slavery

Nuristan is a province located in the northeast of Afghanistan, which is known as Bilour/Bilouristan in Islamic sources of the Middle Ages and as Kāfiristān among Muslims. The people of Nuristan were divided into several social classes, the lowest class of which were slaves. Slaves played an important role in the daily work and life of Nuristan people. Slaves were responsible for important jobs such as carpentry, blacksmithing, wood carving, making clothes, shoe making and leather making. In the meantime, carpentry and blacksmithing had a special place in the daily life of Nuristan people, because the agricultural tools and weapons that people needed were prepared by slaves. Slave women and girls were also used to work in houses, raising children and farming. Based on George Scott Robertson's travelogue, this research has investigated the social status and daily life of slaves in old Nuristan.

This article examines cultural attitudes on race and African slavery in late Qajar chronicles prior to abolition in 1929. In contrast to previous scholarship, Qajar textual sources reveal that elite cultural attitudes were relevant in structuring the social conditions of enslavement in Iran. Visual depictions and narratives about African eunuchs and concubines naturalized the violent acquisition and use of the Other. Slave narratives also bear witness to how such views of African corporeality determined the social worth of eunuchs and concubines in the domestic sphere.

In this study, the behavior of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and the Imams (AS) is examined in the face of the slavery system for maintaining the dignity of slaves and maids using a descriptive-analytical method. The findings show that in the “Age of Ignorance”, slavery was widespread in Saudi Arabia and slaves had little rights and they were traded. With the advent of Islam, the Prophet (PBUH) and the Imams tried to eliminate the prejudices of ignorance among the Arabs, especially slavery in the society of that time. The present research seeks to answer the question that what strategies and arrangements did the Prophet (PBUH) and the Imams devise to change the status of slaves and maids in the Islamic society? The findings of the research indicate that the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and the Imams tried hard to raise slaves’ position in Islamic society through great efforts such as freeing slaves for the God’s sake, mingling with slaves, training and educating them.

The foundation of the Old Persian Empire was undoubtedly an important link in the development of the ancient world. It happened for the first time in the history of humanity that the huge territory stretching from Libya to the Pamir, from Sudan to the Syr Darya was incorporated into a relative unity by an empire, which was practically a historical summing up of the results achieved by the earlier Near Eastern states in social-economic, technical and cultural fields, and which with its two centuries long existence exerted a significant influence on the further historical development. Although the historical importance of the Old Persian Empire was obvious since long time to historical research, the problem of its social-economic structure remaind surprisingly unclarified up to the latest times. A few years ago in scientific circles it was still a generally spread opinion that the Old Persian Empire was a slave-holding state, and the major part of its population consisted of slaves. In contrast to this opinion, represented by such eminent scientists as from 1961 in several lectures and publications, and especially in my study entitled «The Problem of Slavery in the Old Persian Empire»I tried to show that the above mentioned historical conception is based on an erroneous interpretation of the social terminology of the Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian, Aramaic and Greek sources, and that the relations of production in the Old Persian Empire do not reflect the conditions of the slave-holding social formation, but they represent the conditions of the Asiatic mode of production. Since then this opinion has found a rather general acceptance, and today it seems already to be doubtless that in the Old Persian Empire, beside the backward smaller peoples living still in tribal society and the slave-holding Greek city-states, the largest part of the population were ...

With the expansion of the Islamic realm and the conquest of parts of Asia and North Africa in the first and second centuries (AH) and the arrival of slaves and captives, a suitable platform was provided for the slavery of the Arab community. A group of these maids who had children from their masters were called Mother of the Child (Umm-E-Valad). The present study seeks to investigate the attitude of the community towards the mothers of the children and the role of the Imams (AS) in promoting their social status. For this purpose, historical and non-historical writings have been examined for the social understanding of the subject, using a descriptive-analytical method. The results of this study show that in a situation where slaves and the mothers of the children had no place in Arab society and were humiliated and discriminated against, the Imams (AS) while providing legal support to slaves, by releasing them and choosing them as wives were practically displaying  a model of right Islamic behavior.  They promoted the status of the mothers as the wives and mothers of their children.

Many scholars believe that the government of Iran in the safavid period can be categorized as the Autarchy. This study seeks to find the intricate factors for Autarchy in the history of Iran. The main source based on the travels of Chardin a French tourist that traveled to Iran during the safavid period. Chardin’s points of view have been analyzed and compared with those of the recent thinkers. The focus of this research has been the influential factors which led the country toward autarchy. Chardin in his work refers to the secondary factors leading to autarchy in the carrion government weak judicial system and the roles of force in government’s domination are among the secondary factors. Moreover، he cites the main factors transferring the government into autarchy from psychological point of view. This stance was analyzed from social –psychological view of Young. He emphasized that people accepted the government habitually not based on reason. The point worthy of citing is that chardin had been under the influence of Dolabboti a French thinker (16 th century) whose thesis entitled voluntary slavery attracted the French protestants and his views were published in La France Turqie (1515).