Arab slave trade

The Arab slave trade refers to the practice of slavery in West Asia and East Africa. The trade mostly involved East Africans, Middle Eastern peoples (Arabs, Berbers, Persians, etc.) and to some extent Indians, while others such as the Chinese played a small role. Also, Arab slave trade was not limited to people of certain color, ethnicity, or religion. In the early days of the Islamic state, ~ 8th and 9th centuries, most of the slaves were of Persian and other Caucasoid origins. Later, and toward the 18th and 19th centuries, slaves were mainly coming from East Africa. Penis

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

• Overland routes across the Maghreb and Mashreq deserts (Trans-Saharan route)
• Sea routes to the east of Africa through the Red Sea and Indian Ocean (Oriental route)

The slave trade went to different destinations from the transatlantic slave trade, and supplied African slaves to the Muslim world, which at its peak stretched over three continents from the Atlantic (Morocco, Spain) to India and eastern China.

A recent and controversial topic

Dhows were used to transport African slaves to India

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 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 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. Slavery in Arabian Societies

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, numismatics, anthropology, linguistics and demography 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 were employed as servants, soldiers, or laborers by their owners, while female slaves, mostly from Africa, were long traded to the Middle Eastern countries and kingdoms by Arab and Oriental traders, some as female servants, others as concubines. 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 CE until around 1900 CE, as many African slaves may have crossed the Sahara Desert, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean as crossed the Atlantic, and perhaps more. The Arab slave trade continued in one form or another into the early 1900s. Historical accounts and references to slave-owning nobility in Arabia, Yemen and elsewhere are frequent into the early 1920s.

For some people, any mention of the slave-trading past of the Islamic world is rejected as an attempt to minimise the transatlantic trade. Yet a slave trade in the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Mediterranean pre-dates the arrival of any significant number of Europeans on the African continent.

Medieval Arabic and Persian sources

Ibn Battûta - first Arab geographer to visit sub-Saharan Africa

These are given in chronological order. Scholars from the Arab world had been travelling to Africa since the time of Muhammad 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 (9th century), Book of Countries
• Al-Bakri, author of Book of Roads and Kingdoms, published in Cordoba around 1068, gives us information about the Berbers and their activities; he collected eye-witness accounts on Saharan caravan routes.
• Al Idrisi (died circa 1165), Description of Africa and Spain
• Ibn Battûta (died circa 1377), Moroccan geographer who travelled to sub-Saharan Africa, to Gao and to Timbuktu. His principal work is called Gift for those who like to reflect on the curiosities of towns and marvels of travel.
• Ibn Khaldun (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 (died in 1442), Egyptian historian. His main contribution is his description of Cairo markets.
• Leo Africanus (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, Roteiro de Lisboa a Goa (1538)
• James Bruce, (1730-1794), Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (1790)
• René Caillié, (1799-1838), Journal d'un voyage à Tombouctou
• Henry Morton Stanley, (1841-1904), Through the Dark Continent (1878)

Other sources

• African oral tradition
• Kilwa 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 in major libraries
• European engravings, contemporary with the slave trade, and some more modern
• Photographs from the 19th century onward
• Ethiopian 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 Islamic 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

Main article: Muslim world

the religion of Islam appeared in the 7th century CE, 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 extended their rule to the Iberian peninsula where they replaced the Visigoth kingdom. Arabs also took control of western Asia from the Byzantine Empire and from the Sassanid Persians. These regions therefore had a diverse range of different peoples, and their knowledge of slavery and a trade in African slaves went back to Antiquity. To some extent, these regions were unified by an Islamic culture built on both religious and civic foundations; they used the Arabic language and the dinar (currency) in commercial transactions. Mecca 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 whom were subsequently set free or turned into slaves or Raqeeq (رقيق) 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 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 “مخارجة” 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 “مكاتبة” (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.” "24:33 "

After the fall of the Umayyad dynasty (750), the Muslim world was divided into various political entities (caliphates, emirates, sultanates), often rivals of one another. In the 11th century, the arrival of the Turks from central Asia radically changed the geography of the Near East and of North Africa, with the establishment of the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922).

The framework of Islamic civilisation was a well-developed network of towns and oasis trading centres with the market (souk, bazaar) 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 traffic.

