Young slaves and servants in nineteenth‐century Morocco

Abstract

Every bourgeois house in Morocco had a substantial number of black servants. Visitors to the imperial cities, impressed by the refined lifestyle of these well-off citizens, were particularly amazed by the number of servant women of African descent: they gave prompt and reliable service, obeying the least command of the chief butler. These women were to be found in cities as well as in the country, and there were many more of them than is indicated by most reference works on the Muslim world. But which literature? Slavery is a complex topic the world over, and especially in Muslim regions. Its memory is still too fresh in many parts of the globe. It was only in the sixties that Saudi Arabia abolished the institution of slavery. In Mauritania, where its consequences are still visible, the abolition dates from the eighties. In most Muslim countries, even those where slavery ended at the close of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the twentieth, its abolition was not the result of a fundamental line of thought or social movement. The relationship between slavery and religion has never been viewed from a critical and modern perspective. To deal openly with this question means to discuss some of the foundations of religion itself in its more traditional aspects. The actual image of slavery is softened. Slavery in Muslim countries is known for its laxity: masters treating their slaves so humanely that observers were surprised by the harmony which reigned between them. Nothing that resembled the brutality reported in the United States. At least this is the picture given by the most current texts on the Muslim world. For example, A. Marcet, a French traveller in Morocco during the spring of 1882, wrote that slaves were not unhappy there. Another traveller of the same period, Oscar Lenz, painted the following idyllic picture: