Anonymous: Arabian Nights

[loousy]

Greetings! (this is my first post here so not sure if I am doing this the right way so...)
I've been reading Arabian Night/One Thousand and One Nights (Richard F. Burton's translation) and I am very confused about the ''slavery'' context of the book, I have a feeling is not at all like the african-american background; the book represents slaves as sometimes being part of the family somehow, like they genuinely care for their masters and accept the status of slave fully.
What are ''slaves'' in asian/arabic context of the book exactly?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Ludus]

Hi, Loousy!

I'm not particularly versed in the subject, but I found this article that may be helpful to you (although I would take what the writer says with a grain of salt, the theme of how to discuss racism in very old texts is fairly controversial). He mentions Button's translation and puts it in a little bit of context

The Dark Side of 'The Arabian Nights' – Robert Irwin

The stories are indeed delightful, but how innocent are they?

www.criticalmuslim.io

 

[loousy]

Hey!
Thanks for the response. It helps!
But I was looking for a more profound historical insight on the matter.

 

[Bagharu]

I am not a practicing muslim, but I do know my share of islam coming from a muslim family. While Islam does not abolish slavery, it does set some rules of conduct where it asks its followers to be kind and lenient towards the slaves. The owner is supposed to provide bread and shelter, and consider them as family members. Quran highly encourages to free slaves, allows a slave to earn his own freedom from his owner, asks its wealthy followers to put part of zakat (a system where you donate a percentage of your annual wealth to the needy and poor) to help slaves buy freedom. It was very common in Arab and Muslim world where slaves would get high social status, and become rich, even establish great empires (Mamluks in Egypt, two sultanate in Persia, Some of the rulers in Delhi sultanate, even in Bengal some sultans were slaves and many others through out the islamic world).

While overall situation of slaves in Islam is far better than most of the other great religions (and some muslims do feel proud of that, to my astonishment and dismay), or later day americas, it never abolished slavery, and while in theory, and to some extant in practice slaves had some rights, in the end it was slavery. Whether a slave is treated as family, or a domestic animal, it all came down to the owner, in whose hand a slaves' fate remained.

It happens again and again, years after years of domination creates a sense of obligation and mutual dependence, an invisible emotional chain that binds and becomes the social norm, the oppressed feels loyalty towards the oppressor, just how many women thought burning in flame with a dying husband is her duty, many slaves thought serving the owner is the only way of life. And I suppose that's what you can glimpse in the Arabian Nights.

 

[JCamilo]

The context is a bit different from the slave trade used as workforce in America. There is a whole dehumanization of the africans, even from religious point of view, supression of cultural manifestation, etc. Those slaves were treated as workforce similar to animals, the slaves in 1001 Nights are more protected, many are servants due to debt, so the owner didnt had right to kill them. Plus, as most stories, the book is arabian, even if satyrical/critical in a way of more conservative arabian pratices, they still were portraied with some level of decency, albeit I recall some stories with slaves being disposed with due violence, etc.

 

[loousy]

The context is a bit different from the slave trade used as workforce in America. There is a whole dehumanization of the africans, even from religious point of view, supression of cultural manifestation, etc. Those slaves were treated as workforce similar to animals, the slaves in 1001 Nights are more protected, many are servants due to debt, so the owner didnt had right to kill them. Plus, as most stories, the book is arabian, even if satyrical/critical in a way of more conservative arabian pratices, they still were portraied with some level of decency, albeit I recall some stories with slaves being disposed with due violence, etc.

Yeah, slaves are treated better than jews and africans in this book