Pipes Daniel. Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System

Yale University Press, 1981. — 278 p.Even a cursory glance at the history of Muslim peoples reveals the extraordinary role played by men of slave origins in the armed forces. On the one hand it is a specialist contribution to the history, particularly the early history, of Islam, on the other it is an important and original contribution to the growing corpus of military sociology... an original book on an important subject... with an intelligence and certainty of purpose which ensures its appeal to scholars far beyond the margins of Islamic studies.