The Forgotten Slave Trade: The White European Slaves of Islam

by (Historian) Simon Webb

In the later ninth century the Arab writer Ibn Khordadbeh was giving a detailed account of the routes which were being used by those trafficking in slaves. In his work Book of Roads and Kingdoms, he gave a detailed and precise account of who was behind the trade and how they moved their goods to and from Europe. Most of the slaves were bought by Jewish traders in what is now Russia, Ukraine and the Balkans and then taken to Venice or Verdun to be operated upon. As Director of Posts and Police for a province of the Abbasid Caliphate, Ibn Khordadbeh was in the best possible position to know about such things (Meynard, 1865). The traders whom he wrote of were the Radhanites, a guild of Jewish merchants about the origin of which there are a number of theories. What is certain though is that the Radhanites were an international business, who travelled across Europe, Asia and Africa, dealing in luxury goods of high value. These men were multilingual and had bases across the whole of the known world, from Western Europe to the far East, from northern Russia to Africa. To quote Ibn Khordadbeh: These merchants speak Arabic, Persian, Roman, Frankish, Spanish, and Slav languages. They journey from West to East, from East to West, partly on land, partly by sea. They transport from the West eunuchs, female slaves, boys, brocade, castor, marten and other furs, and swords. (Meynard, 1865)