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Arab Slave Trade

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Arab slave trade



 
 
The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery
Slavery

Slavery is a form of forced labor where a person is compelled to Labor for another . Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive Remuneration in return for their labor....
 in West Asia
Southwest Asia

Southwest Asia or Southwestern Asia is the southwestern subregion of Asia. The term West Asia is sometimes used in the United Nations subregion geoscheme and in writings about the archeology and the late prehistory of the region....
, North Africa
North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories:...
, East Africa
East Africa

East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN subregion, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
, and certain parts of Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
 (such as Sicily
Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
 and Iberia
Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes modern-day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar and a very small area of France....
) during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade mostly involved North and East Africans
African people

The peoples of Africa The African continent is home to people of wide-ranging phenotypical traits, both indigenous and foreign to the continent, of diverse origins, and with several different cultural, communal, and artistic traits....
 and Middle East
Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
ern peoples (Arab
Arab

An Arab is a person who Identity as such on linguistic or cultural grounds. The plural form, Arabs , refers to the Ethnocultural group at large....
s, Berbers, etc.). Also, the Arab slave trade was not limited to people of certain color, ethnicity, or religion. In the early days of the Islamic Caliphate
Caliphate

The caliphate represented the political leadership of the Muslim ummah in classical and medieval Islamic history and juristic theory. The head of state's position is based on the notion of a successor to the Prophets of Islam Muhammad's political authority....
—during the 8th and 9th centuries—most of the slaves were Slavic
Slavic peoples

The Slavic Peoples are a linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in eastern Europe. From the early 6th century they spread from their original homeland to inhabit most of eastern Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans....
 Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is a term that applies to the geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the Europe. Throughout history and to a lesser extent today, parts of Eastern Europe has been distinguishable from Western Europe and other regions due to cultural, religious, economic, and historical reasons, even though there i...
ans (called Saqaliba
Saqaliba

Saqaliba refers to the Slavic peoples, particularly Slavic Slavery and Mercenary in the medieval Arab world, in the Middle East, North Africa, History of Islam in southern Italy and Al-Andalus....
), people from surrounding Mediterranean
Mediterranean Basin

The Mediterranean Basin refers to the lands around and surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea. In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin refers to the lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have a Mediterranean climate, with mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub...
 areas, Persians
Persian people

Persian identity, at least in terms of language, is traced to the ancient Indo-Iranians , who arrived in parts of Greater Iran circa 2000-1500 BCE....
, Turks
Turkic peoples

The Turkic peoples are Eurasian peoples residing in northern, central and western Eurasia, and who mostly speak languages belonging to the Turkic languages....
, peoples from the Caucasus
Caucasus

The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region located between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is home to Europe's highest mountain ....
 mountain regions (such as Georgia
Georgia (country)

Georgia is a transcontinental country in the Caucasus region, located at the dividing line between Europe and Asia. It is bordered by the Russia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east, Armenia to the south, and Turkey to the southwest....
, Armenia
Armenia

Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in South Caucasus between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea....
 and Circassia
Circassia

Circassia, also known as Cherkessia in Russian, is a region in Caucasus. Historically it comprised the southern half of the current Krasnodar Krai and most of the interior of the current Stavropol Krai, but now only refers to a portion of the Karachay-Cherkessia Republic, Adyghe Republic and Kabardino-Balkaria Republic of the Russian...
) and parts of Central Asia
Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south....
 and Scandinavia
Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a historical and geographical subregion in northern Europe that includes the Scandinavian Peninsula. It consists of the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark; some authorities also include Finland and some might even include Iceland....
, Berbers
Berber people

Berbers are the indigenous ethnic groups of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are discontinuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River....
 from North Africa, and various other peoples of varied origins as well as those of Black
Black people

Black people is a term usually referring to a Race of humans with a dark skin color, but the term has also been used to categorise a number of diverse populations into one common group....
 African origins.






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The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery
Slavery

Slavery is a form of forced labor where a person is compelled to Labor for another . Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive Remuneration in return for their labor....
 in West Asia
Southwest Asia

Southwest Asia or Southwestern Asia is the southwestern subregion of Asia. The term West Asia is sometimes used in the United Nations subregion geoscheme and in writings about the archeology and the late prehistory of the region....
, North Africa
North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories:...
, East Africa
East Africa

East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN subregion, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
, and certain parts of Europe
Europe

Europe is, conventionally, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural , the Caspian Sea, and by the Caucasus Mountains to the southeast....
 (such as Sicily
Sicily

Sicily is an Autonomous regions with special statute of Italy. Of all the regions of Italy, Sicily covers the largest land area at 25,708 km? and currently has just over five million inhabitants....
 and Iberia
Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes modern-day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar and a very small area of France....
) during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade mostly involved North and East Africans
African people

The peoples of Africa The African continent is home to people of wide-ranging phenotypical traits, both indigenous and foreign to the continent, of diverse origins, and with several different cultural, communal, and artistic traits....
 and Middle East
Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
ern peoples (Arab
Arab

An Arab is a person who Identity as such on linguistic or cultural grounds. The plural form, Arabs , refers to the Ethnocultural group at large....
s, Berbers, etc.). Also, the Arab slave trade was not limited to people of certain color, ethnicity, or religion. In the early days of the Islamic Caliphate
Caliphate

The caliphate represented the political leadership of the Muslim ummah in classical and medieval Islamic history and juristic theory. The head of state's position is based on the notion of a successor to the Prophets of Islam Muhammad's political authority....
—during the 8th and 9th centuries—most of the slaves were Slavic
Slavic peoples

The Slavic Peoples are a linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in eastern Europe. From the early 6th century they spread from their original homeland to inhabit most of eastern Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans....
 Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is a term that applies to the geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the Europe. Throughout history and to a lesser extent today, parts of Eastern Europe has been distinguishable from Western Europe and other regions due to cultural, religious, economic, and historical reasons, even though there i...
ans (called Saqaliba
Saqaliba

Saqaliba refers to the Slavic peoples, particularly Slavic Slavery and Mercenary in the medieval Arab world, in the Middle East, North Africa, History of Islam in southern Italy and Al-Andalus....
), people from surrounding Mediterranean
Mediterranean Basin

The Mediterranean Basin refers to the lands around and surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea. In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin refers to the lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have a Mediterranean climate, with mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub...
 areas, Persians
Persian people

Persian identity, at least in terms of language, is traced to the ancient Indo-Iranians , who arrived in parts of Greater Iran circa 2000-1500 BCE....
, Turks
Turkic peoples

The Turkic peoples are Eurasian peoples residing in northern, central and western Eurasia, and who mostly speak languages belonging to the Turkic languages....
, peoples from the Caucasus
Caucasus

The Caucasus or Caucas is a geopolitical region located between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. It is home to Europe's highest mountain ....
 mountain regions (such as Georgia
Georgia (country)

Georgia is a transcontinental country in the Caucasus region, located at the dividing line between Europe and Asia. It is bordered by the Russia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east, Armenia to the south, and Turkey to the southwest....
, Armenia
Armenia

Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in South Caucasus between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea....
 and Circassia
Circassia

Circassia, also known as Cherkessia in Russian, is a region in Caucasus. Historically it comprised the southern half of the current Krasnodar Krai and most of the interior of the current Stavropol Krai, but now only refers to a portion of the Karachay-Cherkessia Republic, Adyghe Republic and Kabardino-Balkaria Republic of the Russian...
) and parts of Central Asia
Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south....
 and Scandinavia
Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a historical and geographical subregion in northern Europe that includes the Scandinavian Peninsula. It consists of the kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark; some authorities also include Finland and some might even include Iceland....
, Berbers
Berber people

Berbers are the indigenous ethnic groups of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are discontinuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River....
 from North Africa, and various other peoples of varied origins as well as those of Black
Black people

Black people is a term usually referring to a Race of humans with a dark skin color, but the term has also been used to categorise a number of diverse populations into one common group....
 African origins. Later, toward the 18th and 19th centuries, slaves increasingly came from East Africa
East Africa

East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN subregion, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
.

Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million black African slaves crossed the Red Sea
Red Sea

The Red Sea is a salt water inlet of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb sound and the Gulf of Aden....
, Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering about 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by Asia ; on the west by Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean ....
, and Sahara
Sahara

The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert. At over 9,000,000 square kilometers , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as the United States or the continent of Europe....
 Desert between 650 and 1900, or more than the 9.4 to 14 million Africans brought to the Americas in the Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of primarily African people supplied to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean....
.

Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Islamic Iberia
Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to the parts of the Iberian Peninsula governed by Arab Muslims, at various times in the period between 711 and 1492....
 to ravage the Christian Iberian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon
Lisbon

Lisbon is the Capital and largest city of Portugal. It is also the seat of the Lisbon and capital of the Lisbon region. Its municipalities of Portugal, which matches the city proper excluding the larger continuous conurbation, has a municipal population of 564,477 in , while the Lisbon Metropolitan Area in total has around 2.8 million inha...
 in 1189, for example, the Almohad
Almohad

The Almohad Dynasty , was a Berber people, Muslim dynasty that was founded in the 12th century, and conquered all northern Africa as far as Libya, together with Al-Andalus ....
 caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba
Córdoba, Spain

viktor chucchuc he sucsuck my dick||-||-|File:Cordoba Water Wheel.jpg|}Cordova is a city in Andalusia, southern Spain, and the capital of the C?rdoba ....
, in a subsequent attack upon Silves
Silves

Silves is a town and a Municipalities of Portugal in the Algarve, southern Portugal. The city has a population of 10,800 inhabitants and the municipality reaches 33,830 ....
 in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.

