More from Bat Ye’or

Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam (Associated University Presses, London, 1996)

On hostage taking:

Hostage-taking is a classic tactic of the jihad. At the theological-juridical level, it is legal and moral. The hostage - a harbi prisoner - represents a military asset for the exchange of prisoners or for obtaining a ransom to finance the war effort. In both cases, the harbi (American, European or any other), becomes a dehumanized object, deprived of the inalienable rights attached to any human being. This dehumanization is a fundamental aspect bound up with the concept of the harbi. A particular occasion can transform any harbi, no matter who, into a hostage. In the past, frontier raids and piracy at sea, particularly from the Maghreb, provided a considerable reserve of hostages destined for slavery, if they were not redeemed financially. Until 1815, Morocco and the Barbary Coast constituted veritable pirate states, growing rich on the human booty carried off from the dar al-harb. (p. 217-8)

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On the remarkable assimilative capacity of Islam:

This stream of converts to Islam was swelled by the throng of freed men and captured slaves. Ibn Ishaq, biographer of the Prophet, was the grandson of a Christian captured in 633 by Khalid b. al-Walid at Ayn al-Tamar (Iraq). Abu Hanifa (d. 767), founder of the school of Hanafi law, was the son of a Zoroastrian slave; the Persian Ibrahim al-Mawsili (742-804), who composed classical Arabic music, had been taken captive as a child at Mosul; Jawhar al-Siqilli (the Sicilian), who conquered Egupt (969) for the Fatimid al-Mu'izz and founded al-Qahira (Cairo) and the al-Azhar mosque (972), was a Christian slave sold at Qairuan. (p.234)

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On manageability of the Dhimmi:

Several factors help to prepare a situation propicious to the manipulation of communities or individuals. Among these, one could mention vulnerability, ideological conditioning, corruption, loss of identity, or historical amnesia.

Vulnerability is integrated into dhimmitude, since the dhimmi, conquered by war and defenseless, is reduced to perpetually repurchasing his life. In addition, the right claimed by the Muslim authority to ratify the appointment of the spiritual leader of the dhimmi community enabled it to interfere in this choice to its own best interests, impose its own candidate, and deepen the schisms of a venal nature which were corrupting the institutions. Thus the morality and cultural level of the communities declined, and this domestic discredit increased the contempt of the outside environment.

Ideological conditioning grafts itself onto vulnerability. The janissaries provide the most perfect example of this situation. Young Christian children abducted during razzias, allocated within the quint of war booty or by the devshirme, were reduced to slavery and converted to Islam. Subjected to an intense military and religious education, they constituted the Muslim power’s elite troops. Blind and fanatical tools of the sultan, they became the cruellest persecutors of Christianity, which was henceforth attacked by its own sons. The janissary incarnates the quintessence of dhimmitude, brought to its perfection. (p. 236-7)

Bat Ye’or, ‘Jihad on the Seas’

I’m doing some reading-up on White slavery at the moment, the Barbary corsairs and whatnot. The following is from one of Bat Ye’or’s books on Islam:

Rapidly exploiting sea-warfare techniques of the conquered Christian populations, the Arabs carried the jihad to the coasts of Europe. The populations of Cyprus (649) and the islands of Cos, Rhodes (672), and Crete (674) were slaughtered or enslaved. The Cyzicus peninsula was ravaged (670) and Paros was reduced to an uninhabited desert. The coasts of southern France and Italy were plundered.

After the forced Islamization of the Jewish and Christian Berber tribes of the Maghreb and the strengthening of Arab-Islamic power, Maghrebian pirates under the Aghlabid dynasty (800-909) undertook a number of expeditions along the European coasts in conjunction with Arabs from Spain. During the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, such razzias depopulated Sardinia, Sicily, the coasts of Italy and southern France and, in the eastern Mediterranean, the Cyclades, the regions of Athos, Euboea, and along the Greek coast.

Landing on Crete in 827 or 828, Arabs from Spain laid waste the island in the space of twelve days, enslaving the populations of twenty-nine towns and sparing one single site where Christians could retain their religion. Moving on to the island of Aegina (gulf of Corinth), they destroyed or deported all the inhabitants as slaves. After having subjugated Bari (842) in southern Italy, then Messina (843) and Modica (844) in Sicily, the Muslim armies set siege to Rome (846). During the 852-53 campaign against Castrogiovanni, Catania, Syracuse, Noto, and Ragusa in Sicily, the Tunisian al-Abbas “took booty in all these territories, ravaged, burned.” During the expedition to the island in summer 853-54, al-Abbas “destroyed the Christians’ harvests and sent expeditionary forces in all directions.” After a six-month siege, the inhabitants of Butira pledged to hand over to him six thousand prisoners, who were then led away. Every year, harvests were laid waste, villages burned and destroyed, towns conquered and reduced to ruins. In the course of the 857-58 campaign, the inhabitants of Cefalu (Sicily) obtained peace by promising to leave their town and abandon it to the Muslims, who then destroyed it. In 878 Syracuse fell after a nine-month siege: “Thousands of its inhabitants were killed and booty acquired, the like of which had never before been taken in any other town. A very small number of men were able to escape.” After pillaging the town, the invaders destroyed it. In 902, the inhabitants of Taormina were decimated by the sword.

This general picture of destruction, ruin, massacre, and deportation of urban and rural captive populations was common to all the conquered territories in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Well documented by contemporary Syriac, Greek, and Arabic chronicles, the few examples provided illustrate a general situation as it recurred regularly during the seasonal razzias, over the years, and for centuries. These chronicles, in great part translated and published, are well known to specialized historians and indicate clearly, beyond any shadow of doubt, that the rules of jihad concerning booty, the fifth part, the fay, levies on harvests, and the fate of populations (conversion, massacre, slavery, or tribute) were not just vague principles laid down by a theoretical treatise on warfare, construed by some obscure theologian. The Arabs, stirred by their profound belief and the conviction of belonging to an elite nation, superior to all others (Koran 3: 106), put them into practice, feeling that they were thereby fulfilling a religious duty and executing the will of Allah.

It must be stressed, however, that massacre or slavery of the vanquished peoples, burning, pillage, destruction, and the claiming of tribute were the common practices during the period under consideration of every army whether Greek, Latin, or Slav. Only the excess, the regular repetition and the systematization of the destruction, codified by theology, distinguishes the jihad from other wars of conquest or depredation.

Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam (Associated University Presses, London, 1996) p.50-51.