Prague slave trade

The Goddess Zorya of the Slavic religion. The fact that the Slavs were Pagans legitimated them as targets for enslavement in the eyes of both Christians and Muslims.
02019 1103 Eiserne Fesseln des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts, Neu-Niekohr
Duchy of Bohemia in cirka 1000
The Radhanite trade routes.
Saint Adalbert of Prague pleads with Boleslaus II, Duke of Bohemia, for the release of Christians slaves by their masters, Jewish merchants, Gniezno Door ca. 1170
Madinat al-Zahra.

The Prague slave trade refers to the slave trade conducted between the Duchy of Bohemia and the Caliphate of Córdoba in Moorish al-Andalus in the early Middle Ages. The Duchy's capital of Prague was the center of this slave trade, and internationally known as one of the biggest centers of slave trade in Europe at the time.

The Prague slave trade is known as one of the main routes of saqaliba-slaves to the Muslim world, alongside the Balkan slave trade by the Republic of Venice in the South, and Volga route of the Vikings via Rus, Volga Bulgaria and the Samanid Bukhara slave trade in the East.

The Duchy of Bohemia was a new state in Christian Europe at this time, bordering to lands of Pagan Slavs to the North and East. Pagans were considered as legitimate targets of enslavement both by Christian and Islamic law. Bohemia was thereby able to traffick Pagan captives to the the slave market of the Muslim Caliphate of Cordoba through Christian France without trouble. The Prague slave trade was a mutual trade of benefit between the Caliphate of Córdoba, who were dependent on slaves to managed their state bureaucracy and military, and the Duchy of Bohemia, whose new state rose to economic prominence due to the trade.

The Prague slave trade was dependent upon supply of Pagan captives to maintain the slave trade with Muslim al-Andalus via Christian Europe, and therefore lost its supply source when Eastern Europe started to adopt Christianity. In parallel, in the early 11th-century both the Caliphate of Cordoba as well as the Duchy of Bohemia went through a period of political instability.


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