Reddit reviews Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire: The Design Of Difference (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization)

Price and use would be a good indicator of this.

>They were largely indiscriminate, in terms of race and sex.

This is quite wrong. [1][2][3] They used different peoples for different purposes. I've only read summaries of [3]. You couldn't actually say this unless you were pretty unfamiliar with the Ottomans.

My comment was a bit of a dark joke. The concept of 'racism' is an artifact of 20th century Allied war propaganda (and Soviet anti-American propaganda), and doesn't really apply to older societies. Recognized differences between peoples was ordinary. And it's still ordinary on a worldwide basis. It's even fairly ordinary in a lot of European countries that provide state funding to different religious groups that cater to different ethnic groups.

[1]http://jreuter.hubpages.com/hub/The-Harem-Luxuries-and-Enslavement-within-the-Sultans-Palace
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire
[3]http://www.amazon.com/Women-Slavery-Late-Ottoman-Empire/dp/1107411459

Slaves in the Middle East weren't all African. Here are some books that can give you a better perspective on slavery in the Islamic world:
http://www.amazon.com/Race-Slavery-Middle-East-Historical/dp/0195053265/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353987039&sr=8-1&keywords=bernard+lewis+race+and+slavery

http://www.amazon.com/Tell-This-My-Memory-Enslavement/dp/0804782334/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353987192&sr=1-1&keywords=eve+troutt+powell

http://www.amazon.com/Women-Slavery-Late-Ottoman-Empire/dp/1107411459/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353987281&sr=1-2&keywords=madeline+zilfi

EDIT: I think it's important to note that I don't have some sort of pro white revisionist history agenda, I just think it's important to know that Europeans were not the only ones who had slaves. I say this as a half Arab myself.