The Khiva Slave Trade: Central Asia's Forgotten Human Market

Long before Russian conquest, the Khanate of Khiva was infamous across Eurasia as the epicenter of a vast slave trade. In this episode, Lucas walks Luna through the origins of Khiva's slave markets, the raiding networks that captured Persians, Russians, and steppe nomads, and the staggering scale of human trafficking that defined the region for centuries. We explore how slaving shaped Khiva's economy, its brutal system of slave labor in the Karakum desert, and the often-overlooked role of Turkmen tribes as both traders and raiders. We also discuss the Russian campaigns to suppress the trade, the Abolition Edict of 1873, and the long shadow this history casts on modern Central Asia. Along the way, we meet figures like Muhammad Rahim Khan I, the Persian slave poet Sayyid Yaghma, and the Russian abolitionist N.P. Ignatyev. This is the story of a market in human lives that connected the Caspian to the Hindu Kush — and the slow, painful end of an institution that shaped Khiva for centuries.

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