Africa: 8th through 19th centuries

File:Africa en.gif

13th century Africa - simplified map of the main states, kingdoms and empires

In the 8th century CE, Africa was dominated by Arab-Berbers in the north: Islam moved southwards along the Nile 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, Oualata, Sijilmasa, Zaouila, and others. They were ruled by Arab or Berber chiefs (Tuaregs). Their independence was relative and depended on the power of the Maghrebi and Egyptian states.
• In the Middle Ages, sub-Saharan Africa was called 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, the Empire of Mali, the Kanem-Bornu Empire.
• 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 had been a "supply zone" for slaves since Antiquity. The Ethiopian coast, particularly the port of Massawa and Dahlak Archipelago, 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.

Slaves in eastern Africa - illustration from late 19th century)

The Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia often exported Nilotic slaves from their western borderland provinces, or from newly conquered or reconquered Muslim provinces. Native muslim Ethiopian sultanates exported slaves as well, such as the sometimes independent Adal Sultanate. On the coast of the Indian Ocean too, slave-trading posts were set up by Arabs and Persians. The archipelago of Zanzibar, along the coast of present-day Tanzania, is undoubtedly the most notorious example of these trading colonies. East Africa and the Indian Ocean continued as an important region for the Oriental slave trade up until the 19th century. Livingstone and Stanley were then the first Europeans to penetrate to the interior of the Congo basin and to discover the scale of slavery there. The Arab Tippo Tip extended his influence and made many people slaves. After Europeans had settled in the Gulf of Guinea, the trans-Saharan slave trade became less important. In Zanzibar, slavery was abolished late, in 1897, under Sultan Hamoud bin Mohammed.

• The rest of Africa had no direct contact with Muslim slave-traders.

Legacy of Arab slave trade

Islam like Christianity became the context for the cultural prevalence of Arab culture, Arab names became Islamic names and those who adopted Islam automatically adopted Arab culture in an attempt to become more Islamic. The Afro-Arab relationship was riddled with complexities lined in a cultural nexus. Some Arabs were Arab linguistically but racially African (see definition of Arab. Thus, the Arab trade in enslaved Africans was not only conducted by Asiatic and Caucasian Arabs, but also African Arabs: Africans speaking Arabic as a first language embracing an Arab culture. Focus on the Arab slavery is previously been low due to the fact that most descendants of enslaved people are as a result of the Transatlantic slave trade for this reason the impact of the Arab trade on people of the Americas is neglegiable. Another reason is the legacy of the Arab Slave Trade is far less impacting than the European trade in enslaved Africans, as there are no ghettos or prison complexes in Arabian lands overflowing with African people. The African Diaspora in Arab lands has almost disappeared through inter-marriage. The resurgence of Islamaphobia some argue has brought this aspect of history to the foreground..

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 Ber (1464–1492), emperor of Songhai, waged many wars to extend his territory.

In the 8th and 9th centuries, the Caliphs 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. In the face of these attacks, the people formed militias, building towers and outer defences to protect their villages.

Aims of the slave trade and slavery

File:Slaves in chains (grayscale).png

Chained slaves in eastern Africa - 19th century

Economic motives were the most obvious. The trade resulted in large profits for those who were running it. Several cities became rich and prospered thanks to the traffic in slaves, both in the Sûdân region and in East Africa. In the Sahara desert, chiefs launched expeditions against pillagers looting the convoys. The kings of medieval Morocco had fortresses constructed in the desert regions which they ruled, so they could offer protected stopping places for caravans. The Sultan of Oman transferred his capital to Zanzibar, since he had understood the economic potential of the eastward slave trade.

There were also social and cultural reasons for the trade: in sub-Saharan Africa, possession of slaves was a sign of high social status. In Arab-Muslim areas, harems needed a "supply" of women.

Finally, it is impossible to ignore the religious and racist dimension of this trade. Punishing bad Muslims or pagans was held to be an ideological justification for enslavement: (evidence?) the Muslim rulers of North Africa, the Sahara and the Sahel sent raiding parties to persecute infidels: in the Middle Ages, Islamisation was only superficial in rural parts of Africa(evidence?).

Racist opinions recurred in the works of historians and geographers: so in the 14th century CE Ibn Khaldun could write "...the Negro nations are, as a rule, submissive to slavery, because (Negroes) have little that is (essentially) human and possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals...

