Arab Slave Trade

Buu · (#1 (**permalink**))

I'm wondering if the Arab slave trade ever existed we talk so little about it in comparison to the European slave trade. We've even had Black Muslims completely deny it ever happened, so I'm also wondering how is it possible to completely wipe it from the history book and have African Muslims on the continent and world wide deny it themselves.

DtotheJ · (#2 (**permalink**))

european or christian slave trade was involving the same countries that later colonized Africa...so lot of Black people have been impacted by that entire systemin a direct way.....we speak "English" here for example....

European slave trade and conquests are responsible for the existence of the African diapsora(95% of it.....)

From my understanding..the africans taken into slavery in Arab held lands during the arab slave trade were either killed off or absorbed into the gene pool........there are, I'm certain thousands or millions o fafricans in these lands still.........

I think the story of the experience under arab slave trade has yet to be written on wide scale or translated into european languages

East_African · (#3 (**permalink**))

Buu wrote:

Quote:

I'm wondering if the Arab slave trade ever existed we talk so little about it in comparison to the European slave trade. We've even had Black Muslims completely deny it ever happened, so I'm also wondering how is it possible to completely wipe it from the history book and have African Muslims on the continent and world wide deny it themselves.

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Anyone who ever denies it ever happened must be a complete fool. What you you have to understand is that african have settled in the arabian peninsula for a long time. Abyssninas used to rule over southeren arabia for a long time. So i dont know how oen could tell if someone is a descendant of a slave or not? There where somali men whos descendants still live in yemen who walked all the way from east africa to mecca and neverreturned.

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[align=center]AFRICAN HERITAGE EXTENDS ACROSS THE ARAB WORLD[/align]
[align=left]By SUNNI KHALID[/align]
Usually Black History Month focuses on the accomplishments of African-Americans or the past glories of African civilizations. When the issue of slavery is explored, the focus is almost always on slavery in the United States. Seldom do we ponder the history of slavery in Africa or the Arab slave traders who exploited the continent long before the 15th century, when the Portuguese became the first Europeans to buy and sell Africans.

What happened to the millions of Africans who did not make the voyage west across the Atlantic but wound up in bondage in the Middle East?

I didn't give it much thought while growing up in the United States. I never saw images of Arabs with dark skin and African facial features on television or in newspapers. All the Arabs I saw in news accounts seemed to have about the same complexion as Saddam Hussein. So you can imagine my surprise when I -- an African-American journalist and a Muslim -- traveled in the Middle East and saw lots of people who looked like my friends and relatives in the United States.

Eventually I began to trace the link between Africa and the Arab world. My research took me back more than 1,500 years to African villages where slaves were captured, tied together and marched to seaside fortresses. They were herded onto ships, and many wound up in what is now southern Iraq and Kuwait, where they became laborers, farm hands, servants, concubines and eunuchs. Initially many of the slaves came from Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and what is now Somalia.

They were brought to what is now southern Iraq to build canals and to turn marshlands into fields for crops, including cotton. The rulers needed more arable land to feed the region's rapidly growing indigenous population.

The demand for slaves grew, but the supply dwindled along Africa's Indian Ocean coast. Two factors contributed to their scarcity: --> some African ethnic groups began to resist the traders and others converted to Islam. Muslim slave traders were prohibited from enslaving fellow Muslims. This forced Arab slavers to go deeper into the Africa, eventually reaching present-day Malawi, Zambia, southern Sudan and the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Laboring for freedom

Arabs also enslaved Persians, Kurds, Jews, Indians, Chinese, Slavs, Turks, Caucasians and others. But most slaves were Africans. A glaring difference existed between Muslim slavery and slavery under the Europeans. In the United States, slavery often lasted a lifetime. Slavery under the Muslims was closer to indentured labor, and slaves could often purchase or earn their freedom.

Eventually African slaves came to be known as the Zanj. Some academics say Zanj comes from the Arabic word Azania, which means the "land of the blacks." But others trace it to an old Arabic or Farsi colloquial expression related to Zanzibar, an island off the East African coast, which was a major shipping point for slaves headed to the Middle East and other Muslim lands.

