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Arab slave trade
The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in West Asia, North Africa, East Africa, and certain parts of Europe (such as Sicily and Iberia) during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade mostly involved North and East Africans and Middle Eastern peoples (Arabs, 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 state?during the 8th and 9th centuries?most of the slaves were Slavic Eastern Europeans (called Saqaliba), people from surrounding Mediterranean areas, Persians, Turks, other neighbouring Middle Eastern peoples, peoples from the Caucasus Mountain regions (such as Georgia and Armenia) and parts of Central Asia, Berbers, and various other peoples of varied origins as well as those of Black African origins. Later, toward the 18th and 19th centuries, slaves increasingly came from East Africa.[1][2][3] Some historians estimate that between 11 and 18 million black African slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 AD to 1900 AD,[4][5][6] or more than the 9.4 to 14 million Africans brought to the Americas in the Atlantic slave trade.[7] The medieval slave trade in Europe was mainly to the East and South: The Byzantine Empire and the Muslim World were the destinations, pagan Central and Eastern Europe an important source. Slavery in medieval Europe was so common that the Roman Catholic Church repeatedly prohibited it? or at least the export of Christian slaves to non-Christian lands was prohibited at, for example, the Council of Koblenz in 922, the Council of London in 1102, and the Council of Armagh in 1171.[8] Viking, Arab, Greek and Jewish merchants (known as Radhanites) were all involved in the slave trade during the Early Middle Ages.[9][10][11] Periodic raiding expeditions were sent from Islamic Iberia to ravage the Christian Iberian kingdoms, bringing back booty and slaves. In a raid against Lisbon in 1189 CE, for example, the Almohad caliph Yaqub al-Mansur took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves in 1191 CE, took 3,000 Christian slaves.[12] According to Robert Davis between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries.[13][14] These slaves were captured mainly from seaside villages from Italy, Spain, Portugal and also from more distant places like France or England, the Netherlands, Ireland and even Iceland and North America. The impact of these attacks was devastating ? France, England, and Spain 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.[15][16] 
The 'Oriental' or 'Arab' slave trade is sometimes called the 'Islamic' slave trade, but a religious imperative was not the driver of the slavery, Patrick Manning, a professor of World History, states. However, since if a non-Muslim population refuses to adopt Islam or pay the Jizzya protection/ subjugation tax, that population is considered to be at war with the Muslim "ummah" 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.[21] Propagators of Islam in Africa often revealed a cautious attitude towards proselytizing because of its effect in reducing the potential reservoir of slaves.[22] From a Western point of view, the subject merges with the Oriental slave trade, which followed two main routes in the Middle Ages:
Historians say the Arab slave trade began in the 7th century and lasted more than a millennium.[26][27] Arab traders brought Africans across the Indian Ocean from present-day Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, western Ethiopia and elsewhere in East Africa to present-day Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Turkey and other parts of the Middle East [28] and South Asia (mainly Pakistan and India). Unlike the trans-Atlantic slave trade to the New World, Arabs 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. Elikia M?bokolo, April 1998, Le Monde diplomatique. Quote:"The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, 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 (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"[29] 
The Slave Market (c. 1884), painting by Jean-Leon Gerome. Painting suggests that White Europeans, particularly women, were brought as slaves in the Islamic world. Sources and historiography of the slave tradeA recent and controversial topicThe 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.[30] 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.[31] 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.[32] 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. [33] 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.[34] Male slaves who were often made eunuchs 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 concubines and others as 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 CE until around 1900 CE 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, who coerced the country into submission.[35] Historical accounts and references to slave-owning nobility in Arabia, Yemen and elsewhere are frequent into the early 1920s.[36] In 1953, sheikhs from Qatar attending the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II included slaves in their retinues, and they did so again on another visit five years later.[37] As recently as the 1950s, the Saudi Arabia?s slave population was estimated at 450,000 ? just 20% of the population.[38][39] It is estimated that as many as 200,000 black Sudanese children and women had been taken into slavery in Sudan during the Second Sudanese Civil War.[40][41] Slavery in Mauritania was legally abolished by laws passed in 1905, 1961, and 1981.[42] It was finally criminalized in August 2007.[43] It is estimated that up to 600,000 black Mauritanians, or 20% of the Mauritania?s population, are currently enslaved, many of them used as bonded labour.[44] For some people, any mention of the slave-trading past of the Arab 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.[45][46] 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.[47][48] Medieval Arabic Sources
Ibn Battûta, an Arabic geographer who visited sub-Saharan Africa in the 14th century. These are given in chronological order. Scholars and geographers from the Arab world had been travelling to Africa since the time of Muhammad in the 7th century.
European texts (16th - 19th centuries)
Other sources
Historical and geographical context of the Arab slave tradeA 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 worldThe 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 invaded the Iberian peninsula where they displaced 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. 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 (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 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 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
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. Arabic views on black peoplePrejudice against black people, who were often known as Zanj, sometimes occurred in the works of several Arabic historians and geographers. In 14th century North Africa, the Arab sociologist, Ibn Khaldun, wrote in his Muqaddimah: However, Ibn Khaldun was also critical of his own people, the Arabs, especially the nomadic Bedouin tribes: His critical attitude towards Arabs has led the scholar Mohammad A. Enan to suggest that Ibn Khaldun may have been a Berber 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.[49] In the same period, the Egyptian historian Al-Abshibi (1388-1446) wrote, "It is said that when the [black] slave is sated, he fornicates, when he is hungry, he steals."[50] However, another North African Arabic geographer and traveller Ibn Battuta visited the Mali Empire in 1352 and held more positive views on black people, writing that they: Africa: 8th through 19th centuries
13th century Africa - Map of the main trade routes and states, kingdoms and empires
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. [52] Native Muslim Ethiopian sultanates exported slaves as well, such as the sometimes independent Adal Sultanate.[53] On the coast of the Indian Ocean too, slave-trading posts were set up by Arabs. 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 Tippu 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. 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. Geography of the slave trade"Supply" zones
Cowrie shells were used as money in the slave trade There are also many historical evidence and reports 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 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.
RoutesCaravan 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. 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[55]) from Arab intermediaries and "stocked up" directly in coastal areas of present-day Somalia, the local Somalis -- referred to as Baribah and Barbaroi (Berbers) by medieval Arab and ancient Greek geographers, respectively (see Periplus of the Erythraean Sea),[56][57][58]and no strangers to capturing, owning and trading slaves themselves[59] -- were not among them[60]: 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.[61] 
13th century slave market in the Yemen Slave labor in East Africa was drawn exclusively from the Zanj, who were Negroid Bantu-speaking peoples that lived along the East African coast in an area roughly comprising modern-day Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi.[56][62] The Zanj were for centuries shipped as slaves by Arab traders to all the countries bordering the Indian Ocean. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs recruited many Zanj slaves as soldiers and, as early as 696 AD, we learn of slave revolts of the Zanj against their Arab enslavers in Iraq (see Zanj Rebellion). 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 in Java.[55] BarterSlaves 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 fairsEnslaved 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. Towns and ports implicated in the slave trade
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