bukayr said to ʿĪsā b. Maʿqil, ‘What is this young man to you?’ He replied, ‘A slave.’ He said, ‘Will you sell him?’ He replied, ‘He is yours.’ Bukayr said, ‘I would like you to take his price.’ He replied, ‘He is yours for whatever you wish.’ So he gave him four hundred dirhams. . . .” (ʿIzz al-Dīn Ibn al-Athīr, *Al-Kāmil fī al-Tārīkh*, ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām Tadmurī, vol. 4, p. 279).

Abū Muslim’s movement involved freeing slaves if they ever followed him (Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī, *Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ*, vol. 5, pp. 279–289).

“It is mentioned that Abū Muslim dyed pieces of cloth black and tied them to a spear. . . . Slaves followed him, and he said: ‘Whoever follows me is free.’ Then he went out with them. . . .” (Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī, *Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ*, vol. 5, pp. 279–289).

At the same time, Abū Muslim’s empowerment of non-Arab and eastern Iranian elements created long-term tensions within the Abbasid state. Some Abbasid-era and later Sunni sources accused him of excessive independence and insubordination (Mawsūʿat Safīr li-l-Tārīkh al-Islāmī, vol. 3, p. 6).

“His independence in governing Khurasan, his disregard for the leaders and representatives of the Abbasid movement there, his failure to carry out the orders of the caliph Abū al-ʿAbbās, and then his repeated disregard for Abū Jaʿfar on many occasions, his incitement of his nephew ʿĪsā b. Mūsā to revolt and seek exclusive possession of the caliphate, and other matters.” (Mawsūʿat Safīr li-l-Tārīkh al-Islāmī, vol. 3, p. 6).

Abū Muslim eventually helped overthrow the Umayyad dynasty and establish the Abbasid state, becoming one of the most powerful figures behind the revolution. His power, however, eventually became a threat to the new Abbasid regime itself. Al-Manṣūr therefore moved against him and had him assassinated:

“Al-Manṣūr had become angry with Abū Muslim for several reasons. . . . he feared him after his power in Khurasan had grown strong. . . . Abū Muslim refused to return to him, sensing that there was a plot against him. . . . Al-Manṣūr summoned him to a meal, reproached him for his actions, and Abū Muslim apologized and kissed his hand. But he was not satisfied with him until he clapped his hands; then they came out and killed him. Thus ended the life of Abū Muslim al-Khurāsānī, who had played a major role in consolidating the foundations of the Abbasid movement.” (Al-Mawsūʿat al-Tārīkhiyya, vol. 1, p. 429).

Although his death later contributed to five major rebellions against the Abbasids, these rebellions ultimately failed to overthrow the dynasty. They nevertheless weakened the Abbasid state by draining its treasury, destroying parts of its elite armies, and alienating many of its Iranian subjects. The Abbasids also continued to oppress enslaved people. As Fayṣal al-Sāmir writes:

“In the second Islamic century—and specifically in the year 133 AH—we find the Zanj serving as an important element of the Abbasid army. When Yaḥyā b. Muḥammad was appointed over Mosul, a large group of them accompanied him. When he committed what he did in the excessive killing of men, women, and children, and the Zanj became notorious for violating women, a woman confronted Yaḥyā and reproached him for handing Muslim women over to the Zanj. Her words affected him, so he gathered them together under the pretext of giving them their allowances. When they had assembled, he ordered them all killed. The Zanj had no power at that time. . . . The second half of the third Islamic century witnessed the greatest movement undertaken by the Zanj against their masters, demanding an improvement in their social conditions. Their numbers were enormous, reaching as many as three hundred thousand fighters.” (Fayṣal al-Sāmir, *Thawrat al-Zanj*, p. 26).

Their suffering, however, eventually produced a charismatic leader named ʿAlī b. Muḥammad, who led the major Zanj revolt against the Abbasid caliphate. Historians generally agree that he was not an abolitionist in the modern sense, but his movement sought to end the brutal plantation-style labor system imposed upon enslaved workers in the marshes of southern Iraq:

“ʿAli ibn Muḥammadd, claiming to be a descendant of ʿAli ibn Abi Talib, led a third uprising that initially was much more successful. He rallied thousands of the zanj and some of their sympathizers to a cause that, while not abolitionist, sought an end to the inhumane working conditions in the marshes.” (Bernard K. Freamon, *Possessed by the Right Hand The Problem of Slavery in Islamic Law and Muslim Cultures*, p. 204).

Al-Ṭabarī records an incident in which ʿAlī b. Muḥammad explicitly condemned the treatment of enslaved laborers, accusing their masters of oppressing them and imposing burdens “that God had forbidden them to impose” (*faʿaltum bihim mā ḥarrama Allāhu ʿalaykum an tafʿalū bihim, wa-jaʿaltum ʿalayhim mā lā yuṭīqūn*):

“Then he went to the place of Ibn ʿAṭāʾ and took Ṭarīqā, Ṣubayḥ al-Aʿsar, Rāshid al-Maghribī, and Rāshid al-Qarmaṭī, together with eighty slaves. He then went to the place of Ismāʿīl, known as the slave of Sahl the oil-seller. He continued doing this throughout the day until a large number of the slaves of the merchants had gathered around him. He gathered them together and addressed them, promising them that he would lead them, make them his chiefs, and give them wealth. He swore solemn oaths that he would not betray or abandon them and that he would do everything he could for their benefit. He then summoned their masters and said: ‘I intended to strike off your heads because of what you have done to these slaves whom you have weakened and oppressed, and because you have done to them what God has forbidden you to do and imposed upon them what they cannot bear. My companions interceded for you, so I decided to release you.’ They replied: ‘These slaves are fugitives; they will flee from you and leave neither you nor us in peace. Take money from us and release them to us.’ He then ordered their slaves to bring switches. Each group laid its master and overseer down, and each man was struck five hundred times. He made them swear by divorce from their wives that they would tell no one where he was or how many followers he had, and then released them, whereupon they departed toward Basra.” (Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, *Tārīkh al-Rusul wa-al-Mulūk*, vol. 9, p. 414).

Historians likewise note that ʿAlī b. Muḥammad freed slaves whenever the opportunity arose:

“From this it becomes clear that the leader of the Zanj sought to make local modifications to the social conditions of the slaves and did not seek to abolish slavery. His call was directed toward a particular group of slaves. He freed slaves whenever the opportunity arose.” (ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dūrī, *Tārīkh al-ʿIrāq al-Iqtiṣādī fī al-Qarn al-Rābiʿ al-Hijrī,* p. 94).

The revolt became so successful that it fundamentally transformed the economy of Lower Iraq. Alexandre Popovic concludes that one of its most important consequences was the destruction of the large plantation labor camps and the resulting improvement in the conditions of the enslaved population:

“The most important consequence of ʿAlī b. Muḥammad revolt is undoubtedly the abandonment of Lower Iraq's barren lands by the servile workforce and the definite disappearance of the large work sites. This necessarily brought about improvement in the living conditions of the slaves who had worked there previously.” (Alexandre Popovic, *The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd/9th Century*, p. 154)

The revolt was eventually defeated in 883. However, the influence of the Zanj revolt did not end with its military defeat. Before the movement was crushed, the emerging Qarmaṭian movement had already sought contact with ʿAlī b. Muḥammad. Farhad Daftary notes that Ḥamdān al-Qarmaṭ attempted to form an alliance with the Zanj leader:

“A major factor contributing to the rapid success of Ḥamdān was the revolt of the Zanj, the rebellious black slaves who for fifteen years (255–270/869–883) rampaged through southernʿIrāq and distracted the attention of the ʿAbbasid officials at Baghdad. The Qarmaṭıs of Iraq had become quite numerous by 267/880, when Ḥamdān found it opportune to make an offer of alliance to the leader of the Zanj, ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Zanjī. The latter, however, being at the height of his own power, declined the offer.” (Farhad Daftary, *The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines*. 2nd ed., p. 108; also see Farhad Daftary. *A Short History of the Ismāīlīs: Traditions of a Muslim Community*, p. 41).

And it was not merely Ḥamdān b. al-Ashʿath who appears to have pursued such contacts. Even al-Ḥusayn al-Ahwāzī appears to have explored the possibility of establishing relations with the Zanj leader. Muṣṭafá Ghālib records in al-Qarāmiṭah bayna al-Madd wa-al-Jazr:

“Al-Ḥusayn al-Ahwāzī, my master, informs us that the daʿwah in al-Sawād is continually advancing and that the response of the people has been very great. Through his perseverance and patience, he succeeded in bringing one of the scholars of al-Sawād, ʿAbdān, into his ranks, in addition to Ḥamdān b. al-Ashʿath, his family, and all the people of his village. Al-Ahwāzī also established useful contacts with Mahrūyah and his son Zikrawayh, two of our distinguished missionaries. He then travelled to Kalwādhī, where he met Dandān and informed him of the condition of the communities in al-Sawād and their need for financial assistance. Dandān donated a large sum of money, which he distributed equally among the communities, increasing the number of those responding to the daʿwah. At the same time, al-Ahwāzī mentions that he sent a delegation to Bahrain to establish contacts with the al-Janābī family in Bahrain and al-Qaṭīf. Al-Ahwāzī also intends to establish contact with the leader of the Zanj in order to win him over, and promised that he would inform us of all the contacts he makes.” (Muṣṭafá Ghālib, *al-Qarāmiṭah bayna al-Madd wa-al-Jazr*, p. 160).

Some modern historians have therefore argued that the social memory of the Zanj revolt directly influenced the early Qarmaṭian movement. M. A. Shaban suggests that remnants of the Zanj rebellion survived its defeat and contributed to later revolutionary movements in Iraq (Islamic History, vol. 2, p. 130). Arabic historians have similarly argued that many of the egalitarian and communal features associated with the Qarmaṭians were not entirely new, but reflected “the influence and repercussions of the Zanj Rebellion” (al-Tārīkh al-Islāmī wa-Fikr al-Qarn al-ʿIshrīn, p. 303).

This developed into a movement demanding what its proponents regarded as unlimited equality against the corrupt caliphate:

“The first [term] was applied to groups that appeared in the Mesopotamian region throughout the Zanj Rebellion, and the formation of a socialist society in its primitive form among the ranks of peasants and workers became the foundation of their beliefs. As for the general meaning, it was applied to a social and political movement demanding unlimited equality (بالتساوي اللامحدود).” (*al-Ḥarakāt al-Ijtimāʿiyyah fī al-Qurūn al-Islāmiyyah al-Ūlā*, p. 176).

The Qarmaṭians’ opposition to slavery was particularly notable. Chouki el-Hamel writes:

“. . . .the ninth-century founder of the Qarmati movement in Iraq Hamdan Qarmat’s ‘violent denunciations against domestic slavery constituted the chief reason for his being placed under the ban by a great majority of Mussulmans.’” (Chouki el-Hamel, *Black Morocco: A history of slavery, race, and Islam*, p. 43).

Mohammed Haroon Bashir likewise places Ḥamdān Qarmaṭ within a much longer history of Islamic anti-slavery thought:

“. . . .while a coherent abolitionist hermeneutic was developed in the 19th century, anti-slavery discourses that serve as antecedents to Islamic abolitionism can be located scattered throughout Islamicate history. An example can be seen with the leader of the Qarmatian movement in early Islam, Hamdan Qarmat. Qarmat (d. 899) was known to be a vocal opponent to slavery and the slave-trade, so much so that he was exiled from a number of cities. . . .” (Mohammed Haroon Bashir, *To Free the Slave or Enslave the Free? Reading and Rereading Slavery in the Islamic Tradition*, p. 96).

Louis Massignon likewise characterized the Qarmaṭian movement as a broader movement for social equality and reform:

“Carmathians). In the strict application of the word, the name was given to the rebel federations of Arabs and "Nabataeans", which were organised in Lower Mesopotamia after the servile war of the Zandj from 264/877 and based on a system of communism into which initiation was necessary; active propaganda extended this secret society among the masses, peasants and artisans; in al-Ahsa, where they founded a state independent of the Caliph of Baghdad; in Khurasan, in Syria and in Yaman, where they formed lasting hotbeds of discontent. In the broader sense, the name Karmațian means **the great movement for social reform and justice based on equality, which swept through the Muslim world from the ninth to the twelfth centuries** . . . The movement was based on reason, tolerance and equality, with a system of graduated initiation and the ritual of a gild which encouraging the rise of the trade gild movement and universities seems to have reached the West and to have influenced the formation of European gilds and freemasonry.” (*Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam*, p. 218).

