During the later period of the Turkish-Egyptian government, the number of slaves in northern Sudan soared, and most slave men and women in northern Sudan were able to marry, start families, settle down and have children. But the patriarchal society of Muslims in northern Sudan meant that male slaves also passed on their slave status to their children.
The development of the slave marriage family
Northern Sudan's motivation for encouraging the establishment of slave families was manifold. First, for male slaves, allowing slaves to marry meant that they could start a family and work more comfortably; Second, for slave owners, it was the maximization of the benefits of slave use. First, providing a spouse for male slaves was not difficult for slave owners because they had relatively easy access to female slaves. Second, by providing a spouse for a male slave, the slave owner encouraged him to develop family and kinship in order to keep the male slave in bondage, which was sufficient to prevent him from escaping. (Because the escaped slaves were almost exclusively men, for female slaves, the fear of male domination of the world was enough to deter them, let alone flee.) ）
Third, this kind of marriage family takes advantage of the reproductive capacity of female slaves, while ensuring that the children born to slaves, male and female, will inherit the social status of male slaves. So, slave families provided slave owners with a new generation of slave children. Fourth, the establishment of kinship within slave families and having a separate family gave slaves a feeling of semi-freedom, which incentivized them to provide their masters with a more docile and stable supply of labor.
Although the establishment of slave families had all the considerations of slave owners, it is undeniable that it did alleviate the pain of slavery for slaves and alleviate the loneliness of slaves who were sold at birth.
As mentioned above, the formation of family relationships, the formation of male slaves with their spouses and children, the formation of emotional dependence, the slave more loyal to the slave owner's family, and marriage also made the slave feel equal in the family like a free man. At the same time, it reduced the attractiveness of male slaves to escape, thus securing the investment of slave owners.
The labor of slaves
The early policies of the Turkish-Egyptian government flooded the Sudanese domestic market with slaves. During the first decades of Turkish-Egyptian rule, officials encouraged the export of slaves from Sudan to Egypt, resulting in between 10,000 and 12,000 slaves transported from northern Sudan to the south each year. These slaves were usually captured either by the Egyptian army in raids on constant movement to the southern border or collected as tribute by the Turkish-Egyptian government from the southern population.
In the 40s of the 19th century, merchants from the Sudan of the North Nile began to invest in the slave plundering of Southern Sudan by developing private slave raiding militias and establishing a fence organization. The increase in the supply of slaves led to a sharp drop in prices in Cairo. In the 50s and 60s of the 19th century, officials in Turkey developed a series of policies aimed at reducing the number of slaves entering Egypt, including imposing new tariffs on slaves imported from Sudan. After Ismail took office, a series of measures and the signing of the Convention resulted in slaves from northern Sudan no longer being sold to Egypt as an economic export.
The bulk of slave use shifted from military slaves to domestic slaves during this period. Like slaves in other parts of Africa, they were mostly used in the "family", and slaves were arranged by slave owners to undertake a variety of household chores and occupations, and played multiple roles in housework, agriculture, factories, etc. The increase in the supply of slaves in northern markets led to a decline in slave prices, and landowners were able to employ male slaves on a large scale in agricultural production.
Cultivators in places such as Dongula made a profit by selling the agricultural products produced by slave labor, and then continued to buy more slaves to cultivate the land more intensively in order to expand their land holdings. This led to the consolidation of land ownership, the expansion of slavery and the strengthening of agricultural production in northern Sudan during this period. Slave work was very different, and this change largely reflected the increasing number of slave owners in the 19th century, with great differences in wealth and professional interests.
So while some well-dressed boys serve food to guests in Khartoum Pasha, others may feed cattle by the Berber farmer's waterwheel. While some women work as prostitutes in Kasala, others grind grain or mend fences in Darfur. Both during the Turkish-Egyptian rule and the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, it was much more difficult for women to survive than male slaves. During the Turkish-Egyptian rule, they were mostly engaged in heavy daily work, such as fetching water and building boats, and were no different from the intensity of their work when they were less physically primitive than male slaves.
Some became concubines of their masters by virtue of their posture, and these women lived more comfortably, and because of the unique loyalties possessed by slaves, they tended to be more trusted and favored by their masters. Slave owners attached great importance to the service of slaves. Slave labor, whether light or tiring, often meant that slave owners did not have to work hard to make ends meet, providing slave owners with plenty of leisure time.
North Sudanese society considers this leisure to be very admirable, even noble; Men or women who did not have to work because of slave labor received a lot of respect. The values of this culture inspired the sultan's morality of leisure or laziness, and until the Anglo-Egyptian condominium, the slack work of former slaves after they were freed was the legacy of slave owners.
In Sudan, the existence of Islamic law does not imply the application of Islamic law. In fact, once sold slaves, they had no status as free persons, and even though some slave owners treated them like members of their own families, slaves were still appendages, commodities, not possessors of human social value.
The social status of slaves during the Mahdi Kingdom
During the Mahdi period, agricultural production declined and food shortages were due to the devastation of war. Slaves suffered from the same food crisis as free men. However, slaves did not have the same social, political, and economic resources as free people. Therefore, they had different experiences in times of famine. For freemen, the food crisis is often understood as a community problem, and during the worst famines, the response was to transfer limited food resources to the "core" members of the community.
As a result, "marginal" community members, such as slaves, may have little or no access to food, even if the "core" community members are able to continue to survive. In this situation, slaves fled their owners in order to survive, and most joined the Mahdi army. The Mahdi promised to free the slaves who joined the army, and in order to increase the number of slaves, the Mahdi claimed to give the slave owners monetary compensation (30 riyals). However, most of these compensation payments have not been paid, one is due to
Due to economic difficulties, the second is that a large number of slaves voluntarily joined the military organization. The Mahdi also allowed slave soldiers to marry and take care of their families. Al-Khalifa continued this policy and allowed slave soldiers to share military camps with freedom soldiers, a policy that gave slave soldiers a certain sense of equality. Abdullah went a step further in slavery by reforming the history of slaves in which confessions were legally invalid, and slave soldiers had some legal status when they could provide limited testimony in court.
Abdullah stipulated that testimony was admissible in cases concerning the slave soldiers themselves and women associated with them. This is a great step forward, and usually a case will include Arabs as a party to the case, in which case the testimony of slave soldiers is acceptable.
After succeeding to the caliphate, Abdullah realized that slaves were a strategic source of goods and soldiers for the armies of the Turkish-Egyptian regime and the Mahdi state, as well as a source of labor for production and services, and began to prohibit the export of slaves. The Mahdi state continued to use slaves as trophies. Throughout the Mahdi Kingdom, the ownership of slaves belonged to the state.