According to Robert Davis
Robert Davis

Robert Davis may refer to:* DJ Screw, influential rap DJ and inventor of "Screwed" music* Robert Davis , who was beaten by three police officers in New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina...
 between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans
White people

White people is a term which is usually used to refer to Human characterized, at least in part, by the light Human skin color. It often refers narrowly to people claiming ancestry exclusively from Europe....
 were captured by Barbary pirates, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299?1923. It was Treaty of Lausanne by the Republic of Turkey, which was officially proclaimed on October 29, 1923....
, and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries. These slaves were captured mainly from seaside villages from Italy
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
, Spain
Spain

Spain or the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in Southern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though Espa?a , Estado espa?ol and Naci?n espa?ola are used interchangeably....
, Portugal
Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country on the Iberian Peninsula. Located in southwestern Europe, Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east....
 and also from more distant places like France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
 or England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
, Ireland
Ireland

Ireland is the List of islands by area in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islet....
 and even Iceland
Iceland

Iceland, officially the Republic of Iceland , is an island country located in the North Atlantic Ocean between mainland Europe and Greenland....
 and North America
North America

North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost totally in the western hemisphere....
. The impact of these attacks
List of Ottoman sieges and landings

The following is an List of Ottoman sieges and landings from the 14th century to Middle Eastern theatre of World War I....
 was devastating – France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
, England
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
, and Spain
Spain

Spain or the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in Southern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though Espa?a , Estado espa?ol and Naci?n espa?ola are used interchangeably....
 each lost thousands of ships, and long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. Pirate raids discouraged settlement along the coast until the 19th century.

The Ottoman wars in Europe
Ottoman wars in Europe

The wars of the Ottoman Empire in Europe are also sometimes referred to as the Ottoman Wars or as Turkish Wars, particularly in older, European texts....
 and Tatar raids
Tatar invasions

The Mongol invasion of Europe from the east took place over the course of three centuries, from the Middle Ages to the early modern period.The terms Tatars or Tartars are applied to nomadic Turkic peoples who, themselves, were conquered by Mongols and incorporated to their horde....
 brought large numbers of European Christian slaves into the Islamic world
Islam by country

Islam is the world's Major religious groups after Christianity with over 1.0-1.8 billion adherents, comprising 20-25% of the world population while most estimates figures that there are 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide....
 too.

The 'Oriental' or 'Arab' slave trade is sometimes called the 'Islamic' slave trade
Islam and Slavery

Historically, the Madh'hab traditionally accepted the institution of slavery. Muhammad and many of Sahaba bought, sold, freed, and captured slaves. Slaves benefited from Islamic dispensations which improved their situation relative to that in pre-Islamic society....
, but a religious imperative was not the driver of the slavery, Patrick Manning
Patrick Manning

Patrick Augustus Mervyn Manning is the 2005 Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, the Political Leader of the People's National Movement . He served as Prime Minister between 17 December 1991 to 9 November 1995 and since 24 December 2001, as Opposition from 1986 to 1990 and from 1995 to 2001....
, a professor of World History, states. However, since if a non-Muslim population refuses to adopt Islam
Islam

Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
 or pay the Jizya
Jizya

Under Sharia, jizya or jizyah is a per capita tax levied on a section of an Islamic state's non-Muslim citizens, who meet certain criteria....
 protection/subjugation tax, that population is considered to be at war with the Muslim "ummah
Ummah

Ummah is an Arabic language word meaning "community" or "nation". It is commonly used to mean either the collective nation of Islamic state, or the whole Arab world....
" and therefore it becomes legal under Islamic law to take slaves from that non-Muslim population. Usage of the terms "Islamic trade" or "Islamic world" has been disputed by some Muslims as it treats Africa as outside of Islam, or a negligible portion of the Islamic world. Propagators of Islam in Africa
Islam in Africa

The precise number of Muslims in Africa is unknown, as statistics regarding religious demography in Africa are incomplete. According to the World Book Encyclopedia, Islam is the largest religion in Africa, followed by Christianity....
 often revealed a cautious attitude towards proselytizing because of its effect in reducing the potential reservoir of slaves.

From a Western point of view, the subject merges with the Oriental slave trade, which followed two main routes in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
:
  • Overland routes across the Maghreb
    Maghreb

    The Maghreb , also rendered Maghrib , meaning "place of sunset" or "western" in Arabic, is a region in North Africa. The term is generally applied to all of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, but in older Arabic usage pertained only to the area of the three countries between the high ranges of the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea....
     and Mashreq deserts (Trans-Saharan
    Trans-Saharan trade

    Trans-Saharan trade is trade across the Sahara between Mediterranean countries and sub-Saharan Africa. While existing from prehistoric times, the peak of such trade extended from the eighth century until the late sixteenth century....
     route)
  • Sea routes to the east of Africa through the Red Sea
    Red Sea

    The Red Sea is a salt water inlet of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb sound and the Gulf of Aden....
     and Indian Ocean
    Indian Ocean

    The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering about 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by Asia ; on the west by Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean ....
     (Oriental route)


The Arab slave trade originated before Islam and lasted more than a millennium
Millennium

A millennium is a period of time equal to one thousand years . The term may implicitly refer to calendar millenniums; periods tied numerically to a particular calendar, specifically ones that begin at the starting point of the calendar in question or in later years which are whole number multiples of a thousand years after it....
. Arab traders brought Africans across the Indian Ocean from present-day Kenya
Kenya

The Republic of Kenya is a country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the northeast, Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, and Sudan to the northwest, with the Indian Ocean running along the southeast border....
, Tanzania
Tanzania

Tanzania , officially the United Republic of Tanzania , is a country in East Africa that is bordered by Kenya and Uganda on the north, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the west, and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique on the south....
, Sudan
Sudan

Sudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest in the African continent and the Arab World, and List of countries and outlying territories by total area by area....
, western Ethiopia
Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast....
 and elsewhere in East Africa to present-day Iraq
Iraq

Iraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros Mountains, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, Iran
Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and formerly known internationally as Persian Empire until 1935, is a country in Central Eurasia, located on the northeastern shore of the Persian Gulf and the southern shore of the Caspian Sea....
, Kuwait
Kuwait

The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab emirate on the coast of the Persian Gulf, enclosed by Saudi Arabia to the south and Iraq to the north and west....
, Turkey
Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in southwest Asia and Thrace in the Balkans region of Southern Europe....
 and other parts of the Middle East
Middle East

File:GreaterMiddleEast1.pngThe Middle East is a region that spans southwestern Asia, western Asia, and northeastern Africa. It has no clear boundaries, often used as a synonym to Near East, in opposition to Far East....
  and South Asia
South Asia

South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries on the west and the east....
 (mainly Pakistan
Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country located in South Asia and borders Central Asia and the Middle East. It has a 1,046 kilometre coastline along the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman in the south, and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and People's Republic of China in th...
 and India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
). Unlike the trans-Atlantic slave trade
Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of primarily African people supplied to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean....
 to the New World
New World

The New World is one of the names used for the non-Eurasian/non-African parts of the Earth, specifically the Americas and Australasia. When the term originated in the late 15th century, the Americas were new to the Europeans, who previously thought of the world as consisting only of Europe, Asia, and Africa ....
, Arabs supplied African slaves to the Muslim world
Muslim world

.The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a Culture sense it refers to the worldwide community of Muslims, adherents of Islam. This community Islam by country, roughly one-fifth of the world population....
, which at its peak stretched over three continents from the Atlantic (Morocco
Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa with a population of nearly 34 million and an area just under 447,000 km2....
, Spain
Spain

Spain or the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in Southern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though Espa?a , Estado espa?ol and Naci?n espa?ola are used interchangeably....
) to India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
 and eastern China
China

China is a Culture of China, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
.

Sources and historiography of the slave trade


A recent and controversial topic

Boutre Indien
The history of the slave trade has given rise to numerous debates amongst historians. For one thing, specialists are undecided on the number of Africans taken from their homes; this is difficult to resolve because of a lack of reliable statistics: there was no census system in medieval Africa. Archival material for the transatlantic trade in the 16th to 18th centuries may seem useful as a source, yet these record books were often falsified. Historians have to use imprecise narrative documents to make estimates which must be treated with caution: Luiz Felipe de Alencastro states that there were 8 million slaves taken from Africa between the 8th and 19th centuries along the Oriental and the Trans-Saharan routes. Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau has put forward a figure of 17 million African people enslaved (in the same period and from the same area) on the basis of Ralph Austen's work. Paul Bairoch
Paul Bairoch

Born of Jewish parents who emigrated from Poland, Paul Bairoch was one of the great post-war economic history who specialized in global economic history, urban history and historical demography....
 suggests a figure of 25 million African people subjected to the Arab slave trade, as against 11 million that arrived in the Americas from the transatlantic slave trade. Owen 'Alik Shahadah
Owen 'Alik Shahadah

Owen 'Alik Shahadah is a film director, African people writer, theorist, photographer and music producer. He is best known for authoring works, which deal with African history, social justice, environmental issues, education and world peace....
 author of African Holocaust (audio documentary), puts the figure at 10 million and argues that the trade only boomed in the 18th century, prior to this the trade was "a trickle trade" and that exaggerated numbers have been claimed in order to de-emphasize the Transatlantic trade.

Another obstacle to a history of the Arab slave trade is the limitations of extant sources. There exist documents from non-African cultures, written by educated men in Arabic, but these only offer an incomplete and often condescending look at the phenomenon. For some years there has been a huge amount of effort going into historical research on Africa. Thanks to new methods and new perspectives, historians can interconnect contributions from archaeology
Archaeology

Archaeology, archeology, or arch?ology is the science that studies Homo cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, Artifact , features, Biofact s, and cultural landscape....
, numismatics
Numismatics

Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, and related objects. While numismatists are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, the discipline also includes a much larger study of payment-media used to resolve debts and the exchange of Good s....
, anthropology
Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humans and humanity in its totality. Anthropology has origins in the natural sciences, and the humanities. In Great Britain it was originally divided into physical anthropology and cultural anthropology, which itself was divided into archaeology, technology, ethnology and sociology ....
, linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
 and demography
Demography

Demography is the statistical study of all populations. It can be a very general science that can be applied to any kind of dynamic population, that is, one that changes over time or space ....
 to compensate for the inadequacy of the written record.

