The Life & Character of the Seal of Prophets (sa) - Volume II — Page 178
Seal of the Prophets - Volume II 178 matter of fact, quite often, many or all of the males belonging to the defeated nation would be executed; and the women and children (except for those who were considered worthy of death), would be taken captive and made slaves. Thereafter, these slaves would be subjected to various types of work and labour. After this, on the one hand, civilization and commerce progressed in the world, and the demand for labourers and servants also began to grow. On the other hand, the practical experience of making women and children into slaves demonstrated that an excellent and easy method by which service and labour could be generated, was to enslave the people of a defeated nation. For this reason, gradually the practice, which then became prevalent, was that except for those people who for some reason, were considered worthy of death, even the men of a defeated nation were made slaves as opposed to being killed. They would then be subjected to forced labour in various domestic, national and individual tasks. As such, history reveals that this practice gradually became so widespread that the number of slaves in certain countries even surpassed the actual population of the residents themselves; and the practice of slavery became an essential part of civilization and society. These slaves were considered to be the full property of their master, and he possessed the right to keep them as he so willed, use them for whatever task he wished, give them any punishment he desired and sell them to another individual whenever and however he so pleased. Ultimately, this system took on such a vast nature that even the offspring of these slaves were considered to be the property of their master, and in this manner a continuous and never ending practice of slavery became prevalent. Furthermore, people eventually realized that this was a very profitable practice, whereby service could be derived from servants and labourers for absolutely nothing. It was not necessary to give them a wage, etc. , and the slave was compelled to perform any service in all circumstances. As a matter of fact, aside from service, other benefits could be derived from them as well. Hence, aside from the practice of taking in prisoners of war, people invented many other cruel means by which to acquire slaves. For example, without any reason, people would attack a weaker tribe or raid a caravan and capture all of its men and women and make them slaves. Then, the blemish of slavery would continue to forever taint the progeny of these unfortunate people. Therefore, gradually, both just and unjust means of making slaves became customary and established throughout the world. At the time of the