Masters and Mamluks: Islam’s Slave Soldiers

‘I see that those on my side have been routed. I fear they will abandon me. I do not expect them to return. I have decided to dismount and fight by myself, until God decrees what He wants. Whoever of you wishes to depart, let him depart. By God, I would rather that you survive than that you perish and be destroyed!’ They replied: ‘Then we would be treating you unjustly, by God! You freed us from slavery, raised us up from humiliation, enriched us after we were poor and then we abandon you in this condition! No, we will advance before you and die beside the stirrup of your horse. May God curse this world and life after your death!’ Then they dismounted, hamstrung their horses, and attacked.

This is an excerpt from al-Tabari’s universal history describing the exchange between an emir (commander) and his military slaves and freedmen after the tide of battle had turned against them during the Abbasid civil war (811-819). The emir’s forces had fled and he was left only with his slaves, who refused to abandon their master even though he urged them to save themselves. This exchange exemplifies the loyalty of military slaves and freedmen, a characteristic that made them the most elite and reliable soldiers of the medieval and early modern Muslim world.

Over a period of almost 1,000 years, military slaves and the institution of military slavery dominated premodern Muslim polities. From their rise to prominence in the early ninth century under the Abbasid caliph al-Mutasim (r. 833-842) to the disbandment of the Ottoman janissary corps in 1826, military slaves formed the elite core and backbone of almost every Muslim army. Military slaves also rose to positions of power that enabled them to dominate the politics, economics and cultures of the societies in which they lived.

The beginning of a tradition

During the early period of the Islamic empire, following the Prophet’s death in 630, armies were primarily composed of Arab warriors, with slaves and freedmen (often referred to as mawali or clients) serving mainly as bodyguards and retainers of the caliphs and commanders.

The situation changed with the overthrow of the Umayyads by the Abbasid revolution in 750. Mawali, especially Iranians, started to play a bigger role in both the army and the administration. But it was not until the end of the Abbasid civil war between the sons of the caliph Harun al-Rashid, who died in 809, that the caliphate’s military was fully transformed, with a professional standing army of slave soldiers at its core. Al-Mamun, the victor in the civil war, had depended on a versatile and mobile cavalry army of eastern Iranians and Turks that defeated the much larger forces mustered against him by his brother, al-Amin.

Al-Mutasim, al-Mamun’s other brother and successor, took things further and reformed the military during his reign. Even before his ascent to the throne, al-Mutasim created a private army primarily of Turkic slaves purchased from the Samanids, a semi-autonomous Iranian dynasty that ruled the eastern parts of the caliphate. The Samanids were in direct contact with the Turks who inhabited the steppe. The two sides often raided one another, resulting in large numbers of captive Turks entering the caliphate. Upon his accession in 833, al-Mutasim disbanded the old army, which had been dominated by the Arabs and Iranians, and removed them from the imperial payroll, relegating them to the role of auxiliaries. He replaced these troops with his Turkic slave soldiers, vassals from eastern Iran and mercenaries.

Why? The need for reliable, loyal and skilled soldiers is one of many reasons that the rulers of the Muslim world adopted military slavery. The loyalties of the warriors who formed the early Muslim armies often lay with their tribes or the regions from which they hailed. Often, these men did not wish to leave their homes, land and families to go on long and distant campaigns. Furthermore, four major civil wars were fought during the first two centuries of Islam, which threatened to split the Muslim world along political, regional, tribal, factional and, later, sectarian lines. In these conflicts, acts of treachery and betrayal were common. It was during the civil war between his brothers, al-Amin and al-Mamun, that al-Mutasim witnessed first-hand how his older brother al-Amin was abandoned by his forces when the tide turned against him. Recruiting and training slave soldiers with tight bonds of solidarity to the master and to one another was the solution to this problem.

Slave soldiers were usually from beyond the boundaries of the caliphate. They were either prisoners of war or purchased from traders, and many were acquired at a young age. They were educated, raised and trained in their patron’s household and became members of his family. As a result, strong bonds of loyalty were formed between the slaves and their master, and among the slaves themselves. Being foreigners, the slaves looked to their master for their pay, rewards and wellbeing; the master depended on his slaves to protect him and keep him in power.

Imprisoned or purchased

By the late ninth century, the caliphs had lost much of their power. Although the caliphate still existed, it had fractured into fragments ruled by autonomous dynasties. But these polities modelled their armies on the caliphate’s military, recruiting military slaves as elite soldiers on whom they depended.

They came from varied ethnic backgrounds and included Turks, Greeks, Slavs, Africans and Mongols, their origins and numbers varying depending on their proximity. North African dynasties had larger numbers of African slave soldiers who were brought across the Sahara and Slavic slave soldiers, referred to as saqaliba, who were purchased from Frankish and Italian slave merchants from across the Mediterranean and the Iberian frontier. There were large numbers of saqaliba in Islamic Spain, and East Africans and Abyssinians found their way into the militaries of Syria and Iraq through the slave trade across the Red Sea and Egypt. Large numbers of Turks and others from the steppes of Inner Eurasia filled the ranks of the armies of the dynasties that ruled the region spanning Central Asia to Egypt. By the 16th century, the main sources of military slaves for the two most powerful Muslim empires, the Ottomans and the Safavids, were the Balkans and Georgia, respectively.

