Balkan slave trade
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The Balkan slave trade was the trade in
The trade rested on the fact that the Balkans was a religious border zone, which was significant in the middle ages, when religion was the determining factor on who was viewed as a legitimate target of enslavement. The Balkans was Pagan territory long in to the middle ages. After it had converted to Christianity by the 11th-century, it was Orthodox Christianity and Bogomilism, which maintained its status as a religious border zone to the rest of then Catholic Europe. The slave trade of first Pagan and then Orthodox and Bogomile Christian Slavs were exported to Italy, Spain and Portugal in Southern Europe, but the major part of the export went to the Muslim Middle East.
The Balkan slave trade was one of the main routes of European
In the 15th-century, the Balkan slave trade was closed of from Europe due to the Muslim
History
Background
During the Middle Ages, informal slave zones were formed alongside religious borders. Both Christians and Muslims banned the enslavement of people of their own faith, but both approved of the enslavement of people of a different faith.[1]
The slave trade thus organized alongside religious principles. While Christians did not enslave Christians, and Muslims did not enslave Muslims, both did allow the enslavement of people they regarded to be heretics, which allowed Catholic Christians to enslave Orthodox Christians, and Sunni Muslims to enslave Shia Muslims.[2]
The slave trade was founded upon the fact that the Balkans was a religious border zone between at first
The most targeted category of the slave trade were the Bosnians, since they were adherents of Bogomilism, a faith which was not acknowledged as Christianity and therefore made them legitimate targets of slavery in Catholic as well as Orthodox Europe.[3]
Slave market
The Balkan slave trade was, alongside the Black Sea slave trade, one of the two main slave supply sources of future Mamluk soldiers to the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.[4] A smaller number of slaves were sold in Italy and Spain as enslaved domestic servants, called ancillae.
The end
The Venetian slave trade from the Balkans gradually ended in parallel with the conquest of the Balkans by the
Venetian slave traders were not able to compete with Ottoman-Crimean competition. After this, they acquired a smaller number of slaves from Ottoman slave traders via the Trans-Saharan slave trade. The Venetian slave trade was however soon supplanted in Europe by the Atlantic slave trade of the 16th century.
See also
References
- ^ Slavery in the Black Sea Region, C.900–1900: Forms of Unfreedom at the Intersection Between Christianity and Islam. (2021). Nederländerna: Brill. 5
- ^ Korpela, J. (2018). Slaves from the North: Finns and Karelians in the East European Slave Trade, 900–1600. Nederländerna: Brill. 242
- ^ Omerovic, Asmin. Between Islam, Christianity, and Bogomil Heresy: The Slave Trade in the Bosnian Slaving Zone, 1280–1464
- ^ The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500–AD 1420. (2021). (n.p.): Cambridge University Press. pp. 117–120
- ^ The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500–AD 1420. (2021). (n.p.): Cambridge University Press. 117-120
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