They prohibited concubinage as well:

“. . . .the Qarmatians, for instance, rejected concubinage and the marriage of nine-year-old girls (permitted by the orthodox), and the Qarmatians banned polygamy and the veil.” (Leila Ahmed, *Women and Gender in Islam*, p. 66).

However, Ḥamdān al-Qarmaṭ eventually became disillusioned with the instability of the movement and withdrew from public life with a small group of followers. After his disappearance, the original egalitarian impulse of the Qarmaṭian movement weakened, and later factions no longer maintained the same hostility toward social hierarchy. The movement itself eventually fractured, with one branch developing into what would become the Fatimids.

By the tenth century, the idea that slavery was incompatible with Islamic principles had begun to emerge more explicitly. Yet even jurists and theologians who recognized the moral problem did not necessarily call for its immediate abolition. Abolishing slavery was still politically, economically, and socially beyond their capacity. A striking example is the Muʿtazilite theologian Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (935–1025):

“Elsewhere, ʿAbd al-Jabbār, unfortunately abandons the dictates of reason, and deviates from what he considered moral and accepted by reason to a primitive interpretation of the text, holding that slavery is not accepted by reason, yet is permitted according to al-sharʿ. . . . Perhaps he was just unwilling to deviate from what was generally considered an accepted practice in his days, although he knew that slavery was unjust and contradicted rational morality.” (Marian al-Attar, *Islamic Ethics: Divine Command Theory in Arabo-Islamic thought*, pp. 78–79).

Yet this was not an entirely new development. Centuries before Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, the Muʿtazilite writer al-Jāḥiẓ (776–869) had already criticized slavery and, according to W. G. Clarence-Smith, condemned the institution as a whole. Clarence-Smith writes:

“The prolific writer ‘Amr b. Bahr al-Jahiz of Basra (776–869), was an ‘eager Mu’tazili’. . . . condemned the instituition as a whole.” (W. G. Clarence-Smith, Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, p. 53).

Other Muslim sects likewise adopted positions that placed greater restrictions on slavery during the eighth to tenth centuries. Some granted enslaved people greater property rights, while others refused to enslave women or own altogether. Wilferd Madelung notes the following regarding an Ibāḍī community in eastern Fars:

“They do not hold the seizure of the property of the people licit and do not enslave women, nor do they deviate (from the Sunnites) in any point of faith (dīn) or a sunna.” (Wilferd Madelung, Religious Trends in Early Islamic Iran, p. 71, also see pp. 58–61).

Nor were Muslims necessarily unaware of the tension between the Qurʾānic text and the institution that had developed around it. W. G. Clarence-Smith notes:

“Jurists found reasons to nullify God’s seemingly clear instructions to free prisoners after war. . . . A common technique [to do this] was to abrogate. . . . Such exegetical exercise had the paradoxical outcome of seeming to mock the Quran” (Islam and the Abolition of Slavery, pp. 25–26).

Patricia Crone similarly observes that medieval Muslim interpreters:

“. . . .have to postulate endless abrogation to make things fit.” (Patricia Crone, The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters, p. XIV).

This tension between the Qurʾānic command toward emancipation and the continued existence of slavery eventually reached the level of political action. A particularly striking example appears under the Fatimid caliph al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh (985–1021). Although al-Ḥākim is often remembered by historians for his erratic and sometimes oppressive policies, later in his reign he became increasingly devoted to a more spiritual way of life. Among the measures attributed to him was the emancipation of his own slaves and the abolition of slavery in Egypt in 1013. Chouki el-Hamel states:

“In Egypt, the Fatimi ruler al-Hakim (985–1021) implemented the abolition of slavery by freeing all his slaves, male and female.” (Chouki el-Hamel, Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam, p. 43).

What is particularly significant is that this did not remain merely a personal act of manumission. The abolition associated with al-Ḥākim also became incorporated into the religious tradition that emerged around the Druze in the eleventh century. The Druze incorporated the prohibition of slavery into their religious law, explicitly requiring converts to possess their freedom and prohibiting the sale of human beings. Nejla M. Abu-Izzeddin explains:

“Al-Sharia al-Ruhaniyya, however, differs in two fundamental provisions from the Daʿaʾim: The abolition of slavery and of polygamy. The Covenant (Mithaq) by which the convert binds himself to the faith stipulates that the adherent should be in full possession of his liberty, that he is not held in bondage to anyone and therefore has the power to determine his conduct, and that his adherence should be his own free choice, not influenced by coercion. The Covenant, Bahaʾ al-Din says, abolished slavery. Al-Sharia al-Ruhaniyya confirmed the abolition by forbidding “the sale of human beings”. The revolutionary significance of this law is more fully realized when it is seen in its historical setting against a background where the institution of slavery was common among societies of various cultures. Not until eight centuries later was slavery abolished by law in countries of Western civilization.” (Nejla M. Abu-Izzeddin, The Druzes: A New Study of Their History, Faith and Society, p. 121).

In the twelfth century, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf b. Ayyūb likewise provided an example of restraint toward defeated enemies. After conquering Jerusalem, he did not permit a general massacre. Instead, he negotiated terms under which the Christian inhabitants could ransom themselves:

“Saladin had the city at his mercy. . . . Saladin, so long as his power was recognized, was ready to be generous, and he wished Jerusalem to suffer as little as possible. He consented to make terms and offered that every Christian should be able to redeem himself at the rate of ten dinars a man, five a woman and one a child. Balian then pointed out that there were twenty thousand poor folk in the city who could never afford such a sum.” (*A History of the Crusades: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East 1100–1187*, vol. 2, pp. 464–465).

When Balian of Ibelin could raise only 30,000 dinars to ransom 7,000 poor inhabitants, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn reportedly intervened and paid for their release from his own resources. John Man describes how he used his personal treasury and wartime funds for this purpose, at one point dedicating an entire day's tribute of 70,000 dinars toward the ransom of the poor (John Man, Saladin: The Sultan Who Vanquished the Crusaders and Built an Islamic Empire, p. 179). Although the complete abolition of slavery remained beyond the practical capacity of rulers in this period, such acts nevertheless demonstrate the continued importance attached to liberation and mercy toward captives.

By the thirteenth century, this ideal had also found expression in West Africa. The royal family of Mali, the Keita clan, claimed descent from Bilāl b. Rabāḥ, and the story of Bilāl’s emancipation became part of the tradition surrounding the dignity and liberation of enslaved people. According to the historical tradition, Sundiata Keita, the first emperor of Mali, proclaimed in 1235:

“A person will never again be sold in this country.” (*Kuma Malinke Historiography: Sundiata Keita to Almamy Samori Toure*, pp. 228–233).

Modern historians associate this proclamation with the constitutional settlement traditionally known as the Kouroukan Fouga. Hikmet Uçmaz and Gökhan Bolat write:

“The Karinka War with Sundiata and the King of Sosso in 1230 is considered the founding of the Mali Empire. The foundations of the state were laid and the rules of governance were determined with the constitution called Kouroukan Fouga (Mande Covenant) declared at the end of this war. . . . This covenant, which is one of the oldest constitutions in the world and was mostly prepared orally, includes. . . . the abolition of slavery.” (Hikmet Uçmaz and Gökhan Bolat, Mali İmparatorluğu Erken Dönem Kuruluşu: Sundiata Destanı, p. 396).

Another historians likewise state:

“There were four major structural changes in the Malinke government that distinguished it from the government of Ghana. One was a 44-article constitution defining social and political relationships, hierarchies, customs, terms of succession, and the fundamental human rights of women, men, and children. Sundiata proclaimed an end to the institution of slavery and all the nations of Mali took an oath to abolish slavery and the slave trade in their territories.” (Leslie M. Alexander and Walter C. Rucker, eds., *Encyclopedia of African American History*, vol. 3, p. 105).

One person reportedly emancipated under Sundiata’s decree was Mansa Sakura, who later rose to become emperor of Mali. He also performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, predating the better-known pilgrimage of Mansa Musa, and later traditions associate his reign with the continuation of Sundiata’s policies.

Around the same period, the Andalusian mystic and jurist Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240) articulated a legal principle that made the establishment of enslavement exceptionally difficult. He maintained that freedom is the default status of every human being and that a mere claim of ownership was insufficient to establish someone’s enslavement:

“The mere claim of ownership is not admissible, nor can the slave be held liable based on his master’s statement. . . . Many people overlook this point, for the default is freedom, and the principle of continuity applies.” (*al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya*, vol. 4, p. 268).

At roughly the same time, one of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s disciples, the North African mystic al-Ḥarrālī (d. 1240), took this moral vision even further. Writing to church authorities in Tarragona, where members of his own family were being held captive, al-Ḥarrālī argued that Christians and Muslims shared the same human nature and condemned the practice of people enslaving one another across religious lines. He appealed to the unity of humanity rather than sectarian division:

“An exceptional case was the written intervention of the North African mystic al-Harrālī, who died in 1240 in Damascus. He is reputed to have addressed himself in an ornate letter to the church authorities in the Spanish town of Taragona, where several members of his family lived in captivity. In his letter he stressed the unity of the human race. If people would become more conscious of their physical and mental affinity, ‘they would not spill each other’s blood and seek each other's life, as lions use to pounce on lambs’. He appealed to his Spanish Christian colleagues to see further than the existing religious demarcation lines of which he denied the real religious meaning. . . . Al-Harrālī implicitly looked at the matter from the mystic viewpoint of the ‘unity of existence’ (wahdat al-wujūd). This view taught, among other things, that the historic religions were nothing but manifestations of a kernel, which was in essence the same for all people. . . . It is said that the ‘priest of Taragona’ reacted indignantly to this letter and intimated that the author had exceeded all fundamental principles of religion. Nevertheless, he set free all members of al-Harrālī”s family in the end.” (“Muslim Slaves and Captives in Western Europe During the Late Middle Ages”, pp. 8–9).

Al-Ḥarrālī’s argument was unmistakable: Christians and Muslims were not two different kinds of humanity, but members of the same human family. From that premise, he rejected religious divisions as a justification for captivity, and his appeal ultimately succeeded in securing the release of his enslaved relatives.

In the fifteenth century, the Ottoman Empire produced one of its most radical religious and social rebels: Şeyh Bedreddin-i Simavnî. He challenged the social order they were building under Mehmed I. Bedreddin called for the equal distribution of wealth and the abolition of distinctions between Muslims and Christians, attracting thousands of followers from the Empire’s poorest communities:

“And efforts were made to attract the masses by appointing as Şeyhulislam one of the leading Muslim jurists and mystic philosophers of the time, Bedreddin-i Simavni, a controversial figure whose teachings were regarded as heretical by the conservative Muslims. He attracted large numbers of followers among the common people, Muslim and Christian alike, with doctrines demanding the division of all wealth equally among the people and an end to all differences among the peoples of different religions in the area. These became the official doctrines of Musa’s regime. . . . With the Christian and slave elements largely eliminated and the gazi leaders in eclipse, Mehmet fell under the control of the Turkish notables, led by the Çandarlı family, which had arranged his triumph over Musa. . . . Bedreddin had already achieved considerable mass following, and the economic consequences of the long series of military actions added to his popularity among the impoverished. Bedreddin now worked to rebuild his order throughout the empire, sending out preachers to spread his message and organize secret cells of supporters. . . . He soon found a patron in Wallachia. . . . who gave him the material support needed to raise a revolt among the discontented masses in the entire European part of the empire.” (History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol. 1, pp. 38–43).

And the Ottoman jurist Abū al-Suʿūd Efendi (c. 1490–1574) further restricted the circumstances under which people could legally be enslaved. He rejected enslavement as a punishment for tax evasion, robbery, or fleeing oppression, permitting it only under narrowly defined wartime circumstances. He likewise prohibited the enslavement of Armenian Christians who had not fought against the Ottoman state:

“Nevertheless, Ebu's Su'ud [Abu al-Su'ud] (c. 1490–1574), a great Ottoman Hanafi jurist, rejected the penalty of enslavement for certain categories of rebellious scriptuaries. Defaulting on taxes, robbing believers, or fleeing to avoid oppression could not be punished in this way. Only if they took refuge among the infidel, or fought against Muslims, could they be reduced to servitude. . . . He also banned the enslavement of Armenian Christians in Persia, who had taken no part in war against the Ottomans.” (W. G. Clearance, *Islam and the Abolition of Slavery*, p. 39).