In Africa, slaves taken by African owners were often captured, either through raids or as a result of warfare, and frequently employed in manual labor by the captors. Some slaves were traded for goods or services to other African kingdoms.

The Arab slave trade from East Africa is one of the oldest slave trades, predating the European transatlantic slave trade by hundreds of years. Male slaves who were often made eunuchs were employed as servants, soldiers, or laborers by their owners, while female slaves, including those from Africa, were long traded to the Middle Eastern countries and kingdoms by Arab and Oriental traders, as concubines and servants. Arab, African and Oriental traders were involved in the capture and transport of slaves northward across the Sahara desert and the Indian Ocean region into the Middle East, Persia, and the Indian subcontinent.

From approximately 650 until around 1900 the Arab slave trade continued in one form or another. The Moroccan Sultan Moulay Ismail "the Bloodthirsty" (1672-1727) raised a corps of 150,000 black slaves, called his Black Guard
Black Guard

The Black Guard were charged with fighting Ismail's campaigns against the European-controlled fortress enclaves dotting his empire's coast and with patrolling Morocco's unstable countryside: They crushed rebellions against Ismail's rule not only by Moroccan Berber clans but also by Ismail's seditious sons, who defected from service as his provinci...
, who coerced the country into submission. Historical accounts and references to slave-owning nobility in Arabia, Yemen
Yemen

Yemen , officially the Republic of Yemen is an Arab country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia. Yemen has an estimated population of more than 23 million people and is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the North, the Red Sea to the West, the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden to the South, and Oman to the east....
 and elsewhere are frequent into the early 1920s. In 1953, sheikhs from Qatar
Qatar

Qatar , officially the State of Qatar , is an Arab emirate in Southwest Asia, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeasterly coast of the larger Arabian Peninsula....
 attending the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II included slaves in their retinues, and they did so again on another visit five years later. As recently as the 1950s, the Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, KSA , is an Arab country and the largest country of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Jordan on the northwest, Iraq on the north and northeast, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates on the east, Oman on the southeast, and Yemen on the south....
’s slave population was estimated at 450,000 — just 20% of the population. It is estimated that as many as 200,000 black Sudanese children and women had been taken into slavery in Sudan
Slavery in Sudan

Since 1995, international rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and CASMAS have reported that slavery in Sudan is a common fate of captives in the Second Sudanese Civil War....
 during the Second Sudanese Civil War
Second Sudanese Civil War

The Second Sudanese Civil War started in 1983, although it was largely a continuation of the First Sudanese Civil War of 1955 to 1972. It took place, for the most part, in southern Sudan and was one of the longest lasting and deadliest wars of the later 20th century....
. Slavery in Mauritania
Slavery in modern Africa

Slavery in Africa continues today. Slavery existed in Africa before the arrival of Europeans - as did a African slave trade that exported millions of sub-Saharan Africans to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf....
 was legally abolished by laws passed in 1905, 1961, and 1981. It was finally criminalized in August 2007. It is estimated that up to 600,000 black Mauritanians, or 20% of the Mauritania
Mauritania

Mauritania , officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a country in northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, by Senegal on the southwest, by Mali on the east and southeast, by Algeria on the northeast, and by the Morocco-controlled Western Sahara on the northwest....
’s population, are currently enslaved, many of them used as bonded labour.

For some people, any mention of the slave-trading past of the Arab world is rejected as an attempt to minimise the transatlantic trade
Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of primarily African people supplied to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean....
. Yet a slave trade in the Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering about 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by Asia ; on the west by Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean ....
, Red Sea
Red Sea

The Red Sea is a salt water inlet of the Indian Ocean between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb sound and the Gulf of Aden....
, and Mediterranean pre-dates the arrival of any significant number of Europeans on the African continent.

Descendants of the African slaves brought to the Middle East during the slave-trade still exist there today, and are aware of their African origins.

Medieval Arabic Sources

Ibnbattuta
These are given in chronological order. Scholars and geographers from the Arab world
Arab world

The Arab World refers to Arabic-speaking countries stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean in the southeast....
 had been travelling to Africa since the time of Muhammad
Muhammad

Muhammad Patronymic#Arabic Abd Allah ibn Abd al Muttalib , is the founder of the Major religious groups of Islam and is regarded by Muslims as a Rasul and prophet of , the last and the greatest law-bearer in a series of prophets....
 in the 7th century.

  • Al Masudi (died 957), Muruj adh-dhahab or Meadows of Gold, the reference manual for geographers and historians of the Muslim world. The author had travelled widely across the Arab world as well as the Far East.
  • Ya'qubi
    Ya'qubi

    Ahmad ibn Abu Ya'qub ibn Ja'far ibn Wahb Ibn Wadih al-Ya'qubi , known as Ya'qubi, was a Muslim historian and geographer....
      (9th century), Book of Countries
  • Al-Bakri, author of Book of Roads and Kingdoms
    Book of Roads and Kingdoms (al-Bakri)

    Book of Roads and Kingdoms or Book of Highways and Kingdoms is the name of an eleventh-century geography text by Abu Abdullah al-Bakri....
    , published in Cordoba around 1068, gives us information about the Berbers and their activities; he collected eye-witness accounts on Sahara
    Sahara

    The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert. At over 9,000,000 square kilometers , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as the United States or the continent of Europe....
    n caravan routes.
  • Al Idrisi
    Muhammad al-Idrisi

    Abu Abd Allah Muhammad al-Idrisi al-Qurtubi al-Hasani al-Sabti or simply El Idrisi was an Islamic geography, cartography and traveller who lived in Sicily, at the court of King Roger II of Sicily....
     (died circa 1165), Description of Africa and Spain
  • Ibn Battûta
    Ibn Battuta

    Ibn Battuta was a Muslim Berber, scholar and traveller who is known for the account of his travels and excursions called the Rihla. His journeys lasted for a period of nearly thirty years and covered almost the entirety of the known Muslim world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in t...
     (died circa 1377), Marinid
    Marinid

    The Anglicised name used for this article derives from the Arabic Banu Marin .The Marinid dynasty was a Berber dynasty formed in 1244....
     geographer who travelled to sub-Saharan Africa, to Gao
    Gao

    ||-||-||}Gao is a city in Songhai and capital of the Gao Region on the River Niger, with a population of 57,978 in 2005.It is also the capital of the surrounding Gao Cercle....
     and to Timbuktu
    Timbuktu

    Timbuktu is a city in Tombouctou Region, in the West African nation of Mali. It was made prosperous by Mansa Musa, tenth mansa of the Mali Empire....
    . His principal work is called Gift for those who like to reflect on the curiosities of towns and marvels of travel.
  • Ibn Khaldun
    Ibn Khaldun

    Ibn Khaldun or Ibn Khaldoun...
     (died in 1406), historian and philosopher from North Africa. Sometimes considered as the historian of Arab, Berber and Persian societies. He is the author of Historical Prolegomena and History of the Berbers.
  • Ahmad al-Maqrî
    Al-Maqrizi

    Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn 'Ali ibn 'Abd al-Qadir ibn Muhammad al-Maqrizi ; Arabic Language: , was an Egyptian historian more commonly known as al-Maqrizi or Makrizi....
     (died in 1442), Egyptian historian. His main contribution is his description of Cairo markets.
  • Leo Africanus
    Leo Africanus

    Joannes Leo Africanus, was a Arab diplomat and author who is best known for his book Descrittione dell?Africa describing the geography of North Africa....
     (died circa 1548), author of a rare description of Africa.
  • Rifa'a al Tahtawi (died in 1873), who translated medieval works on geography and history. His work is mostly about Muslim Egypt.
  • Joseph Cuoq, Collection of Arabic sources concerning Western Africa between the 8th and 16th centuries (Paris 1975)


European texts (16th - 19th centuries)

  • João de Castro
    João de Castro

    Don Jo?o de Castro was a Portugal naval officer and fourth viceroy of Portuguese India. He was called Castro Forte by poet Lu?s de Cam?es....
    ,
    Roteiro de Lisboa a Goa (1538)
  • James Bruce
    James Bruce

    James Bruce was a Scotland traveller and travel writer who spent more than a dozen years in North Africa and Ethiopia, where he traced the origins of the Blue Nile....
    , (1730-1794),
    Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (1790)
  • René Caillié, (1799-1838), Journal d'un voyage à Tombouctou
  • Johann Ludwig Burckhardt
    Johann Ludwig Burckhardt

    Johann Ludwig Burckhardt , Switzerland traveller and orientalist, was born in Lausanne. He wrote his letters in French language and signed Louis ....
    , (1784-1817),
    Travels in Nubia (1819)
  • Henry Morton Stanley
    Henry Morton Stanley

    Sir Henry Morton Stanley , Order of the Bath, born John Rowlands , was a Wales journalist and List of explorers famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone....
    , (1841-1904),
    Through the Dark Continent (1878)


Other sources

  • African Arabic and Ajami Manuscripts
  • African oral tradition
  • Kilwa
    Kilwa Kisiwani

    Kilwa Kisiwani is a community on an island off the coast of East Africa, in present day Tanzania....
     Chronicle (16th century fragments)
  • Numismatics: analysis of coins and of their diffusion
  • Archaeology: architecture of trading posts and of towns associated with the slave trade
  • Iconography: Arab and Persian miniatures
    Miniature (illuminated manuscript)

    The word miniature, derived from the Latin minium, red lead, is a picture in an ancient history or medieval illuminated manuscript; the simple decoration of the early codex having been miniated or delineated with that pigment....
     in major libraries
  • European engravings, contemporary with the slave trade, and some more modern
  • Photographs from the 19th century onward
  • Ethiopia
    Ethiopia

    Ethiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast....
    n ( Ge'ez
    Ge'ez language

    Ge'ez is an ancient South Semitic language that developed in the current region of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa. It later became the official language of the Kingdom of Aksum and Ethiopian imperial court....
     and Amharic)historical texts


Historical and geographical context of the Arab slave trade


A brief review of the region and era in which the Oriental and trans-Saharan slave trade took place should be useful here. It is not a detailed study of the Arab world, nor of Africa, but an outline of key points which will help with understanding the slave trade in this part of the world.

