Slavery can be redefined as martyrdom and honor through religious identification.

Evidence

Many took pride in direct descent from slaves, a claim that became easier to make as more and more Egyptians entered the ranks of the elite and thus were able to marry (or were given in marriage) the freed slave-women of the Ottoman-Egyptian ruling classes, who were considered to be members of the nobility. There was thus honor and social mobility inherent in the intermarriage between women of the Ottoman-Egyptian households and ambitious Egyptians, demonstrating that a certain kind of slavery led to social mobility. This also created a level of society whose members were half Egyptian and half Circassian, like the lawyer and statesman Ahmad Shafïk.These people took pride in their mothers’ descent and in their ability to marry wives whose slave past ensured them access to nobility. The enslavement of black Africans in North Africa was described (often erroneously so) as being synonymous with this type of intimate slavery. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 647 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Descent from some slaves conferred honor and social mobility in Egypt — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 647; Displaced Sudanese women reclaim slavery as a badge of honor and identity; Martyrdom derives the body’s value from abstraction toward eternity. — Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, 160

Related

• Descent from some slaves conferred honor and social mobility in Egypt (similarity 0.85)
• Egyptian elites reframed slave descent as honorable social-capital currency (similarity 0.84)
• Egyptian elites prized descent from slaves as social mobility (similarity 0.81)
• Egyptian antislavery debate conflated African and Circassian slave experience. (similarity 0.81)
• Islamic slavery offered slaves mobility and rights unmatched in Christian law (similarity 0.81)
• Westernized Egyptian elites were torn between rejecting slavery and honoring slave-born kin (similarity 0.79)
• Elite Egyptian households absorbed Sudanese slaves so thoroughly that their origins became bedtime folklore (similarity 0.79)
• Descendants of enslaved Sudanese reclaim a saint as family and honor (similarity 0.78)
• Sudanese refugee women transformed the slave insult into a badge of courage (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Displaced Sudanese women reclaim slavery as a badge of honor and identity #exemplifies (0.85)
• Descent from some slaves conferred honor and social mobility in Egypt #corroborates (0.60) — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 647