Sand and Tears: The Central Asian Slave Route

Sand and tears—the slave route.

That decade must have been the busiest of Mirza Muhammad’s life. Aside from the basic necessities of breathing and sleeping, this seasoned Iranian managed to find himself quartered in Turkmen tents, endure beatings, insult the religion of his captors' elders, fail at one arsenic poisoning (of a Turkmen), succeed decisively at another (of camels), endure beatings, forge a promissory note by masterfully carving a soap seal, serve as a menial in a merchant caravan bound for Bukhara, endure beatings, amass a vital little fortune by carving painted eggs, stay briefly in the home of a Jew, win praise for quoting poetry and scripture, endure beatings, tumble into the service of a minister at the court of the Emir of Bukhara, become entangled in palace intrigues, be thrown into one dungeon after another, feel the thumping of Russian drums as they marched on Kokand and Tashkent, and endure a few more beatings before finally being sent westward to grow old at home, crowned with the tales of his exploits.

Indeed, the life of a bondservant wandering the dusty roads of Central Asia is a busy one.

As we have seen, the enslavement of human beings—their transformation into cheap cogs in the economic machine—has accompanied humanity since the dawn of time. Many of the great civilizations, from Egypt and Assyria to Rome and China, relied on human property to produce grain and crafts, provide transport and entertainment, and maintain the infrastructure of everything we call "culture."

Central Asia was no exception. Various groups engaged in the "harvest of the steppe" not only for their own needs but primarily for the open market. Notable were the great slave markets of the Iranian Samanids, where *ghulam* youths were sold to Islamic emirs for their military slave corps, as well as the armies of the displaced swept up in tears during Mahmud of Ghazni’s raids into Hindustan.

Enslavement—as an economic pursuit, a military tactic, and a means of production—was woven tightly into the cultural and geographical mosaic of Central Asia. Those whose luck failed them, placing them on the wrong side of the lash, could find themselves in city or village, in mountain shepherd camps or the orchards of Sufi orders in the valleys—essentially anywhere someone required the services of another for a one-time, albeit substantial, payment.

We know that slaves were an expensive commodity. Bills of sale valued them at a hundred or a hundred and fifty sheep; or twenty sheep and three horses; or twenty sheep, one horse, one camel, and three decorated felt rugs. The price always fluctuated according to time, place, and the quality of the specimen.

Women were generally more expensive than men, and the most beautiful among them even more so. Russian slaves were more profitable than Iranian men (though cheaper than Russian women), but a specialized skill, such as blacksmithing, significantly raised the price. Kurds, for some reason, yielded a rather paltry sum.

The 16th century saw the meteoric rise of the Safavid state in Iran. The sound of shattering Persian Sunni walls and the blinding ascent of the House of Ali made the courts of Istanbul, Delhi, and Transoxiana tremble. Although the echoes of cannons and the frequent severing of trade routes during the Safavid wars wreaked havoc on business, at least one class of merchants hurried to sink their teeth into a hot, plump, and highly profitable commodity: Shiite slaves.

While Islam generally permits the slave trade but forbids the holding of fellow Muslims as slaves, the total war on Iran's borders between the Safavids and their eastern neighbors—and the clear theological undertones accompanying it—allowed for a fascinating border dynamic. Sunnis and Shiites were captured back and forth by the warring parties, each side conveniently delegitimizing the faith of the other.

The trade networks for Iranian slaves grew rapidly following the rise of Iranian Shiism, reaching their peak in the pre-modern period. The trade enjoyed full religious legitimacy from the Central Asian Sunni *ulama* and relied heavily on Turkmen border tribes. For these tribes, slave-hunting expeditions were a vital pillar of the economy, whether they were extracting heavy ransoms from families across the border or selling captives as merchantable goods to the settled agricultural zones to the east.

Contrary to common assumptions, pastoral nomads had no difficulty keeping slaves. A new addition to the camp provided essential extra hands, and sometimes a slave even earned their own yurt and the possibility of marriage with a member of equal status.

Our acquaintance Mirza Muhammad—a Safavid official and scholar captured during the border wars—is a perfect example of the Iranian slave’s suffering in the East. Kicked from place to place by the whims of fate and his own sharp wit, he left behind a rare, detailed record that represents the universal experience of Central Asian slavery. He was passed like currency between Turkmen camps and peasant villages, from dusty waystations to the bustling bazaars of Turkestan’s cities. He served nomads and farmers, Jewish merchants and Muslim clerics, and eventually the Bukharan Khan himself—all while demonstrating resourcefulness, scholarly talent, no small amount of chutzpah, and a significant capacity to absorb beatings.

While we lack precise statistics for the number of Shiites, Hindus, Chinese, Armenians, and Russians enslaved during the trade's peak, the numbers likely reached the hundreds of thousands. They constituted a significant portion of the labor force, particularly within the elite economy. The keeping of Russian slaves, many of whom were skilled craftsmen, was common in Bukhara, Kokand, and the notorious markets of Khiva, provoking horrified outcries from the European ambassadors and pilgrims who visited the region.

The fierce rhetoric regarding the liberation of slaves—a driving factor in the Russian conquest of Central Asia—eventually brought about the trade's decline. In truth, this was often little more than a hollow war trumpet to grease the wheels of imperial conquest. Yet, even if the initial result of this shock was a slave uprising in Bukhara that the Russians themselves suppressed by executing its leaders, it ultimately led to a formal Tsarist policy that ended the trail of tears leading from Iran to the slave markets of the East.

The story of Mirza Muhammad, like those of the nameless thousands who preceded him, is a testament to humanity's ability to economically digest its own kind given enough power and time. And even if the slave trade in its historical form is now loathsome under the law, the instinct for ownership based on religion, nationality, or status still lingers. From the oil-soaked shores of the Gulf to the hidden desert camps of the East, market forces possess a terrible ability to silence every cry and absorb every tear into the sand.