The Islamic world

The religion of Islam
Islam

Islam is a Monotheism, Abrahamic religion originating with the teachings of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad, a 7th century Arab religious and political figure....
 appeared in the 7th century CE
Common Era

Common Era, abbreviated as CE, is a designation for the calendar system most commonly used in the Western world, and also internationally, for numbering the year part of the calendar date....
, and in the next hundred years it was quickly diffused throughout the Mediterranean area, spread by Arabs who had conquered North Africa after its long occupation by the Berbers; they invaded the Iberian peninsula
Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes modern-day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar and a very small area of France....
 where they displaced the Visigoth
Visigoth

The Visigoths were one of two main branches of the Goths, an East Germanic tribe, the Ostrogoths being the other. Together these tribes were among the barbarians who disturbed the late Roman Empire during the Migration Period....
 kingdom. Arabs also took control of western Asia from the Byzantine Empire
Byzantine Empire

Byzantine Empire and Eastern Roman Empire are conventional names used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered on its capital of Constantinople....
 and from the Sassanid Persians. These regions therefore had a diverse range of different peoples. To some extent, these regions were unified by an imposed Islamic culture built on both religious and civic foundations; they used the Arabic language and the
dinar
Dinar

File:Dinar map.pngThe Dinar is the name of the official currency in several countries. The Gold Dinar was a coin dating back to the early days of Islam, issued by many rulers, and the Islamic gold dinar is a modern revival of it as a coin or unit of account, separate from the currencies listed below....
(currency) in commercial transactions. Mecca
Mecca

Mecca , also spelled Makkah , Makka is a city in Saudi Arabia. Home to the Masjid al-Haram, it is the holy city in Islam and plays an important role in the faith....
 in Arabia, then as now, was the holy city of Islam and pilgrimage centre for all Muslims, whatever their origins.

It must be noted here that the conquests of the Arab armies and the expansion of the Islamic state that followed, have always resulted in the capture of war prisoners who were subsequently set free or turned into slaves or
Raqeeq and servants rather than taken as prisoners as was the Islamic tradition in wars. Once taken as slaves, they had to be dealt with in accordance with the Islamic law which was the law of the Islamic state especially during the Umayyad and Abbasid
Abbasid

The Abbasid Caliphate was the third of the Islamic Caliphates of the Islamic Empire. The Caliphate is one of the high points of Islam, and at the time Muslim civilization, together with that of Byzantium, China and India, was the most developed part of the world....
 eras. According to that law, slaves are allowed to earn their living if they opted for that, otherwise it is the owner’s (master) duty to provide for that. They also can’t be forced to earn money for their masters unless with an agreement between the slave and the master. This concept is called “??????” in the Islamic jurisprudence. If the slave agrees to that and he would like the money s/he earns to be counted toward his/her emancipation then this has to be written in the form of a contract between the slave and the master. This is called “??????” (mukatabah) in the Islamic jurisprudence. Muslims believe that slave owners in Islam are strongly encouraged to perform “mukatabah” with their slaves as directed by Qur’an
And if any of your slaves ask for a deed in writing (to enable them to earn their freedom for a certain sum), give them such a deed if ye know any good in them: yea, give them something yourselves out of the means which Allah has given to you.


The framework of Islamic civilisation was a well-developed network of towns and oasis
Oasis

In geography, an oasis or cienega is an isolated area of vegetation in a desert, typically surrounding a spring or similar water source. Oases also provide habitat for animals and even humans if the area is big enough....
 trading centres with the market (
souk
Souk

A souq is a commercial quarter in an Arab or Berber city. The term is often used to designate the market in any Arabized or Muslim city. It may also refer to the weekly market in some smaller towns where neutrality from tribal conflicts would be declared to permit the exchange of surplus goods....
, bazaar
Bazaar

File:Railway Road by Ajaz Anwar.jpgA bazaar , , is a permanent merchandising area, marketplace, or street of shops where goods and services are exchanged or sold....
) at its heart. These towns were inter-connected by a system of roads crossing semi-arid regions or deserts. The routes were travelled by convoys, and black slaves formed part of this caravan
Caravan (travellers)

A caravan is a group of people traveling together, often on a trade expedition. Caravans were used mainly in desert areas and throughout the Silk Road, where traveling in groups aided in defense against bandits as well as helped to improve economies of scale in trade....
 traffic.

Arabic views on black people

The Qur'an
Qur'an

The Qur?an is the central religious text of Islam. Muslims believe the Qur?an to be the book of divine guidance and direction for mankind, and consider the original Arabic text to be the final revelation of God....
, the Islamic prophet
Prophets of Islam

Muslims regard as prophets of Islam those non-divine humans chosen by Allah as prophets.Each prophet brought the same basic ideas of Islam, including belief in one God and avoidance of idolatry and sin....
 Muhammad
Muhammad

Muhammad Patronymic#Arabic Abd Allah ibn Abd al Muttalib , is the founder of the Major religious groups of Islam and is regarded by Muslims as a Rasul and prophet of , the last and the greatest law-bearer in a series of prophets....
, and the overwhelming majority of Islamic jurists
Ulema

Ulema refers to the educated class of Muslim legal scholars engaged in the several fields of Islamic studies. They are best known as the arbiters of Sharia law....
 and theologians
Islamic theology

Islamic theology is a branch of Islamic studies regarding the beliefs associated with the Islamic faith....
, all stated that humankind has a single origin and rejected the idea of certain ethnic groups being superior to others. According to the hadith
Hadith

Hadith are oral traditions relating to the words and deeds of the Prophets of Islam Muhammad. Hadith collections are regarded by all traditional madhab as important tools for determining the Muslim way of life, the sunnah....
s, the prophet Muhammad declared:

Despite this, some ethnic prejudices later developed among Arab
Arab

An Arab is a person who Identity as such on linguistic or cultural grounds. The plural form, Arabs , refers to the Ethnocultural group at large....
s due to several reasons: their extensive conquests
Muslim conquests

Arab Muslim conquests , also referred to as the Islamic conquests or Arab conquests, began after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad....
 and slave trade; the influence of Aristotle
Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greeks philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, Poetics , theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology and zoology....
's idea of certain ethnic groups being slaves by nature, echoed by Muslim philosophers
Early Islamic philosophy

Early Islamic philosophy or classical Islamic philosophy is a period of intense philosophical development beginning in the 2nd century AH of the Islamic calendar and lasting until the 6th century AH ....
 such as Al-Farabi
Al-Farabi

Abu Nasr al-Farabi , known in the Western world as Alpharabius , was a Muslim polymath and one of the greatest Islamic sciences and Early Islamic philosophys of History of Iran and the Islamic Golden Age in his time....
 and Avicenna
Avicenna

, known as Abu Ali Sina Balkhi or Ibn Sina and commonly known in English by his Latinized name Avicenna , was a Persian people polymath and the foremost Islamic medicine and Early Islamic philosophy of his time....
, particularly in regards to Turkic
Turkic peoples

The Turkic peoples are Eurasian peoples residing in northern, central and western Eurasia, and who mostly speak languages belonging to the Turkic languages....
 and black people
Black people

Black people is a term usually referring to a Race of humans with a dark skin color, but the term has also been used to categorise a number of diverse populations into one common group....
s; and the influence of Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian

Judeo?Christian is a term used to describe the body of concepts and values which are thought to be held in common by Judaism and Christianity, and considered, often along with classical antiquity Greco-Roman civilization, a fundamental basis for Western world legal codes and moral values....
 ideas regarding divisions among humankind between the three sons of Noah
Sons of Noah

The Table of Nations or Sons of Noah is an extensive list of descendants of Noah appearing within the Torah at Genesis 10, representing an ethnology from an Iron Age Levantine perspective and its reflections in the medieval and modern history and genealogy researches....
, with the Babylonian Talmud
Talmud

The Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Halakha, Jewish ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism....
 stating that "the descendants of Ham
Hamitic

Hamitic is a historical term for the peoples supposedly descended from Noah's son Ham, son of Noah, paralleling Semitic and Japhetic.It used to be used for grouping the non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages , but since, unlike the Semitic branch, these have not been shown to form a phylogenetic unity, the term is obsolete in this sense....
 are cursed by being black, and [it] depicts Ham as a sinful man and his progeny as degenerates."

