The History of Slavery in the Middle East

A man's wife and children come to be considered no different than his sheep and crockery, as property to be liquidated on the occasion of default. This is a practice with a very specific history that appears in the great agrarian civilizations from sumer to rome to china. Later, more gradually, it also appears in those surrounding hinterlands that supplied those civilizations with slaves. Excluding all this is deceptive because it excludes the main purpose to which money was actually put in the past.