Review of M’hamed OUALDI (2024) : L’esclavage dans les mondes musulmans: des premières traites aux traumatismes, París, Éditions Amsterdam, 241 páginas.
Keywords:
Slavery, Islamophobia, Post-slavery, Eastern slave trades, RacismCopyright (c) 2025 Marta G. Novo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Abstract
M’hamed Oualdi’s L’esclavage dans les mondes musulmans constitutes a valuable contribution to both academic and public debates on slavery in pre-modern Islamic societies and its contemporary repercussions. Rather than offering an exhaustive historical synthesis, the author presents a conceptual reflection aimed at deconstructing the main clichés that sustain Islamophobic discourses surrounding the so-called "Eastern slave trades." Oualdi challenges these narratives from a critical perspective, drawing on recent historiography and contextualizing slavery practices in their regional, temporal, and functional diversity. Despite some limitations, particularly regarding the treatment of classical Islamic legislation on slavery and the omission of certain underlying social and economic dynamics, the book represents a significant contribution to understanding the relationships between slavery, racialization, and post-slavery in pre-contemporary Islamic societies and their projection in current memory debates.
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