In response to such views, the 9th century Muslim author Al-Jahiz
Al-Jahiz

Al-Ja?i? was a famous Afro-Arab scholar of East African descent, the grandson of a Black slave. He was an Arabic language prose writer and author of works on Arabic literature, Islamic medicine, history, early Islamic philosophy, Islamic psychology, Mu'tazili Kalam, and politico-religious polemics....
, an Afro-Arab
Afro-Arab

Afro-Arab refers to people who possess both black African and Arab ancestry.It may in addition refer to Arabs who are not descended from recent African ancestry but who live on the African continent....
 and the grandson of a Zanj
Zanj

Zanj was a name used by medieval Geography in medieval Islam to refer to both a certain portion of the East African coast and its inhabitants....
 (Bantu) slave, wrote a book entitled
Risalat mufakharat al-sudan 'ala al-bidan ("Treatise on the Superiority of Blacks over Whites"), in which he stated that Blacks:

And that:

However, Al-Jahiz also stated in his
Kitab al-Bukhala ("Avarice and the Avaricious") that:

This sentiment was echoed in the following passage from
Kitab al-Bad' wah-tarikh (vol.4) by the medieval Arab writer Al-Muqaddasi
Al-Muqaddasi

Muhammad ibn Ahmad Shams al-Din Al-Muqaddasi , also transliterated as Al-Maqdisi and el-Mukaddasi, was a notable medieval Arab geographer, author of Ahsan at-Taqasim fi Ma`rifat il-Aqalim ....
:

By the 14th century, an overwhelming number of slaves came from sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographical term used to describe the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara, or those African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara....
, leading to prejudice against black people in the works of several Arabic historians and geographers
Islamic geography

Islamic geography includes the advancement of geography, cartography and earth sciences under various Islamic civilizations. During the medieval ages, Islamic geography was driven by a number of factors: the Islamic Golden Age, parallel development of Islamic astronomy, translation of ancient texts into Arabic, increased travel due to comm...
. For example, the Egypt
Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
ian historian Al-Abshibi (1388-1446) wrote: "It is said that when the [black] slave is sated, he fornicates, when he is hungry, he steals."

In 14th century North Africa
North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories:...
, the Arab sociologist, Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun

Ibn Khaldun or Ibn Khaldoun...
, wrote in his
Muqaddimah
Muqaddimah

The Muqaddimah, or the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun , or the Prolegomena in Greek language, is a book written by the North African historian Ibn Khaldun in 1377 which records an early Muslim view of universal history....
:

Ibn Khaldun, however, attributed their "strange practices and customs" to the hot climate of sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographical term used to describe the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara, or those African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara....
 and made it clear that it was not due to any curse in their lineage, dismissing the Hamitic
Hamitic

Hamitic is a historical term for the peoples supposedly descended from Noah's son Ham, son of Noah, paralleling Semitic and Japhetic.It used to be used for grouping the non-Semitic Afro-Asiatic languages , but since, unlike the Semitic branch, these have not been shown to form a phylogenetic unity, the term is obsolete in this sense....
 theory as a myth.

His critical attitude towards Arabs has led the scholar Mohammad A. Enan to suggest that Ibn Khaldun may have been a Berber
Berber people

Berbers are the indigenous ethnic groups of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are discontinuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River....
 pretending to be an Arab in order to gain social status, but Muhammad Hozien has responded to this claim stating that Ibn Khaldun or anyone else in his family never claimed to be Berber even when the Berbers were in power.

The 14th-century North Africa
North Africa

North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, separated by the Sahara from Sub-Saharan Africa.Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Northern Africa includes the following seven countries or territories:...
n Arabic geographer and traveller, Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta

Ibn Battuta was a Muslim Berber, scholar and traveller who is known for the account of his travels and excursions called the Rihla. His journeys lasted for a period of nearly thirty years and covered almost the entirety of the known Muslim world and beyond, extending from North Africa, West Africa, Southern Europe and Eastern Europe in t...
, on his trip to Western Sudan
Sudan

Sudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest in the African continent and the Arab World, and List of countries and outlying territories by total area by area....
, was impressed with occasional aspects of life but had, according to historian E. W. Bovill (1970), "hardly arrived (in the Western Sudan) before he was regretting having come, merely because he was disgusted at finding Negro
Negro

Negro is a term referring to people of Black people ancestry. Prior to the shift in the lexicon of American and worldwide classification of race and ethnicity in the late 1960s, the appellation was accepted as a normal neutral formal term both by those of Black African descent as well as non-African blacks....
es, whom hitherto he had known only as slaves, behaving as masters in their own country."

Battuta later visited the Zanj
Zanj

Zanj was a name used by medieval Geography in medieval Islam to refer to both a certain portion of the East African coast and its inhabitants....
-inhabited portions of East Africa
East Africa

East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN subregion, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
 and held more positive views of its black people:

Ibn Battuta also appeared to be relatively impressed with some aspects of the Mali Empire
Mali Empire

The Mali Empire or Manding Empire or Manden Kurufa was a West African civilization of the Mandinka people from c. 1230 to c. 1600. The empire was founded by Sundiata Keita and became renowned for the wealth of its rulers, especially Mansa Mansa Musa....
 of West Africa
West Africa

West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries distributed over an area of approximately 5 million square km:...
, which he visited in 1352, writing that the people there:

In addition, he wrote many other positive comments on the people of the Mali Empire, including the following:

However, after expressing dissapointment with Sultan Mansa Suleyman
Suleyman (mansa)

Suleyman was mansa of the Mali Empire from 1341 to 1360. The brother of the powerful Mansa Musa, he succeeded Musa's son Maghan to the throne in 1341....
's miser
Miser

A miser is a person who is reluctant to spend money, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts. The term derives from the Latin miser, meaning "poor" or "wretched," comparable to the modern word "miserable"....
liness when it came to giving gifts, Ibn Battuta remarked on Mali
Mali

Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked nation in West Africa. Mali is the seventh largest country in Africa, bordering Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the C?te d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west....
's inhabitants how he:

Battuta's derogatory remarks, however, were mild compared to some of the other comments Arab authors made about blacks. For example, Al-Dimashqi (Ibn al-Nafis), the Arab polymath
Polymath

A polymath is a person whose knowledge is not restricted to one subject area. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply refer to someone who is very knowledgeable....
, described the inhabitants of Sudan and the Zanj
Zanj

Zanj was a name used by medieval Geography in medieval Islam to refer to both a certain portion of the East African coast and its inhabitants....
 coast, among others, as being of "dim" intelligence and that:

Africa: 8th through 19th centuries


Elikia M’bokolo, April 1998, Le Monde diplomatique
Le Monde diplomatique

Le Monde diplomatique is a monthly publication offering analysis and opinion on politics, culture, and current affairs.Its articles are long, thoughtful, scholarly, and opinionated ....
. Quote:"The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara
Sahara

The Sahara is the world's largest hot desert. At over 9,000,000 square kilometers , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as the United States or the continent of Europe....
, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries
Muslim world

.The term Muslim world has several meanings. In a Culture sense it refers to the worldwide community of Muslims, adherents of Islam. This community Islam by country, roughly one-fifth of the world population....
 (from the ninth to the nineteenth)." He continues: "Four million slaves exported via the Red Sea, another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean, perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean"

In the 8th century AD, Africa was dominated by Arab-Berbers in the north: Islam moved southwards along the Nile
Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the List of rivers by length in the world.The Nile has two major tributary, the White Nile and Blue Nile, the latter being the source of most of the Nile's water and silt, but the former being the longer of the two....
 and along the desert trails.

  • The Sahara was thinly populated. Nevertheless, since Antiquity there had been cities living on a trade in salt, gold, slaves, cloth, and on agriculture enabled by irrigation: Tahert
    Tahert

    Tiaret is the name of a large Algerian town, one that gives its name to the wider farming region of 'Provinces of Algeria de Tiaret ' province in central Algeria....
    , Oualata
    Oualata

    Oualata or Walata is a small oasis town in south east Mauritania that was important in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as the southern terminus of trans-Saharan trade....
    , Sijilmasa
    Sijilmasa

    Sijilmasa was a mediaeval trade centre in the western Maghreb. The ruins of the city lie in the Tafilalt oasis near the modern small town of Rissani in southeastern Morocco....
    , Zaouila, and others. They were ruled by Arab, Berber, Fulani, Hausa
    Hausa

    Hausa may refer to:*the Hausa language*the Hausa people...
     and Tuareg
    Tuareg

    The Tuareg are a nomadic pastoralist people. They are the principal inhabitants of the Saharan interior of North Africa. They call themselves variously Kel Tamasheq or Kel Tamajaq , Imuhagh, Imazaghan or Imashaghen , or Kel Tagelmust, i.e., "People of the Veil"....
    s. Their independence was relative and depended on the power of the Maghrebi and Egyptian states.
  • In the Middle Ages, sub-Saharan Africa was called bilad -ul-Sûdân in Arabic, meaning land of the Blacks. It provided a pool of manual labour for North Africa and Saharan Africa. This region was dominated by certain states: the Ghana Empire
    Ghana Empire

    The Ghana Empire or Wagadou Empire was located in what is now southeastern Mauritania, and Western Mali.This is believed to be first of many empires that would rise in that part of Africa....
    , the Empire of Mali, the Kanem-Bornu Empire
    Kanem-Bornu Empire

    Kanem-Bornu Empire might refer to:* Kanem Empire, the Ancient African state founded in the 8th century in what is modern day Chad* Bornu Empire, the Medieval African state which continued the dynasty of the Kanem state from what is modern day Nigeria and Niger....
    .
  • In eastern Africa, the coasts of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean were controlled by native Muslims, and Arabs were important as traders along the coasts. Nubia
    Nubia

    Nubia is a region in Southern Egypt along the Nile and in what is now northern Sudan. Most of Nubia is situated in Sudan with about a quarter of its territory in Egypt....
     had been a "supply zone" for slaves since Antiquity. The Ethiopian coast, particularly the port of Massawa
    Massawa

    Massawa, formerly known as Mitsiwa and Batsi? or Badi }} is a port on the Red Sea coast of Eritrea. Important for many centuries, it has been colonised by Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, UK and finally Ethiopia until 1991....
     and Dahlak Archipelago
    Dahlak Archipelago

    The Dahlak Archipelago is an island group located in the Red Sea near Massawa, Eritrea. It consists of two large and 124 small islands. The pearl fisheries as they were known to the Romans, still produce a few pearls....
    , had long been a hub for the exportation of slaves from the interior, even in Aksumite times. The port and most coastal areas were largely Muslim, and the port itself was home to a number of Arab and Indian merchants.
St Slaves
The Solomonic dynasty
Solomonic dynasty

The Solomonic dynasty is the traditional Royal House of Ethiopia, claiming descent from King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, who is said to have given birth to the traditional first king Menelik I after her Biblically-described visit to Solomon in Jerusalem: ....
 of Ethiopia
Ethiopia

Ethiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast....
 often exported Nilotic
Nilotic

Nilotic people or Nilotes, in its contemporary usage, refers to some ethnic groups mainly in southern Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and northern Tanzania, who speak Nilotic languages, a large sub-group of the Nilo-Saharan languages....
 slaves from their western borderland provinces, or from newly conquered or reconquered Muslim provinces. The Somali
Somali people

Somalis are an ethnic group located in the Horn of Africa, also known as the Somali Peninsula. The overwhelming majority of Somalis speak the Somali language, which is part of the Cushitic languages subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages language family....
 and Afar
Afar people

Afar are an ethnic group in the Horn of Africa who reside principally in the Danakil Desert in the Afar of Ethiopia, as well as in Eritrea and Djibouti....
 Muslim sultanates, such as the Adal Sultanate
Adal Sultanate

The Adal Sultanate was a province-cum-sultanate located in present-day northwestern Somalia, southern Djibouti, and the Somali Region, Oromia Region, and Afar Region regions of Ethiopia....
, exported slaves as well. Arab
Arab

An Arab is a person who Identity as such on linguistic or cultural grounds. The plural form, Arabs , refers to the Ethnocultural group at large....
s also set up slave-trading posts along the southeastern coast of the Indian Ocean, most notably in the archipelago of Zanzibar
Zanzibar

Zanzibar is part of the East African republic of Tanzania. It consists of the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, 25?50 km off the coast of the mainland....
, along the coast of present-day Tanzania
Tanzania

Tanzania , officially the United Republic of Tanzania , is a country in East Africa that is bordered by Kenya and Uganda on the north, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the west, and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique on the south....
. East Africa and the Indian Ocean continued as an important region for the Oriental slave trade up until the 19th century. Livingstone
David Livingstone

Doctor David Livingstone was a Scotland Congregational church pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and List of explorers in Central Africa Africa....
 and Stanley
Henry Morton Stanley

Sir Henry Morton Stanley , Order of the Bath, born John Rowlands , was a Wales journalist and List of explorers famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone....
 were then the first Europeans to penetrate to the interior of the Congo basin and to discover the scale of slavery there. The Arab Tippu Tip
Tippu Tip

Tippu Tip or Tib , real name Hamed bin Mohammed bin Juma bin Rajab bin Mohammed bin Said el Murgebi, was a Swahili people-Zanzibari trader, notorious slaver, plantation owner and governor....
 extended his influence and made many people slaves. After Europeans had settled in the Gulf of Guinea
Gulf of Guinea

The Gulf of Guinea is the part of the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Africa. The intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian is in the gulf. According to the International Hydrographic Organization, the Gulf's oceanic border is the rhumb line that runs from Cape Palmas in Liberia to Cape Lopez in Gabon ....
, the trans-Saharan slave trade became less important. In Zanzibar, slavery was abolished late, in 1897, under Sultan Hamoud bin Mohammed
Hamoud bin Mohammed of Zanzibar

Sayyid Sir Hamoud bin Mohammed Al-Said, GCSI, was the United Kingdom-controlled Omani sultan of the protectorate of Zanzibar, who outlawed slavery on the island....
.

Africa and the Arab slave trade


People were captured, transported, bought and sold by some very different characters. The trade passed through a series of intermediaries and enriched some sections of the Muslim aristocracy.

Slavery fed on wars between African peoples and states, which gave rise to an internal slave trade. Those conquered owed tribute in the form of men and women reduced to captivity. Sonni Ali
Sonni Ali

Sonni Ali, also known as Sunni Ali Ber or "Sunni Ali", was born Ali Kolon. He reigned from about 1464 to 1492. Sunni Ali was the first great king of the Songhai Empire, located in west Africa and the 15th ruler of the Sonni dynasty....
 Ber (1464–1492), emperor of Songhai
Songhai Empire

The Songhai Empire, also known as the Songhay Empire, was a pre-colonial African state of west Africa. From the early 15th to the late 16th century, Songhai was one of the largest African empires in history....
, waged many wars to extend his territory.

In the 8th and 9th centuries, the Caliph
Caliph

The Caliph is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the leader of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah....
s had tried to colonise the African shores of the Indian Ocean for commercial purposes. But these establishments were ephemeral, often founded by exiles or adventurers. The Sultan of Cairo sent slave traffickers on raids against the villages of Darfur
Darfur

Darfur is a region in Sudan. An independent sultanate for several hundred years, it was incorporated into Sudan by History of the Anglo-Egyptian co-dominium....
. In the face of these attacks, the people formed militias, building towers and outer defences to protect their villages.

Geography of the slave trade


"Supply" zones

Different Cowries
Merchants of slaves for the Orient stocked up in Europe. Danish merchants had bases in the Volga region and dealt in Slavs
Slavic peoples

The Slavic Peoples are a linguistic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in eastern Europe. From the early 6th century they spread from their original homeland to inhabit most of eastern Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans....
 with Arab merchants. Circassian
Circassians

Circassians is a term derived from the Turkic languages Cherkess and is not the self-designation of any people. It has sometimes been applied indiscriminately to all the peoples of the North Caucasus, including the Mamluks....
 slaves were conspicuously present in the harem
Harem

Harem refers to the sphere of women in a usually polygyny household and their quarters which is enclosed and forbidden to men. It originated in the Near East and came to the Western world via the Ottoman Empire....
s and there were many odalisque
Odalisque

An odalisque was a virgin female slave in an Ottoman Empire seraglio. She was an assistant or apprentice to the concubines and wives, and she might rise in status to become one of them....
s from that region in the paintings of Orientalists
Orientalism

Orientalism refers to the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, and can also refer to a sympathetic stance towards the region by a writer or other person....
. Non-Muslim slaves were valued in the harems, for all roles (gate-keeper, servant, odalisque, musician, dancer, court dwarf). In the Ottoman Empire, the last black slave sold in Ethiopia named Hayrettin Effendi, was freed in 1918. The slaves of Slavic origin in Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus

Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to the parts of the Iberian Peninsula governed by Arab Muslims, at various times in the period between 711 and 1492....
 came from the Varangians
Varangians

The Varangians or Varyags , sometimes referred to as Variagians, were Vikings, Norsemen, who went eastwards and southwards through what is now Russia, Belarus and Ukraine mainly in the 9th and 10th centuries....
 who had captured them. They were put in the Caliph's guard and gradually took up important posts in the army (they became
saqaliba
Saqaliba

Saqaliba refers to the Slavic peoples, particularly Slavic Slavery and Mercenary in the medieval Arab world, in the Middle East, North Africa, History of Islam in southern Italy and Al-Andalus....
), and even went to take back taifa
Taifa

In the history of Iberian Peninsula, a taifa was an independent Muslim-ruled principality, an emirate or petty kingdom, of which a number formed in the Al-Andalus after the final collapse of the Umayyad Caliph of Cordoba in 1031....
s after the civil war had led to an implosion of the Western Caliphate. Columns of slaves feeding the great harems of Cordoba
Córdoba, Spain

viktor chucchuc he sucsuck my dick||-||-|File:Cordoba Water Wheel.jpg|}Cordova is a city in Andalusia, southern Spain, and the capital of the C?rdoba ....
, Seville
Seville

||-||}Seville is the artistic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of Andalusia and of the province of Seville ....
 and Grenada
Grenada

Grenada is an island nation that includes the southern Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea. Grenada is located northwest of Trinidad and Tobago, northeast of Venezuela, and southwest of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines....
 were organised by Jewish merchants (
mercaderes) from Germanic countries and parts of Northern Europe not controlled by the Carolingian Empire
Carolingian Empire

Carolingian Empire is a historiography term sometimes used to refer to the Francia under the Carolingian dynasty. This dynasty is seen as the founders of France and Germany....
. These columns crossed the Rhône
Rhône River

The Rhone, or the Rh?ne is one of the major rivers of Europe, originating in Switzerland and running from there through the south-eastern corner of France....
 valley to reach the lands to the south of the Pyrenees
Pyrenees

The Pyrenees are a mountain range in southwest Europe that form a natural border between France and Spain. They separate the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of continental Europe, and extend for about from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean Sea ....
.

There are also historical evidence of North African Muslim slave raids all along the Mediterranean coasts across Christian Europe and beyond to even as far north as the British Isles and Iceland. See book titled White Gold
White Gold

White Gold is a 2003 in film Russian action film directed by Viktor Ivanov from a screenplay by John Jopson and Viktor Ivanov. The story begins with the actual events of 1919 when a White Army train carrying the bulk of Czar Nicholas' gold reserves arrives empty at Siberia's Irkutsk station....


Slaves were also brought into the Arab world via Central Asia
Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south....
. Many of these slaves went on to serve in the armies forming an elite rank.

  • At sea, Barbary pirates joined in this traffic when they could capture people by boarding ships or by incursions into coastal areas.
  • Nubia
    Nubia

    Nubia is a region in Southern Egypt along the Nile and in what is now northern Sudan. Most of Nubia is situated in Sudan with about a quarter of its territory in Egypt....
     and Ethiopia
    Ethiopia

    Ethiopia , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country situated in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Sudan to the west, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the east and Djibouti to the northeast....
     were also "exporting" regions: in the 15th century, Ethiopians sold slaves from western borderland areas (usually just outside of the realm of the Emperor of Ethiopia
    Emperor of Ethiopia

    The Emperor of Ethiopia was the hereditary ruler of Ethiopia until the abolition of the monarchy in 1975. The Emperor was the head of state and head of government, with ultimate executive power, judicial power and legislative power in that country....
    ) or Ennarea, which often ended up in India, where they worked on ships or as soldiers. They eventually rebelled and took power (dynasty of the Habshi Kings in Bengal 1487-1493).
  • The Sûdân region and Saharan Africa formed another "export" area, but it is impossible to estimate the scale, since there is a lack of sources with figures.
  • Finally, the slave traffic affected eastern Africa, but the distance and local hostility slowed down this section of the Oriental trade.