In the middle of the ninth century, the Zanj are believed to have numbered about 3 million. Written accounts from the era are replete with racial slurs denigrating the intelligence and physical characteristics of Africans. These slurs are strikingly similar to those expressed by European slave masters centuries later in the New World.

A 14-year uprising later in that century brought an end to slavery as it had been known in the Middle East. The rebellion had a major impact on the region, said Thabit Abdullah, a history professor at York University in Toronto.

"As a result of the Zanj rebellion," Abdullah said, "the Abbasids never again tried to establish the system of plantation slavery, even though the institution of slavery continued. So, in many ways, while the revolt ultimately failed, it did put an end to plantation slavery in what became Iraq."

The African influence did not end with the Zanj rebellion. Abdullah points to many words of the Arabic dialect spoken in present-day southern Iraq that can be traced to East Africa.

For example, the haywa, a popular dance in Basra and Kuwait, is believed to have East African origins, along with boza, homemade beer brewed throughout southern Iraq. Some Iraqi classical music, composed by the late Munir Bashir, is based on the African-influenced music of southern Iraq.

In Basra, which was sacked twice by the Zanj, are areas called Mahalat al-Abid (Quarter of the Slaves) and Jisr al-Abid (the Slaves' Bridge), which refer to areas where African slaves were sold or transferred.

Distant kin

And the African genetic imprint survives in the faces of some of the people of southern Iraq, Kuwait and southern Iran, who are referred to as Zanji and resemble distant kinfolk in other places touched by the African diaspora.

Iraqis of African descent speak Arabic and almost all are Muslims, belonging to Iraq's Shi'a majority or the powerful Sunni minority. Intermarriage with lighter-skinned Iraqis is common.

Divisions within modern Iraqi society are primarily based on class, religion, region, genealogy and sex -- not necessarily race. But that's not to say that racial prejudice does not exist there.

As for Iraqis with African blood, the fact that even a distant ancestor was once enslaved carries a considerable social stigma. This has as much to do with the degrading nature of slavery, which implies cultural and often genetic inferiority of the slaves and their descendants. As a result, there are few, if any, public displays of cultural affinity by African-Iraqis with their hereditary homeland of sub-Saharan Africa. Instead, they identify with the Arab culture.

This is also the case throughout the modern Arab peninsula, which has included a significant number of Afro-Arabs since the pre-Islamic era. The birth of Islam and the institution of the annual hajj, or religious pilgrimage to Mecca, have brought literally millions of Africans to Arabia.

The hajj has demonstrated since ancient times that neither Africans nor Arabs considered physical barriers or long distances as insurmountable obstacles. Large numbers of African pilgrims never returned to their native lands as far away as Senegal. Instead, they settled throughout the Middle East, including present-day Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestine/Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen, the Persian Gulf countries and Turkey.

Prominent Arabs of African descent include Kuwaiti Crown Prince Saad and Saudi Arabia's longtime ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Also included are many popular musicians, such as Mohamed Abdu of Saudi Arabia, members of the Miami Kuwaiti Group and Nabil Shuail of Kuwait, and Yemeni musician Abu Rab Idriss.

Despite social and cultural differences, these natives of the Arabian peninsula have historic and genetic ties to the African diaspora. And they also share a common bond with African-Americans and others who live in Europe, the Caribbean and Africa.

East_African · (#4 (**permalink**))

Prince Bandar Bin Sultan (his mother was a sudanese slave girl.)

zaghawa · (#5 (**permalink**))

Buu wrote:

Quote:

I'm wondering if the Arab slave trade ever existed we talk so little about it in comparison to the European slave trade. We've even had Black Muslims completely deny it ever happened, so I'm also wondering how is it possible to completely wipe it from the history book and have African Muslims on the continent and world wide deny it themselves.

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Blacks in the west have focused, somewhat understandably, on the trans Atlantic slave trade. It is mostlypolitical reasons that the islamic trade is not well know.

The slave trade in Islam began in the middle of the seventh century and survives today in Mauritania and Sudan.

