HIME 5053
Slavery in the Middle East and Ottoman Empire
Course Description
This course explores the practice of slavery in its various forms in the Middle East and North Africa from pre-Islamic times through the abolition of the slave trade in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. Topics include: sources of slaves and the slave trade; manumission; the social and legal position of slaves in Islamic societies; the slave-soldier phenomenon; captivity and ransom; gender and race; and the movement towards abolition.