Routes

Caravan trails, set up in the 9th century, went past the oases of the Sahara; travel was difficult and uncomfortable for reasons of climate and distance. Since Roman times, long convoys had transported slaves as well as all sorts of products to be used for barter
Barter

Barter is a type of trade in which product or Service are directly exchanged for other goods and/or services, without the use of Money. It can be bilateral or multilateral, and usually exists parallel to monetary systems in most developed countries, though to a very limited extent....
. To protect against attacks from desert nomads, slaves were used as an escort. Any who slowed down the progress of the caravan were killed.

Historians know less about the sea routes. From the evidence of illustrated documents, and travellers' tales, it seems that people travelled on dhow
Dhow

A dhow is a traditional Arab Sailing ship with one or more lateen. They are primarily used along the coasts of the Arabian Peninsula, Pakistan, India, and East Africa....
s or
jalbas, Arab ships which were used as transport in the Red Sea. Crossing the Indian Ocean required better organisation and more resources than overland transport. Ships coming from Zanzibar made stops on Socotra
Socotra

Socotra or Soqotra is a small archipelago of four islands and islets in the Indian Ocean off the coast of the Horn of Africa some south of the Arabian peninsula, belonging to the Yemen....
 or at Aden
Aden

Aden is a city in Yemen, 170 kilometers east of Bab-el-Mandeb.Aden's ancient, natural harbour lies in the crater of an extinct volcano which now forms a peninsula, joined to the mainland by a low isthmus....
 before heading to the Persian Gulf
Persian Gulf

The Persian Gulf, in the Southwest Asian region, is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. Historically and commonly known as the Persian Gulf, this body of water is sometimes Persian Gulf naming dispute referred to as the Arabian Gulf by certain Arab countries or simply The Gulf, although nei...
 or to India. Slaves were sold as far away as India, or even China: there was a colony of Arab merchants in Canton
Guangzhou

'Guangzhou' is the Capital and a sub-provincial city of Guangdong Province of China in the northern and southern China part of the People's Republic of China....
. Serge Bilé cites a 12th century text which tells us that most well-to-do families in Canton had black slaves whom they regarded as savages and demons because of their physical appearance. Although Chinese slave traders bought slaves (
Seng Chi i.e. the Zanj
Zanj

Zanj was a name used by medieval Geography in medieval Islam to refer to both a certain portion of the East African coast and its inhabitants....
) from Arab intermediaries and "stocked up" directly in coastal areas of present-day Somalia
Somalia

Somalia , officially the Republic of Somalia and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, is a country located in the Horn of Africa....
, the local Somalis
Somali people

Somalis are an ethnic group located in the Horn of Africa, also known as the Somali Peninsula. The overwhelming majority of Somalis speak the Somali language, which is part of the Cushitic languages subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic languages language family....
 -- referred to as
Baribah and Barbaroi (Berbers
Berber people

Berbers are the indigenous ethnic groups of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are discontinuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River....
) by medieval Arab and ancient Greek
Greeks

The Greeks , also known as Hellenes, are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighbouring regions, who can also be found in Greek diaspora communities around the world....
 geographers, respectively (see
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
Periplus of the Erythraean Sea

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is a Greek language periplus, describing navigation and Roman commerce from History of Roman Egypt ports like Berenice along the coast of the Red Sea, and others along Horn of Africa and India....
),and no strangers to capturing, owning and trading slaves themselves -- were not among them:

One important commodity being transported by the Arab dhows to Somalia was slaves from other parts of East Africa. During the nineteenth century, the East African slave trade grew enormously due to demands by Arabs, Portuguese, and French. Slave traders and raiders moved throughout eastern and central Africa to meet the rising demand for enslaved men, women, and children. Somalia did not supply slaves -- as part of the Islamic world Somalis were at least nominally protected by the religious tenet that free Muslims cannot be enslaved -- but Arab dhows loaded with human cargo continually visited Somali ports.
Slaves Zadib Yemen 13th Century Bnf Paris
Slave labor in East Africa was drawn exclusively from the
Zanj
Zanj

Zanj was a name used by medieval Geography in medieval Islam to refer to both a certain portion of the East African coast and its inhabitants....
, who were Negroid
Negroid

Negroid is an adjective derived from the term Negro and refers to a Race of people whose recent ancestors are mostly from sub-Saharan Africa. The concept originated with a now defunct typological method of racial classification, but is still used, in a less rigid or essentialism sense, by many anthropology, especially physical anthropolog...
 Bantu
Bantu languages

The Bantu languages constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo languages family. This grouping is deep down in the genealogical tree of the Bantoid grouping, which in turn is deep down in the Niger-Congo tree....
-speaking peoples that lived along the East African coast in an area roughly comprising modern-day Tanzania
Tanzania

Tanzania , officially the United Republic of Tanzania , is a country in East Africa that is bordered by Kenya and Uganda on the north, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the west, and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique on the south....
, Mozambique
Mozambique

Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique , is a country in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest....
 and Malawi
Malawi

The Republic of Malawi is a landlocked country in southeast Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland. It is bordered by Zambia to the northwest, Tanzania to the northeast and Mozambique, which surrounds it on the east, south and west....
. The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean
Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering about 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by Asia ; on the west by Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean ....
. The Umayyad and Abbasid
Abbasid

The Abbasid Caliphate was the third of the Islamic Caliphates of the Islamic Empire. The Caliphate is one of the high points of Islam, and at the time Muslim civilization, together with that of Byzantium, China and India, was the most developed part of the world....
 caliph
Caliph

The Caliph is the head of state in a Caliphate, and the title for the leader of the Islamic Ummah, an Islamic community ruled by the Shari'ah....
s recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as AD 696, we learn of slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers in Iraq
Iraq

Iraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros Mountains, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
 (see Zanj Rebellion
Zanj Rebellion

Note: The Zanj Rebellion was not a single revolt but a series of small revolts that eventually culminated to a large revolt. This article details the largest revolt led by Ali bin Muhammad....
). Ancient Chinese texts also mention ambassadors from Java presenting the Chinese emperor with two
Seng Chi (Zanj) slaves as gifts, and Seng Chi slaves reaching China from the Hindu kingdom of Sri Vijaya
Srivijaya

Srivijaya or Sriwijaya was an ancient Malays kingdom on the island of Sumatra, Southeast Asia which influenced much of the Malay Archipelago. The earliest solid proof of its existence dates from the 7th century; a Chinese monk, I-Tsing, wrote that he visited Srivijaya in 671 for 6 months....
 in Java
Java

Java is an island of Indonesia and the site of its Capital city, Jakarta. Once the centre of powerful Hindu kingdoms, The spread of Islam in Indonesia , and the core of the colonial Dutch East Indies, Java now plays a dominant role in the economic and political life of Indonesia....
.

Barter

Slaves were often bartered for objects of various different kinds: in the Sûdân, they were exchanged for cloth, trinket
Trinket

Trinket may refer to:* The original name of New Zealand rock band The Datsuns* A troll girl in the comic series List of characters in Elfquest#Greymung's Trolls...
s and so on. In the Maghreb, they were swapped for horses. In the desert cities, lengths of cloth, pottery, Venetian glass beads, dyestuffs and jewels were used as payment. The trade in black slaves was part of a diverse commercial network. Alongside gold coins, cowrie shells from the Indian Ocean or the Atlantic (Canaries
Canary Islands

The Canary Islands are a Spain archipelago which, in turn, forms one of the Spanish Autonomous Communities and an Outermost Region of the European Union....
, Luanda
Luanda

Luanda is the Capital and largest city of Angola. Located on Angola's coast with the Atlantic Ocean, Luanda is both Angola's chief seaport and administrative center and has a population of approximately 4.8 million ....
) were used as money throughout black Africa (merchandise was paid for with sacks of cowries).

Slave markets and fairs

Enslaved Africans were sold in the towns of the Muslim world. In 1416, al-Makrisi told how pilgrims coming from Takrur (near the Senegal river
Sénégal River

The S?n?gal River is a 1790 km long river in West Africa, that forms the border between Senegal and Mauritania. It was called Bambotus by Pliny the Elder and Nias by Claudius Ptolemy....
) had brought 1700 slaves with them to Mecca. In North Africa, the main slave markets were in Morocco, Algiers
Algiers

Algiers Nicknamed El-Bahdja or Alger la Blanche for the glistening white of its buildings as seen rising up from the sea, Algiers is situated on the west side of a bay of the Mediterranean Sea....
, Tripoli
Tripoli

Tripoli is the largest and Capital city of Libya.Tripoli has a population of 1.69 million. The city is located in the northwest of the country on the edge of the desert, on a point of rocky land projecting into the Mediterranean Sea and forming a bay....
 and Cairo. Sales were held in public places or in souks. Potential buyers made a careful examination of the "merchandise": they checked the state of health of a person who was often standing naked with wrists bound together. In Cairo, transactions involving eunuchs and concubines happened in private houses. Prices varied according to the slave's quality.

