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The Balkan slave trade was the trade in slaves from the Balkans via Venetian slave traders across the Adriatic and Aegean Seas to Italy, Spain and the Islamic Middle East, from the 7th-century Early Middle Ages until the mid-15th century. The Balkan slave trade was one of the main routes of European Saqaliba-slaves to the Islamic Middle East, alongside the Prague slave trade in the West, and the Black Sea slave trade, the Khazar slave trade and the Bukhara slave trade in the East.
History
Background
During the Middle Ages, informal slave zones were formed alongside religious borders. Both Christians and Muslims banned the enslavement of people of their own faith, but both approved of the enslavement of people of a different faith.[1]
The slave trade thus organized alongside religious principles. While Christians did not enslave Christians, and Muslims did not enslave Muslims, both did allow the enslavement of people they regarded to be heretics, which allowed Catholic Christians to enslave Orthodox Christians, and Sunni Muslims to enslave Shia Muslims.[2]
The slave trade was founded upon the fact that the Balkans was a religious border zone between at first pagan and Christian, and later Catholic and Orthodox Christian lands. Since the custom at the time did not approve of enslaving people of the same religion, in combination with the fact that the Balkans was for a long time politically decentralized and unstable, this factor made the Balkans a fertile target for slave trade, when war captives were sold by their enemies to Venetian slave traders at the coasts.
The most targeted category of the slave trade were the Bosnians, since they were adherents of Bogomilism, a faith which was not acknowledged as Christianity and therefore made them legitimate targets of slavery in Catholic as well as Orthodox Europe.[3]
Slave market
The Balkan slave trade was, alongside the Black Sea slave trade, one of the two main slave supply sources of future Mamluk soldiers to the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.[4] A smaller number of slaves were sold in Italy and Spain as enslaved domestic servants, called ancillae.
The end
The Venetian slave trade from the Balkans gradually ended in parallel with the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottoman Empire during the 15th century. The slave trade from the Balkans was ended as a separate slave trade and was overtaken by the Ottomans and incorporated into the Ottoman slave trade,[5] which in the Balkans was connected to the Crimean slave trade.
Venetian slave traders were not able to compete with Ottoman-Crimean competition. After this, they acquired a smaller number of slaves from Ottoman slave traders via the Trans-Saharan slave trade. The Venetian slave trade was however soon supplanted in Europe by the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th century.
See also
References
- ^ Slavery in the Black Sea Region, C.900–1900: Forms of Unfreedom at the Intersection Between Christianity and Islam. (2021). Nederländerna: Brill. 5
- ^ Korpela, J. (2018). Slaves from the North: Finns and Karelians in the East European Slave Trade, 900–1600. Nederländerna: Brill. 242
- ^ Omerovic, Asmin. Between Islam, Christianity, and Bogomil Heresy: The Slave Trade in the Bosnian Slaving Zone, 1280–1464
- ^ The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500–AD 1420. (2021). (n.p.): Cambridge University Press. pp. 117–120
- ^ The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500–AD 1420. (2021). (n.p.): Cambridge University Press. 117-120
This page was last edited on 7 April 2024, at 12:14