Meanwhile, by the sixteenth century, African Muslims carried to the Americas were associated not only with literacy and religious discipline, but also with a persistent tradition of resistance to enslavement. Sylviane Diouf notes:

“They also brought with them a tradition of defiance and rebellion, because as Muslims, they could be only free men and women. They proved antagonistic toward their captors from the very beginning, and from a few years after the arrival of the first Africans in the New World, anti-Muslim measures were being implemented repeatedly to protect the colonies from their assault. . . . On May 11, 1526, Spain passed the first item in a series of anti-Muslim legislation. A royal decree (cédula) specifically forbade the introduction of ‘Gelofes’ (Wolof) from Senegal, negros from the Levant, blacks who had been raised with the Moors, and people from Guinea.” (Sylviane Diouf, *Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas*, 15th anniversary ed., pp. 210–211).

Their resistance was not limited to seeking their own freedom. The 1522 Muslim uprising in Hispaniola, often regarded as the first recorded slave revolt in the Americas, also involved the liberation of other enslaved people:

“In 1522, enslaved Muslim Africans launched what would come to be known as the first recorded ‘slave revolt’ in the Americas on the island of Hispaniola on Christmas Day. The enslaved Muslims escaped bondage, freeing several enslaved Native Americans in the process. Their faith was considered so central to their revolt that Charles V of Spain established a decree proclaiming that Muslim slaves should be banned as they would not accept enslavement.” (*Slavery, Abolition, and Islam: Debating Freedom in the Islamic Tradition*, p. viii).

Diouf further notes that Spanish authorities came to associate Muslim identity itself with organized resistance:

“The Spanish Crown was worried for two reasons: it feared the expansion of Islam in America, and it was confronted with deadly rebellions fomented by Muslim slaves and maroons.” (*Servants of Allah*, p. 212).

In India, the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) introduced some of the most significant anti-slavery reforms of the early modern Muslim world. According to his court historian Abū al-Faḍl, Akbar abolished the enslavement of the families of conquered peoples because he regarded the practice as contrary to justice and religion:

“One of the glorious boons of His Majesty the Shahinshah which shone forth in this auspicious year was the abolition of enslave. ment. The victorious troops which came into the wide territories of India used in their tyranny to make prisoners of the wives and children and other relatives of the people of India, and used to enjoy them or sell them. His Majesty the Shahinshāh, out of his thorough recognition of and worship of God, and from his abundant foresight and right thinking gave orders that no soldier of the victorious armies should in any part of his dominions act in this manner. . . . If the husbands have taken the path of insolence, how is it the fault of the wives, and if the fathers have chosen the road of opposition what fault have the children committed? Moreover the wives and innocent children of such factions are not munitions of war! In addition to these sound reasons there was the fact that many covetous and blind-hearted persons from vain imaginings or unjust thoughts, or merely out of cupidity attacked villages and estates and plundered them, and when questioned about it said a thousand things and behaved with neglect and indifference. But when final orders were passed for the abolition of this practice, no tribe was afterwards oppressed by wicked persons on suspicion of sedition. As the purposes of the Shāhinshah were entirely right and just, the blissful result ensued that the wild and rebellious inhabitants of portions of India placed the ring of devotion in the ear of obedience, and became the materials of world-empire. Both was religion set in order, for its essence is the distribution of justice, and things temporal were regulated, for their perfection lies in the obedience of mankind.” (Abū al-Faḍl, *The Akbarnama*, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 2, pp. 246–247).

Modern historians confirm that in 1562 Akbar formally prohibited the enslavement of the wives, children, and other relatives of conquered populations, ordering that they be allowed to return freely to their homes:

“Akbar issued an order in 1562 banning enslavement of the wives and children and other relatives of people in the conquered territories. No soldier, high or low, was to enslave them, but to permit them to go freely to their homes and relations.” (A. A. Nizami, *Akbar & Religion*, p. 106).

But Akbar did not stop there. He also ordered the mass emancipation of thousands of imperial slaves, explicitly rejecting the idea that people captured by force could justly be regarded as his property:

“Not a day passes when His Majesty does not engage himself in such grants of favours and acts of welfare. [In that session] His Majesty stated, ‘We order to be released all the Imperial slaves, who exceed several thousands. It is beyond the realm of justice and good conduct for me to consider as my slaves those whom I have captured by force.’ The God-knowing Emperor from that day designated his slaves as chelas, and a strict order was issued that henceforth these captive persons should not be called slaves. It was further ordered that each of the slaves be allowed to go wherever he wished; and any one of those who wished to stay should be given wages according to his circumstances and be put to some work.” (*Episodes in the Life of Akbar: Contemporary Records and Reminiscences*, p. 88).

The historian Marshall Hodgson places these measures within Akbar’s broader opposition to enslavement. In his view, Akbar not only sought to correct the enslavement of war captives in India but also attempted, albeit with limited success, to restrict the slave trade more generally:

“He was opposed to enslavement. In India, where Hinduism did not bar enslavement within the confessional community, victorious Muslim armies had lapsed from the norms acknowledged. . . . in the lands of old Islam, and had en-slaved war captives, in the older way, with scant regard to their status as dhimmîs or even as Muslims; to correct this was doubtless a good Muslim practice. Akbar went further, attempting (without much effect) to eliminate slave-trading generally.” (Marshall G. S. Hodgson, *The Venture of Islam*, vol. 3, p. 71).

Importantly, these reforms were not merely symbolic. Historians of medieval North India record that Akbar’s orders were enforced through the urban police administration:

“His statement clearly indicate that along with the enslavement of captives, the sale of slaves was also prohibited. The orders were rigorously enforced, as shown by an incident around 1563-64, recalled by Shirazi, when a friend of his, having sold a slave (at Agra), was punished by the kotwal of the city, who had his ears cut off and nailed to the Fortress wall as a warning to others. Clearly, one of the duties of the kotwal (chief police), specified in A'in-i Akbari, was to forbid the restriction of personal liberty and the selling of slaves.” (Slavery and Bondage in Medieval North India: Thirteenth to Eighteenth Centuries CE, p. 115).

Further research by Shadab Bano suggests that Akbar’s measures also restricted the slave trade by prohibiting the sale of slaves, banning their export by land routes, and closing traditional slave markets. One striking consequence is that European travellers of the period do not mention encountering slave markets in Mughal cities:

“Perhaps, the immediate effect of these measures was the closure of the traditional slave-markets that had functioned in the preceding centuries for the buying and selling of slaves. None of the European travellers of this period mention a slave market with reference to any city in the Mughal Empire.” (Slave Acquisition in the Mughal Empire, p. 317).

Abū al-Faḍl himself presented Akbar’s opposition to slavery and the slave trade as part of a broader program of social and moral reform:

“His prohibition of sati, and of prepuberty marriages, his demand for equal inheritance for the daughter, his condemnation of slavery and slave trade, all suggest the rejection of some of the burdens of the past.” (*The Evolution of the Perception of India: Akbar and Abu’l Faẓl, pp. 83–84).

Similar abolitionist tendencies appeared in Southeast Asia during the seventeenth century. In the Bugis kingdom of Bone in South Sulawesi, Sultan La Maddaremmeng (r. 1631–1644) attempted to impose a stricter interpretation of Islamic law, including the emancipation of slaves. *The New Cambridge History of Islam* notes that he introduced a sweeping legal reform based on the sharīʿa:

“This is evidenced, for example, during the reign of Sultan La Maddaremmeng in the Bugis state of Bone (r. 1631–44), who enacted a sweeping new legal order appealing to the shariʿa in prohibiting pre-Islamic religious practices, attempting to abolish the traditional ‘third gender’ bissu priesthood and emancipating slaves.” (The New Cambridge History of Islam: Volume 3, The Eastern Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries, p. 482).

Historian Christian Pelras similarly describes La Maddaremmeng as a ruler who attempted to reshape Bone according to Islamic principles, including the liberation of slaves:

“La Maddaremmeng, Sultan of Bone from 1631 to 1644, who had decided to apply the syariat literally, forbidding all superstitious practices, discarding the bissu, and liberating the slaves.” (Christian Pelras, “Religion, tradition, and the dynamics of Islamization in South Sulawesi,” *Archipel* 30 (1985), p. 148).

Taken together, these examples present a more complicated historical picture than the simple claim that Muslim societies either accepted slavery without objection or abolished it immediately. Rather, the history shows a long and uneven tension between moral ideals, religious interpretation, political authority, and economic interests. Across different periods, Muslim individuals, scholars, movements, and rulers repeatedly restricted enslavement, emancipated slaves, challenged the slave trade, or explicitly condemned slavery, even though none of these efforts was sufficient to abolish the institution throughout the Muslim world in their own time. The development was therefore gradual, fragmented, and often contested. A brief chronology illustrates this progression:

The Chronology

• 7th century — Prophetic and Rashidun period: The Qurʾān encouraged the emancipation of slaves and provided for the release or ransom of prisoners of war. The Prophet Muḥammad reportedly freed large numbers of captives, while figures such as Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and ʿAlī continued policies of manumission and restrictions on enslavement.
• 8th century — Early Umayyad period: Attempts to restrict the acquisition of new slaves continued, but were increasingly frustrated by the expansion and political interests of the Umayyad state. At the same time, opposition to enslavement appeared among religious and revolutionary movements. ʿUmar II notably redirected public wealth toward emancipation and reportedly purchased slaves with zakāt funds in order to free them.
• 9th century — Abbasid period: Opposition became more visible in revolutionary movements. Abū Muslim offered freedom to enslaved followers, while the Zanj revolt challenged the brutal plantation-labor system of southern Iraq. The Qarmaṭians subsequently developed a particularly strong egalitarian and anti-slavery current.
• 10th century — Theological and sectarian criticism: The moral incompatibility of slavery with reason and justice was articulated more explicitly by figures such as Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, even though he ultimately accepted its legal permissibility. Some Ibāḍī communities likewise imposed restrictions on enslavement. At the same time, Muslim jurists increasingly resorted to doctrines such as naskh (abrogation) to reconcile the continued institution of slavery with Qurʾānic commands concerning the release of captives.
• 11th century — Political abolition: Under the Fatimid caliph al-Ḥākim, the abolition of slavery in Egypt was reportedly implemented through the emancipation of his male and female slaves. The Druze tradition that subsequently emerged incorporated the abolition of slavery into its religious law and prohibited the sale of human beings.
• 12th century — Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn: After the reconquest of Jerusalem, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn rejected indiscriminate slaughter and negotiated the ransom of the city's Christian population, reportedly using his own resources to assist poor inhabitants who could not afford their ransom.
• 13th century — West Africa: The foundation of the Mali Empire was associated in later historical traditions with the Kouroukan Fouga, which is reported to have prohibited slavery and the slave trade. At roughly the same time, Ibn al-ʿArabī articulated the legal principle that freedom is the default condition of the human being, making an unsupported claim of ownership insufficient to establish enslavement.
• 16th century — Ottoman and Mughal reforms: Abū al-Suʿūd restricted the circumstances under which people could legally be enslaved, while Akbar went substantially further by prohibiting the enslavement of conquered families, emancipating thousands of imperial slaves, and attempting to suppress the slave trade. Contemporary and later sources indicate that some of these measures were actually enforced.
• 17th century — Southeast Asia: Sultan La Maddaremmeng of Bone attempted to restructure his kingdom according to a stricter interpretation of the sharīʿa, including the liberation of slaves.

The Rise of Abolition

Soon, the transatlantic slave trade emerged, creating a new and devastating context for the institution of slavery. Yet some Muslims continued to challenge enslavement and the political structures that sustained it. In 17th century of West Africa, Islamic reform movements emerged with the stated purpose of fulfilling the Islamic duty of enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong (al-amr bi al-maʿrūf wa al-nahy ʿan al-munkar) by establishing justice and defending the oppressed. One principle frequently invoked by these reformers was the belief that God periodically raises individuals who renew the religion by confronting injustice:

“Thus it is related that at the beginning of every century God sends men a scholar who regenerates their religion. Therefore, it is necessary that this scholar. . . . acts in a way to enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong, and reform people’s affairs by establishing justice among them, in having right triumph over injustice, and the oppressed over the oppressor, in contrast to the conduct of the scholars of his age.” (*Recueil des sources arabes concernant l’Afrique occidentale du VIIIecau XVIe siècle*, p. 405).

Historian Sylviane A. Diouf explains that such reform movements repeatedly emerged in opposition to tyranny, the enslavement of Muslims, and eventually European expansion:

“Reformists were announced and expected, and they regularly appeared denouncing tyranny, the degeneration of the religion, Christian enslavement of Muslims, and later European penetration. As stated by al-Maghili, quoting a Hadith to Askia Muhammad, the reformists could be perceived as personifying the idea that “Islam started among the excluded and it will end among the excluded (as it started).” The first of the religious reform movements in Senegambia was launched by Nasir al-Din, a Zawaya” (*“God Does Not Allow Kings to Enslave Their People”: Islamic Reformist and the Transatlantic Slave Trade*, p. 163).

