Bloodlines and Race Essay

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Bloodlines and Race

Moslem communities and Moslem slave-holders in particular, have often been conceived as color-blind. Lewis claims this is not so, why? What evidence can he bring to bear?

Bernard Lewis is a renowned historian scholar, with many great, detailed researches on his record. As a born Jew, Lewis's obvious interest was towards the Middle East civilization and its history, thus he did his PhD in the history of Islam and has a series of highly acclaimed academic works upon the Ottoman Empire. Amongst his several other books, there is Race and Slavery in the Middle East: a Historical Enquiry, which was written in 1990. In this book, Lewis provided a detailed research upon the concept and practice of slavery in Islam, since its innovation till its abolition. He has noted several facts which were never mentioned before, and used Islamic writings and pictorial representations as basis. He quoted several Muslim scholars to prove his analysis that although, Islam as a religion greatly condemned the practice of slavery, yet this command of the Holy Quran is not much followed by the Muslims of later times. It was just that the free Muslims cannot be made the slaves, whether he/she is of any race or color; all other non-believers who were usually taken as the prisoners of wars can be made slaves.

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Muslims traded slaves for a long time and it included every race or color, like white Turks or black Negros, but like other similar concepts, Muslims too preferred whites over blacks and treated them more humbly. Whites were of high cost as compare to blacks, and it was a common belief that blacks have no intelligence and thus are destined for slavery. Lewis quoted Jahiz and Ibrahim al Mawsili that white females were more expensive as they were considered brighter. Also, white slaves were assigned light domestic work while the blacks carried heavy burdens. Those slaves who were imported from east Africa lived a miserable life, they had very less to eat and a lot of work to do. Hence overall, the view that Muslim slave holders do not account for color for their slaves is not a fact, instead Muslims considered color and skin while trading the slaves and used white slaves as their entertainment while blacks as nothing but a two hand animal to do work for them (Lewis 1990).….....

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