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Message: <blockquote data-quote="d4" data-source="post: 1378678" data-attributes="member: 12699">your Calastia sounds a lot like the practice of slavery in the medieval Islamic world.Islam permitted slavery without really encouraging the practice. treating a slave well and even freeing a slave was considered virtuous. on the other hand, releasing a slave who had no training or skills with which to support himself once free was often illegal! according to Muslim law, the owner had an obligation to care for his slaves and to see that they were provided for.a large percentage (perhaps even a majority) of slaves in the Muslim world were skilled workers, instead of unskilled manual laborers. these slaves often held a great deal of loyalty toward their masters. in fact, there was even an entire caste of slave-soldiers (the Mamelukes) who fought and died for their owners!it was not uncommon for slaves to be able to buy their freedom, and their former owners would sometimes even help them out with some money or property to get them started as freedmen. slave owners also often freed all their slaves upon their deaths to show their virtue.there was a prohibition against taking other Muslims as slaves. therefore, Muslim slave traders were forced to look outside the Dar al-Islam (the "world of Islam") for slaves -- and considering that at its height Islam spread from Spain to Indonesia, and from Central Asia to East Africa, this was not as easy as it sounds! However, a slave who converted to Islam was not automatically freed. i've not seen any direct evidence, but my assumption is that children of slaves who converted to Islam would not be considered slaves (since they were born Muslims), although i can't confirm that. however, the child of a slave and a free man was considered free (contrast this to the policy of the American slavery era).according to the information in GURPS Arabian Nights (a very well written and well researched book on the era), a trained slave could vary in price from a few hundred to a few thousand dirhams. for comparison, the average day laborer earned about a hundred dirhams a month. in the Arabian Nights tales themselves, an 8-year old boy, with one small fault, sold for 800 dirhams, whereas the "cultured and beautiful slave-girls of the caliph's court" could cost up to 10,000 dirhams each!</blockquote>

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