So how did the feudalism in the levant and Iran work? Since I thought that most Muslim rulers in the middle east used slave soldiers as their core troops.


You are not incorrect. Certainly it is true that most Muslim rulers in the Middle East built their army around a corps of slave soldiers, usually Turkish cavalry, but the whole matter is somewhat more complex than just that.

It started with the breakup of the Abbasid empire n the 9th and 10th centuries, which towards the end also had relied on a system of slave soldiers and foreign mercenaries to make up their armies. As the empire fell apart ambitious rulers seized power for themselves, basing their power on their slave soldiers and their foreign mercenaries.
One of the most powerful were the Buwayhids who seized power in Iraq and western Iran, they recognized the Abbasid caliph as spiritual head, and allowed him to retain the right to make appointments to religious offices, but he had to surrender his lordship over the land which the Buwayhid brothers divided up amongst themselves, soon they were fighting each other for power and influence.

The constant warfare and economic decline of the late Abbasid period made it hard to maintain a central bureaucracy that could collect taxes and oversee the empire, and so also made it hard to provide salary to soldiers. Despite being slaves, mamluks (or ghulams as they were often known in the early middle ages) received salaries, and many (in some states most) were actually freed at the completion of their training, though they were expected to remain beholden to their master. In lieu of payment soldiers were therefore given iqta, land grants from which they could collect taxes to pay for their equipment, raise retainers and recieve salary. This was not hereditary and could be revoked at the behest of a soldiers master and did pass on to a soldier's son.

When the Seljuks entered the scene and conquered the Middle East in the 11th century they introduced many of their own customs, notably the institution of the Atabeg (or Atabey). An Atabeg was a tutor and regent assigned to Seljuk princes still in their minority, governing the land in his name until he came of age, he was also entitled to marry his ward's mother should something ill befall him. This seemed to happen quite often and by the 12th century many Atabegs were practically independent rulers, particulary in Iraq and Syria, establishing dynasties of their own as they became the hereditary rulers. At the same time the loss of Seljuk central power would lead to the iqta land grants becoming hereditary in nature transforming the slave soldier elite from an army loyal only to the ruler into a military aristocracy of its own, by using force to impose their power over the iqta and its inhabitants, usurping it from the ruler who owned it in theory.

This system of military regimes centered around a core of, usually Turkish, slave soldiers who received land grants, that were practically hereditary, would continue throughout the Middle ages and be continued, in part, by the Ottomans through the Timar system (though this owed almost as much to Byzantine practice and was somewhat different both in practice and theory IIRC). However it is not entirely correct to term this entire thing simply as feudalism in the Middle East. A vassal under the feudal system had rights, as well as duties, whereas a subordinate of a Muslim ruler had no such rights and could (in theory) have his property and liberty and even his life revoked at the whim of the ruler. A large part of this is because the subordinates of a Muslim ruler were, often as not, his actual slaves (or slaves he had freed), however to be a slave in such a way was not to be at the bottom of society, a slave of a sultan could be a general or a governor, with slaves of his own serving as officers and elite soldiers. Sometimes these slave soldiers would even seize power for themselves and establish dynasties of their own, most famous are the mamluk dynasties of Egypt, but mamluk dynasties also existed in eastern Iran, Afghanistan and India. The difference between the military aristocracies of Europe and the Middle East was that the former were free men with rights that the ruler could not (in theory) violate, while the ones of the Middle East were often literal slaves of the ruler, but their accumulation of power at the cost of the ruler enabled them to establish hereditary rule over their iqta land grants, in practice giving rise to semi-feudal system that lasted throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.

To explain the bit about everybody being the literal slave of the ruler, people often read "slave" and assume it means something like chattel slavery, such as they are familiar with from more recent European and American history. Islamic slavery was something rather different, with a number of firm religious laws and directives governing the relationship between owner and slave and defining their mutual obligations. Slaves were considered minors in the household of their owner, similar to a woman or a child. In pre-modern times the concept of the state as its own discrete entity hadn't been established and in most of the world the ruler and his family (or dynasty) functioned as the state. Somebody who was not directly related to a ruler became a member of his household if he was the ruler's slave, therefore it made sense for official positions to be filled by the Sultan's slaves because they had that immediate connection and could derive authority from it.

     What exactly is the deal with slavery in the middle east? Cause I've read Ibn Battuta's book and one of the things that I noticed is that he was absolutely disgusted by men he met holding slaves in Turkey but he himself later admitted he held slaves (including 2 girls in a dubious position) which seems somewhat ironic. What made his slaveholding acceptable for him while the others were unacceptable?


Can you quote the part where he is disgusted with slavery among the Turks? I can mostly find instanced of him only casually mention that there were so and so many slaves accompanying this person, and that some were Greeks and others were Indians and such. And he mentions in passing that he himself bought a greek slave girl for 40 dinars. Though there is the part where he is skeptical of the slave girls in a bath house which the guests and owners are free to use as they wish, but to me it seems that he is more disgusted with the sexual depravity of the whole thing, rather than the fact that the women are slaves.

EvanSchenk already said some about the status of slaves in Islamic society, and I said some about miltiary slaves. Generally speaking there was a lot of different kind of slaves, who could hold various social positions, even going as far as being rulers.

Generally speaking slavery was viewed as a natural part of society, though you could enslave a Muslim or your own subjects, and freeing infidel slaves who converted to Islam was generally looked on as especially virtous. Slaves came from everywhere outside the Muslim world, from both western and eastern africa as part of the especially long live Arab Slave Trade, but throughout middle ages (especially so from the 9th-11th centuries) Muslim pirates in the mediterranean enslaved whole communities in Italy bringing them to the slave markets in Sicily, Tunis and elsewhere, Slavic slaves bought from Vikings or Jewish middle-men were also especially common. Generally enslaved women were fated to serve as household servants or as concubines as part of a ruler's palace. Many young boys or handsome men were also sold as harem slaves, especially as eunuchs where there eventually developed a practice of white eunuchs only having their balls removed and black eunuchs getting their penis sliced off as well. Military slaves was also a particulary Islamic practice, this included not just Turks but also Africans and Slavs, though those were usually infantry and palace guards (sometimes eunuchs), while the Turkish slaves (sometimes just called 'white slaves') were elite cavalry, officers and governors, and later would even become rulers of entire states. Chattel slavery for agricultural work on plantations existed in the Abbasid empire, particularly in the salt marches of Southern Iraq where a plantation economy had developed. But a great slave revolt (though some are divided on whether or not it was wholly a slave rebellion), the Zanj rebellion (Zanj was a general term for black people), seems to have convinced most of the Islamic world that gathering such large numbers of slaves tohether and subjecting them to arduous labor was a recipe for disaster, and such slavery became uncommon to the point that it became insignificant.

I'm not completely sure why Ibn Battuta was disgusted by the slavery he saw among the Turks, though to me it seems he was more disgusted by the kind of slavery he saw, which makes sense as slavery in the Islamic world was very widespread, very pervasive and very diverse. One did not usually question the morality of slavery, but one might look upon certain forms of slavery as immoral, such as enslaving one's own dependents, a Muslim, a master not freeing a converted slave, or even in Ibn Battuta's case considering a slave-staffed brothel an immoral thing.