Saqaliba

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Saqaliba (Arabic: صقالبة, romanized: ṣaqāliba, singular Arabic: صقلبي, romanized: ṣaqlabī)^{[nb 1]} is a term used in medieval Arabic sources to refer to Slavic peoples^[2] of Central, Southern, and Eastern Europe as inherited from Byzantines. The term originates from the Middle Greek slavos/sklavenos (Slav), which in Hispano-Arabic came to designate Slavic slaves. While Europeans kept the "Slav" term, "Saqaliba" transformed with medieval Muslims.

The word was often used to refer specifically to Slavic slaves, but it could also refer more broadly to various other ethnicities of Eastern Europe traded by the Arab traders, as well as all European slaves in some Muslim regions like Spain and Portugal including those abducted from raids on Christian kingdoms of Spain and Portugal.^[3][4] According to Sudár and B. Szabó, the word Saqaliba meant 'forest dweller', regardless of ethnicity.^[5]

There were several major routes for the trading of Slavic slaves into the Arab world: through Central Asia (Mongols, Tatars, Khazars, etc.) for the East Slavs; through the Balkans for the South Slavs; through Central and Western Europe for the West Slavs and to al-Andalus.^[6] The Volga trade route and other European routes, according to Ibrahim ibn Jakub (10th century), were serviced by Radanite Jewish merchants. Theophanes mentions that the Umayyad caliph Mu'awiya I settled a whole army of 5,000 Slavic mercenaries in Syria who had defected from the Byzantine side in the 660s.^[7] After the battle of Sebastopolis in 692, Neboulos, the archon of the Slavic corps in the Byzantine army, and 30,000 of his men were settled by the Umayyads in the region of Syria.^[8][9]

In the Arab world, the Saqaliba served or were forced to serve in a multitude of ways: as servants, harem concubines, eunuchs, craftsmen, mercenaries, slave soldiers, and as Caliph's guards. In Iberia, Morocco, Damascus and Sicily, their military role may be compared with that of mamluks in the Ottoman Empire. In al-Andalus, Slavic eunuchs were so popular and widely distributed that they became synonymous with the term Saqāliba, though not all Saqaliba were eunuchs.^[10][11] Some Saqāliba became rulers of taifas (principalities) in Iberia after the collapse of the Caliphate of Cordoba in 1031. For example, Mujāhid al-ʿĀmirī organized the Saqaliba in Dénia to rebel, seize control of the city, and establish the Taifa of Dénia (1010–1227), which extended its reach as far as the island of Majorca.

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