It’s been alleged that the Knights Templar were involved in the medieval slave trade but is there any truth in this? To be clear, this is not the trans-Atlantic slave trade, nor does it have anything to do with the horrendous traffic in African slaves from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. But it’s certainly a stain on their reputation if it happened – no matter where or on what scale.
The gist of the story is that the Knights Templar were engaged in what is sometimes termed the ‘white slave trade’ – a phrase that carries an enormous amount of political baggage. The dubious inference being that white people being trafficked is somehow much worse than black people.
We begin with the Templars engaged in all sorts of trading in the town of Ajazzo, known in Armenian as Ayas, located today in modern Turkey. In the thirteenth century it was part of the Armenian kingdom of Cicilia, a Christian territory linking the Byzantine empire to the increasingly beleaguered crusader states of the Levant.
By the time the Templars were active in the kingdom, it was taking a hammering from Mongol armies that had stormed out of the east, Mamluk armies from the south and Turks from the north. Inevitably, the kingdom just kept shrinking until it was completely absorbed in to the Turkic Ottoman empire.
READ MORE: Ten things you never knew about the Templars
Templars tapped into the slave trade
Before that happened though, it benefited from the criss-cross of trade in the region and it’s said that both Mongol and Turk slave drivers brought their human cargo to Ayas to trade the live bodies to the highest bidders. Some of those bidders, it’s said, were Templars. They basically bought up the slaves and took them back to work on the estates attached to their preceptories.
These slaves came from the Russian steppes. Both the Turks and the Mongols had invaded and raided these lands and part of the treasure was a section of the population. Many of these slaves were sold in the Muslim world and converted to Islam – voluntarily or forcibly. In Egypt, these converted slaves rose up and killed their masters becoming the Mamluk rulers of that country.
Templars were also slave owners
So did the Templars trade in slaves? It’s possible that they engaged in this unpleasant activity. Did those slaves work their lands? It’s claimed that they did, particularly in southern Europe. But I’d be delighted to know if you have any evidence for this.
If you’d like to know more about the Knights Templar, then buy my book – The Knights Templar: History & Mystery – published by Pen & Sword – available on Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmith, Barnes & Noble, etc.
