n many respects inferior to free persons as to
rights and powers. They have no right of property against their owners.
They are under milder criminal law than their owners. All this is to be
understood of slaves who are Moslems.[877] The Koran often inculcates
kindness to slaves.[878] Slaves are goods given to the free by the grace
of God. Mohammedans would consider the abolition of slavery a triumph of
Christianity over Islam.[879] An unbelieving slave has no guarantees at
all against the will of his owner. In the eighth century the serfs in
the Asturias rose _en masse_ against their Mohammedan lords, and we are
told that under the wealth and glory of Grenada the peasants hated the
lords with great intensity.[880] In the great days of Abdurrahman III
slaves were very numerous. They possessed land and slaves and the sultan
charged them with "important military and civil functions, and pursued
the policy of all despots in making them his ministers and favorites, in
order to humiliate the aristocrats."[881] They were also armed. The late
Romans put colons in the army. The Visigoths inherited the usage,
although the lords would not give them up. At last the levy arose to one
half of the serfs and they became a majority of the army.[882]
Schweinfurth[883] says that "wherever Islamism has sway in Africa it
appears never to be the fashion for any one to allow himself to be
carried." "A strict Mohammedan reckons it an actual sin to employ a man
as a vehicle, and such a sentiment is very remarkable in a people who
set no limits to their spirit of oppression. It is a known fact that a
Mohammedan, though he cannot refuse to recognize a negro, denying the
faith, as being _a man_, has not the faintest idea of his being entitled
to any rights of humanity." The jurists early set up the doctrine that
the life of a Mohammedan slave was worth as much as that of a Mohammedan
freeman, but this doctrine rarely was fulfilled in practice, never
inside of the harem. The jurists pronounced against the right of life
and death on the part of the slave owner, but it was exercised.[884] It
is not law, but custom, to emancipate an adult slave after from seven to
nine years' service. In most Moslem families slaves are well treated, as
members of the household. Their children are educated as those of their
masters are.[885] Pischon says that Moslems cannot live without slavery.
No free woman will do the menial housework, and no woman may be seen
unveil