Due to the enormous length of the Islamic Slave Trade, from 700 to 1911AD, it is impossible to be certain of the numbers of Black Africans sold in this system. Estimates place the numbers somewhere around 11 to 14 million. With the Islamic slave trade, we're talking of 14 centuries rather than four for the Atlantic slave trade.

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Islam's black slaves: With the expansion of Islam and the conquests of huge territories, there were large numbers of white slaves in the early periods. But, to be fair, white slaves became increasingly more difficult and expensive to obtain. Black slaves becamemuch more numerous than white ones. When you get to the 19th century, the cruelest century, there were many more black slaves than white ones in Islam.

In the early stages of Islam, slaves in Iraq and neighboring Iran they were put to work in large quantities to clear the salt crust for agriculture and plantation labor. But in the ninth century, a prophet arrived who instigated a rebellion among the black slaves, in the area. This rebellion was enormous. It destroyed much of the commerce ofthe region and came close to capturing the city of Baghdad, then the greatest city of Islam. It was crushed after quite a protracted period. The impact across Islam was huge. There developed a reluctance to allow very large concentrations of slaves for plantation agriculture.

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The gender ratio of slaves in the Atlantic trade was two males to every female, in the Islamic trade, it was two females to every male. Very large numbers of slaves were used for domestic purposes. Concubinage was for those who couldpay forit and there was nostigma attached to having women as sexual objects. The male slaves were used for the more physical jobs in homes and palaces: porters, messengers, doorkeepers. In various places, from Islamic Spain to Egypt to Libya.

In the case of the Islamic slave trade a significant proportion of the black males were castrated which may explain the low incidence of blacks in many of these areas as compared to the Americas. However some black slaves came to be used increasingly by rulers as counselors, advisors, tutors and, eventually, to actually run the holy places of Mecca and Medina, where they were treated with respect. One can speculate on the motivation -- if they were not sexually active they were more likely to be devoted and loyal to spiritual preoccupations instead of bodily ones.

In Islam, castration is against the law. But they got around this as people will. Oneway was to buy already castrated slaves. Another was to employ those who were not Muslims to perform the operation. But then even these contrivances came to be abandoned and dealers would perform the operation themselves along the route. The mortality rates were huge.

The institution of slaveryis sanctioned in the Koran. To say that the Koran is opposed to the institution of slavery is incorrect. It is never recommended, but it is influentially and explicitly benevolent in its attitude to the poor, the orphaned and slaves. And there is a specific injunction that to free a slave is an act of piety, which has its reward in thenext life. Incidentally, what was absolutelyforbidden in the Koran was to separate an infant or a young child from his mother.

The resurgence of fundamentalist Islam has a lot to do with slavery in both Sudan and Mauritania today. Both describe themselves as Islamic states and pursue policies of Arab-Islamic religious. Sudan is an imperial agglomeration of two countries -- one part of black Africa, one part of North Africa. Involved in the war is a question of control and power. In Mauritania, the so-called white Moors represent a third of the population, another third are the Haratin -- who are the descendants of freed slaves and largely black -- and the last third are blacks still held in slavery.

There are many more distinctions between the islamic trade and the atlantic trade. Some blackstry to make the point that the islamic trade was more humane than the atlantic trade. That arguement always reminds me too much of the the plantation owners who said that they always treated their slaves well. It smells bad. The very fact that the trade lasted for 14 centuries speaks volumes to me.

And that is small part of the story.

East_African · (#6 (**permalink**))

The tragic truth of how African Muslims became the main victims of the west's slave trade

SERVANTS OF ALLAH: AFRICAN MUSLIMS ENSLAVED IN THE AMERICAS by Sylviane A. Diouf. Pub: New York University Press, New York, US, 1998. Pp: 254 (inc. notes, bibliography and index), pbk: $18.50.

