In the Mediterranean, Muslim slavery differed from Christian slavery in several significant respects. In Islam, slavery was temporary, not hereditary, and it did not necessarily sever ties between slaves and their own families. Most often, slaves in the Muslim world performed domestic functions rather than brute labor in agriculture, mining, transport, and the like. Fundamental to understanding slavery in the Ottoman Empire, and indeed throughout Muslim history, is the insight that in fact it served as a conduit for upward social mobility.
