he is called ashqar (pale). If he is paler than that, he is called ashkal. If there is nevertheless increasing red, he is called ashqar. If there are nevertheless freckles, he is called anmash (freckled). If his color is pure and leaning towards yellow and he is not ill, he is called asḥab in color.139
Because this passage is about describing the parties to a contract, its range of colors is meant to apply to free people as well as slaves.
With such a rich variety of colors available, restricting scholarly discussion of Mamluk slavery to black and white is misleading. Nevertheless, it has frequently been claimed that the terminology of slavery in Arabic reflects a binary division between black and white. Derivatives of the root mīm-lām-kāf (mamlūk) supposedly referred to white slaves, whereas derivatives of the root ‘ayn-bā-dāl (‘abd) supposedly referred to black slaves.140 The root rā-qāf-qāf (raqīq) supposedly applied to both white and black slaves. Color-based definitions of these terms, however, tend to come from nineteenth-century dictionaries such as E. W. Lane’s An Arabic English Lexicon and not Mamluk dictionaries such as Ibn Manẓūr’s Lisān al-ʿarab.
When medieval sources are read without the aid of nineteenth-century dictionaries, there are numerous exceptions to the color-based definitions of mamlūk and ʿabd. The eleventh-century Ḥanafī jurist al-Sarakhsī discussed a hypothetical case in which an ‘abd was sold as a Turk but was actually a Greek or an Indian (sindī).141 According to the rule, an ‘abd should be black, but Turks and Greeks did not fall under the Sūdān category, and Indians could be either Sūdān or ʿAjam. Al-Asyūṭī’s fifteenth-century shurūṭ manual refers to the exchange of “a white or black ‘abd for a female slave,” even though, according to the rule, it should have been a white mamlūk and a black ʿabd.142 Another fifteenth-century jurist, al-Suyūṭī, called a group of thirteenth-century amirs ‘abīd of the treasury, although as military commanders and former slaves, one would expect them to be white mamālīk.143 Yet not all mamluks were white. Five mamālīk were described as brown (asmar) in Mamluk biographical dictionaries.144 There was at least one Ethiopian mamlūk whose color was not given and whose brother was also enslaved as a eunuch.145 A fourteenth-century marriage contract between two slaves referred to the husband, a Nubian (nūbī), as a mamlūk without describing his color.146 Color was relevant to how Mamluk masters used their slaves, as discussed in Chapter 3, because it was associated with stereotypes about physical health and temperament. But during the Mamluk period, color was not relevant to determining slave status or the terminology of slavery.
Moreover, color was not correlated with race in the context of late medieval slavery. The theory of climate zones could have been used to link color and race via geographical location, but in practice, one could not predict slaves’ color based on their race or their race based on their color. Greek slaves were described in Arabic sources as pale, red, or brown and in Latin sources as white, olive, or brown.147 The Greek sultan Khushqadam was “light in complexion with a beautiful golden yellow dominating it,” according to Ibn Taghrī Birdī, but red in complexion according to Ibn Iyās.148 Tatars might be white or olive.149 Circassian slaves were white, olive, brown, or red.150 Saracens could be white, black, olive, or mixed.151 In the Florentine slave register of 1366, Moors were more likely to be described as white (seventeen cases) than as black (thirteen cases), and there were also olive and mixed-color Moors.152 Whiteness was attributed to Abkhaz, Bulgar, Circassian, Russian, Saracen, Slavic, Tatar, and Turkish slaves in the Latin sources; in the Arabic sources, it was attributed to Circassians, Greeks, and Turks.153 Brownness was attributed to Circassian, Laz, Saracen, and Iberian slaves in Latin; in Arabic, it was attributed to Greeks and Tatars.154 Blackness was used as a color and a racial category in both Latin and Arabic sources. In addition to Blacks, black color was attributed to Iberian, Ethiopian, Canary Island, Indian, Moorish, and Saracen slaves. In Arabic, it was attributed to Ethiopians, Nubians, Zanjis, Zaghāwis, Bujawis, and Qandaharis.155
Finally, color was not the only aspect of physical appearance relevant to slavery. Florentine and Pisan sources frequently mentioned slaves’ stature.156 Some notarial descriptions included hair color.157 Tatars in Italy (but not in the Mamluk kingdom) were distinguished by the shape of their faces. One of the chief characteristics of the Tatar face was broadness and flatness, including flatness of the nose.158 Sculpted Tatar heads on two fourteenth-century capitals in the south and west porticoes of the Doge’s Palace in Venice offer contemporary images.159 A Venetian merchant described a Tatar slave as having “a face like a board,” that is, flat, and implied that she was ugly.160 Franco Sacchetti, a Florentine poet, gave a favorable description of a slave woman who “doesn’t have a very Tatar face.”161 Felix Fabri judged the Tatar face negatively, as well as the Tatar hairstyle, which reminded him of idiots (stulti) in Germany.162 Pero Tafur claimed that among the Tatars, “the most deformed are of the noblest birth.”163
The poet and humanist Petrarch linked the perceived ugliness of the Tatar face directly to its association with slavery. In a 1367 letter from Venice to his childhood friend Guido Sette, at that time archbishop of Genoa, he wrote, “Already, a strange, enormous crowd of slaves of both sexes, like a muddy torrent tainting a limpid stream, taints this beautiful city with Scythian faces and hideous filth. If they were not more acceptable to their buyers than they are to me, and if they were not more pleasing to their eyes than to mine, these repulsive youths would not crowd our narrow streets; nor would they, by jostling people so clumsily, annoy foreign visitors, who are accustomed to better sights.”164 Although the features of a Tatar face did not change much when the Tatar being described was free, the associations were less negative.165 Travelers characterized Mongol women as unattractive but hardworking, able to fight and hold power alongside men. Marco Polo described Tatars at the court of Kubilai Khan as noble and beautiful people. Illustrators of his text portrayed them with the same colors as European nobles.
Descriptions of the faces of Turkish slaves appear in both Italian and Mamluk sources as well. The Italians judged Turks, like Tatars, to be ugly: “[they] have short faces, broad in the upper part and narrow below. Their eyes are very small and very similar to those of that small beast [weasel], which by instinct hunts rabbits in their warrens and underground holes. Their noses are rather like those of the Indians [Ethiopians], and their beards closely resemble those of cats.”166 Mamluk descriptions of Turks portrayed them more positively. According to al-Asyūṭī, a legal description of a Turkish mamluk should mention “whether he has sprouted a moustache, that he is white of complexion, with a prominent forehead, with big deep-black eyes, long lashes, and lids painted with kohl, with a low-bridged nose, flat jaws, ruddy cheeks, red lips, well spaced teeth, with a small mouth, a long neck, of full stature, with small feet.”167 A female Turkish slave should be described as follows: “a young woman, white tinged with red in color, with a prominent forehead, as in the previous description but in feminine form.”168
Conclusion
Although language and race did not form the ideological basis of late medieval Mediterranean slavery, they played an important role in determining who was and was not enslaved in practice. When it proved difficult or disadvantageous for masters to use religion to categorize their slaves, they turned to language and, especially, to race as substitutes. Yet the strength of race as an intellectual framework is also its weakness. Race subsumes many kinds of difference (ancestry, geography, culture, climate, humoral complexion, physical appearance, astrological sign, etc.) into a single category, and it promises us that this category is fixed, inherent, permanent, natural, and therefore reliable. Racial shorthand was useful to Italian notaries and Mamluk scribes who needed to categorize individual slaves in a few brief but meaningful