Dr Yusuf Progler's review of the new, abridged edition of Allan D. Austin's African Muslims in Anti-Bellum America (Crescent International, February 1-15, 1999) highlighted an issue of which few Muslims are aware. But Austin's work - a pioneer in the field when it was originally published in 1984 - suffers from drawbacks which limit its appeal, particularly for Muslim readers. One is that Austin is hazy on Islamic beliefs and practice. Another is that he focuses on a few individual Muslims who left substantial literary and other records, without extrapolating to the broader Muslim experience.

Sylviane Diouf's new book, Servants of Allah, is far broader in its approach, examining the Muslim experience thematically, using a far wider range of sources. The result is a presentation which is far more reader-friendly.

Diouf begins, very usefully, by looking at the situation in west Africa during the period when Africans were shipped to the 'new world' as slaves, explaining that 'the history of Africa... cannot be dissociated from the history of the people of African descent in the New World.' By the time of the first shipments, in 1501, Islam was well-established in the region even though it was not the religion of the majority. There were both Muslim rulers governing largely non-Muslim populations, and large Muslim communities living peaceably under non-Muslim rulers. Having come to the region with traders, ulama and rulers, in many areas Islam had become a religion of the masses, regarded and accepted as an indigenous faith.
At the same time, the west African Muslims were part of the larger Islamic world, which stretched from the Atlantic and Europe to Central Asia, China and south-east Asia. West African Muslim society, Diouf points out, 'had direct economic, religious and cultural ties to the Maghreb, Egypt and the Middle East, and was evolving in what would today be called a global market of ideas and goods.' In particular, she emphasises that Islam and literacy were directly linked. Arabic was the common language of scholarship, trade and politics, education was almost entirely in the hands of the Muslims, and Islamic law was the norm even where non-Muslims ruled.

Diouf's account of how European slavery came to these regions is cool and detached, but moving nonetheless. The first west African Muslims to become slaves to the Europeans were being taken to Spain even before the last Muslims rulers in Iberian peninsula were defeated in 1492. These slaves were forcibly converted to Catholicism; the Spanish were wary of the power of Islam. The same fear later led them to ban the direct transfer of slaves from west Africa to the 'new world'; slaves were first to be brought to Spain to be converted.

Diouf also emphasises that 'Muslims did not arrive in the New World by accident. There were political, religious and social reasons that they were victims of the slave trade.' One major reason she highlights was the disintegration of the Muslim Jolof empire between 1490 and 1512. This had ruled much of what is now Senegal through vassal kingdoms, some Muslim and some non-Muslim. As some of these kingdoms revolted against the Jolofs, jihad movements led by ulama emerged to resist the break-up of the Muslim polity and to demand its reform (as they did in virtually every part of the Muslim world as political power declined).

As Jolof fell, many of these mujahideen were captured and sold into Spanish slavery, along with large numbers of Muslim peoples, such as the Wolof, Mandingo, Tukulor and Fulani. Time and again this pattern is repeated, notably after the Tubenan jihad of Nasir Al-Din in 1673-74, and decades later during the jihad of Uthman dan Fodio. Not only were so many African slaves Muslim, therefore, but among them were the most committed and learned of the community. Diouf's discussion of this African background is one of the strongest parts of the book.

Most of it, however, is concerned the Muslims' experiences in America. The ground Diouf is treading here is not new; but her marshalling of sources, and her thematic organization of her findings, are exceptional. She begins by discussing the ways in which Muslims maintained their faith and rituals, in the most appalling living circumstances and often despite being forced to convert to Christianity. While many of the literate and educated Muslims were discriminated against, or even killed, ordinary Muslims showed remarkable fortitude.

Diouf tells the stories of several slaves who were forced to convert, but reverted to Islam decades later, when circumstances permitted, having presumably remained Muslims in secret in the meantime. Notably, many of the strategies the slaves developed in these circumstances are similar to those developed by other Muslims forced to live under non-Muslim rule, such as in Andalusia and Tartaristan.

Under these circumstances, the Islam which came from Africa eventually died out; the most recent signs of it that Diouf can find are in the memories of elderly African Americans that their elders performed rituals which seem similar to those of Islam.

