Cain, Ham, and Ishmael

Abstract

This chapter tracks how figures of Jewish hereditary inferiority translate to Muslims and Africans. The canon law formulation of Jews as enemies of Christendom, punished with enslavement, influences attitudes toward other infidels. The figure of Ishmael facilitates this connection, since he represents both Jews and Muslims. Anachronistically, popes and canonists begin describing Muslims as cursed with perpetual servitude for the crime of deicide, thus subjecting them to the same rationale that secured Jewish subordination to Christians. Crusader logic provides the legal justification for the European expansion into Africa, which begins in North African territory frequently associated with Islam. The language of papal bulls transfers the figural concept of hereditary inferiority through the inclusion of the term “perpetual servitude” in edicts that not only authorize the Iberian appropriation of African lands, but also license the trade in enslaved peoples by representing Africans as already inferior enemies of Christendom.