The Volga Bulgarian slave trade took place in the Volga Bulgar Emirate in Central Asia (in modern Eastern Russia).

Volga Bulgaria was a buffer state between Europe and the Islamic world and played a major part in the trade between Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages from the 10th century onward, and slaves were one of the main goods. The Volga Bulgarian slave trade was one of the major routes of the human trafficking of saqaliba slaves from Europe to the Muslim world from the early 10th century when it replaced the Khazar slave trade. The Viking slave trade in Volga Bulgaria was the subject of a famous description by Ibn Fadlan in the 920s.

In the 9th century, the slave trade of European slaves to the Muslim world were trafficked via the Khazar Khaganate. The flourishing Khazar slave trade was however affected by a crisis in circa 900, and by the early 10th century, the Vikings instead sold their captives to Volga Bulgaria, who exported them by caravan around the Khazar Khaganate to the Abbasid Caliphate via the Samanid slave trade in Central Asia instead, circumventing the Khazar Khaganate.

The Khazar Khaganate initially reacted to this change by making Volga Bulgaria their tributary state in order to continue to profit by the slave trade to the Caliphate, but it resulted in Volga Bulgaria converting to Islam in the 920s and becoming directly aligned with the Caliphate.

The shift of the slave trade to the Caliphate via Volga Bulgaria and the Samanid Empire instead of the Khazar Khaganate is reflected in the fact that from this point on, the Arab silver dirham found in Europe now came from the Samanid Empire rather than directly from the Abbasid Caliphate.

The Vikings used the demand for slaves in the Southern slave markets in the Orthodox Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Middle Eastern Caliphate, both of whom craved slaves of a different religion than their own. During the Middle Ages, organized alongside religious principles. Both Christians and Muslims banned the enslavement of people of their own faith, but both approved of the enslavement of people of a different faith; both did allow the enslavement of people they regarded to be heretics, which allowed Catholic Christians to enslave Orthodox Christians, and Sunni Muslims to enslave Shia Muslims.

Volga Bulgaria played a key role in the Viking trade route in the 10th and 11th centuries. People taken captive during the Viking raids across Eastern Europe could be sold to Moorish Spain or transported to Hedeby or Brännö and from there via the Volga trade route to present-day Russia, where Slavic slaves and furs were sold to Muslim merchants in exchange for Arab silver dirham and silk, which have been found in Birka, Wolin, and Dublin; initially this trade route between Europe and the Abbasid Caliphate passed via the Khazar Kaghanate, but from the early 10th-century onward it went via Volga Bulgaria.

The slave trade between the Vikings and Bukhara via Volga Bulgaria ended when the Vikings converted to Christianity in the 11th century. However, East Europeans were still exported to the slave trade in Central Asia. During the warfare between the Russian principalities in the 12th century, Russian princes allowed their Cuman (Kipchak) allies to enslave peasants from the territory of opposing Russian principalities, and sell them to slave traders in Central Asia.