However, Ibn Khaldun, also wrote, of the arabs themselves. : "they are the most savage human beings that exist. Compared with sedentary people, they are on a level with wild, untamable animals and dumb beasts of prey." - Arabs dominate only of the plains, because they are, by their savage nature, people of pillage and corruption. - The Muqaddimmah

In addition, there is debate over his ethnicity, some refer to him as Andalusian/Spanish (he grew up there, his parents were from there), some say he was a Berber/North African (time spent in Tunis), and some say he was an arab (he traced his ancestors to Yemen). - see Ibn Khaldun article for details.

" In the same period, the Egyptian scholar Al-Abshibi wrote, "When he (a black man) is hungry, he steals, and when he is sated, he fornicates". (This is however a forged hadith which has been universally dismissed by hadith experts as false. See the book "An introduction to the science of Hadith" by Suhaib Hasan for further details of this quote)

Geography of the slave trade

"Supply" zones

Cowrie shells were used as money in the slave trade

Merchants of slaves for the Orient stocked up in Europe. Danish merchants had bases in the Volga region and dealt in Slavs with Arab merchants. Circassian slaves were conspicuously present in the harems and there were many odalisques from that region in the paintings of Orientalists. Non-Muslim slaves were valued in the harems, for all roles (gate-keeper, servant, odalisque, musician, dancer, court dwarf). In 9th century Baghdad, the Caliph Al-Amin owned about 7000 black eunuchs (who were completely emasculated) and 4000 white eunuchs (who were castrated). In the Ottoman Empire, the last black eunuch, the slave sold in Ethiopia named Hayrettin Effendi, was freed in 1918. The slaves of Slavic origin in Al-Andalus came from the Varangians who had captured them. They were put in the Caliph's guard and gradually took up important posts in the army (they became saqaliba), and even went to take back taifas after the civil war had led to an implosion of the Western Caliphate. Columns of slaves feeding the great harems of Cordoba, Seville and Grenada were organised by Jewish merchants (mercaderes) from Germanic countries and parts of Northern Europe not controlled by the Carolingian Empire. These columns crossed the Rhône valley to reach the lands to the south of the Pyrenees.

Slaves were also brought into the Arab world via Central Asia. many of these slaves went on to serve in the armies forming an elite rank. It was from these troops that the Mamaluks came.

• At sea, Barbary pirates joined in this traffic when they could capture people by boarding ships or by incursions into coastal areas.
• Nubia and Ethiopia were also "exporting" regions: in the 15th century, there were slaves in India sold from Ethiopia (though generally not subjects of the Emperor of Ethiopia) 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. 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 dhows 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 or at Aden before heading to the Persian Gulf or to India. Slaves were sold as far away as India, or even China: there was a colony of Arab merchants in Canton. Chinese slave traders bought black slaves (Hei-hsiao-ssu) from Arab intermediaries or "stocked up" directly in coastal areas of present-day Somalia. 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. The 15th century Chinese emperors sent maritime expeditions, led by Zheng He, to eastern Africa. Their aim was to increase their commercial influence.

13th century slave market in the Yemen

Barter

Slaves were often bartered for objects of various different kinds: in the Sûdân, they were exchanged for cloth, trinkets 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,Luanda) 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) had brought 1700 slaves with them to Mecca. In North Africa, the main slave markets were in Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli 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.

File:Zanzibar old Kelele Slave Market Square.jpg

Zanzibar - the Old Slave Market

Towns and ports implicated in the slave trade

North Africa: Marrakesh (Morocco) Algiers (Algeria) Tripoli (Libya) Cairo (Egypt) Aswan (Sudan) Sub-Saharan Africa Aoudaghost Timbuktu (Mali) Gao Bilma

East Africa: Massawa (Eritrea) Zeila (Somalia) Mogadishu (Somalia) Bagamoyo (Tanzania) Zanzibar (Tanzania) Kilwa Sofala (Beira, Mozambique) Arabian peninsula Mecca Zabid (Yemen) Muscat (Oman) Aden (Yemen) Socotra

See also

• Atlantic slave trade
• African slave trade
• Slave beads
• Slavery
• Slavery in antiquity
• Zanj Rebellion

References

This article was initially translated from the featured French wiki article "Traite musulmane" on 19 May 2006.

• [1] Mintz, S., Digital History/Slavery Facts & Myths

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)
• 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, Race and slavery in the Middle East (OUP 1990)
• Ibn Khaldun, 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 Audio Documentary

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.

Websites

• East African Slave-Trade
• African Holocaust/Arab Slave Trade
• Defining Legends
• Calling Trade Muslim Misleads