The Arab Slave Trade

The Arab slave trade was the practice of slavery in the Arab world, mainly in Western Asia, North Africa, East Africa, and certain parts of Europe (such as Iberia and Sicily) during their period of domination by Arab leaders. The trade was focused on the slave markets of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. People traded were not limited to a certain race, ethnicity, or religion, and included Turks, Iranians, Europeans, and Berbers, especially during the trade’s early days.

During the 8th and 9th centuries of the Fatimid Caliphate, most of the slaves were Europeans (called Saqaliba) captured along European coasts and during wars. However, slaves were drawn from a wide variety of regions and included Mediterranean peoples, Persians, peoples from the Caucasus mountain regions (such as Georgia, Armenia and Circassia) and parts of Central Asia and Scandinavia, English, Dutch and Irish, Berbers from North Africa, and various other peoples of varied origins as well as those of African origins.

Toward the 18th and 19th centuries, the flow of Zanj (Bantu) slaves from East Africa increased with the rise of the Oman sultanate, which was based in Zanzibar. They came into direct trade conflict and competition with Portuguese and other Europeans along the Swahili coast. The North African Barbary states carried on piracy against European shipping and enslaved thousands of European Christians. They earned revenues from the ransoms charged; in many cases in Britain, village churches and communities would raise money for such ransoms. The government did not ransom its citizens.

SCOPE OF THE TRADE

Historians estimate that between 650 and 1900, 10 to 18 million peoples were enslaved by Arab slave traders and taken from Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert. The term Arab when used in historical documents often represented an ethnic term, as many of the “Arab” slave traders, such as Tippu Tip and others, were physically indistinguishable from the “Africans” whom they enslaved and sold. Due to the nature of the Arab slave trade, it is impossible to be precise about actual numbers.

To a smaller degree, Arabs also enslaved Europeans. According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured between the 16th and 19th centuries by Barbary corsairs, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and sold as slaves. 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. They were also taken from ships stopped by the pirates.The effects of these attacks was devastating: France, England, and Spain each lost thousands of ships. Long stretches of the Spanish and Italian coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants, because of frequent pirate attacks. Pirateraids discouraged settlement along the coast until the 19th century.

Periodic Arab 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, for example, the Almohad caliph, Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, took 3,000 female and child captives, while his governor of Córdoba, in a subsequent attack upon Silves in 1191, took 3,000 Christian slaves.

The Ottoman wars in Europe and Tatar raids brought large numbers of European Christian slaves into the Muslim world too.

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 Mashriq deserts (Trans-Saharan route), Sea routes to the east of Africa through the Red Sea and Indian Ocean (Oriental route).

The Arab slave trade originated before Islam and lasted more than a millennium. Arab traders brought Africans across the Indian Ocean from present-day Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, Eritrea, Ethiopia and elsewhere in East Africa to present-day Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Somalia, Turkeyand other parts of the Middle East 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 to the Far East.