Regardless of geographic proximity, most medieval Islamic polities sought to acquire Turkic slave soldiers. During the Middle Ages the Turks were seen as the most martial of all peoples and became the elite soldiers of most Muslim armies. They were considered a tough and hardy martial people, uncorrupted by civilisation and urban life. Hailing from the Altai region, Turkic tribes inhabited large portions of the Inner Eurasian steppes, which brought them into direct contact with the Muslims on their northern and eastern frontiers. These pastoralist nomads had to survive in harsh environments; their tribes raided one another for livestock and competed for grazing grounds. They also raided and fought the sedentary peoples around them. Turkic children learned to ride horses and use weapons, specifically the bow. As slave soldiers in the medieval Muslim world, in which mounted warriors dominated the battlefield, the Turks, therefore, served as elite heavy cavalry, forming the dominant strike force of most Muslim dynasties until the rise of the Ottomans and the creation of their elite janissary corps, composed of infantrymen.

The Islamic institution of military slavery produced some of the period’s best soldiers. Upon being purchased, often at high prices, the slaves were attached to their master’s household. They underwent years of education and rigorous training, which included riding horses as individuals and in grouped formations, archery, using melee weapons, such as swords, lances, maces, daggers and axes, both on foot and on horseback, and wrestling on horseback. The acquisition and training of military slaves was expensive and involved investment in time. Most often it was only the ruling elite that could afford to recruit them in large numbers. Often, the slaves were emancipated upon the completion of their military training.

Vocabulary of slaves

There were several terms designating various types of slaves. One of the earliest, used between the ninth and 12th centuries, was ghulam, meaning ‘boy’ or ‘youth’. This is not surprising, because a large number of the slave soldiers were either captured or purchased when they were still young boys. This term was eventually replaced, by the late 12th and early 13th centuries, with mamluk, ‘one who is owned’.

Both of these terms refer to a specific group of military slaves who were fair-skinned and fought on horseback. The terms abd, abid and sudan all refer to African slave soldiers, who were regarded as inferior to their mamluk counterparts. The saqaliba were military slaves of mainly Slavic origin, who served the Umayyad caliphate of Islamic Spain and some of the North African polities. The term kul was used in the Ottoman period to refer to the sultan’s slaves and means ‘slave’ or ‘servant’. Finally, kapi-kulu, meaning ‘slaves of the Porte’, referred to the household troops that formed the Ottoman sultans’ standing army and included the janissary infantry corps.

Although the system of training military slaves on a grand scale was unique to the Muslim world, there were Iranian and central Asian practices that may have provided the foundation upon which the Muslims built. The Sogdians, an Iranian people who lived between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya Rivers in Central Asia (in modern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), were heavily engaged in trade with both the east and the west. They gathered children and trained them as military slaves to defend their city states and protect their caravans. The Sasanians, the last great Iranian empire before the Islamic conquests, also enlisted prisoners of war and slaves into their military, whom they settled on their frontier regions, which they defended in exchange for land and pay. Incidentally, it was the Samanids, a semi-independent Iranian dynasty ruling the eastern parts of the caliphate (including Sogdia), who first created a corps of Turkic slave soldiers. It may have been their sojourn in the east during the Abbasid Civil War that prompted both al-Mamun and al-Mutasim to adopt this tradition of training and using slave soldiers.

What made Islamic military slavery different was its institutionalisation, the slaves’ elite status within society, and their proximity to, and influence on, the central ruling powers. There were other societies that used slaves for war during various eras. The Spartans sometimes mobilised the Helots, their servile population, for war. Herodotus claims that there were Helots among the Greek casualties of Thermopylae and that at the Battle of Plataea every one of the 5,000 Spartan hoplites was accompanied by seven lightly armed Helots. The Romans enlisted large numbers of slaves to replenish the ranks of their legions after suffering several defeats by Hannibal during the Second Punic War. The European colonial powers also recruited slaves in their colonies during times of war in the Americas and Africa. Slaves also participated in the fighting during the American War of Independence and the Civil War. But in the Muslim world, slave soldiers formed socio-military elites and, in some cases, even rose to form the ruling class. Slaves were enlisted into the military in other societies during emergencies, such as civil wars and after military defeats that left the ranks of the regular army depleted, or when there was a shortage of manpower but they had little or no social standing or influence.

Wealth and social mobility 

Unlike slaves in other societies, military slaves were paid handsomely for their services. They received stipends and salaries from the central treasury. Military slavery was also one of the means through which one could acquire upward social mobility in an age when climbing the social ladder was rare. The most intelligent, promising, loyal, brave and capable military slaves were promoted to become officers and generals in the army, to government posts and to positions in the ruler’s household and inner circle. Posts such as royal arms bearer, cup bearer, holder of the royal inkwell, keeper of the hunting dogs, stable master, master of the hunt and chamberlain may not seem impressive, but they were all held by senior officers.

Such positions indicated the slaves’ proximity to the master, the intimate relationship they shared and the trust that the patron had for the men who served him.

