Although the color of slaves is of great interest to us today, it was not particularly interesting to medieval Italian notaries. No more than 3 percent of slave-related documents produced in Venice mentioned slaves’ color. In Genoa, thirteenth-century notaries recorded slaves’ color more consistently than those in the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries.134 During the thirteenth century, 38 percent of slave-related documents from Genoa mentioned color. During the fourteenth century, 30 percent of slave-related documents mentioned color, but during the fifteenth century, the figure was only 2 percent. Although the fourteenth-century figure seems significant, 82 percent of those references came from just two notaries, Bartolomeo Gatto and Giovanni Bardi.135 In the thirteenth century, references to color came from a much larger proportion of notaries. The reason for the shift from general interest in color to interest on the part of just a few notaries to general disinterest to renewed interest in the sixteenth century is unclear.136 The shift suggests that the relationship between color and slavery did not develop in a linear way.
The Galenic system of humors was equally fundamental to medical theory in the Islamic world.137 Indeed, it was through Arabic translations of Greek texts that humoral theory reached Latin physicians. As a result of the Galenic emphasis on mixture and balance, the terminology of color in Arabic was complex. The following passage is drawn from a Mamluk shurūṭ manual, a guide to writing legal documents. It comes from a chapter explaining how to compose a physical description of the parties to a contract, including their age, stature, forehead, eyebrows, eyes, nose, cheeks, jaw, lips, mouth, teeth, neck, and distinguishing features. For color, it offers the following array of possibilities:
If a man is very aswad (black), he is called ḥālik (pitch black). If his black is mixed with red, he is called daghmān. If his color is pure, he is called asḥam. If the black is mixed with yellow, he is called aṣḥam. If his color is muddy, he is called arbad. If it is purer than that, he is called abyaḍ. If it is fine yellow and leaning towards black, he is called ādamī in color.138 And if it is below arbad and above adama he is called very adama. If it is pure adama, he is called shadīd al-samra (very brown). And if it is purer than that, he is called asmar in color. And if it is purer than that, he is called raqīq al-samra (fine brown). If it is purer than that and leaning towards white and red, he is called ṣāfī al-samra ta’aluhu ḥamra (pure brown rising to red), and is called raqīq al-samra bi-ḥamra (fine brown with red). If his color is very pure he is called ṣāfī al-samra (pure brown) and is not called abyaḍ (white) because bayāḍ is leprosy. If he is completely white, he is called anṣaḥ. If there is paleness in his whiteness, he is called ashqar (pale). If he is paler than that, he is called ashkal. If there is nevertheless increasing red, he is called ashqar. If there are nevertheless freckles, he is called anmash (freckled). If his color is pure and leaning towards yellow and he is not ill, he is called asḥab in color.139
Because this passage is about describing the parties to a contract, its range of colors is meant to apply to free people as well as slaves.
With such a rich variety of colors available, restricting scholarly discussion of Mamluk slavery to black and white is misleading. Nevertheless, it has frequently been claimed that the terminology of slavery in Arabic reflects a binary division between black and white. Derivatives of the root mīm-lām-kāf (mamlūk) supposedly referred to white slaves, whereas derivatives of the root ‘ayn-bā-dāl (‘abd) supposedly referred to black slaves.140 The root rā-qāf-qāf (raqīq) supposedly applied to both white and black slaves. Color-based definitions of these terms, however, tend to come from nineteenth-century dictionaries such as E. W. Lane’s An Arabic English Lexicon and not Mamluk dictionaries such as Ibn Manẓūr’s Lisān al-ʿarab.
When medieval sources are read without the aid of nineteenth-century dictionaries, there are numerous exceptions to the color-based definitions of mamlūk and ʿabd. The eleventh-century Ḥanafī jurist al-Sarakhsī discussed a hypothetical case in which an ‘abd was sold as a Turk but was actually a Greek or an Indian (sindī).141 According to the rule, an ‘abd should be black, but Turks and Greeks did not fall under the Sūdān category, and Indians could be either Sūdān or ʿAjam. Al-Asyūṭī’s fifteenth-century shurūṭ manual refers to the exchange of “a white or black ‘abd for a female slave,” even though, according to the rule, it should have been a white mamlūk and a black ʿabd.142 Another fifteenth-century jurist, al-Suyūṭī, called a group of thirteenth-century amirs ‘abīd of the treasury, although as military commanders and former slaves, one would expect them to be white mamālīk.143 Yet not all mamluks were white. Five mamālīk were described as brown (asmar) in Mamluk biographical dictionaries.144 There was at least one Ethiopian mamlūk whose color was not given and whose brother was also enslaved as a eunuch.145 A fourteenth-century marriage contract between two slaves referred to the husband, a Nubian (nūbī), as a mamlūk without describing his color.146 Color was relevant to how Mamluk masters used their slaves, as discussed in Chapter 3, because it was associated with stereotypes about physical health and temperament. But during the Mamluk period, color was not relevant to determining slave status or the terminology of slavery.
Moreover, color was not correlated with race in the context of late medieval slavery. The theory of climate zones could have been used to link color and race via geographical location, but in practice, one could not predict slaves’ color based on their race or their race based on their color. Greek slaves were described in Arabic sources as pale, red, or brown and in Latin sources as white, olive, or brown.147 The Greek sultan Khushqadam was “light in complexion with a beautiful golden yellow dominating it,” according to Ibn Taghrī Birdī, but red in complexion according to Ibn Iyās.148 Tatars might be white or olive.149 Circassian slaves were white, olive, brown, or red.150 Saracens could be white, black, olive, or mixed.151 In the Florentine slave register of 1366, Moors were more likely to be described as white (seventeen cases) than as black (thirteen cases), and there were also olive and mixed-color Moors.152 Whiteness was attributed to Abkhaz, Bulgar, Circassian, Russian, Saracen, Slavic, Tatar, and Turkish slaves in the Latin sources; in the Arabic sources, it was attributed to Circassians, Greeks, and Turks.153 Brownness was attributed to Circassian, Laz, Saracen, and Iberian slaves in Latin; in Arabic, it was attributed to Greeks and Tatars.154 Blackness was used as a color and a racial category in both Latin and Arabic sources. In addition to Blacks, black color was attributed to Iberian, Ethiopian, Canary Island, Indian, Moorish, and Saracen slaves. In Arabic, it was attributed to Ethiopians, Nubians, Zanjis, Zaghāwis, Bujawis, and Qandaharis.155
Finally, color was not the only aspect of physical appearance relevant to slavery. Florentine and Pisan sources frequently mentioned slaves’ stature.156 Some notarial descriptions included hair color.157 Tatars in Italy (but not in the Mamluk kingdom) were distinguished by the shape of their faces. One of the