Includes bibliographical references and index.

Front Matter -- Dedication -- Acknowledgments -- Figures and Maps -- Introduction -- Slavery, Slave Trading, and the Law in the Pre-Islamic Middle East -- Slavery and Slave Trading in Early Islam -- Slavery and Empire in the Medieval and Early Modern Islamic Worlds -- The “Mamluk/Ghulam Phenomenon”—Slave Sultans, Soldiers, Eunuchs, and Concubines -- Plural Imperialisms and Multiple Diasporas -- A Taxonomy of Slavery and Slave Trading in Muslim Cultures -- The Rise and Impact of Abolitionism -- A Tale of Three Sovereigns—The Shah, the Khedive, and the Sultan -- The Illusion of Abolition -- The Reemergence of Slavery and Slave Trading in the Muslim World -- Back Matter -- Bibliography -- Index.

In Possessed by the Right Hand , the first comprehensive legal history of slavery in Islam ever offered to readers, Bernard K. Freamon, an African-American Muslim law professor, provides a penetrating analysis of the problems of slavery and slave-trading in Islamic history. After examining the issues from pre-Islamic times through to the nineteenth century, Professor Freamon considers the impact of Western abolitionism, arguing that such efforts have been a failure, with the notion of abolition becoming nothing more than a cruel illusion. He closes this ground-breaking account with an examination of the slaving ideologies and actions of ISIS and Boko Haram, asserting that Muslims now have an important and urgent responsibility to achieve true abolition under the aegis of Islamic law.