Slavery existed in the territory of the modern state of Iraq until the 1920s. The are later to become the modern state of Iraq was a center of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258), the are was a major slave trade destination, and slaves were imported to Iraq from the East along the Volga trade route, from the West via the Red Sea slave trade, and from the South from the Indian Ocean slave trade.
Under the First World War, Ottoman Iraq came under rulership of the British, who disliked slavery. Slavery was formally abolished in Iraq in 1924. Iraq was the first Gulf state, in which slavery was banned.
In the 21st-century, Islamic terrorists again practiced slavery in areas under their control in Syria and Iraq.
History
Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258)
Slave trade
The slave trade had been big also during the Umayyad Caliphate, but then, it had been fueled by war captives and people enslaved as tax levy, but during the Abbasid Caliphate the slave trade was supplanted by people bought through commercial slave trade provided for the slave markets in Basra, Baghdad and Samarra.
Slaves were transported in the 9th-century from the Red Sea slave trade to Jeddah, Mecca and Medina, and by caravan over the desert to Baghdad; as well as via the Indian Ocean slave trade by boat through the Persian Gulf to Ras al Khymah, Dubai, Bandrar Abbas, Bushine and Basra.
A third slave trade route was the Volga trade route, in which enslaved Europeans were sold in Russia and shipped down to Baghdad via Persia and the Samanid Empire.
Function and conditions
Female slaves
Female slaves were primarily used as either domestic servants, or as concubines (sex slaves), while male slaves were used in a number of tasks.
The slave trade in the Muslim world focused on women for used of domestic servants and sex slaves. Women were trafficked to the royal Abbasid harem from Europe via the Volga trade route, as well as from Africa and Asia. The royal harem was used as a role model for the harems of other wealthy men. Women from Europe, Central Asia, Asia and Africa was used as sex slaves and domestic servants within the royal and the lesser harems.
Male slaves
The use of male slaves were far more varied. Since eunuchs lacked family of their own and was unable to have children, they were considered highly thrustworthy, and used as harem guards, as guards at mosques and holy sites, as administrators and family stewards.
Slave laborers were used in cash-crop production, in the silk textile industry, in salt production and land reclamation, in cotton and sugar production especially in the area of the big slave market center of Basra. Slave laborers were kept in big work camps, and often had to be replaced by new slaves through the slave trade, since the marschlands in Mesopotamia caused slaves to die in large numbers from malaria, and slaves were not allowed to marry or have children. Around 15,000 slaves were estimated to be kept in the Basra area at any given time, and that a quarter of the labor force consisted of slave labor. Contemporary writers in the late 9th-century estimated that there were around 300.000 slaves in Iraq. The harsch condition resulted in a big slave rebellion known as the Zanj Rebellion, which lasted between 869 and 883.
From the early 9th-century, slaves, specifically Turkish slaves, were also employed as slave soldiers.
Thousands and possibly millions of Africans, Berbers, Turks, and Europeans from Northeastern Europe (saqaliba) are estimated to have been enslaved in this time period.
Ottoman Iraq (1534–1920)
Slave trade
During the 19th-century, the slave route from Africa to Ottoman Iraq from the East coast of Africa via the Indian Ocean slave trade and the Red Sea slave trade via the Persian Gulf and by caravans over the desert respectively.
In 1847, the British consulate in Baghdad reported: The average import of slaves into Bussorah is 2000 head - in some years the numbers have reached 3000, but for the year 1836, owing, it is supposed, to the discouragement which the traffic has sustained from the iman of Muscat, no more than 1000 slaves were imported. [...] Of the slaves imported, one half is usually sent to the Muntefick town on the Euphrates, named Sook-ess-Shookh, from whence they are pread all over Southern Mesopotamia, and Eastern Syria; a quarter are exported directly to Bahgdad and the remainder are disposed of in the Bussorah Market.