Conversion, Islamic Law, and Shi’a Enslavement in Central Asia

Despite Islamic legal proscriptions against Muslims' enslaving other Muslims, the majority of slaves owned by Sunnis in nineteenth-century Central Asia were Shi'as. Legal documents and eyewitness reports indicate that Shi'a slaves who converted to Sunnism oftentimes remained in slavery, and evidence also points to the enslavement of unknown numbers of Sunni Afghans, Arabs, and others. These surprising, unusual facts raise questions about how the enslavement of fellow Muslims was justified, how Islamic law was applied to slavery, and how we know what we know about the little-studied but well-evidenced Central Asian slave trade.