Race, Skin Colour, Enslavement and Sexuality in the Late Medieval Mediterranean

Abstract

ABSTRACT Medieval race-making connected enslavement and a wanton nature based on ideas that enslaved women had an uncontrollable sexual appetite. Focusing primarily on Muslim, Mongol (‘Tatar’, Turkic, or any individuals from central Asia), and African women, this article considers how the bodies of enslaved women of colour were eroticized, depicted as pathologically lusty, and their sexuality perceived as fundamentally more carnal in both a Christian and Islamic context as a tacit justification for their enslavement. This study argues that a hierarchy of slaves existed throughout the Mediterranean that was linked to dermal pigmentation because the bodies of the enslaved were not all perceived to be the same. It also makes the case that a commonality of racialisation existed across the Christian and Islamic Mediterranean and advocates for the use more flexible methodologies to recover the omissions in archival sources.