Malik Ambar (1548–1626): the rise and fall of military slavery

Richard M. Eaton

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521254847.007

5 - Malik Ambar (1548–1626): the rise and fall of military slavery

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008

Richard M. Eaton

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Richard M. Eaton: Affiliation:
University of Arizona

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The slaves of this kingdom [Damot, in Ethiopia] are much esteemed by the Moors, and they do not let them go at any price; all the country of Arabia, Persia, India, Egypt, and Greece, are full of slaves from this country, and they say they make very good Moors and great warriors.

Father Francisco Alvares (1523)

FROM “CHAPU” to “MALIK AMBAR”

An Ethiopian slave known to history as “Malik Ambar” was already seventeen years old in 1565, the year of the Battle of Talikota. If that date signaled the beginning of a slide into near-oblivion for the city of Vijayanagara, for the Ethiopian it heralded the dawn of an extraordinary career. His original name was not, of course, Malik Ambar, for malik means “king, ” conceptually quite distant from a slave. In his native land he was known as “Chapu,” a name that suggests an origin in the Kambata region of southern Ethiopia.

Born in 1548, Chapu as a youth had fallen into the hands of slave dealers operating between the Ethiopian highlands and the coasts of eastern Africa. He might have been captured in war, or he might have been sold into slavery by his impoverished parents. In any event, he joined streams of other Ethiopians–known in the Arab world as “Habshis”–who turned up in slave markets in the Middle East, there to enter élite households as servants or, as in Chapu's case, to be re-exported to the Deccan plateau to meet that region's insatiable demand for military labor. Chapu thus appears to have been sold and resold several times after his initial entry into slavery. A contemporary European source relates that he was sold in the Red Sea port of Mocha for the sum of eighty Dutch guilders.

Keywords

Deccani regional identity Ethiopian highlands Battle of Talikota Chapu Malik Ambar military slavery Indian Tughluq rule

Type: Chapter
Information: A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761
Eight Indian Lives
, pp. 105 - 128

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521254847.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2005

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5 - Malik Ambar (1548–1626): the rise and fall of military slavery

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