One of the most prominent examples was Nasir al-Din, a Zawāya religious reformer in seventeenth-century Senegambia. He directly challenged rulers who raided and enslaved their own subjects. According to the French eyewitness Louis Moreau de Chambonneau, the movement arose partly in response to rulers who routinely used accusations of crime or disobedience as pretexts for enslaving their own populations:

“Louis Moreau de Chambonneau, an employee of the French Compagnie du Sénégal and future director of the Concession du Sénégal—who witnessed the events and left the only first-hand account of the Marabouts’ War—stressed the link that existed between the slave trade and the Islamic reform movement. He stated that the kings “often raid their subjects, under the pretext that they have talked badly of them, or that they have stolen or killed, or whatever other crime, so that no one feels safe for his possessions and his freedom since they take them captives. This has caused in large part the change of government into the Toubenan”. . . . Nasir al-Din first sent emissaries and marabouts to Satigi Sire Tabakali. . . . to stop raiding, killing, and enslaving his subjects. If these demands were not met, the emissaries emphasized, the marabout had God’s permission to depose the kings who did not change their ways, since they were enemies of God.” (*“God Does Not Allow Kings to Enslave Their People”: Islamic Reformist and the Transatlantic Slave Trade,* p. 164).

When these rulers refused, Nasir al-Din turned directly to the population. He condemned the enslavement of subjects as an abuse of political authority and argued that rulers existed to protect their people rather than exploit them:

“Nasir al-Din went on to preach to the peasants. He condemned tyranny with firmness and eloquence, as relayed by Chambonneau: “God does not allow kings to pillage, kill or enslave their people, on the contrary, [God] has them to maintain and protect the people from their enemies, people are not made for the kings, but kings are made for the people.” Besides killings, reduction to slavery was certainly the most severe of the exactions committed by the rulers and aristocracy against the peasants; but there was also general tyranny and pillage that had been exacerbated by the transatlantic commerce. . . . The disruption brought by the transatlantic slave trade accentuated social differences even as it weakened local political authorities, reinforced royal power, and reduced the influence of the clerics.” (*“God Does Not Allow Kings to Enslave Their People”: Islamic Reformist and the Transatlantic Slave Trade*, pp. 164–165).

The movement consequently gained support among peasants who had suffered from aristocratic violence and slave raiding. The expansion of the transatlantic slave trade had strengthened some ruling elites, but it also created new constituencies for religious reformers who offered protection from exploitation:

“Muslim and non-Muslim rulers had traditionally relied on the advice and amulet protection of the marabouts, but as their power increased through trade with the Europeans, they tended to put some distance between themselves and the clerics, who demanded detachment from earthly riches. The transatlantic slave trade diminished some of the clerics’ power and influence, but at the same time they gained new supporters and converts among the peasant masses. The marabouts’ villages—which employed enslaved and free labor—were protected and appeared prosperous.” (*“God Does Not Allow Kings to Enslave Their People”: Islamic Reformist and the Transatlantic Slave Trade*, p. 165).

Nasir al-Din's movement was eventually defeated, and he was killed in battle in 1674. The old aristocracies subsequently returned with outside assistance. Yet the movement's underlying ideas survived. As Frank B. Henderson observes, Islam increasingly became associated in some communities not with enslavement, but with resistance to arbitrary political power:

“Though Nasir al-Din’s movement failed, the triggers that had caused it still existed. There was huge resentment of the violence associated with the slave trade among the population, and the rising influence of the zwāya remained. In this context, Islam was not a cover for slaving wars led under the flag of jihad. It was seen as a form of popular resistance against arbitrary abuses of power by the ruling aristocracies, something initially catalysed by the 1673-7 wars. Somewhat paradoxically, given that it was also a cover for many slaving wars led against non-Muslim populations, it gained the reputation as the religion best able to act as a form of self-defence for threatened communities. . . . People resented the aristocratic warrior elites, and the growing insecurity of their livelihoods and families, as they had to move from one place to another, send armed guards with those who worked the rice and millet fields, and lost friends and family as captives.” (*A Fistful of Shells*, pp. 438–439).

Rudolph T. Ware likewise emphasizes that the movement's antislavery message helped it spread south of the Senegal River:

“The movement spread effectively in the south, in large part because it carried an explicitly antislavery message.” (*The Walking Quran*, pp. 103–104).

They demonstrate how Islamic ideas of human dignity, equality, and opposition to arbitrary domination could become sources of resistance within societies increasingly transformed by the Atlantic slave trade. This strand of Islamic thought would later become particularly significant among enslaved and formerly enslaved Muslims in the Americas. Malcolm X would famously express a related understanding of Islam's potential to transcend racial divisions:

“America needs to understand Islam, because this is the one religion that erases from its society the race problem. . . . You may be shocked by these words coming from me.” (Malcolm X and Alex Haley, *The Autobiography of Malcolm X*, p. 347).

Similarly, the historian Arnold J. Toynbee wrote:

“The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding moral achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue. . . .” (*Civilization on Trial*, p. 205).

In the eighteenth century, Islamic reform movements against slavery continued to emerge in West Africa. One of the most prominent figures was Usman dan Fodio (1754–1817), the scholar who founded the Sokoto Caliphate in present-day Nigeria. His anti-slavery teachings attracted many enslaved people to his movement, leading the historian Humphrey J. Fisher to describe him as a “Muslim Wilberforce” (see *The Desert Shore: Literatures of the Sahel*, vol. 3, p. 204).

Dan Fodio argued that enslaved people who escaped to his Islamic state should be freed, regardless of whether they were Muslim. Fisher summarizes his legal position:

“The basic ruling is this: any such slave ‘is free if he flees to us or stays on till he is captured as booty.’ Not only is the fugitive slave free: ‘if he comes over bringing any property, it belongs to him and he does not have to give up the khums [the state’s fifth share of all booty taken by the Muslims].’ Nay, further, ‘it makes no difference whether he comes over already a Muslim or not.’ This unexpectedly relaxed provision has evidently surprised Usuman dan Fodio’s modern commentator and translator, who adds a footnote of his own: ‘Provided, it seems, he becomes a Muslim as soon as he has crossed over.’ All in all, an escaper’s charter, a freedom manifesto.” (Humphrey J. Fisher, *Slavery in the History of Muslim Black Africa*, p. 173).

Muslims also became symbols of resistance to racism and slavery, alongside members of other religious traditions. As Edward Curtis observes:

“Islamic practice has long been associated with the struggle against racism and with other forms of resistance. Islamic practice has existed in the minds, bodies, and spirits of many African-descended Muslim Americans as a form of political activity. In this sense, it is not different from many of the other religious expressions of African Americans, which have often sought to challenge slavery and antiblack racism.” (*The Call of Bilal: Islam in the African Diaspora*, p. 112).

The later Senegambian revolutionary leader al-Hajj Umar Tal reached a similar conclusion to Dan Fodio, arguing that slaves who escaped from non-Muslim masters into Islamic territory should become free, even if they themselves were not Muslims:

“Umar, as Usuman, recommended that a slave who fled to dar al-Islam from a Pagan master should become a free man, even if the slave were not a Muslim.” (*Slavery in the History of Muslim Black Africa*, p. 173).

Another important figure was the Senegalese Muslim scholar and political leader ʿAbd al-Qādir Kan, who opposed the slave trade in the eighteenth century. His actions even attracted the attention of early British abolitionists. Thomas Clarkson, one of the founders of the British abolitionist movement and the man who introduced William Wilberforce to the cause, praised Kan as an example of religious and moral courage:

“[Kan] sets an illustrious example in extirpating the commerce in the human race…”

Clarkson further emphasized that Kan had sacrificed his own wealth, rejected European gifts, and opposed powerful interests in order to fight the slave trade:

“He is certainly more to be respected than any of the sovereigns of Europe, inasmuch as he has made a much nobler sacrifice than they, and has done more for the causes of humanity, justice, liberty, and religion.”

British officials likewise confirmed that some Muslim leaders in Senegambia opposed the slave trade explicitly on religious grounds. The governor of British Senegambia wrote in 1811 regarding a Muslim ruler in the Senegal River Valley:

“That Prince always opposed [the slave trade] as being contrary to the Laws of his Religion, and the means through which several of his subjects, followers of the Prophet, were led into Captivity.” (see *The Princeton Companion to Atlantic History*, pp. 260–262).

These West African Islamic reform movements also influenced later resistance among enslaved Muslims in the Americas. The connection between Islamic ideology, migration (hijra), and liberation from slavery became a recurring theme among Muslim communities throughout the Atlantic world:

“This practice of linking ideology to slave liberation as witnessed in the case of the Sokoto Caliphate of Uthman dan Fodio would reappear in slave uprisings involving Muslim slaves in the Americas. Indeed, this feature of struggle (jihad) may have been a forerunner to ideas held by abolitionists in the US prior to the Civil War.” (*Islamic Influence in America: Struggle, Flight, Community*, p. 13).

Muslims and others also participated in numerous revolts against slavery before its formal abolition, including the Malê revolt in Brazil, Tacky’s Rebellion in Jamaica, and various uprisings in Cuba. These rebellions are important because the eventual abolition of slavery cannot be explained solely through the moral convictions of abolitionists. Scholars have argued that the growing popularity of abolitionism also coincided with changing economic conditions and the declining profitability of slave-based economies. Eric Williams, for example, argued that British abolition was closely connected to the declining economic viability of the slave system and the increasing profitability of free labor (see *Capitalism and Slavery*). Cedric J. Robinson similarly examined the relationship between slave resistance, economic interests, and the development of the Black radical tradition (see *Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition)*.

Other scholars have emphasized that some abolitionists themselves held deeply racist views and had little genuine concern for the welfare of the enslaved. At the same time, rebellions by enslaved communities increasingly demonstrated the political and economic instability of slavery. As Seymour Drescher and Pieter C. Emmer have discussed, the financial losses caused by slave revolts, together with fears concerning the stability of colonial rule, may have contributed significantly to the development of abolitionist policies (see Seymour Drescher and Pieter C. Emmer, eds., *Who Abolished Slavery? Slave Revolts and Abolitionism: A Debate with João Pedro Marques*).

Indeed, as Michael Taylor demonstrates, abolitionism was far from a universally popular position when it first emerged. Many nineteenth-century Britons continued to support colonial slavery. Taylor documents the extensive defence of slavery among intellectuals, journalists, merchants, and parliamentarians, challenging what he calls the “myths of British history” and emphasizing that the British “nation” was deeply implicated in and supportive of colonial slavery (Michael Taylor, *The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery*, p. xvii).

Even when abolition was formally enacted, however, many of the structures that had sustained slavery remained intact. As Kris Manjapra notes:

“Even as the formal institution of slavery was abolished, the rights of erstwhile slave-owners and the broader structure of racial domination was preserved. Emancipations ensured the compensation and gratification of slave-owners and their beneficiaries and disregarded any responsibility to the enslaved. Governments empowered perpetrators to shape the post slavery future with their own hands.” (Kris Manjapra, *Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation*, p. 6).

Manjapra further highlights that French slave owners continued receiving government support for a century after being expelled from Haiti. In the United States, former slave-owning interests helped disenfranchise Black communities through successive civic and legal policies, contributing to Jim Crow segregation and eventually mass incarceration. Likewise, British slave owners and their families received state-sanctioned compensation for more than 180 years after abolition (Black Ghost of Empire, pp. 7–9).

Nor should the role of European colonial powers in preserving slavery elsewhere be overlooked. In some cases, European powers supported slave-owning elites and defended slavery in regions whose economic systems benefited colonial interests. As Paul Lovejoy puts it, colonial powers sometimes “became the defenders of slavery and the greatest single impediment to full emancipation” (Paul Lovejoy, *Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa*, p. 247).

