Prague slave trade

The Goddess Zorya of the Slavic religion. The fact that the Slavs were pagans legitimized them as targets for enslavement in the eyes of both Christians and Muslims.
Iron restraints, 11th or 12th century, from Neu Niekohr
Duchy of Bohemia in c. 1000.
The Radhanite trade routes.
Saint Adalbert of Prague pleads with Boleslaus II, Duke of Bohemia, for the release of Christians slaves by their masters, Jewish merchants, Gniezno Door c. 1170
Madinat al-Zahra.

The Prague slave trade refers to the slave trade conducted between the Duchy of Bohemia and the Caliphate of Córdoba in Moorish al-Andalus in the Early Middle Ages. The Duchy's capital of Prague was the center of this slave trade, and internationally known as one of the biggest centers of slave trade in Europe at the time.

The Prague slave trade is known as one of the main routes of saqaliba-slaves to the Muslim world, alongside the Balkan slave trade by the Republic of Venice in the south, and the Volga route of the Vikings via Volga Bulgaria and the Samanid slave trade in the east.

The Duchy of Bohemia was a new state in Christian Europe at this time, bordering to lands of pagan Slavs to the north and east. Pagans were considered as legitimate targets of enslavement both by Christian and Islamic law. Bohemia was thereby able to traffic pagan captives to the slave market of the Muslim Caliphate of Cordoba through Christian France without trouble. The Prague slave trade was a mutual trade of benefit between the Caliphate of Córdoba, who were dependent on slaves to manage their state bureaucracy and military, and the Duchy of Bohemia, whose new state rose to economic prominence due to the trade.

The Prague slave trade was dependent upon supply of pagan captives to maintain the slave trade with Muslim al-Andalus via Christian Europe, and therefore lost its supply source when Eastern Europe started to adopt Christianity. In parallel, in the early 11th century both the Caliphate of Cordoba as well as the Duchy of Bohemia went through a period of political instability.