But cultural clues to the slaves' origins and faith are easier to find. As recently as 1949, for example, linguists recorded the 'day words' used by some former slave communities in Georgia as Altine for Monday (from Ithnain), Talata for Tuesday, Araba for Wednesday, Alkamisa or Aramisa for Thursday, and Arajuma for Friday. Versions of Islamic names were also widely used by African-Americans long before the arrival of modern Islam in America.

Muslim slaves did more than just try to maintain their personal Islam. Diouf reports numerous episodes of Muslim slaves having organized themselves collectively to provide for their Islamic needs, and to protect and promote Islam through education, da'wah and even jihad efforts which were brutally suppressed. This area of her book is relatively weak; the reader is left hungry for more information and analysis. Another weakness is that Diouf is unable to reflect the full range of Muslim experiences in different parts of the 'new world' and at different times.
The paucity of knowledge in this area of history - in the historiographies of both America and Islam - requires more than a single book to be made up. Sylviane Diouf's book is, however, a major contribution to this task, which other Muslims must take up.

East_African · (#7 (**permalink**))

Tippo tip notorious zanzibar slave trader(I read this man was an arab but know i see his faceam thinking wtf)

http://lrrc3.sas.upenn.edu/indianoce...p1/ioslv4.html

read this website about the indian ocean slave trade in full

Famous Islamic scholar Al-Jihaz (778-868)

wrote of the physical superiority of the Africans nations over all other nations. For example, he states: "We Blacks have conquered the country of the Arabs as far as Mecca and governed them. The desert swarm with the number of our men who married your women and who became chiefs and defended you against your enemies. You even have sayings in your language which vaunt the deeds of our kings - deeds which you often placed above your own; this you would not have done had you not considered them superior to your own. We defeated Dhu Nowas (Jewish ruler of Yemen) and killed all the Himyarite princes, but the Arabs and Whites (from Europe) have never conquered our country. Our people, the Zinges (an African race), revolted forty times in the Euphrates, driving the inhabitants from their homes...Blacks are physically stronger. A single one of them can lift stones of great weight and carry burdens such as several whites could not lift nor carry between them. They are brave, strong...- these good traits are the gifts of God." [Excerpt taken from the book - The Superiority of the blacks over the whites].

Buu · (#8 (**permalink**))

East African, I actually knew I could count on you to add some information, very interesting read. It would be nice to see more pictures like the one you just posted. Its good to know that you've had first hand experience of African descendants within the middle east. Already reading Zaghawa and your post a 2nd time.

Zaghawa, we seem to play into the politics of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and the US intervention in Middle East partly because of the Media and that some of our Leaders have lead us into, such as Farrakhan and he and the NOI are partly funded by Islamic Arab groups. Is this what you mean by it's political that we don't talk about the Arab atrocities against us.

Buu · (#9 (**permalink**))

zaghawa wrote:
The resurgence of fundamentalist Islam has a lot to do with slavery in both Sudan and Mauritania today. Both describe themselves as Islamic states and pursue policies of Arab-Islamic religious. Sudan is an imperial agglomeration of two countries -- one part of black Africa, one part of North Africa. Involved in the war is a question of control and power. In Mauritania, the so-called white Moors represent a third of the population, another third are the Haratin -- who are the descendants of freed slaves and largely black -- and the last third are blacks still held in slavery.
[/quote]

I'd like to know more about the feelings of Africans on the continent toward Islamic slave trade in North Africa the conflict in Sudan and the Arab-Islamic policies in Mauritania. I read some BNVs here talk about their ill feelings of whats going on in Mauritania, such as Mezmerized. Are Africans more conscienous about Arab agendas than some of us are in the West? Because It doesn't seem to me that enough of us there are judging by whats going on in Sudan.

zaghawa wrote:
There are many more distinctions between the islamic trade and the atlantic trade. Some blacksÂ*try to make the point that the islamic trade was more humaneÂ*than the atlantic trade. That arguement always reminds me too much of the the plantation owners who said that they always treated their slaves well. It smells bad. The very fact that the trade lasted for 14 centuries speaks volumes to me.
[/quote]

Lol, you got this down to a tea!

Buu · (#10 (**permalink**))

Double post..