Towns and ports implicated in the slave trade

  • North Africa:
    • Marrakesh (Morocco)
    • Algiers
      Algiers

      Algiers Nicknamed El-Bahdja or Alger la Blanche for the glistening white of its buildings as seen rising up from the sea, Algiers is situated on the west side of a bay of the Mediterranean Sea....
       (Algeria)
    • Tripoli
      Tripoli

      Tripoli is the largest and Capital city of Libya.Tripoli has a population of 1.69 million. The city is located in the northwest of the country on the edge of the desert, on a point of rocky land projecting into the Mediterranean Sea and forming a bay....
       (Libya)
    • Cairo
      Cairo

      Cairo , which means "the triumphant", is the Cairo and largest city of Egypt.It is the most populous metropolitan area in Egypt and is also one of the most populous in the world....
       (Egypt)
    • Aswan
      Aswan

      Aswan , Egyptian language: Swenet , Coptic language: Swan; Greek language: Syene; ) is a city in the south of Egypt, the capital of the Aswan Governorate....
       (Egypt)


  • West Africa
    • Aoudaghost
      Aoudaghost

      Aoudaghost, , was a major city in ancient mediaeval West Africa, lying in what is now southern Mauritania. It was founded around the 5th century AD as a commercial centre at the southern end of trans-Saharan trade routes....
       (Mauritania)
    • Timbuktu
      Timbuktu

      Timbuktu is a city in Tombouctou Region, in the West African nation of Mali. It was made prosperous by Mansa Musa, tenth mansa of the Mali Empire....
       (Mali)
    • Gao
      Gao

      ||-||-||}Gao is a city in Songhai and capital of the Gao Region on the River Niger, with a population of 57,978 in 2005.It is also the capital of the surrounding Gao Cercle....
       (Mali)
    • Bilma
      Bilma

      Bilma is an oasis town in north east Niger with a population of around 2,500 people. It lies protected from the desert dunes under the Kaouar and is the largest town along the Kaouar escarpment....
       (Niger)


  • East Africa:
    • Bagamoyo
      Bagamoyo

      The town of Bagamoyo, Tanzania, was founded at the end of the 18th century. It was the original capital of German East Africa and was one of the most important trading ports along the East African coast....
       (Tanzania)
    • Zanzibar
      Zanzibar

      Zanzibar is part of the East African republic of Tanzania. It consists of the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, 25?50 km off the coast of the mainland....
       (Tanzania)
    • Kilwa (Tanzania)
    • Sofala
      Sofala

      Sofala, at present known as Nova Sofala, used to be the chief seaport of the Monomotapa Kingdom, whose capital was at Mount Fura. It is located on the Sofala Bank in Sofala Province of Mozambique....
       (Beira
      Beira, Mozambique

      Beira is the second largest city in Mozambique. It lies in the central region of the country in Sofala Province, where the Pungue River meets the Indian Ocean....
      , Mozambique)
  • Horn of Africa
    • Massawa
      Massawa

      Massawa, formerly known as Mitsiwa and Batsi? or Badi }} is a port on the Red Sea coast of Eritrea. Important for many centuries, it has been colonised by Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, UK and finally Ethiopia until 1991....
       (Eritrea)
    • Zeila
      Zeila

      Zeila is a port city on the Gulf of Aden coast and is located in the Awdal region of Somalia near the Djibouti border.It is located at , surrounded on three sides by the sea; landward the country is unbroken desert for some fifty miles....
       (Somalia)
    • Mogadishu
      Mogadishu

      Mogadishu [] is the largest city in Somalia and the nation's Capital .Located in the coastal Benadir region on the Indian Ocean, the city has served as an important regional port for centuries....
       (Somalia)


    • Arabian peninsula
      • Mecca
        Mecca

        Mecca , also spelled Makkah , Makka is a city in Saudi Arabia. Home to the Masjid al-Haram, it is the holy city in Islam and plays an important role in the faith....
         (Saudi Arabia)
      • Zabid
        Zabid

        Zabid is a town with an urban population of around 23,000 persons on Yemen's western coastal plain. The town, named after Wadi Zabid the wadi to its south, is one of the oldest towns in Yemen, it was the capital of Yemen from the 13th to the 15th century and a center of the Arab and Muslim world due in large part to its famed University of...
         (Yemen)
      • Muscat
        Muscat, Oman

        Muscat is the Capital and largest city of Oman. It is also the seat of government and largest city in the Muscat . As of 2008, the population of the Muscat metropolitan area was 1,090,797....
         (Oman)
      • Aden
        Aden

        Aden is a city in Yemen, 170 kilometers east of Bab-el-Mandeb.Aden's ancient, natural harbour lies in the crater of an extinct volcano which now forms a peninsula, joined to the mainland by a low isthmus....
         (Yemen)
      • Socotra
        Socotra

        Socotra or Soqotra is a small archipelago of four islands and islets in the Indian Ocean off the coast of the Horn of Africa some south of the Arabian peninsula, belonging to the Yemen....
         (Indian Ocean)


    See also

    • Slavery
      Slavery

      Slavery is a form of forced labor where a person is compelled to Labor for another . Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive Remuneration in return for their labor....
    • Atlantic slave trade
      Atlantic slave trade

      The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the transatlantic slave trade, was the trade of primarily African people supplied to the colonies of the New World that occurred in and around the Atlantic Ocean....
    • African slave trade
      African slave trade

      The slave trade in Africa existed for thousands of years. The first main route passed through the Sahara, tying in to the Arab slave trade. After the European Age of Exploration, African slaves became part of the Atlantic slave trade, from which comes the modern, Western conception of slavery as an institution of African-descended slaves and...
    • History of slavery
      History of slavery

      The history of slavery covers many different forms of human exploitation across many cultures throughout history. Slavery, generally defined, refers to a situation where one human being is considered to be the property of another, and is therefore obligated to perform tasks for their owner without any choice involved....
    • Slavery in modern Africa
      Slavery in modern Africa

      Slavery in Africa continues today. Slavery existed in Africa before the arrival of Europeans - as did a African slave trade that exported millions of sub-Saharan Africans to North Africa, the Middle East, and the Persian Gulf....
    • Slavery in Libya
      Slavery in Libya

      Slavery in Libya has a long history and a lasting impact on the Libyan culture. Slavery in Libya is closely connected with the wider context of slavery in north Africa....
    • Slave beads
      Slave beads

      Slave beads were otherwise decorative glass beads used between the 16th and 20th century as a currency to exchange for good , Service s and slaverys ....
    • Slavery in antiquity
      Slavery in antiquity

      Slavery in the ancient world, specifically, in Mediterranean cultures, comprised a mixture of debt-slavery, slavery as a punishment for crime, and the enslavement of prisoner of war....
    • Islam and slavery
      Islam and Slavery

      Historically, the Madh'hab traditionally accepted the institution of slavery. Muhammad and many of Sahaba bought, sold, freed, and captured slaves. Slaves benefited from Islamic dispensations which improved their situation relative to that in pre-Islamic society....
    • Christianity and slavery
      Christianity and slavery

      The issue of Christianity and slavery is one that has seen intense conflict. While Christian abolitionists were a principal force in the abolition of slavery, the Bible sanctioned the use of regulated slavery in the Old Testament, while the New Testament does not explicitly condemn slavery in all its forms....
    • Judaism and slavery
      Judaism and slavery

      Judaism has been influenced by the experience of slavery of the Hebrews in the land of Ancient Egypt, as narrated in the biblical story of the Exodus and their emancipation by the hand of God and under the leadership of Moses and Aaron....
    • Zanj Rebellion
      Zanj Rebellion

      Note: The Zanj Rebellion was not a single revolt but a series of small revolts that eventually culminated to a large revolt. This article details the largest revolt led by Ali bin Muhammad....
    • Afro Arab
    • Black orientalism
      Black orientalism

      Black orientalism is an intellectual and cultural movement found primarily within African American circles. While similar to the general movement of Orientalism in its negative outlook upon Western Asian - especially Arab - culture and religion, it differs in its emphasis upon the role of the Arab slave trade in the historic dialogue between...
    • Slavery in the Ottoman Empire
      Slavery (Ottoman Empire)

      Slavery was an important part of Ottoman Empire society. As late as 1908, women slaves were still sold in the Ottoman Empire. In Constantinople , about one-fifth of the population consisted of slaves....


    Bibliography


    Books in English


    • The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (Princeton Series on the Middle East) by Eve Troutt Powell (Editor), John O. Hunwick (Editor)
    • Edward A. Alpers, The East African Slave Trade (Berkeley 1967)
    • Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) ISBN 978-1403945518
    • Allan G. B. Fisher, Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa, ed. C. Hurst (London 1970, 2nd edition 2001)
    • Murray Gordon, Slavery in the Arab world (New York 1989)
    • Bernard Lewis
      Bernard Lewis

      Bernard Lewis is a British-American historian, Orientalist, and pundit . He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University....
      ,
      Race and slavery in the Middle East (OUP 1990)
    • Ibn Khaldun
      Ibn Khaldun

      Ibn Khaldun or Ibn Khaldoun...
      ,
      The Muqaddimah trans. F.Rosenthal ed. N.J.Dawood (Princeton 1967)]
    • Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (Cambridge 2000)
    • Ronald Segal, Islam's Black Slaves (Atlantic Books, London 2002)


    Audio Material

    • Owen 'Alik Shahadah, African Holocaust


    Books and articles in French

    • Serge Daget, De la traite à l'esclavage, du Ve au XVIIIe siècle, actes du Colloque international sur la traite des noirs (Nantes, Société française d'histoire d'Outre-Mer, 1985)
    • Jacques Heers, Les Négriers en terre d'islam (Perrin, Pour l'histoire collection, Paris, 2003) (ISBN 2-262-01850-2)
    • Murray Gordon, L'esclavage dans le monde arabe, du VIIe au XXe siècle (Robert Laffont, Paris, 1987)
    • Bernard Lewis, Race et esclavage au Proche-Orient, (Gallimard, Bibliothèque des histoires collection, Paris, 1993) (ISBN 2-07-072740-8)
    • Olivier Petré-Grenouilleau, Les Traites oubliée des négrières (la Documentation française, Paris, 2003)
    • Jean-Claude Deveau, Esclaves noirs en Méditerranée in Cahiers de la Méditerranée, vol. 65, Sophia-Antipolis
    • Olivier Petré-Grenouilleau, La traite oubliée des négriers musulmans in L'Histoire, special number 280 S (October 2003), pages 48-55.


    External links