Most of the Ottoman viziers were the brightest cadets selected from among the boys collected for the janissary corps. Slave soldiers who were promoted to become officers in the army and government officials became wealthy and powerful. In addition to receiving their pay they were often given parcels of land from which they drew an income. They amassed huge amounts of wealth in the form of gold, land, palaces, horses and livestock. These commanders, who had started their careers as slaves, then recruited slave soldiers of their own. Some slave generals grew so powerful that they were able to challenge their masters and, in some cases, overthrow them and establish empires and dynasties of their own.

There are several examples of slave soldiers turning on their masters. In 861 the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil was murdered by his Turkic guards while drinking with some of his companions. The Turks were members of the army that his father, al Mutasim, had created. In the east, Alp Tegin, a Turkic slave of the Samanids, had grown too powerful for his master’s comfort. When the Samanid prince divested him of his rank and possessions and sent an army to arrest him in 962, Alp Tegin fought his master and defeated the force sent against him. He then fled to and conquered the city of Ghazna (in modern Afghanistan) with his own slave soldiers. From there he and his successors created the Ghaznavid Empire (977-1163) that eventually swallowed up the domains of their former masters.

Similarly, in 868 Ahmad ibn Tulun, a member of the Abbasids’ Turkish guard, was sent to Egypt as its governor, but he took complete control of the treasury and created a new army that was loyal to him. He and his descendants managed to maintain their independence until 905. With the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba in Islamic Spain in 1031, several successor states emerged, known as the Taifa. A number of these principalities were established and ruled by the saqaliba and included the Taifas of Valencia, Denia and Almeria.

Perhaps the best example of military slaves in power is the Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and Syria, established in 1250, which lasted until 1517. The last effective Ayyubid sultan, al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub, created a new army composed primarily of mamluks after he rose to power. He had previously been betrayed by his troops during his struggle with other family members for the throne and it was only his mamluks who remained loyal to him. He treated them well, paying them handsomely and promoting many to high positions. When he died, his successor, Turanshah, did not share his father’s affection and he made it clear that he was going to disband them and have their leaders killed. Upon learning of the new sultan’s intentions, the mamluks killed him and established their own regime, rather than returning to their homelands. They continued to refer to themselves as mamluks, which they considered more honourable than being a mere freeborn subject of the caliph.

Loyalty paradox

Although the institution of military slavery produced excellent and loyal elite soldiers it had its weaknesses. Loyalty did not necessarily pass on to a ruler’s successor, who was sometimes deposed and killed. Successors who managed to establish themselves on the throne often purged their predecessor’s slaves, replacing them with their own. The Ottoman case was exceptional, because the army was loyal to the dynasty and not to individual sultans. Riots, mutinies and rebellions were common, the main trigger being late or unforthcoming pay or mistreatment.

Mardavij ibn Ziyar, a Northern Iranian prince, soldier of fortune and the founder of the Ziyard dynasty, for example, was murdered by his Turkish slave soldiers due to his mistreatment of them. Similarly, the great Mamluk emir, Yalbugha al-Umari, was murdered at the peak of his power in 1366 because of his harshness and the severe punishments he meted out to those who fell short of his expectations.

Another weakness of the institution of military slavery was manpower and costs. That most military slaves were foreigners, as well as the time and money it took to train them, made them valuable and costly assets which were difficult to replace. Military slaves got married and had families; however, their descendants were born free as Muslims. Having grown up in the towns and cities of the Muslim world, they were viewed as being less martial than their fathers and not suitable to replace them. Fresh tough and ‘uncorrupted’ recruits were preferred, brought in from the steppes or mountainous regions such as the Caucasus.

Battlefield dominance 

Despite the weaknesses of military slavery, the institution produced some of the best soldiers of the medieval and early modern periods. The performance of the ghulams, mamluks and janissaries on the battlefield are a testament to their superiority over most of their counterparts. Mahmud of Ghazna, the greatest of the Ghaznavid sultans, launched several campaigns into what is now Pakistan and northern India between 1001 and 1024. His forces were almost always heavily outnumbered, but they were superior in training and equipment. At the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, it was the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan’s heavy ghulam cavalry that dealt the death blow to the Byzantine army after it had been weakened by skirmishing light cavalry. The Mamluk sultanate’s army, composed predominantly of mamluk soldiers, defeated the hitherto undefeated Mongols, halting their westward advance at the Battle of Ayn Jalut and subsequently defeated four other much larger Mongol invasions of their territory. The Mamluks also defeated Louis IX’s Seventh Crusade and put an end to the Crusader states in the Levant.

Slaves or not?

Were these soldiers slaves as we understand the term? It is true that many practices in the Muslim world fit our understanding of slavery; military slavery is not one of them. Until the proliferation of effective gunpowder weapons in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, they dominated battlefields and rose to dominate the armies, politics and societies of the regions where they were employed. Some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in Muslim societies were military slaves who had risen to become generals, governors and ministers. In some cases, they even rose to be princes and sultans and ruled in their own right. Slaves recruited through a military institution became a political and social elite, which dominated and ruled the Muslim world for much of its history.

Adam Ali is Course Instructor at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto.