Perfect Slavery (part one)

“Systematically enslaved by a system”…Although forms of free-labor existed earlier than recorded history the term slave was first used in the 10th century. The word slave originates in old English as scalavus in 1290. The word had evolved from the French word escalave from the Latin word sclavus from the Byzantine Greek word sklabos meaning Slavic people first appearing in the mid 6th century. The term originally referred to various peoples from eastern and central Europe that were captured and sold as slaves by Vikings and later the Holy Roman Emperor Otto 1st, the first king of the Germans to be called the emperor of Italy. There existed slavery in early religions previous to the Middle Ages. Jesus the founder of a religious movement called Christianity fought against slavery. Many are unfamiliar as to why the religion was called Christianity. The term Christ came from the Greek word Christos which referred to a ceremony where princes were initiated into power as kings. The ceremony consisted of pouring water or sacred oils over the head of the initiated; this would later be known as a baptism. When Jesus began to baptize common man this outraged authorities because it was a protest against kings and rulers that convinced the people they had special connections to god that no other man could have. Jesus also protested against usury or the taxation of the people. These are the facts at the basis of the ‘story’. For 300 years after his death and during the 33 years of his life the belief was persecuted. King Herod of Judaea was placed in power by the Roman Emperor Caesar, and 300 years later King Herod’s descendent Constantine 1st would become the Roman Emperor and ‘legalize’ Christianity. He took control of the church and created a council with him at the head to decide what should be documented as official Christian scriptures…and it became law, while the church was exempt from taxation the people faced high taxes and severe punishments for refusing to pay. The Emperor Constantine then moved the imperial city from Rome to Byzantine in Greece and renamed it Constantinople or Nova Roma meaning New Rome. During these years slavery was a large part of the economy in the Roman Empire, as many slaves worked as soldiers for the Roman Empire for periods of years in return for their freedom. This would result in many tribes grouping together and rebelling against the Roman Empire and leading to its fall.At around 265 to 273AD, Rome officially took over the Nabataean kingdom; from there two kingdoms arose in Arabia. These kingdoms were in the center of an important trade route and profited from the hatred between the Roman and Persian empires, which had both used trades to Egypt. Before 384AD Rome and Persia were at war and Arabia gained a lot of wealth as a trade route. From 384 to 502 a peace treaty was made between Rome and Persia and trade was not needed in Egypt because trade had begun between Rome and Persia. But in 502 the treaty was broken and trade ended between them and re-started with Egypt.Before the religion that is Islam was created, Muhammad was a man, (just like Jesus) who was born in about 570AD to the Banu Hashim family, which was a tribe of Quraysh that grew into a noble family in Mecca and began his belief in 622AD. He was forced to leave Mecca because of the founding of his laws of Islam and left with 622 followers only to return to Mecca in 630AD. The new Islamic Muslims were a large enough group and were able to re-capture Mecca. However two years later the founder of Islam would die and in the time of a decade two groups would emerge as oppositions from the same path (Sunni & Shi’a) and both would lose their end route. Kharaj in Traditional Islamic law refers to a tax on land and was used to denote any kind of taxation on Muslims that went to foreign rulers at the time being the Sassanid and Byzantine Roman Empire. Later on after the movement was squashed, Muslims were required to pay a tithe or tribute to the Caliph of Islam.