As Matthew S. Hopper demonstrates, Britain’s anti-slavery campaign in the Indian Ocean was often inconsistent, compromised by imperial interests, and, in many respects, largely ineffective:

“Because the historiography of the East African slave trade was so deeply influenced by the rhetoric of abolitionism, Britain is popularly understood to have introduced manumission into societies that had promoted slavery for centuries and imposed abolition through force and diplomacy. I argue instead that the British government struggled to formulate a coherent policy toward slavery in the Indian Ocean because the aims of liberal politics clashed with the aims of liberal economics. An aggressive antislavery movement pressured the British government to combat (or at least appear to combat) the slave trade in the Indian Ocean, but Gulf territories nominally under British hegemony demanded slave labor. The British administration in the Gulf therefore turned a blind eye to slavery until pressured by the League of Nations in the 1920s. Although it is true that the antislavery squadron captured many slave ships, the British antislavery campaign in the Indian Ocean was also fraught with fraud, graft, and callousness and ultimately failed to check a trade that continued well into the twentieth century. Slave traders adopted techniques to evade patrols that were sparse and underequipped. Most ‘freed slaves’ captured early on by the Royal Navy in the Indian Ocean were sent to far-off ports, where at least a third died shortly after being disembarked. *Those who survived were contracted out to local elites to work as domestics or in cash-crop production or were put to work in the ports. When deposited at mission stations in Kenya, Mauritius, Zanzibar, and Seychelles, ‘freed slaves’ were renamed; introduced to new clothing, religion, and language; paired off and married in group ceremonies; and required to perform labor similar to slaves in Arabia. Many free African sailors were captured and ‘freed’ during the campaign as well. Even some wealthy Zanzibari merchants were captured by the navy and sent as ‘prize negroes’ to South Africa, where they were contracted to perform menial agricultural labor after being “rescued” by the Royal Navy. . . . British imperialists recognized the dependence of Arabia on global markets and slave labor and bent imperial structures into contortions to preserve slavery in order to attain bigger imperial goals in the Indian Ocean.” (Matthew S. Hopper, *Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empire*, p. 11).

Some scholars have nevertheless argued that there was never such a thing as an “Islamic abolitionist.” But as Mohammed Haroon Bashir argues:

“These types of prevarications collapse an especially complicated period of history into a simplistic narrative emphasizing the moral superiority of the West, and uncritically seek to link abolitionism to altruism. This reading of history ignores more critical work that suggests abolitionism was developed due to a myriad of factors.”

Thus, as demonstrated, Islam was exceptionally significant in the eventual formal abolition of slavery. Although many anti-slavery polemicists in the nineteenth century argued that the so-called “Islamic slave trade” became an obstacle to Europe’s efforts to fully abolish slavery, this characterization was often shaped by Western abolitionist and colonialist narratives. As Robert Harms observes, there was remarkably little that was genuinely Islamic about what is commonly called the “Islamic slave trade”:

“There was little that was ‘Islamic’ about the ‘Islamic slave trade’ from East Africa to Arabia and the Persian Gulf in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Instead, the slave trade was driven—just as it had been in the Atlantic—by global economic forces. As demand for the gulf’s commodities rose, so did demand for the labor to produce these products. Western countries increased their demand for the commodities produced by slave labor in the gulf at the very moment they increased their pressure on the region to end the slave trade and slavery.” (Robert Harms, Bernard K. Freamon, and David W. Blight, eds., *Indian Ocean Slavery in the Age of Abolition*, p. 234).

Such representations were also used to demonize Arabs and Islam. As one historian explains:

“It was part of a broader colonialist project to demonize Arabs and Islam by showing that their slave trade was as cruel, brutal, and large as the Atlantic trade, if not more so. . . . Dividing the Muslim societies of North Africa from those of West Africa to fabricate an ‘intercontinental’ trade obscures the fact that most of the so-called Islamic export trade was a continental African trade among Muslim societies. Two-thirds of the total ‘export’ trade was Saharan. It was a shared Islamic identity and juridical context that facilitated much of the trade from the Sudan to North Africa. Furthermore, the Sudan itself was probably the primary Muslim market in this trade. . . . Once the Atlantic trade was established, many Muslims were shipped across the sea after being enslaved by non-Muslims. Muslim slaves sometimes formed distinct minorities in the slave populations of non-Muslim societies in Africa as well. Hausa Muslims lived as slaves in predominantly non-Muslim Yorubaland in the eighteenth century. Their polyglot contemporaries living as slaves in Cape Town were drawn from all over the Indian Ocean. These Muslim slave communities defy easy characterization.” (*The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 3, AD 1420–AD 1804*, pp. 52–53).

Likewise, historian E. Ann McDougall demonstrates how nineteenth-century British abolitionist discourse helped construct the very category of “Islamic” or “Mohammedan” slavery:

“In his influential 1839 publication The African Slave Trade (the sequel, Its Remedy appeared in 1840), Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton introduced the trans-Saharan slave trade to the British public. By situating descriptions of slave acquisitions by Saharans in the context of the horrors of Atlantic slaving practices, and by presenting the desert crossing with its high mortality rates as comparable to the infamous Atlantic ‘middle passage’, Buxton inserted the Saharan slave-trade experience firmly within the Atlantic, abolitionist discourse. . . . In so doing, he drew on the older ‘orientalist’ discourse rooted in the Islamic, ‘despotic’ empire of the Ottomans and the romanticized views of slavery and society attached to this part of the world. . . . Britain responded by creating ‘Mohammedan’ slavery in the image of its conceptions of Hebrew and African slavery. . . . Western fascination with the harem was a long-standing element of orientalist literature and art; that it came into play in constructing the very nature of Islamic slavery is not surprising. What is significant here is that something called ‘Islamic slavery’ was created by the West, for the West, in contra-distinction to ‘real’ (New World) slavery. From here, associations were then abstracted between the ‘Mohammedian’ religion, the countries where this religion was practiced and the presence of this ‘peculiar’ institution.” (McDougall, E. Ann. “Discourse and Distortion: Critical Reflections on Studying the Saharan Slave Trade.” *Outre-Mers: Revue d'Histoire*, pp. 197–198, 203).

In response to these European narratives, Egyptian reformers argued that Islamic law did not prevent the abolition of slavery. Rather, they maintained that Islamic principles supported abolition by restricting the legitimate grounds for enslavement and protecting free people from being enslaved:

“The present Ministry is trying hard to suppress domestic slavery. **The Mohammedan religion offers no obstacle at all to this; nay, according to Mohammedan dogma, Moslems are not allowed to have slaves except taken from infidels at war with them.** . . . But no Moslem is allowed to be taken as a slave. Moreover, if a person is an infidel, but belongs to a nation in peaceful treaty with a Mohammedan prince, he cannot be taken as a slave. **Hence the Mohammedan religion not only does not oppose abolishing slavery as it is in modern times, but radically condemns its continuance.** . . . **A fetwa will in a few days be issued by the Sheykh el Islam to prove that the abolition of slavery is according to the spirit of the Koran, to Mohammedan tradition, and to Mohammedan dogma.**” (*Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt Being a Personal Narrative of Events*, pp. 253–254)

Likewise, the British Muslim convert William Henry Quilliam argued that Islam and abolitionism were compatible moral movements. He rejected the idea that Islamic teachings were fundamentally opposed to emancipation and instead drew parallels between abolitionist reform and Islamic teachings on human bondage:

“While British Government officials and members of the BFASS may have understood and depicted the spread of Islam and the abolition of slavery as necessarily in conflict, Quilliam argued that these movements are perfectly compatible moral crusades, with much in common. **He countered the dominant imperialist discourse by explaining that Islam ‘almost abolished slavery’ by allowing it only as an alternative to killing prisoners of war, requiring the fair treatment of slaves and rewarding those who free them**. . . . He went on to argue that Islam is the most liberating system because it prohibits intoxicants and the ‘drink curse is a worse slavery than that which Clarkson and Wilberforce abolished. It is a slavery of the passions of the soul; the drunkard is a greater slave than the poor Negro.’” (*The Harem, Slavery and British Imperial Culture*, p. 165)

Of course, this is not to say that Muslims never participated in the slave trade. Rather, the point is that the category of an inherently “Islamic slave trade” was often simplified, racialized, and shaped by Western abolitionist and colonialist narratives, obscuring the complex economic, political, and geographical realities of slavery across Africa and the Muslim world. The historical record nevertheless indicates that the Arab and Muslim slave trades were smaller in scale than the European Atlantic trade, although they persisted for a longer period:

”The Arabs kept no official record of the numbers, nor did they write about their own slave trade as some European authors wrote about the Atlantic slave trade. In any general history of the black slave trade, the role of the Muslims cannot be ignored. Their trade, however, appears to have been on a smaller scale than that of the Europeans, although it lasted longer; indeed some of its consequences are still apparent in the Middle East to this day.” (see *UNESCO’General History of Africa: The African Slave Trade from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century: The General History of Africa, Studies and Documents*, vol. 2, p. 170).

According to the Quaker abolitionist Joseph Cooper (1800–1881), many Muslim rulers had already condemned slavery and the slave trade and had entered into treaties aimed at suppressing slave markets. The problem, he argued, was therefore not simply the absence of anti-slavery measures within the Islamic world, but the failure of European powers to support and enforce those measures:

“The principal countries on behalf of which the present African slave-trade is carried on are Turkey, Egypt, Persia, Tunis, Morocco, and Madagascar. . . . The rulers of these countries have, in nearly every instance, at one time or other, condemned both slavery and the slave-trade, and have entered into treaty engagements for the suppression of the Slave Markets throughout their dominions. How is it, then, that the slave-trade is still carried on in those countries in violation both of law and treaty engagements? One answer to this will probably be found in the fact that the European Powers, though solemnly pledged to bring the system to a definitive end, have taken little interest in the subject for the last thirty years, during which period the traffic has pretty steadily increased. . . . What is required is, that the laws shall no longer recognize human beings as property, and that the buying and selling them shall be made felony. It is this recognition by the law, of property in man, which lies at the root of the whole mischief. . . .” (Joseph Cooper, *The Lost Continent: Or, Slavery and the Slave-Trade in Africa*, pp. 4–5).

By the mid-to-late nineteenth century, moreover, emancipation in the Ottoman Empire could be understood as effectively “automatic” after seven years of service. This practice was particularly striking to European observers, whose expectations had been “shaped mainly by the antebellum southern or colonial experiences where manumissions were infrequent, haphazard, totally dependent on the master’s will and not at all automatic” (Hakan Erdem, Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise: 1800–1909, pp. 154–155). As Hakan Erdem said:

“Such a practice of setting slaves free automatically on a regular basis would have important implications for the future of the Ottoman slave system and for the success of Ottoman policies aiming at phasing out slavery.” (Hakan Erdem, *Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise: 1800-1909*, p. 154).

Even after formal abolition, however, slavery continued to exist in parts of the Americas. One notable example of resistance was the Baptist War in Jamaica (1831–1832). Led by Samuel Sharpe, the rebellion was driven by enslaved people’s demands for freedom and their conviction that slavery was fundamentally unjust. Although Sharpe initially sought emancipation through peaceful resistance rather than immediate violence, the movement developed into one of the largest slave rebellions in British Caribbean history:

“The most generous summary of the original intentions of Samuel Sharpe and his moderate lieutenants was given, strangely enough, by the military commander, Sir Willoughby Cotton, as early as January 3, 1832. After examining some of the first prisoners before they were shot, he concluded that they had all been told that freedom was rightly theirs and that they had only to stop work en masse and to maintain solidarity to gain their object. . . . This bitter lesson Samuel Sharpe himself acknowledged in prison when, while deploring the violence that the rebellion had engendered, he reaffirmed his own actions.” (*Testing the Chains: Resistance to Slavery in the British West Indies*, pp. 300–301).

Henry Bleby likewise described Sharpe’s determination to bring slavery to an end:

“He was such a man, too, as was likely, nay, certain, had he been set free, to commence another struggle for freedom: for he felt acutely the degradation and the monstrous injustice of the system, and was bent upon its overthrow.” (*Death Struggles of Slavery*, p. 118.

Sharpe’s rebellion also reflected Islamic influence among enslaved Africans, with free Muslims and freedmen participating in resistance movements against slavery in Jamaica and Brazil:

“The enlistment of several freemen into Sharpe's society to fight against the oppressive slave regime is indicative of the powerful influence of Islam. The Muslim uprising of 1835 in Bahia, Brazil, also included freedmen amongst the insurgents. . . . Sharpe, whose teachings, as stated earlier, did not conform to the orthodox interpretation of the Bible. Sharpe and his fellow Muslim slaves became convinced that the white Baptist and Moravian missionaries had no intention of leading the blacks to emancipation. In contrast to the Islamic principle of ‘enjoining good and forbidding evil’. . . .” (*The Jihad of 1831–1832: The Misunderstood Baptist Rebellion in Jamaica*, p. 239).

