Note 23 — Chapter XIII · CONCLUSION.

It is not, however, true, as some European writers have maintained, that if an unbeliever is the slave of a Muslim his conversion to Islam procures for him his manumission, for, according to Muhammadan law, the conversion of a slave does not affect the prior state of bondage;23 and the condition of the Muslim slave has varied much according to the character of his master. But freedom is in many instances the reward of conversion, and devout minds have even recognised in enslavement God’s guidance to the true faith, as the negroes from the Upper Nile countries, whom Doughty met in Arabia. “In those Africans there is no resentment that they have been made slaves … even though cruel men-stealers rent them from their parentage. The patrons who paid their price have adopted them into their households, the males are circumcised and—that which enfranchises their souls, even in the long passion of home-sickness—God has visited them in their mishap; they can say ‘it was His grace,’ since they be thereby entered into the saving religion. This, therefore, they think is the better country, where they are the Lord’s free men, a land of more civil life, the soil of the two Sanctuaries, the land of Mohammed:—for such they do give God thanks that their bodies were sometime sold into slavery!”24