Muḥammad is usually known among Muslims simply as the Prophet or Messenger, but he was by no means the only prominent prophet in his own lifetime, although the others were eventually overtaken by him. This chapter attempts to place Muḥammad in the prophetic milieu of his own lifetime and to identify his leading rivals, which included at least one with a Qurʾān of his own.

This chapter traces the establishment, and evolution of military slavery in north India between ca. 1000-1500. It will moreover investigate the interaction between war and society when it involves enslavement of captured civilians. Lastly, it will argue that the expansion of agriculture and the rise of a large peasant population that served as a potential source of mercenaries that eventually competed with slaves as a source of recruitment.

While captivity was the product of the violent confrontation between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, this essay uses Latin, Arabic, and Romance sources to argue that ransoming was also a phenomenon that intimately linked these communities. Grounded in a shared Roman inheritance, the tradition of ransoming brought Jews, Christians, and Muslims into a dialogic and reciprocal relationship with one another, one that depended on mutual understanding and expectations. It provided a channel to share ideas and institutions. Ransomers also helped pave the paths for commercial and diplomatic relations. Nevertheless, if ransoming drew these communities together, it also tore them apart. The physical and emotional cost of captivity, although shared, became the ground of separation.

As Dio began writing the history of his own time, he began to incorporate his personal experiences into the narrative of the Roman History to the point that the final portion of his history serves as a largely autobiographical sphragis to the Roman History. These final books of his history are central to the construction of historian’s authorial persona and his self-fashioning the embodiment to traditional senatorial virtues. This chapter analyses Dio’s representation of himself through what he says about his dreams, his conduct and his career, before turning to looking what he says about his senatorial peers in the contemporary narrative of the Roman History. It is argued that an underlying theme of the Severan books is the commemoration of men (like Dio) who upheld a senatorial ideal, excelling domi militiaeque and in the field of paideia, in the face of perceived external and internal threats to the senatorial order.

The study of pre-modern (i.e. pre-sixteenth century) systems of enslavement and slave trading in sub-Saharan Africa have relied heavily on textual, especially Arabic, sources. By contrast, there have been few archaeological studies of these phenomena, although reference is often made to the Trans-Saharan and Red Sea/Indian Ocean slave trades in archaeological studies of early state formation and globalisation on the continent. This chapter provides a brief review of some of the key written sources concerning the presence of slaves in different regions of sub-Saharan Africa between c. 500-1500 CE, and what these can tell us about prevailing systems of enslavement. This is followed by discussion of the limited number of archaeological studies of enslavement during this same period across the continent, their main findings and the key interpretative challenges faced when trying to detect the presence of slaves from material evidence alone. The chapter concludes with suggestions for the direction of future work, laying emphasis on the need for multi-sited projects that aim to reconstruct landscapes of enslavement and how slave-based economies were organised and functioned.

Dio’s account of the second century AD, the ‘Antonine period’ broadly construed, has not received the same attention when compared with the better-preserved Julio-Claudian books or the exciting contemporary narrative of the Severan age. This chapter examines Dio’s portrayal of five second-century emperors: Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Commodus and Pertinax. It focuses particularly on the role that military qualities (or lack thereof) played in the historian’s assessment of their character and reigns. In Dio’s view, the best emperors were not necessarily the best generals, but leaders who were able to maintain the frontiers in the face of foreign threats and kept the troops disciplined and ready for defence at all time. A good emperor should be an all-rounder, able to balance attention to military matters with concern for the civilian government of the empire. In the second-century narrative, it is Marcus Aurelius who best embodies these qualities.

This chapter provides an overview of slavery as practiced in the Iberian Peninsula over the course of the medieval period, from the era of the Visigoths up until the era of the Catholic Kings, and in both Muslim and Christian-controlled territories. While traditionally scholars have paid attention to medieval Iberian slavery almost exclusively for the purposes of exploring how it laid the groundwork for the Atlantic-World slave system, this chapter argues that the study of slavery in this particular time and place merits scholarly interest for a wealth of other reasons, in particular, it illuminates how gender and the law had a profound impact on both the experiences and trajectories of the enslaved.