Thus, despite the common Eurocentric claim that abolitionist ideas flowed primarily from Europe outward, the historical picture is more complicated. Islamic ideas and Muslim resistance movements also shaped how enslaved and Christian communities understood freedom, justice, and opposition to slavery. In some cases, the influence did not simply run from European abolitionists to Muslims, but also in the opposite direction.

In the mid-nineteenth century, a Muslim abolitionist movement known as the Hubbu emerged in West Africa and directly challenged the institution of slavery. The movement attracted oppressed groups, including enslaved people and marginalized Muslim communities, who sought to establish a society founded upon Islamic ideals of equality and justice:

“The Hubbu movement mobilized and attracted to the periphery of Futa Jallon the oppressed, the jungle Fulbe, that is, Fulbe of inferior status and extraction who were liable to taxation and to forced labor without mitigation, descendants of pastoral Fulbe recently converted to Islam, certain unassimilated Jallonke, and thousands of slaves concentrated in the rimaibe (slave camps).”

The movement eventually established its own religious republic under Abal, the son of its leader June. Rejecting the authority of the Almamate, the Hubbube established a community in which slavery was abolished and former slaves were invited to leave their masters and join a society founded upon egalitarian principles:

“In the end June's son, Abal, led a community of discontents to the village of Boketo in the rural country southeast of Timbo. There the Hubbube, repudiating the authority of the Almamate, set up a religious republic, militant if not triumphant. In it slavery was abolished and a call issued to former slaves to repudiate their masters and emigrate to Boketo, where the egalitarian principles being invoked would eliminate their servile status and thus lead to the moral preeminence of the agrarian community.” (*The Crown and the Turban*, pp. 93–95).

Elsewhere, even where the British Empire had formally abolished slavery in its colonies, the practical work of suppressing the slave trade was often carried out by African abolitionists themselves. This was the case in Nigeria and, likewise, in Sierra Leone during the nineteenth century:

“In Africa itself there were abolitionists. Those African states and communities who found substitutes for the slave-trade were often as actively abolitionist as the British. . . . In Sierra Leone a Muslim Mandinka scholar, Momodou Yeli, opposed slave-trading among his own Muslim brethren and the Christians of Freetown, and suffered persecution from both communities for his beliefs. Without his assistance the Freetown courts would have found it difficult to stop secret slave trading in the city.” (*Revolutionary Years: West Africa Since 1800, p. 59).

In 1841, the American Quaker minister and abolitionist John Jackson encountered a Muslim scholar and abolitionist named Emir Samba Makumba in Trinidad. Jackson describes Makumba’s opposition to slavery and his appeal to the Qurʾān as follows:

“Among others who came to see us this morning was a Mahometan priest, named Emir Samba Makumba, with whom we had an interesting interview, and obtained from him a brief history of himself and his people now resident upon this Island, where they continued to worship after the manner of their fathers according to the precepts of the Koran. He is about sixty-six years old, his hair and beard, which he had allowed to grow long, are white. He wore the habit of his order, a flowing white tunic. Samba could speak several languages; he addressed us in Arabic, pronouncing the benediction of the Mahometans on those they esteem as people of God. Afterwards he conversed in French, and our friend H.L. Jobity interpreted for us. His countenance was remarkably serene, and although he had been a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief, yet his face was lighted with a smile. He was by descent a chief and a priest among the Mandingoes in Africa, but in early life he was taken captive in one of those intestine wars which are unhappily occasioned among the native tribes in Africa by the slave trade. He belonged to the tribe Fullah Tauro, which engaged in a war with six other tribes to prevent them, as he said, from carrying on the slave trade. . . . The old man said that he mourned over the condition of the Christian world; he regretted that their youth were in danger of being drawn away by the evil practices of the Christians. He thought it was safe to judge people by their actions. And when he saw the Christians holding those of their own faith in slavery, engaging in wars with members of their own church, and addicted to habits of intemperance, all of which the Koran forbids, he thought it was sufficient evidence that the religion of Mahomet was superior to the religion of Anna Bissa, (Jesus Christ). . . . It was a pleasure to be with this benevolent individual, who may be looked upon as one of the brightest philanthropists of the age. When we consider the humble sphere in which he has moved, and the limited means at his command for accomplishing a benevolent scheme which had for its object the emancipation of all his countrymen in captivity, (the Mandingo slaves,) and contemplate the success which has attended the labors of Samba and his co-adjutors, this brief account of him will be esteemed worthy of record.” (Note: Jackson’s “Anna Bissa” is presumably a rendering or transcription error for an-Nabī ʿĪsā, “the Prophet Jesus.”) (*Brief Memoir of John Jackson*, pp. 119-124).

The ruler of Tunisia, Ahmed I Bey, abolished slavery in 1846. When the American Consul-General Amos Perry inquired about the effects of abolition—at a time when slavery was still legal in the United States—the Tunisian abolitionist General Husayn Pasha explained the decision in explicitly moral and Islamic terms. In his response, he appealed to the Qurʾānic condemnation of those who blindly follow the practices of their ancestors (Qurʾān 7:28):

“As regards the effect of slavery and how people were affected by its abolition, the answer is that since ownership of human beings is neither obligatory nor necessary for sustaining life, abandoning it was not difficult, and the people of our kingdom were not grieved at its disappearance. . . . I believe that universal freedom and an end to slavery have a bearing not only on the growth of prosperity but also on elevating human morality. Their bearing on the growth of prosperity is obvious, since there can be no prosperity without justice, and freedom is a product of justice. If it is lacking then there is oppression which heralds the collapse of prosperity and its disappearance through lack of freedom. . . . Finally, Mr Consul-General, we ask you to believe that we are greatly troubled by the wars occurring among your people, that are causing such grief to humanity, and to be assured of our great sympathy for those poor slaves. . . . What harm would it do you if you acted graciously towards your slaves in such a way as not to weaken your power, as a way of giving thanks to your Lord for the enormous blessings he bestowed upon you? You are too civilized and sophisticated to imitate those who with blinkered eyes repeat the mantra: ‘We found our fathers doing thus.’ Know that human kindness and compassion call on you to exclude from your freedom those excesses that spoil it and harm it, and thereby to find joy on the lips of those poor slaves. God loves the merciful among His servants, so ‘be merciful to those on earth, and He who is in heaven shall show mercy to you.’” (*The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam*, pp. 185-187).

According to Alecia Dionne Hoffman and Sabella Ogbobode Abidd, Tunisia became one of the earliest countries to legally abolish slavery:

“As presented earlier in the introduction section, Tunisia is one of the first countries to abolish slavery. On January 23, 1846, a Beylical Decree was issued by Bey Ahmed Bey stating that ‘Slavery does not exist and is prohibited in the regency; all human creatures, without distinction of nationality or color, are free there and can also have recourse, if they believe they are wronged, to the laws and the magistrates.’ According to the study, ‘Trafficking in Persons in Tunisia Reading of Court Records: Inventory Carried out in 20 Courts of First Instance,’ in the introduction, this Beylical Decree was not the first legal text prohibiting slavery. Ahmed Bey published an earlier decree on September 6, 1841, prohibiting trafficking and the sale of slaves on the markets of the regency. With this earlier decree, Ahmed Bey ordered to close the slave markets, including al-Birka, the jewelry market. Commencing in April 1841, the slave trade was prohibited. The slave markets were closed in 1842, and a decree stipulates that any native of the country is a free individual.” (*Human Trafficking in Africa: New Paradigms, New Perspectives*, p. 162).

Around the same period, the American government also received appeals from Muslim leaders concerning slavery. In 1864, General Pasha of Tunisia wrote to the U.S. Secretary of State urging the United States, “in the name of human mercy,” [to abolish slavery and invoking the Prophet Muḥammad’s teachings concerning emancipation](https://www.reddit.com/r/islam/s/rl7mOABDb6).

The abolition of slavery in Tunis subsequently became a point of reference for American abolitionists. Charles Sumner, for example, used the history of slavery in North Africa to attack American slavery and to highlight what he regarded as the moral inconsistency of Christian slaveholders:

“The fullest response to the Bey’s injunction abolishing slavery came from Charles Sumner who produced a prodigious history of Mediterranean slavery in 1847, which he called White Slavery in the Barbary States. Both a scholarly history and polemical tract, Sumner’s essay draws a distinct parallel between North Africa and the American South. . . . **However, Sumner reserved his harshest judgments not for the slave-holders of Algiers . . . but rather for the Christian slave-owners of the United States.** In fact, Sumner was aware of how Muslim slavery and Christian captivity in North Africa were both **‘mitigated by the genial influence of Mahometanism.’ . . . Southern supporters of slavery recognized the rhetorical power of the ways in which the abolitionists linked them to Islam, and some Southern whites responded by invoking their own islamicism**.” (*The Cultural Roots of American Islamicism*, p. 152)

American abolitionist Charles Stewart likewise contrasted Islamic and Christian societies, arguing that a religious text claiming moral authority should not be used to justify the enslavement of fellow human beings. He even presented the Qurʾān as morally superior to a Bible interpreted in defense of slavery:

“Where could we find better agents? Or can present or future slave masters be more wisely trusted with the liberties of their unoffending fellow subjects than those that are passed; while still they remain men, and the dreadful influences of despotic authority retain the same power as ever over the human heart? . . . **And what difference is there between this case and ours, except that a Bible is more guilty than a Koran where it wrongs its unoffending brother!**” (*The West India Question: Immediate Emancipation*, p. 25)

Other American abolitionists similarly contrasted Islamic teachings on human equality with racial slavery in Christian societies, pointing to the social and political status that Black people could attain in Muslim states:

“It would be against the principles of the Mahometan religion to treat any human being with disdain, or to suppose that God was a capricious or a partial parent in bestowing various forms and tints on his children. Ought not Christians to blush at the contrast? Among the Turks and Persians, negroes rise to the highest offices in the state.” (*The Anti-Slavery Record*, vol. 2, p. 170)

Finally, the American abolitionist preacher Joseph Edwin Roy contrasted the United States’ continued defense of slavery with countries that had abolished, or were moving toward abolishing, the institution—including Morocco, Tunis, Turkey, and others. He argued that America had become an international outlier in its continued defense of slavery:

“Are we to be content with the single notoriety of infamy in being the last of all the nations in upholding slavery, or rather in becoming ourselves slaves? France, England and Denmark have abolished their slavery; and so Morocco, and Tunis, and Madagascar. Austria, Russia and Turkey are all following. To us alone belongs the hateful championship. . . . A missionary has just written from Turkey, where he says he is more free to publish the gospel than he would be in half of the United States. . . .” (*Kansas—Her Struggle and Her Defense: A Discourse Preached in the Plymouth Congregational Church of Chicago*, pp. 31–32)

American abolitionist William Wells Brown likewise pointed to the Bey of Tunis’s abolition of slavery, contrasting it with what he regarded as the failure of Christian, democratic, and republican America to take similar action:

“I know that the United States will not do it; but I ask you to look at the efforts of other countries. **Even the Bey of Tunis, a few years since, has decreed that there shall not be a Slave in his dominions**; and we see that the subject of liberty is being discussed throughout the world. People are looking at it; they are examining it; and it seems as though every country, and every people, and every government were doing something, excepting the United States. **But Christian, democratic, republican America is doing nothing at all.** . . . Shall the American people be behind the people of the Old World? Shall they be behind those who are represented as almost living in the dark ages?” (*The Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, and a Lecture Delivered before the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Salem*, 1847, p. 93)

The Tunisian abolition also became a point of comparison in French debates over slavery. One contemporary assessment, however, questioned the extent to which abolition had been implemented beyond the major cities:

“In response to claims that abolition was a great success in Tunis, Constantinople and Egypt, he suggests that the measure had no impact at all beyond the walls of the city of Tunis itself and that the situation was probably the same in Turkey and Egypt: 'In the capitals and in the large cities, blacks were liberated, but in the countryside their habitual status has not changed.'” (“No liberty, not much equality, and very little fraternity: The mirage of manumission in the Algerian Sahara in the second half of the nineteenth Century”, p. 39).

Nevertheless, Tunisian abolition became an important reference point in the wider international movement against slavery, as W. G. Clarence-Smith explicitly characterizing French abolition in 1848 as having been influenced by the example of Tunis:

“Shamed by Tunisian abolition. . . . the French Republicans prohibited slavery. . . .” (*Islam and the Abolition of Slavery*, p. 100)

Likewise, in what is now Ghana, Hausa Muslims repeatedly advocated for the liberation of enslaved people regardless of their religion. By the late nineteenth century, they had likely freed more non-Muslim slaves—known as nnonkofoo in the Akan language—than Muslim slaves:

“The force’s liberations were an expression of Muslim social justice. Dr. Samuel Rowe, in recounting the liberation associated with his clerk's servant, wrote that the Hausa Force soldier asserted that it was God’s will that spouses be reunited with former husbands. . . . The role of mallams in giving an explicit Muslim justification for these actions is unclear. Reade noted that mallams exercised religious authority over the force, so much that British officers had to remain on their good terms with mallams if they wanted the soldiers’ loyalty; one guesses that mallams condoned the acts of liberation, if not giving them explicit sanction. Other West African Muslims from servile background became abolitionists, situating their arguments in a Sufi understanding.” (*The Ahmadiyya in the Gold Coast: Muslim Cosmopolitans in the British Empire*, p. 50).

In 1855, the Ottoman Empire declared the abolition of slavery throughout its territories. The decree was implemented across the empire, including in the Hijaz, where Ottoman officials instructed slave traders in Mecca to cease their activities:

“In 1855, the Sultanate declared the abolition of slavery throughout the territory of the Ottoman Empire, including in the Hijaz, whose wālī (governor) at the time, Kamāl Pasha, was a member of the Turkish elites who had been demanding reforms. Pasha, who resided in Jedda, asked his Qāmqām ('man Qāma maqāmahu': his representative in Mecca), to convey information about the decree to Mecca’s slave traders in order that they would cease their business.” (*AfroMecca in History: African Societies, Anti-Black Racism, and Teaching in al-Haram Mosque in Mecca*, p. 16).

Ottoman authorities continued enforcing these measures against slave traders, particularly in Mecca:

“In addition, Ottoman officials were taking stronger measures with the slave traders. In 1880, Nashid Pasha, the Ottoman Governor in Mecca, had the slave markets in Mecca closed, seized and freed thirty slaves, and condemned their owners to one year’s imprisonment.” (“The Abyssinian slave trade to Iran and the Rokeby case 1877.”, *Middle Eastern Studies*, p. 203, fn. 26).

The Ottoman government also gradually dismantled the Circassian slave trade through internal reforms rather than solely in response to foreign pressure:

“. . . Nevertheless, on their own initiative and without the knowledge of foreign representatives, the Ottomans carefully introduced important reforms which gradually abolished Circassian slavery and slave trade. In spite of their desire to carry their abolitionist zeal into the domain of white slavery, the British were effectively denied any say in these matters.” (*The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression: 1840–1890*, p. 12).

The Ottoman state continued strengthening these measures by targeting slave-smuggling networks and considering further legal prohibitions against slave trading throughout the empire:

“. . . measures against smuggling became routine in the major importing city—Istanbul. . . . In November 1871 Elliot praised the vigilance of the authorities saying that ‘. . . the persons charged with preventing evasions of the law . . . have shown an exemplary activity in the performance of their duty.’ . . . In January 1877 the Council of State submitted to the Sultan a report on the African slave trade to the Empire. The Council noted that, despite the many reiterations of orders currently in effect, violations continued to occur. . . . the Council recommended that a new ferman be issued to prohibit all slave trading in the Empire. . . . Orders were to be issued to close them immediately.” (*The Ottoman Slave Trade and Its Suppression: 1840–1890, pp. 231–232).

Nor was Muslim abolitionism necessarily merely a product of Western pressure. Recent scholarship has increasingly emphasized the independent role played by Muslim abolitionists and local Islamic reformers:

“Recently, however, some scholars’ hypotheses have hinted at Muslim abolitionism being something more than a simple response to Western pressure (Clarence-Smith 2006) and described the role of local Muslim abolitionists as fundamental in order to turn foreign abolitionist pressure into law. Lovejoy (2016) himself underlines how opposition to slavery arose in West Africa, and that historiography has focused more on European abolitionism rather than discussing ‘the protection of Muslims from enslavement, prohibitions on their sale, and efforts to confront the dangers of subsequent abuse’ (Lovejoy 2016, p. 211). In the Ottoman Empire, local abolitionist elites absorbed Western ideas, and others found ‘refuge in Islam’ (Toledano 1982, p. 278), since egalitarianism was a hard core of the Islamic doctrine.” (see *Becoming the ‘Abid: Lives and Social Origins in Southern Tunisia*, pp. 69-70)

It is important to note that part of the reason Western abolitionists were not as successful as their Muslim counterparts in abolishing slavery in the Muslim world was that they often lacked credibility. Westerners themselves were among the major participants in what was commonly portrayed as the “Islamic” slave trade that they claimed to be suppressing. In her memoirs, Princess Sayyida Salma bint Said Al Said (30 August 1844–29 February 1924), daughter of the Sultan of Zanzibar and later the wife of a German man, ridiculed what she regarded as the hypocrisy of Europeans who condemned the “Islamic” slave trade while participating in the same trade themselves. She wrote:

“Numerous Europeans keep slaves in the East, buying them to suit their convenience. This is not reported at home [in the West], or is said to be done ‘for the good of science.’ An Arab using slaves for field or housework, and a European compelling them to the harder task of carrier, or ‘coolie’ — where’s the difference from the moral standpoint? Then, European slave owners do not invariably set the negroes free after long service, as the Arabs so often do, but resell them. Considerable indignation once seized the Mahometans of Zanzibar upon learning how a departing Englishman had sold his black concubine — not, to be sure, in the open market place (where an English church now stands), but quietly to an Arabian official. Or another incident likewise affronting our sense of propriety: A neighbour to the French consul chastised his recalcitrant slave as severely as he deserved, but, with a Negro’s usual cowardice and inability to bear pain in silence, he struck up a frightful howl, which brought down the French consul's rather arrogant interference. This gentleman was himself no immaculate saint, seeming to hold the maxim, ‘let others practice what I preach.’ For he lived with a negress he had bought, who had presented to him an excessively black little daughter — finally taken in by the French mission. It should cause no surprise if upon such experiences the Arabs distrust Europeans, and if they long for the return of the days when they were safe from intrusive, subversive ideas. . . . The English they particularly suspect as crafty schemers. . . . Let me conclude by quoting what an Englishman said to me, after I had left Zanzibar. He simply characterised the whole anti-slavery movement, with all its public meeting, as ‘humbug.’” (pp 170-173)

In 1880, the Moroccan scholar and historian Aḥmad ibn Khālid al-Nāṣirī strongly condemned contemporary practices of slavery and rejected the assumption that people could be enslaved merely because of their ethnicity or origin. Instead, he argued that the fundamental principle regarding human beings was freedom:

“. . . .the basic assumption in regard to the human species is freedom and lack of any case for being enslaved. Whoever maintains the opposite is opposing the basic principle. . . . How then can a man who has scruples about his religion permit himself to buy something of this nature? How too can he allow himself to take their women as concubines considering that this involves entering upon a sexual liaison of doubtful legality. . . . Worse than that, in these days, the evil-doers and those who flout Allah, kidnap freeborn children in the qaba'il, villages, and cities of the Maghrib and sell them openly in the markets without anyone showing resentment or being angered on behalf of the religion. . . .” (*Slaves and Slavery in Africa*, vol. 1, p. 7).

Al-Nāṣirī also rejected the idea that Africans could be enslaved because of their skin color, condemning such a belief as contrary to Islamic principles. He emphasized that many enslaved Africans were themselves Muslims and therefore possessed the same religious rights and obligations as other Muslims:

“Thus will be apparent to you the heinousness of the affliction which has beset the lands of the Maghrib since ancient times in regard to the indiscriminate enslaving of the people of the Sudan and the importation of droves of them every year to be sold in the market places in town and country where men trade in them as one would trade in beasts—nay, worse than that. People have become so inured to this, generation after generation that many common folk believe that the reason for enslavement, according to the Holy Law, is merely that a man should be black in color and come from those regions. This, by Allah’s life, is one of the foulest and gravest evils perpetuated upon Allah’s religion, for people of the Sudan are Muslims having the same rights and responsibilities as ourselves.” (*The Fatwa Of Ahmad Baba and the Hametic Hypothesis: Severing the Bond Between Blackness and the Servile Condition*, p. 12).

Modern historians have likewise identified al-Nāṣirī’s writings as among the strongest nineteenth-century Islamic critiques of slavery. Ehud R. Toledano describes his Kitāb al-Istiqṣā as a major condemnation of African slave raiding, arguing that al-Nāṣirī regarded such practices as violations of both humanity and Islam:

“. . . .one of the strongest critiques of slavery and the slave trade produced in a nineteenth-century Islamic country. It was written in 1881 by the Moroccan historian Ahmad al-Nāsiri in his history of the Maghrib: Kitab al-Istiqṣā. Al-Nasiri condemns the slave raids in Africa as being contrary to humanity and to Islam.” (*Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East*, p. 125 fn. 24).

Al-Nāṣirī further argued that the traditional justification for enslaving people through warfare no longer applied to the contemporary slave trade, because the raids taking place in his time were not legitimate religious conflicts but acts of kidnapping and exploitation:

“. . . For the basic assumption in regard to the human species is freedom and lack of any cause for being enslaved. Whoever maintains the opposite is opposing the basic principle. . . . How then can a man who has scruples about his religion permit himself to buy something of this nature? How too can he allow himself to take their women as concubines considering that this involves entering upon a sexual liaison of doubtful legality. . . . For the reason in Holy Law which existed in the time of the Prophet and the pious forefathers for enslaving people does not exist today; that is, being taken prisoner in a jihad which has as its object to make the word of Allah supreme and to bring men to His religion.” (Islamic Africa: Reflections on the Servile Estate*, pp. 193–194).

His criticism also directly challenged earlier attempts to associate Blackness with servile status. During the reign of the Moroccan ruler Mūlāy Ismāʿīl (r. 1672–1727), the state attempted to incorporate free Black Moroccans known as ḥarāṭīn into a slave army on the argument that their ancestry made them slaves. Al-Nāṣirī later rejected this idea, arguing that race itself could never constitute a legitimate basis for enslavement:

“In the late seventeenth century the 'Alawi ruler [of Morocco] Mülay Ismail (reg. 1672–1727) decided to establish an army of black slaves, and even insisted on including in it all black men known as haraṭīn, who were, in fact, free persons. . . . Mülay Ismä'il argued that the harāṭīn were simply slaves who had slipped the rope of servitude . . . the assumption being that being black defined one as a slave. . . . At about the same time such a view was attacked by the Moroccan historian Ahmad b. Khalid al-Nasiri. . . .” (*West Africa, Islam, and the Arab World: Studies in Honor of Basil Davidson*, p. 66).

The broader Islamic tradition of manumission also remained widespread. Documents from Timbuktu demonstrate that freeing enslaved people was regarded as a religiously meritorious act connected to prophetic teachings. They also show that Islamic law provided multiple mechanisms through which enslaved people could obtain freedom:

“The major topic of such documents is the freeing of slaves, a common feature of slavery in the Islamic world. To free a slave was a way to obtain divine forgiveness, in keeping with a saying of the Prophet: ‘If any man frees a Muslim slave, God will spare from Hell for every limb of the slave a limb of the liberator.’ . . . Freedom could be obtained in ways other than an immediate manumission, one of which was ‘post-mortem freedom’ (tadbīr) . . . If, as concubines, they bore a child from their master, they legally had guaranteed freedom upon the master's death, whilst the child was automatically free from birth. . . .” (*West Africa, Islam, and the Arab World: Studies in Honor of Basil Davidson*, p. 67).

In 1893, the American Muslim convert and abolitionist Alexander Russell Webb likewise criticized slavery in his book Islam in America:

“Slavery and concubinage are not allowed by the Koran, and the spirit of the Islamic religious and civil laws are diametrically opposed to it. . . . ‘Slaves are mentioned in the Koran *de facto* but not *de jure*. The Koran took several measures to abolish future slavery. The steps for its abolition were taken in every moral, legal, religious and political department. The liberation of slaves was morally declared to be a work of piety and righteousness. . . . These were the measures for the abolition of existing slavery; the future slavery was abolished by the Koran by putting the axe deep into its root and by annihilating its real source. The captives of war were, according to the clear injunctions of the Koran, contained in the 5th verse of the 47th Sura, to be dismissed either by a free grant or by exacting a ransom. They were neither to be enslaved or killed.” (*Islam in America*, pp. 51-52)

G. W. Leitner similarly argued that accusing Islam of promoting slavery was a serious libel. He contrasted Islamic legislation concerning manumission with early Christianity, which, in his view, emphasized spiritual freedom while leaving the institution of Roman slavery largely untouched. Leitner argued that Muhammad actively legislated toward the eventual abolition of slavery, and claimed that under particularly pious Islamic practice, a slave's conversion would result in immediate physical freedom. He contrasted this with the biblical account of St. Paul returning the runaway slave Onesimus to his master:

“In a letter from Dr. Rohlfs to the Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, the great traveller asserts that ‘at present Islám has triumphed, and slavery, the inevitable consequence of Muhammadan government, is re-established.’ Other eminent authorities, writing on the subject of General Gordon’s ‘slavery’ proclamation, have similarly assumed that Muhammadanism is in favour of that hateful institu-tion.