Stemming from its primeval origins in ancient notions of punitive punishment, by medieval times, Chinese slavery had already long ago become culturally embedded enough to function effectively as an invisible institution, practiced endogenously as well as exogenously. Since earliest times, slave status in medieval China, which was a class-bound, inheritable, and thus only rarely escapable condition, tended to befall either the surviving dependents of executed elites who had contravened authority or else those oftentimes non-Chinese unfortunates—combatants or otherwise—who were captured alive in battle or simply taken by force. Additionally, at any time, exigency could compel the sale of children into slavery. Slaves themselves were divided into two broad categories according to ownership, being either official slaves or private slaves. A crucial development of the medieval age is that both types of slaves came to be accounted for in the dynastic legal codes, which was an especially important occurrence for private slaves because, for the first time, their treatment by their masters became regulated. Finally worth noting in the medieval Chinese case is the prominence of specialized functionaries who, although unfree by any measure, were not typically regarded societally as slaves. Included under this rubric were eunuchs and concubines.

The revived interest in the Roman past in tenth–twelfth century Byzantium led to a revived interest in ancient historical writings, and in particular Cassius Dios’ Roman History, the most comprehensive Greek narrative of the history of Rome. Whereas in earlier periods Dio was mainly referenced by grammarians and moralists, scholars of the tenth through twelfth centuries, who admired Dios’ classicizing prose and identified with his focus on emperors and dynasties, copied, excerpted and abridged his lengthy account. Notably, excerpts from the Roman History were included in the tenth-century Excerpta Constantiniana, a voluminous assemblage of excerpts from historians ranging from the fifth century BC to the ninth century AD commissioned by Constantine VII. An epitome of the Roman History was made by John Xiphilinus, probably for the education of the young Michael VII in the eleventh century, and the text was adapted by John Zonaras in his sophisticated world chronicle in the twelfth century. In addition to these major works, Dio was referenced and utilized by poets such as Theodosios the Deacon, scholars such as John Tzetzes, and educated laymen like Kekaumenos. All this indicates a familiarity with and esteem for Dio’s Roman History not only in court circles but also among the educated reading public.

The author argues that Dio's account of the Principate was based on extensive reading of literary sources, whose precise identification is almost impossible, for he selected and reworked with great independence the copious material he gathered. Moreover, he drew information from systematic reading of documentary sources, above all the archives of the senate, but also the acta urbis and inscriptions. He probably employed only a fraction of the material he gathered, in accordance with his methodological principle of omitting ‘meaningless’ details and with his overriding interests: honour and festivities for emperors, as well as institutional, procedural and ceremonial aspects of the Roman state, which he collected with the intention of comparing them with his own time.

This chapter examines Dio’s presentation of wonders in relation to his characterization of emperors and Roman power. After analysing Dio’s ‘lexicon of wonder’ in the Roman History, the chapter offers a close reading of two case studies: (i) the rain miracle during the extraordinary battle (AD 172) between the Romans and the Quadi on the Danube under the leadership of Marcus Aurelius (72[71].8); (ii) the case of Pedo Apronianus, accused (AD 205) on apparently flimsy grounds of aspiring to become emperor, which results in thedemise of the innocent and unlucky bald-headed senator Baebius Marcellinus (77[76].8.1 [Xiph.]). These case studies support the following conclusions. It is clear even from the epitomized narrative that Dio finds wonders expressive and rich in meaning. Dio’s wonders operate on a broad spectrum, running from the uplifting and positive to the humiliating and negative, thus evoking the dynamics of exemplarity in Roman historiography. Generally, although narrative modes of wonder can potentially be problematic for the heavyweight and serious genres of historiography, Dio embraces wonders which are expressive about his perceptions of the nature of imperial power. Dio’s wonders are clearly a hugely important thread in the fabric of his distinctive brand of historical writing.

This chapter explores the intersection of gender, sex, and slavery in the medieval dar al-islam (“the lands of Islam). A background survey is provided for sexual ethics, male social reproduction, and female sexual slavery in these societies that illustrates how Islamic sexual ethics, derived from the Quran, and the Islamic legal understanding of legitimacy were very different from those of Roman law, Christianity, late antique Judaism and seventh century Zoroastrianism. Two central questions of the chapter are how was the status of an enslaved woman defined and whether or not the child of an enslaved woman was born with slave-status. In classical Islamic law, the rule of umm al-walad (“mother of child”) meant that an enslaved woman who bore her Muslim owner a child gave birth to a free born person. The status of umm al-walad thus provided enslaved women with limited opportunities to assert their agency.