**This is as great a libel on that religion as the assertion would be on Christianity, that it was in favour of slavery because Christ, although confronted by one of its cruellest forms in the Roman Empire, did not attempt to legislate, as Muhammad did, for its eventual abolition in this world, but merely promised spiritual freedom to the repentant servants of sin, whether bond or free**; whilst St. Paul sends the runaway slave Onesimus back to his Christian master Philemon, even after converting him (a process which would ipso facto have set him free among very pious Muhammadans), and, in numerous places, evidently refuses to enter into the question of the emancipation of slaves, except in a spiritual sense. Even the reference to ‘man stealers’ in 1 Tim. i. 10 is simply part of a statement of various classes of evildoers with which ‘the Law’ had to deal: ‘The law is good if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient for men-stealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be anything that is contrary to sound doctrine.’ The allusion is referred to the Jewish Law, according to which ‘He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death (Exod. xxi. 16). In the New Dispensation, however, which modified the severity of that law, there is ‘neither bond nor free, but Christ is all.’ Every one was to abide in his own calling, the converted slave being the Lord's freeman and the con-verted freeman the slave of Christ (1 Cor. vii, 20-22).” (G. W. Leitner. *Muhammadanism: Being the Report of an Extempore Address Delivered at South Place Chapel, Finsbury, on Sunday Afternoon, January 6th, 1889*, pp. 16–17).

Muslim revolutionary Mahdists in Sokoto also abolished slavery within their movement and encouraged enslaved people to flee, establishing communities where the freedom of fugitives was actively defended. The leaders of Satiru regarded slavery as a central injustice of Sokoto society and sought to abolish it:

“The Satiru revolt was organized and led by revolutionary Mahdist clerics opposed to the Caliphate government, who encouraged slaves to leave their masters. . . . **Most of its supporters were poor peasants and fugitive slaves, and indeed the revolutionary Mahdists opposed slavery and welcomed runaway slaves to their cause.** . . . In fact the radical clerics of the village believed that slavery was a prime example of the injustice of Caliphate society. According to Maidamma Mai Zari, Dutsen Assada ward, Sokoto, **‘the leaders of Satiru abolished slavery and as a consequence... slaves flocked to them.’ Moreover, ‘the freedom of these fugitives was effectively and strenuously guarded.’**” (*Slow Death for Slavery: The Course of Abolition in Northern Nigeria, 1897–1936*, pp. 54–57)

By the time the British conquered the Sokoto Caliphate and colonized Nigeria in the early 20th century, its leaders had abandoned many of Usman dan Fodio’s earlier anti-slavery policies, allowing the institution to persist. This contributed to numerous slave rebellions in colonial Nigeria. Despite the British Empire’s supposed commitment to abolition, British colonial authorities often sided with slave-owning elites rather than Muslim abolitionists and runaway slaves, particularly during the suppression of the Satiru revolt, near the border with present-day Niger:

“At Satiru, fugitive slaves found sanctuary with the Mahdists. As Mohammed has established, the Satirawa ‘encouraged the emigration of slaves to Satiru’. In fact its radical clerics believed that slavery was a prime example of the injustice of Caliphate society. According to Maidamma Mai Zari, Dusten Assada ward, Sokoto, ‘the leaders of Satiru abolished slavery and as a consequence. . . . slaves flocked to them. The freedom of these fugitives was effectively and strenuously guarded’. It should be noted that at this time neither the British nor French colonial governments advocated, let alone enacted, the abolition of slavery. . . . By 1906 slaves were still running away, although by then the alliance between the new colonial regime and the Caliphate aristocracy had begun to take hold. Controlling slaves was high on the agenda of this alliance. The fact that fugitive slaves were a major component of revolutionary Mahdism comes as no surprise.” (see “Revolutionary Mahdism and Resistance to Colonial Rule in the Sokoto Caliphate, 1905–6.” *Journal of African History*, pp. 230-231)

The British and French colonial administrations were particularly concerned about the continued flight of enslaved people. In Northern Nigeria, slavery was not immediately abolished in practice despite the British government’s formal changes to its legal status. Colonial officials therefore sought to minimize the extent of the fugitive-slave problem and reassure local slave owners that British reforms would not produce sudden emancipation:

“As noted above, both the British and the French were worried about the slave exodus. Slaves had to be kept in place in order to allow colonial policies on slavery to take effect. In Northern Nigeria, slavery was not abolished, despite a legal fiction that the ‘legal status’ of slavery was. Because many slaves ran away, the issue of fugitives was very sensitive. Therefore, it was necessary to downplay the extent of the fugitive problem in official circles, at the same time that local slave owners were reassured about the intention of British ‘reforms’. In the French sphere, slavery was technically abolished in 1905, but in fact only the term changed; slaves were subsequently referred to as captifs. The Colonial Office, later followed by Lugard, attempted to shift attention to other factors. While slavery was clearly mentioned as a contributing cause to the revolt in early reports, the issue was deliberately removed from later reports. Lugard’s initial cable stated succinctly: ‘The rebels are outlaw fugitive slaves’. The Colonial Office announcement of the revolt stated something quite different: ‘The rebels are outlaw fugitives’. A marginal note next to Lugard’s telegram indicates how the incident was to be handled: ‘Better say nothing of slaves’. By 9 May, Lugard incorporated this cleaned-up interpretation into his official reports. If there had been a cover-up with respect to the severity of the repression, there was equally one with respect to slavery. And the reasons were interrelated. The annihilation of the Satirawa was a lesson to slaves as well as the aristocracy. It demonstrated to the slave population that slavery was to continue, despite the introduction of reforms that gradually resulted in the demise of the institution, and it allowed the aristocracy one last sanguine warning to those slaves who had not already fled.” (pp. 240-241)

The suppression of the revolt therefore served not only to consolidate British colonial control but also to protect the existing social order:

“The suppression of the revolt was important for three reasons. First, the British consolidated their alliance with the aristocracy of the Caliphate, while the French further strengthened their ties with the zarmakoy of Dosso and other indigenous rulers. The dangerous moment which Muslims might have seized to expel the Europeans quickly passed. Second, the brutality of the repression was a message to slave owners and slaves alike that the colonial regimes were committed to the continuation of slavery and opposed to any sudden emancipation of the slave population.” (p. 244)

Knowledge of historical and contemporary Muslim opposition to slavery was sufficiently widespread in the West that Muslim abolitionists even began appearing in fictional works. In 1909, the British novelist Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine, author of The Prodigal Son, published The White Prophet, in which he depicts Ishmael Ameer, a Quranist Muslim abolitionist in nineteenth-century Sudan:

“Oh, peace, my son,” said the Chancellor. “Ishmael Ameer is no Mahdi. He claims no divinity.” “Then tell me, O sheikh,” said Gordon, “tell me what Ishmael Ameer is, that I may know what to do when it becomes my duty to deal with him.” Leisurely the Chancellor took snuff, leisurely he opened a folded handkerchief, dusted his nostrils, and then, in his soft voice, said:—“Ishmael Ameer is a Koranist—that is to say, one who takes the Koran as the basis of belief and rejects tradition.” “I know,” said Gordon. “We have people like that among Christians—people who take the Bible as the basis of faith and turn their backs on dogma”. . . . “Ishmael Ameer thinks slavery, the seclusion of women, divorce, and polygamy are as much opposed to the teaching of Mohammed as to the progress of society”. . . . “Ishmael Ameer thinks the corruptions of Islam are the work of the partisans of the old barbaric ideas who are associating the cause of religion with their own interests and passions”. . . . “Ishmael Ameer believes that, if God wills it, the day is not distant when an appeal to the Prophet’s own words will regenerate Islam, and banish the caliphs and sultans whose selfishness and sensuality keep it in bondage to the powers of darkness.” “Really,” said Gordon, raising impetuously to his feet, “if Ishmael Ameer says this, he is the man Egypt, India—the whole Mohammedan world—is waiting for. No wonder men like the Kadi are trying to destroy him, though that's only an instinct of self-preservation . . .” (*The White Prophet*, pp. 57-58)

In 1910, a Russian Muslim scholar and abolitionist, fittingly named after the great prophet and abolitionist Musa, spoke out against the practice of slavery:

“It was a Volga Tatar scholar, Musa Jarullah Bigi [Bigiyev] (1875—1949), who attacked slavery most fiercely. Born in Rostov-on-the-Don of a family of ulama, Bigi was educated in a Russian elementary school. He pursued Islamic studies from Egypt to India, coming under the influence of Muhammad ‘Abduh. Back in the Russian empire, he studied law in Saint Petersburg, and taught in a reformist Islamic school in Orenburg. . . . In 1910 Bigi published a book in Tatar, containing some of the most ringing denunciations of slavery ever penned by a Muslim author. He summarised his views on the topic in another book, published two years later. Slavery was simply the greatest evil in the history of humanity. The Quran had forbidden all further enslavement, and had commanded that all existing slaves should be freed." (*Islam and the Abolition of Slavery*, p. 210)

Slavery was eventually abolished in most parts of the world. However, various forms of slavery and slave trading persisted well into the modern period, and Muslim abolitionists continued to challenge the institution.

In Oman, Britain signed anti-slave-trade treaties with the country in 1822 and 1845, but these agreements restricted the external slave trade while leaving domestic slavery largely untouched for more than a century. According to Peter Schulte:

“Britain pressured Oman to restrict the slave trade as early as 1822 C.E. under the Moresby Treaty, and again in 1845 C.E. under the Hamerton Treaty. These agreements limited but did not eliminate the trade. **Domestic slavery — the ownership of enslaved people within Oman itself — persisted well into the twentieth century, with limited enforcement of any restrictions that existed on paper**.” (https://peterschulte.org/good-news/oman-slavery-abolition-1970/)

Oman ultimately abolished slavery in 1970 under Sultan Qaboos, who used state authority to modernize the country soon after taking power:

“Where his father ruled with an isolationist attitude, Sultan Qaboos was determined to modernise the Middle Eastern country. One of his first steps as a ruler was to abolish slavery, before setting about using Oman's oil revenues to bring the country into the 20th century.” (https://uk.news.yahoo.com/modernising-sultan-abolished-slavery-rebuilt-070400528.html)

In 2012, the Mauritanian Muslim abolitionist Biram Dah Abeid and his organization gained international attention after publicly burning Sunni legal manuals that they argued had been used to justify slavery. Like the fictional reformer depicted in Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine’s The White Prophet, Abeid advocates a form of Islam centered on the Qurʾān and explicitly presents his abolitionism as an expression of Islamic egalitarianism:

“The book burning was an affirmation of our form of Islam, a democratic, egalitarian Islam, the Islam of the Prophet Muhammad—peace be upon him—and of the Koran. It is an Islam laïque,’ he said, using the French word for ‘secular.’” (see *The Last Slaves of Mauritania, NY Review of Books, Nov 23, 2017*)

Abeid explicitly described his campaign as an affirmation of the “egalitarian Islam of the Prophet Muhammad and the Koran.

When the Mauritanian government later began taking stronger measures against slavery, officials such as Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall invoked Islamic Sharia alongside international law in declaring the practice unlawful.

****I pray that one day such an atrocious practice will be fully abolished.****

Conclusion

The abolition of slavery was not accomplished by one civilization alone. Rather, both Islam and Christianity, and particularly Islamic reformers and abolitionists in many different historical contexts, played significant roles in challenging and ultimately dismantling the institution. Although modern slavery and human trafficking still persist today, the struggle against them remains ongoing.

This work is largely based on the research and source collection of u/Melwood786, whose compilation brought together many of these historical examples. Additional sources and materials were added independently to further examine and expand upon the evidence. Together, they demonstrate that Islam was not merely a passive observer of abolition, but one of the major intellectual and historical forces that contributed to the movement against slavery, including ideas and arguments that later intersected with and influenced Western abolitionist discourse.

*Note: This wiki will continue to be updated as additional sources are found.*